acute

Bioartificial kidney under study at MCG

...arold M. Szerlip, MCG nephrologist specializing in acute renal failure and a principal investigator on the study. "If you have renal failure in the ICU, your mortality is extremely high," Dr. Szerlip says. "Anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of those patients die and over the past 20 years, despite dialysis, ...

Topical treatment shown to inhibit HIV and herpes simplex virus infection

...mmatory cytokines were also measured as markers of acute inflammation. Analyses showed that CVL obtained after the application of PRO 2000 gel reduced both HIV and HSV infectivity by at least 1000-fold compared to CVL obtained at baseline. The effects were highly statistically significant (p "An inflamma...

Scientists Replicate Hepatitis C Virus in Laboratory

...itis viruses, HCV accounts for about 15 percent of acute hepatitis cases, 60 to 70 percent of chronic hepatitis cases, and up to 50 percent of cases of cirrhosis, end-stage liver disease, and liver cancer. Almost 4 million Americans, or 1.8 percent of the U.S. population, have antibodies to HCV indicating ...

Newly discovered virus linked to childhood lung disorders and Kawasaki disease

...imarily for causing colds or, morerecently, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Genetic evidencenow s...sponse inthe respiratory tract and other organs in acute cases of Kawasakidisease, suggesting the involvement of a specific microbe, which mayenter the body ...

Genome-wide mouse study yields link to human leukemia

...e Cancer Center bred a type of mouse that develops acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The mouse first goes through a pre-leukemic stage marked by rapidly expanding T cells and natural killer cells, both major components of the immune system. In comparing the mice in the pre-leukemic stage and those with ...

U of M researcher examines newly emerging deadly disease

...o patients have survived. Purpura fulminans is an acute illness commonly associated with meningococcemia or invasive streptococcal disease, and it is typically characterized by the depletion of clotting factors in the blood and skin lesions. Purpura fulminans refers to widespread severe purpura with exten...

Study: Soap And Water Work Best In Ridding Hands Of Disease Viruses

...n cold. Other removable viruses cause hepatitis A, acute gastroenteritis and a host of other illnesses. A separate key finding was that waterless handwipes only removed roughly 50 percent of bacteria from volunteer subjects?hands. "We studied the efficacy of 14 different hand hygiene agents in reducing b...

Genetically modified natural killer immune cells attack, kill leukemia cells

... the outcome of children who receive treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or other blood cancers. Results of the St. Jude study are published in the current online issue of Blood. The researchers demonstrated how to overcome significant technical hurdles that have until now slowed development...

Alcohol's effects on gene expression in the central nervous system

...e. More than 300 genes were found to be altered by acute alcohol treatment. "The prefrontal cortex is involved in motivated behaviors," noted McBride. "Studies with humans indicate that this brain region is sensitive to the effects of heavy alcohol drinking and repeated withdrawals. The microarray techniq...

New studies suggest airborne SARS transmission is possible

...ies present evidence that the virus causing severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) may spread through the air, not just through direct contact with contaminated water droplets as previous research had shown. SARS coronavirus was detected in the air in a patient's room during the 2003 outbreak in Toronto...

Circles Of DNA Might Help Predict Success Of Stem Cell Transplantation

... been treated for either white cell cancers (e.g., acute lymphoblastic leukemia) or red cell diseases (e.g., sickle cell disease). Because blood from the normal, healthy donors contained 1,200 to 155,000 sjTREC copies per milliliter of blood, the investigators chose 1,200 as the lowest end of the normal r...

VCU Researchers Identify Networks Of Genes Responding To Alcohol In The Brain

...ains differ in a number of behavioral responses to acute alcohol and in their predisposition to drink alcohol. Researchers isolated tissue from three different regions of the brain that are all known to play a role in responses to alcohol and other drugs of abuse. Using DNA microarrays, which measure the ...

Asthma gene clusters identified

Children who suffer from acute asthma attacks share a genetic profile that appear... from the nasal epithelium of children who have an acute case of asthma or asthma stabilized with medication. The analysis revealed two distinct gene express...

Gene Signatures Predict Interferon Response For Multiple Sclerosis Patients

...52 patients with relapsing-remitting MS (marked by acute flare-ups followed by partial or full recovery), and their RNA was isolated from a class of immune cells called peripheral blood mononuclear cells. After patients started interferon therapy, blood was taken at specific time points over the course of ...

