PHILADELPHIA — Reporting in Nature, scientists from Thomas Jefferson University have determined that a single protein called FADD controls multiple cell death pathways, a discovery that could lead to better, more targeted autoimmune disease and can…
Ever get a flu shot and still get the flu? If so, there’s new hope for flu-free winters in the years to come thanks to a new discovery by researchers who found that a drug called DMXAA, originally developed as anti-tumor agent, enhances the ability …
CHICAGO — If a human cell and a bacterial cell met at a speed-dating event, they would never be expected to exchange phone numbers, much less genetic material. In more scientific terms, a direct transfer of DNA has never been recorded from humans …
HIV adapts in a surprising way to survive and thrive in its hiding spot within the human immune system, scientists have learned. While the finding helps explain why HIV remains such a formidable foe after three decades of research — more than 30 m…
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Urinary tract infections are a painful, recurring problem for millions of women. They are also getting more dangerous as bacteria develop resistance to the most common treatments.
Scientists from the University of Michigan ha…
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Pathogenic listeria tricks intestinal cells into helping it pass through those cells to make people ill, and, if that doesn’t work, the bacteria simply goes around the cells, according to a Purdue University study.
Arun …
Using nanotechnology to stop HIV viruses from entering cells is the ultimate aim of a new project at the University of California, Davis. The researchers hope to create tiny particles that can interfere with the proteins that viruses such as HIV use to attach to cells.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have helped identify a large, undetected epidemic of the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia in China. The new findings appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The collaboration involving UNC, the University of Chicago and researchers in China points to a chlamydia epidemic that developed in that country during the last 20 years ? and represents the first nationwide study of its kind to combine reported behavior with physical evidence of the consequences of sexual activity.
Researchers report that satellite imagery could be used to determine areas at high-risk for exposure to Sin Nombre virus (SNV), a rodent-born disease that causes the often fatal hantaviral pulmonary syndrome (HPS) in humans. According to the researchers, satellite imaging detects the distinct environmental conditions that may serve as a refuge for the disease-carrying deer mice. Higher populations of infected deer mice increase the risk of HPS to humans.
The use of live bacteria to treat cancer goes back a hundred years. But while the therapy can sometimes shrink tumors, the treatment usually leads to toxicity, limiting its value in medicine. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have isolated a protein secreted by bacteria that kills cancer cells but appears to have no harmful side effects. Tested in mice injected with human melanomas, the protein shrank the malignancies, but, in contrast with other studies using whole bacteria, caused no deaths or adverse reactions in the laboratory animals.
A new study suggests smallpox vaccine immunity may last far longer than expected. Scientists had believed that the vaccine generally only conferred protection from the deadly virus for about a decade. But a study released this week found evidence that people may be covered for 35 years or more, meaning many Americans could retain some level of immunity. The study looked at blood samples from laboratory workers who had been immunized in the last five years and those who had been vaccinated up to 35 years earlier.