Household insecticides may increase the risk of childhood leukaemia, suggests French research in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Leukaemia is the most common childhood cancer in France, affecting 43 in every million children every year. The findings are based on 280 children newly diagnosed with acute leukaemia and a further 288 children matched for sex and age, but free of the disease.
When medics are treating trauma patients, every second counts. Yet bruises, burns, and other physical conditions often make it difficult to locate veins and administer lifesaving drugs or solutions. In response, a team of Georgia Institute of Technology researchers is developing an inexpensive, handheld device that uses Doppler ultrasound technology to find veins quickly.
Researchers are developing a nano-size battery that one day could be implanted in the eye to power an artificial retina. They are seeking to design a class of devices for generating electric power — bio-batteries — for a wide array of implantable devices, starting with an artificial retina that has already been developed at the Doheny Eye Institute at the University of Southern California. The artificial retina and accompanying nanobattery will be used to correct certain types of macular degeneration.
If children with autism can’t see the forest for the trees, that may be partly because the burden of processing all those trees at once makes it harder to lock in the scene. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System have found that children with autism differ from other children in two specific memory capabilities.
The Food and Drug Administration has announced steps to advance the earliest phases of clinical research in the development of innovative medical treatments. FDA’s goal is to improve the process for bringing safe and effective drugs for potentially serious and life-threatening diseases, such as cancer, heart disease and neurological disorders, to the market.
Watching comedy films boosts blood flow to the heart, finds a study in the journal Heart. Researchers asked 20 healthy young adults to watch 15 to 30 minute segments of sad and humorous films, a minimum of 48 hours apart. Examples of sad films included the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan and examples of comedy films included There’s Something About Mary. Participants were asked to abstain from drinking alcohol, using vitamins or herbs, or taking aerobic exercise the evening before the experiment, as all these can affect blood flow.
Italian researchers have found that blockade of the hormone leptin, which is primarily produced in fats cells, has beneficial effects on the induction and progression of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) in mice — the animal model of human multiple sclerosis (MS). In their study, the researchers suggest that leptin neutralization may be a potential way to both prevent and treat MS.
In healthy volunteers, the equivalent of two cups of coffee reduced the body’s ability to boost blood flow to the heart muscle in response to exercise, and the effect was stronger when the participants were in a chamber simulating high altitude, according to a new study in the Jan. 17, 2006, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. “Whenever we do a physical exercise, myocardial blood flow has to increase in order to match the increased need of oxygen. We found that caffeine may adversely affect this mechanism. It partly blunts the needed increase in flow.”
Every year, heart disease claims an estimated 7 million lives, according to the World Health Organization. Scientists have struggled to pinpoint the precise genes behind this complex disease. Now, however, they have a new research ally: the designer rat. In a four-year study published in the January 15 advance online publication of Nature Genetics, researchers at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) systematically bred and studied 43 designer rats with and without high blood pressure, in order to pinpoint candidate genes behind heart disease.
Philip Koehring spent his life working for companies that built giants. They weren’t the kind that gave small children nightmares, but giants that could move mountains and inspire awe by their sheer size and power. These behemoths mined coal and possessed the kind of Herculean power NASA would need to move the massive rockets that would first carry men to the moon. So in the early 1960s, much of the burden of adapting the engineering know-how fell on Koehring’s shoulders.
A research team at UT Southwestern Medical Center has discovered a cell-signaling mechanism instrumental in the most common brain cancer in adults. The study, published in today’s issue of the journal Cancer Research, opens an avenue to develop therapeutic drugs to target the epidermal growth factor receptor genes that play a major role in the development of deadly brain tumors, researchers said.
Researchers have found that the curry spice turmeric holds real potential for the treatment and prevention of prostate cancer, particularly when combined with certain vegetables. The scientists tested turmeric, also known as curcumin, along with phenethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC), a naturally occurring substance particularly abundant in a group of vegetables that includes watercress, cabbage, winter cress, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, cauliflower, kohlrabi and turnips.
Nearly seven years after setting off in pursuit of comet Wild 2, the Stardust return capsule streaked across the night sky of the Western United States early Sunday, making a soft parachute landing in the Utah desert southwest of Salt Lake City. Special helicopter-borne teams secured and recovered the capsule, containing tens of thousands of comet grains and as many as 100 bits of interstellar dust, shortly after it landed.