Genetically Modified Natural Killer Immune Cells Attack, Kill Leukemia Cells

... the outcome of children who receive treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or other blood cancers. Results of the St. Jude study are published in the current online issue of Blood. The researchers demonstrated how to overcome significant technical hurdles that have until now slowed development...

A little stress gives beneficial oomph! to immune system

...ertain conditions. Laboratory results showed that acute stress ?stress that lasts for minutes to hours ?te...habhar and his team have focused on the effects of acute stressors, other researchers have found that chronic stress may substantively weaken the immune syst...

Multiple-drug resistant gene expression pattern predicts treatment outcome for pediatric leukemia

... with a better understanding of why some pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients fail to respond to treatment even when existing clinical predictive criteria point towards a positive treatment outcome. The research, published in the April issue of Cancer Cell, is likely to facilitate developm...

How A Latent Virus Eludes Immune Defenses

...to EBV and KSHV infections in humans, producing an acute mononucleosis-like illness and a pervasive pool of latently infected B cells. The episome maintenance protein in MHV-68 and KSHV is called ORF73. None of the viruses can maintain latent infections with deficient episome maintenance proteins. Stevens...

Touching Molecules With Your Bare Hands

...to EBV and KSHV infections in humans, producing an acute mononucleosis-like illness and a pervasive pool of latently infected B cells. The episome maintenance protein in MHV-68 and KSHV is called ORF73. None of the viruses can maintain latent infections with deficient episome maintenance proteins. Stevens...

FDA Approves New Treatment for Chronic Hepatitis B

...ically seen with HBV therapy. They include severe, acute exacerbation of hepatitis B after discontinuation of Baraclude, headache, abdominal pain, diarrhea, fatigue, and dizziness. The labeling for Baraclude states that patients who discontinue Baraclude should be monitored at repeated intervals over a per...

Stem cell treatment improves mobility after spinal cord injury

...hese cells can help restore motor skills lost from acute spinal cord tissue damage. Hans Keirstead and his...mans will occur during spinal stabilization at the acute phase, when rods and ties are placed in the spinal column to restabilize it after injury. Currently,...

Circulating stem cells play small role in lung repair

...mosome-containing pneumocytes and the incidence of acute cellular rejection in the tissue, suggesting that stem cell repopulation might be stimulated by greater degrees of injury to the lung. The possibility that the presence of male gender pneumocytes in female lungs might result from an earlier pregnanc...

Candida albicans Genome Fully Annotated

...mosome-containing pneumocytes and the incidence of acute cellular rejection in the tissue, suggesting that stem cell repopulation might be stimulated by greater degrees of injury to the lung. The possibility that the presence of male gender pneumocytes in female lungs might result from an earlier pregnanc...

Morphine for Chest Pain Increases Death Risk

...t after else has been tried." While patients with acute STEMI are at higher risk of dying within 30 days of their hospital stay, patients with non-STEMI actually have a higher risk of dying six months and one year after initial hospital presentation. It is estimated that about 1.3 million Americans are ho...

Attacks of King George III's madness linked to key metabolism molecule

...-1 alpha is a major determinant of the severity of acute porphyric attacks in mouse models of chemical porphyria." Through a series of experiments with normal mice and those engineered to lack the PGC-1 alpha gene, the researchers said they have provided "a clear-cut mechanism" linking fasting to an incre...

Fragment of yellow fever virus may hold key to safer vaccine

...mproved vaccine, ter Meulen turned to survivors of acute yellow fever in the Republic of Guinea in West Africa. Along the war-torn border with Sierra Leone, disruptions in vaccination and medical services led to a large epidemic in 2000. In collaboration with local health authorities, ter Meulen set up a v...

Doctors should stop prescribing antibiotics for the common cold, review advises

...tics appear to have no benefit in the treatment of acute upper respiratory tract infections," conclude Dr. Bruce Arroll and Dr. Timothy Kenealy of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. "The implications for practice are that prescription of antibiotics should not be given in the first instance as they w...

New type of rejection blocker protects kidneys after transplant

...ne responses has proved as effective in preventing acute kidney transplant rejection as cyclosporine, the s...nt therapy. At the end of six months, the rates of acute rejection were similar in all patient groups (six to seven percent for belatacept versus eight perce...

Measuring hidden parasites in falciparum malaria

...l regions of the world, malaria causes 300 million acute illnesses and at least 1 million deaths annually. Estimates of plasma PfHRP2 concentrations may be useful as a research tool to assess patients' parasite loads and may also provide one way of assessing the severity of a patient's disease. ...

