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Mouse brain cells rapidly recover after Alzheimer's plaques are cleared

Brain cells in a mouse model of Alzheimer'sdisease have surprised scientists with their ability to recuperateafter the disorder's characteristic brain plaques are removed.Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louisinjected mice with an antibody for a key component of brain plaques,the amyloid beta (Abeta) peptide. In areas of the brain whereantibodies cleared plaque...

Bone Density Recovers After Teens Stop Injected Contraceptive

Lower bone density appears to recover in adolescent females once they stop using the injected contraceptive depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA), according to a study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health. Previous studies had shown that women who use DMPA, marketed under the brand name Depo-Provera, experience a lo...

Youth With HIV Take More Risks After New Meds Introduced

Teens with HIV are having more risky sex with more partners than their counterparts did in the years before powerful new medications for HIV were introduced in 1996, according to a new report in the American Journal of Health Behavior. A group of HIV-positive youth studied between 1999 and 2000 reported having more sexual partners, more unprotected sex and more drug use than HIV-positive...

After a time-shift, mixed signals from the circadian clock

Circadian rhythms in mammalian behavior, physiology, and biochemistry are controlled by the central clock within a brain structure known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). The clock is synchronized to environmental cycles of light and dark. It is well known, from everyday experience, that adjusting to new light schedules takes several days, though the details of how this adaptation takes place...

Does vitamin C help prevent or treat the common cold? Maybe not, after all.

Linus Pauling's book Vitamin C and The Common Cold, published in 1970, was a bestseller and led many people to believe in the value of the vitamin for cold prevention and treatment. But an article in this month's PLoS Medicine reviewing all of the best clinical research on this topic, suggests that the public's enthusiasm for the vitamin may be unjustified. Robert M Douglas of the Australi...

Stem cell treatment improves mobility after spinal cord injury

A treatment derived from human embryonic stem cells improves mobility in rats with spinal cord injuries, providing the first physical evidence that the therapeutic use of these cells can help restore motor skills lost from acute spinal cord tissue damage. Hans Keirstead and his colleagues in the Reeve-Irvine Research Center at UC Irvine have found that a human embryonic stem cell-derived t...

Bad aftertaste? New sensory on/off switch may 'cure' bane of artificial sweetener search

Chemistry and biology researchers at Virginia Tech have enhanced the abilities of the molecules they are creating to deliver killing blows to cancer cells. The man-made molecular complexes enter cancer cells and, when signaled, deliver killing medicine or cause the cell to change. The new supermolecules have more units that will absorb light - providing more control over the range of light freque...

Drug Offers Alternative to Surgical Treatment After Miscarriage

A drug first used to reduce the risk of stomach ulcers in people taking certain types of painkillers offers an alternative to surgery after miscarriage, according to a study by researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health and other research institutions. The study appears in the August 18, 2005, New England Journal of Med...

New type of rejection blocker protects kidneys after transplant

In an international clinical trial, a new drug that selectively blocks immune responses has proved as effective in preventing acute kidney transplant rejection as cyclosporine, the standard anti-rejection treatment. Patients who took the experimental drug, a co-stimulatory blocker called belatacept (LEA29Y), also had better kidney function and experienced less of the toxic side effects as...

Menopause Symptoms May Come Back After Stopping Menopausal Hormone Therapy

Women who take soy or herbal supplements, such as black cohosh, red clover and ginseng, should do so with care, says a Cornell University expert affiliated with the Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors (BCERF) at Cornell, the land-grant institution of New York state. "Although there is no direct evidence that any herbal medicines can increase or decrease breast cancer ri...

After the yeast is gone bacteria continue to develop flavor of sparkling wine

Researchers at the University of Barcelona, Spain, show for the first time that bacteria, in addition to yeast, are involved in the secondary fermentation of the sparkling wine known as Cava. They report their findings today at the 105th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. "Bacteria found in Cava samples could have a distinctive impact upon sparkling wine quality in t...

Hurricane aftermath: Infectious disease threats from common, not exotic, diseases

In the wake of Katrina, the public health threats from infectious diseases in hurricane-devastated areas are more likely to come from milder, more common infections rather than exotic diseases. These common infections can often be prevented using simple hygiene measures and a little common sense. "Deadly diseases, such as typhoid or cholera, are unlikely to break out after hurricanes and f...

