DIA

Adding Radiation Therapy To Chemotherapy Improves Survival In Patients With High-risk Breast Cancer

For patients with high-risk breast cancer treated with radical mastectomy and adjuvant chemotherapy, the addition of radiation therapy leads to better survival outcomes with few long-term toxic effects, according to a 20-year follow-up of a randomized trial, which appears in the January 19 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The British Columbia randomized radiation the...

Gene sequencing explains bioremediation 'bug'

A team led by Johns Hopkins scientists hasfound the first clear evidence that the process behind the human immunesystem's remarkable ability to recognize and respond to a milliondifferent proteins might have originated from a family of genes whoseonly apparent function is to jump around in genetic material. essentially cut...

FDA Warns Consumers Not to Use Home-Use Diagnostic Kits Marketed by Globus Media

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers not to use unapproved home-use diagnostic test kits that have been marketed nationwide via the Internet by Globus Media, Montreal, Canada. The use of these products could result in false results that could lead to significant adverse health consequences. The illegal kits are labeled as: Rapid HIV Test Kit. * Rapid Syphilis Te...

Study of genomic DNA leads to new advances in cancer diagnostics

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have identified a method of assessing the malignant potential of cells based on the sensitivity of cellular DNA to enzyme digestion. The article by Andrew J. Maniotis et al., "Chromatin sensitivity to Alu I restriction enzyme decreases with malignancy and is regulated by the extracellular matrix and cytoskeleton," appears in the April 2005 issu...

FDA Approves New Drug to Treat Type I and Type II Diabetes

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved Symlin, an injectable medicine to control blood sugar for adults with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Symlin is to be used in addition to insulin therapy in patients who cannot achieve adequate control of their blood sugars on intensive insulin therapy alone. Symlin will be the only therapy for the treatment of type 1 diabetes other than in...

Chemists identify key gene in development of type 1 diabetes

Chemists say they have identified a gene that appears to play a key role in the development of type 1 diabetes, also known as insulin-dependent or juvenile diabetes, a disease that affects about one million people in the U.S. and is on the rise worldwide. They described their findings, which they say could lead to new drug interventions and possibly gene therapy, today at the 229th national meeti...

Researchers develop rapid diagnostic tool for pathogen identification

Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the Columbia Genome Center have designed and developed a sensitive new diagnostic technology platform, called “Mass Tag PCR,?that can simultaneously screen for multiple infectious agents. The new technology is addressed in a paper published in the February issue of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Emerg...

World-first Living Donor Islet Cell Transplant A Success; Procedure Offers Promise For Diabetics

A University of Alberta and Capital Health surgeon, well known for his pioneering work in developing the Edmonton Protocol treatment for diabetes, has taken another important step in the fight against diabetes. On January 19, at Kyoto University Hospital, Dr. Koichi Tanaka and Dr. James Shapiro, along with a team of Japanese surgeons, removed part of a 56-year-old woman's pancreas. Dr. Sh...

Nanoscale Diagnostic Sets Sights on Alzheimer's

Using their novel bio-bar-code amplification (BCA) technology, researchers analyzing fluid from around the brain and spinal cord have detected a protein linked in recent studies to Alzheimer's disease. Gold nanoparticles and bio-bar codes bring sen...

Rare surgery performed to remove pancreas, prevent diabetes

In a 12-hour, dual-stage surgery known to be performed at only two other centers in the U.S., doctors at the University of Alabama at Birmingham on Tuesday returned a patient's own insulin-producing cells to him after surgically removing his pancreas to eliminate constant, severe pain from chronic pancreatitis. The patient, Leonard Stewart, 47, of Panama City, Fla., remained anesthetized i...

Disease diagnosis, biodefense among UH chemical research projects

With 33 presentations of original research that showcase applications ranging from early-stage disease diagnosis to fuel cells and batteries, the University of Houston will be well represented at the 229th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), March 13 to 17 in San Diego. Founded in 1876, the ACS is a nonprofit, scientific and educational organization and the largest sci...

Canadian youth 4th highest in international obesity study

Canadian youth rank fourth-highest on the obesity scale in a new international study of adolescents from 34 countries, says co-author Dr. Ian Janssen, a professor in Queen's University's School of Physical & Health Education and Department of Community Health & Epidemiology. And sedentary behaviour ?like watching television ?was strongly correlated with being overweight, he adds.</...

Discovery may lead to better Candidiasis drug

Oral biologists at the University at Buffalo have shown for the first time how histatin, the naturally occurring antifungal agent in saliva, kills the oral pathogen Candida albicans, the fungus responsible for most HIV-related oral infections. Researchers led by Mira Edgerton, D.D.S., Ph.D., discovered that histatin binds to a specific membrane protein called TRK1p, which regulates potass...

First North American Encapsulated Islet Transplant without Long-term Immune Suppression into a Patient with Type 1 Diabetes

Biologists at the University of Liverpool have discovered how the plagues of the Middle Ages have made around 10% of Europeans resistant to HIV. Scientists have known for some time that these individuals carry a genetic mutation (known as CCR5-delta32) that prevents the virus from entering the cells of the immune system but have been unable to account for the high levels of the gene in Scandinavi...

Duke engineers develop new 3-D cardiac imaging probe

Biomedical engineers at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering have created a new three-dimensional ultrasound cardiac imaging probe. Inserted inside the esophagus, the probe creates a picture of the whole heart in the time it takes for current ultrasound technology to image a single heart cross section. The new probe has considerable potential not only for evaluating the condition...

Mouse gene shows new mechanism behind cardiac infarction in man

A gene that, in different variants, increases or decreases the level of atherosclerosis has been identified in mice. The corresponding human gene has been shown to play a role in the development of myocardial infarction. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, in collaboration with the Jackson Laboratory in th...