Insulin pulses keep the liver lean

...he current study uncovered a new mechanism whereby acute insulin pulses limit fat synthesis in the liver. This protective mechanism fails in obese mice and mice with persistently high levels of insulin, the researchers also found. The findings suggest that periods of fasting between meals play a critical ...

Nicotine triggers the same brain reward circuitry as opiates

... the activation of CREB "is evident not only after acute and repeated nicotine administration, but also following exposure to an environment in which the animal has previously received nicotine." The researchers noted that clinical studies of opioid receptor blockers to relieve cigarette cravings "so far ...

Investigating 'brain shrinkage' in alcoholics

...sily with oral or injected thiamine. Patients with acute deficiency respond very quickly but some permanent damage can occur if patients are not treated and particularly if they suffer repeated episodes of the deficiency." - Combining in vivo brain imaging and animal research allows for an unprecedented e...

Survival of heart patients on beta-blockers varies greatly with genetic variation

...can Medical Association. "In our investigation of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients discharged on bet... patients," Lanfear says. "Data from patients with acute myocardial infarction have shown that beta-blockers are generally effective. They are known to decre...

Defect in gene causes 'neuralgic amyotrophy'

...s system. This heritable disease causes prolonged acute attacks of pain in the shoulder or arm, followed by temporary paralysis. Researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected to the University of Antwerp, have uncovered a small piece of the molecular puzzle of t...

UIC developing drug for SARS

...ng replication of the virus responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. Currently, there are no effective antiviral agents or vaccines for SARS, which killed almost 800 people in an epidemic in 2002-2003. On the basis of their success, the researchers have received an $8 million grant fro...

Stem cells bring fast direct improvement, without differentiation, in acute renal failure

...ed mesenchymal stem cells protect against ischemic acute renal failure through differentiation-independent mechanisms," appears in the American Journal of Physiology-Renal Physiology, published by the American Physiological Society. Research was conducted by Florian Tögel, Zhuma Hu, Kathleen Weiss, and Chr...

Genes linked to treatment resistance in children with leukemia

...tology. The researchers studied 246 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), all of whom were assigned to one of two groups that determined the intensity of therapy. Patients with poorer prognostic factors ?130 children ?were assigned to a high-risk group; the remaining children were enrolled in ...

New study shows SARS can infect brain tissue

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), by its very name, indicates a disease of the respiratory tract. But SARS can also infiltrate brain tissue, causing significant central nervous system problems, according to an article in the Oct. 15 issue of Clinical Infe...

Learning how SARS spikes its quarry

...el antiviral drugs or vaccines. The SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus was responsible for a worldwide outbreak in 2002-2003 that affected more than 8,000 people and killed 774 before being brought under control. Public health experts worry about another outbreak of the virus, which ori...

UQ scientists break new ground in fight against infection & chronic disease

...archers are on track to develop new treatments for acute infections, chronic inflammatory diseases and canc... among the agents that caused patients to die from acute infections like bird flu and to acquire chronic inflammatory diseases such as arthritis and inflamma...

Dendritic cells offer new therapeutic target for drugs to treat MS and other autoimmune disease

... identified as a treatment target in patients with acute myeloid leukemia, a blood cell cancer, several years ago by the same Johns Hopkins investigators. In the current work, the Hopkins team has confirmed that the gene is activated in dendritic cells, whose role is to distribute "look here" information a...

Researcher says flu responders can learn from 1918 epidemic

...pically healthy younger patients -- fell victim to acute respiratory distress syndrome, which replicated the sense of a chemical burn searing the lungs. "It wasn't always that quick, either," Higgins said. "And along the way, you had symptoms like fingers and genitals turning black, and people reporting b...

Amphetamines reverse Parkinson's disease symptoms in mice

...he symptoms of Parkinson's disease in mice with an acute form of the condition, according to new research at Duke University Medical Center. The researchers caution that the findings in animals do not suggest Parkinson's disease patients should find relief by taking amphetamines, which are drugs of abuse ...

Master regulatory gene found that guides fate of blood-producing stem cells

...tients in whom this process has gone awry, such as acute leukemia, we might block the regulatory gene to shift the balance of self-renewal versus differentiation so that all the immature, leukemic cells differentiate and die. Over the past 10 years, several gene families have been suggested to be importan...

Chernobyl: The true scale of the accident

...his includes some 50 emergency workers who died of acute radiation syndrome and nine children who died of t...istance of 20-30 kilometers. Outside that zone, no acute radiation-induced effects have been reported. With reductions of exposure levels, biological populat...