Bone marrow stem cells may heal hearts even years after heart attacks

Left ventricular function and exercise capacity increased, while the area of heart muscle damage shrank, in 18 patients given infusions of their own bone marrow stem cells up to eight years after a heart attack, according to a new study in the Nov. 1, 2005, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. "This new therapy is able to treat until now irreversible heart complaints...

Many smokers fail to quit after cancer diagnosis

A new report says despite a growing body of evidence that continued smoking after a cancer diagnosis has substantial adverse effects on treatment effectiveness, overall survival, risk of other cancers, and quality of life, up to one-half of cancer patients who smoke continue to do so or relapse after trying to quit. The report, published in the January 1, 2006 issue of CANCER, a peer-revi...

Researchers Find Drug May Give Some Cardiac Protection 24 Hours After Heart Attack

A drug has been shown to provide some protection to the heart from injury even if given as much as 24 hours after a heart attack, Jefferson Medical College researchers report. Walter Koch, Ph.D., director of the Center for Translational Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and his co-workers knew that the drug D...

Getting an evolutionary handle on life after reproduction

Since many animals live beyond their fertile years, biologists have searched for evolutionary clues to this extended lifespan. What role, if any, does natural selection play in the evolution of the postreproductive lifespan? For natural selection to shape the twilight years, postreproductive females should contribute to the fitness of their offspring or relatives, a hypothesis called the...

Stroke treatment a step closer after trial

A potential new treatment for stroke has taken a major step forward following promising results from the first clinical trial. The team, led by Professor Nancy Rothwell and Dr Pippa Tyrrell, have now reported the r...

Hormonal male contraception reversible after few months for all men

With hormonal male contraception likely to be available in the near future, results of a study in this week's issue of THE LANCET highlight how such contraception is reversible within a few months. Currently available male contraceptive methods (condoms, withdrawal, and vasectomy) are not acceptable to many couples because they are either not sufficiently reliable or not easily reversible....

Experimental vaccine protects nonhuman primates when given after exposure to Marburg virus

Using multi-disciplinary analysis that included cognitive, neurophysiologic, virologic, and molecular techniques, the team found both a low-level viral infection in the brain and immune cells that had infiltrated the brain in order to protect against the virus. "As in the rest of the body, in the brain immune cells achieve a level of control of the virus, but are unable to clear the infec...

New drug could reduce tissue damage after heart attack

A study led by UCL (University College London) scientists has designed a new drug that inhibits the adverse effects of C reactive protein (CRP), a protein that contributes to tissue damage in heart attacks and strokes. The findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest that targeting CRP may produce both immediate and long-term clinical benefits following a heart attack. CRP is normal...

'Bad' enzymes may wear white hats after stroke

Enzymes that can harm the brain immediately after a stroke may actually be beneficial days later, according to new research. Insights from the study could change the way stroke is treated, extending the window for effective treatment from a couple of hours to a couple of weeks. The results may suggest new ideas for drug development. Working with rats, a team from the Harvard Medical Schoo...

Junk DNA may not be so junky after all

Researchers at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins have invented a cost-effective and highly efficient way of analyzing what many have termed "junk" DNA and identified regions critical for controlling gene function. And they have found that these control regions from different species don't have to look alike to work alike. The study will be published online...

Insect predation sheds light on food web recovery after the dinosaur extinction

The recovery of biodiversity after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction was much more chaotic than previously thought, according to paleontologists. New fossil evidence shows that at certain times and places, plant and insect diversity were severely out of balance, not linked as they are today. The extinction took place 65.5 million years ago. Labeled the K-T extinction, it marks the beginning of t...

Bt cotton in China fails to reap profit after seven years

Although Chinese cotton growers were among the first farmers worldwide to plant genetically modified (GM) cotton to resist bollworms, the substantial profits they have reaped for several years by saving on pesticides have now been eroded. The reason, as reported by Cornell University researchers at the American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting in Long Beach, Calif.,...

Chromosomal abnormalities in sperm higher after vasectomy reversal

Men who have had a vasectomy reversed have a very much greater rate of chromosomal abnormalities in their sperm than do normal fertile men, a scientist told the 22nd annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Prague, Czech Republic on Wednesday 21 June 2006. Professor Nares Sukchareon, of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Chulalongkorn Universi...