Cyberkinetics, Case to develop system to help restore extremity function

...euroPort TM System, a neural monitor designed for acute inpatient applications and labeled for temporary (less than 30 days) recording and monitoring of brain electrical activity. The NeuroPort TM System can contribute to the diagnosis and treatment of neurological conditions in patients who have undergo...

Synthetic Protein Eases Arthritis Symptoms in Mice

...ion of a human protein alleviates symptoms of both acute and chronic arthritis in mice and could be the bas...sease symptoms in mice with established as well as acute arthritis. The scientists did not detect any obvious toxicity in the PLAD-treated mice. “We’re very...

Cord blood cells may widen treatment window for stroke

...experimental treatment that spares disability from acute stroke may be delivered much later than the curren...mine the timing of brain inflammatory responses in acute stroke patients. Researchers working with Dr. Willing were Jennifer Newcomb, Ted Ajmo, Lisa Collier...

Children overprescribed antibiotics for sore throat

...n in the article. The most common manifestation of acute pharyngitis is sore throat. The main bacterial cause of sore throat and the only common cause of sore throat warranting antibiotic treatment is group A beta-hemolytic streptococci (GABHS). GABHS are cultured from 15 percent to 36 percent of children ...

Group proves it's possible to grow new lung alveoli by growing new blood vessels

...infants on ventilators and oxygen-rich therapy for acute respiratory failure. It's really a win-lose situation: the babies are saved but they pay the price with dramatically underdeveloped lungs--forcing them to spend their early days outside the womb fighting for every breath. And now, with many of these...

Stem cell mobilization therapy appears to be ineffective in repairing damage caused by heart attack

... 114 patients, diagnosed with ST-segment elevation acute myocardial infarction (a certain pattern on an ele...improve left ventricular recovery in patients with acute myocardial infarction after successful mechanical reperfusion," they write. ...

Diabetes researchers pioneer islet cell xenotransplantation in primate studies

...cted against antigens that can cause hyperacute or acute humoral rejection. To combat that, the researchers administered an anti-IL-2 receptor and anti-CD154 (H106) antibody, while maintaining immunosuppression using sirolimus and belatacept (a second-generation high affinity derivative of CTLA4-Ig)9-11 on...

'Bad' enzymes may wear white hats after stroke

...at with stroke, we may now be able to think beyond acute treatment times of just a few hours, and find ways of manipulating peri-infarct recovery over several weeks." Currently, the only FDA-approved drug for treating stroke--tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA--must be given within three hours after a s...

Marine mammals are on the frontline of failing ocean health

... blooms. Neurotoxic shellfish poisoning and other acute effects of consuming brevetoxins are not new to sc...ty of Alaska Fairbanks. In laboratory studies and acute exposure scenarios, persistent organic pollutants have been shown to affect brain function, reproduc...

Patients now surviving once-fatal immune disease

...he past, the majority of patients with XLA died of acute or chronic infections in the first two decades of life," Howard noted. "But in the last 20 years the outlook for patients with XLA has significantly improved, thanks to earlier diagnosis and improved gamma globulin therapy. Our study is reassuring an...

MiRNA fingerprint identified in platelet formation

...hey also studied miRNA expression patterns in four acute megakaryoblastic leukemia (AMKL) cell lines. They discovered that a set of 17 miRNAs are turned off during normal megakaryocyte differentiation and that 8 of those genes create a molecular signature that clearly defines a megakaryocyte from any oth...

Single microRNA causes cancer in transgenic mouse

...an effective therapeutic strategy in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia or high grade lymphomas. ...

St. Jude projects 90 percent cure rate for ALL

...the once almost universally fatal childhood cancer acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) could reach 90 percen...on of the use of irradiation should further reduce acute and long-term toxic side effects and improve outcome." Coupled with the successes of the recent pas...

Scientists develop malaria forecasting tool to predict disease risk

...s endemic in several regions globally, but is most acute in Africa, home to an estimated 90 per cent of all cases. Dr Andy Morse from the Department of Geography and colleagues from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting; Columbia University, New York and the Ministry of Health in Bots...

Scientists make first step towards 'holy grail' of crystallography

...stallography. This problem has become increasingly acute with the advent of structural genomics and proteomics which aim to determine the structures of thousands of proteins. Protein crystallography plays a major role in this understanding because proteins, being the major machinery of living things, are o...