Even a little cooling helps after cardiac arrest

Is that salt marsh healthy? To answer this, Sea Grant biologists are cracking open common marsh snails and counting parasitic worms. Their claim: the more parasites, the healthier the marsh. While the parasite hypothesis may conflict with conventional ideas about infectious disease and human health (malaria, for example, is caused by a parasite), the worms the scientists are investigating...

New research promising for improving brain cell survival after brain injury

Scientists at Melbourne's Howard Florey Institute have found a protein in the brain that can save neurons from dying after experiencing traumatic brain injury from incidents such as stroke, car accidents and falls. The team, led by Professor Seong-Seng Tan, has discovered that thisnaturally occurring protein, called BP5, is produced more than usual in brain cells after they have experienc...

Brain protein improves stroke symptoms in rats, even when injected after 3 days

A protein naturally occurring in the brain improves recovery from stroke when injected up to three days after the onset of the stroke, and could be used as an effective stroke drug. A study in rats published today in the open access journal BMC Biology shows that an injection of Granulocyte-Colony Stimulating Factor (G-CSF), whose function in the brain is to control the formation of neurons and c...

New research shows big improvement in survival after stroke

A new research report by The George Institute for International Health, in collaboration with Auckland City Hospital and The University of Auckland, has revealed a 40% decline in the number of deaths after stroke in the total population of Auckland, New Zealand over the past 25 years. The study attributes the improved survival rate to health care factors associated with an increase in hospital a...

Diabetes slows nerve recovery after heart transplant

Diabetes has a detrimental effect on a person's ability to recover from a heart transplant, notes a study in the September Journal of Nuclear Medicine. "Using positron emission tomography (PET) and the transplanted heart as a very specific model to study the regenerative capacity of the heart's sympathetic nervous system, we determined that reinnervation--or the heart's ability to develop...

Radiation after surgery doubles survival time for some lung cancer patients

Patients with lung cancer that has spread to mediastinal lymph nodes ?located between the chest, breastbone and spine ?who receive radiation after surgery and chemotherapy live twice as long as patients who do not receive radiation after surgery, according to a study presented at the plenary session November 6, 2006, at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology's 48th Annual Mee...

Smokers quit after damage to brain region

Smokers with a damaged insula ?a region in the brain linked to emotion and feelings ?quit smoking easily and immediately, according to a study in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Science. It also raises the possibility that other addictive behaviors may have an equally strong hold on neural circuits for pleasure....

Newly discovered fish named after New York aquarium biologist

An ichthyologist from the Wildlife Conservation Society's New York Aquarium received the ultimate honor recently, when a freshwater fish discovered on the African island nation of Madagascar was named after him. Dr. Paul Loiselle, who has dedicated much of his career safeguarding Madagascar's little- known freshwater fishes, received the honor from a team of biologists from the American Mu...

Over a century after disappearing, wild elk return to Ontario

After disappearing from Ontario due to over hunting in the 19th century, wild elk have returned to the province thanks to the efforts of the Ontario elk restoration program. According to a report on the program’s success, published in the March issue of Restoration Ecology, 460 elk were brought from Alberta and released in various Ontario sites between 1998 and 2001. "The Ontario elk resto...

Robotic therapy helps restore hand use after stroke

A robotic therapy device may help people regain strength and normal use of affected hands long after a stroke, according to a University of California, Irvine study. Stroke patients with impaired hand use reported improved ability to grasp and release objects after therapy sessions using the Hand-Wrist Assisting Robotic Device (HOWARD). Each patient had at least moderate residual weakne...

Drug-resistant bacterial infections serious complication after corrective eye surgery

Drug-resistant bacteria can complicate treatment after many surgical procedures. In particular, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which has been found in many healthcare settings, can be a serious post-operative complication. In a study published in the April issue of the American Journal of Ophthalmology, researchers found MRSA infections in the eyes of 12 patients after refrac...

Glucose triggers brain cell death in rats after hypoglycemic coma

Brain damage that was thought to be caused by hypoglycemic coma actually occurs when glucose is administered to treat the coma, according to a study in rodents led by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. The results are surprising, say the authors, and may be of clinical significance for the treatment of diabetics in hypoglycemic coma, though they caution that the results c...

Researchers use MRI to predict recovery after spinal cord injury

"Our study demonstrates that the possibility and extent of neurological recovery after SCI can be predicted within 48 hours after injury by rigorou...