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

A new study is providing scientists 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 development of new strategies to combat drug resistance and treat...

Activation of thermoreceptors mediates raw garlic's burning pungency

The worldwide popularity of garlic as a food ingredient and its therapeutic stature in folklore both stem in part from the distinctive pungency associated with its raw, uncooked state. Researchers this week report that this pungency, manifested as a characteristic mixture of burning and prickling sensations and flavor, can be ascribed largely to the effects of a particular compound and its abilit...

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...

Norovirus found to cause traveler's diarrhea

A majority of traveler's diarrhea cases among U.S. travelers to Mexico and Guatemala were attributed to Norovirus, a common cause of nonbacterial gastroenteritis outbreaks usually associated with developed countries, according to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other institutions. The researchers also found that the longer travelers stayed at...

The circadian clock: Understanding nature's timepiece

A cluster of brain cells less than half the size of a pencil eraser tells you when to wake up, when to be hungry and when it's time to go to sleep. The same cells also cause you to be disoriented after you've flown across multiple time zones. The human circadian clock, comprised of about 20,000 time-keeping cells, has mystified scientists since it was pinpointed in the brain about 30 year...

Future diabetes drugs may target new protein interaction

In the March 3 issue of Nature, Johns Hopkins researchers report that two proteins best known for very different activities actually come together to turn the liver into a sugar-producing factory when food is scarce. Because the liver's production of sugar is a damaging problem in people with diabetes, the proteins' interaction might be a target for future drugs to fight the disease, the research...

Owl genomics presents a HEPATOCHIP for diagnosis of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis

OWL Genomics, biotechnological company, has presented at the CIC bioGUNE hold at the Bizkaia Technological Park (Derio), the first DNA chip concerning diagnosis and prognosis of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), allowing the discrimination between normal, steatosis and NASH predisposed subjects. Non alcoholic steatohepatitis is a progressive disease of the liver of unknown etiology, ch...

Single-donor Islet Transplantation Procedure Shows Promise For Patients With Type 1 Diabetes

Patients with type 1 diabetes who received islet transplantation from a single donor pancreas were insulin independent one year later, according to a study in the February 16 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical applications of biotechnology. Type 1 diabetes remains a therapeutic challenge, according to background information in the article. The success rate of islet (cells that produc...

Precise Timing Enabled Pig-to-rat Transplants To Cure Diabetes

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have learned that a temporal "window of opportunity" was critical to their earlier successes in treating diabetic rats with embryonic pig tissues. In those experiments, published in 2004, researchers were surprised to find that they didn't have to give anti-rejection drugs to diabetic rats treated with embryonic pig cell...

A hope for oil spill bioremediation

A recently published article in Environmental Microbiology reveals that indigenous microbiota of the Galician shore is readily able to degrade crude oil. Scientists from the Estación Experimental del Zaidín (Spanish Council for Research, CSIC) in Granada investigated in situ crude oil degradation after the Prestige oil spill in November 2002. After a spill, hydrocarbons are subjected to ph...

Affymetrix and bioMerieux Extend Their Agreement on GeneChip(R) Technology to Breast Cancer Diagnostics

Affymetrix Inc. (Nasdaq: AFFX) and bioMerieux announced today that Affymetrix has granted bioMerieux long-term and comprehensive access to its GeneChip(R) technology to develop and market in vitro diagnostic tests for breast cancer, as well as an option to expand the agreement into other cancer areas. The agreement, made under the Powered by Affymetrix(TM) program, gives bioMerieux non-exc...

Ocean climate predicts elk population in Canadian Rockies

Mark Hebblewhite can look at specific climate statistics from the north Pacific Ocean and tell you how the elk are doing in Banff National Park. The University of Alberta doctoral student is the first researcher to show a correlation between the North Pacific Oscillation (NPO) and a mammal population. Based on many climate-related ocean measurements, researchers are able to determine posit...

Diabetic nerve therapy shows 'striking' results

Research into a new treatment for nerve damage caused by diabetes could bring relief to millions of diabetic patients, say experts. The treatment might also reduce the number of amputations of toes and feet if early effects on nerve protection and regeneration are borne out long-term. Nerve disease in diabetes is the major cause of non-traumatic lower limb amputations in Europe and North...

Disease diagnosis, bioengineering covered at state nano summit

Research into the evolution of protein design by a University of Houston professor will be featured among nearly 20 presentations at the 2005 Nano Summit Research Conference July 28. Sponsored by the Nanotechnology Found...

Sandia completes depleted uranium study

Sandia National Laboratories has completed a two-year study of the potential health effects associated with accidental exposure to depleted uranium (DU) during the 1991 Gulf War. The study, "An Analysis of Uranium Dispersal and Health Effects Using a Gulf War Case Study," performed by Sandia scientist Al Marshall, employs analytical capabilities used by Sandia's National Security Studies D...

New mitochondrial DNA gene chip may be early cancer diagnosis tool

A pilot study at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in support of the National Cancer Institute's Early Detection Research Network (EDRN), has validated the measurement accuracy of new techniques that use mitochondrial DNA as an early indicator for certain types of cancer. Additional results suggest that a relatively simple diagnostic test using a DNA microarray "chip" cou...

Gene controlling circadian rhythms linked to drug addiction

The gene that regulates the body's main biological clocks also may play a pivotal role in drug addiction, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found. The Clock gene not only controls the body's circadian rhythms, including sleep and wakefulness, body temperature, hormone levels, blood pressure and heart activity, it may also be a key regulator of the brain's reward system.</...

Temperature regulates circadian clock in zebrafish

The biological clock controls the circadian rhythms of a wide range of physiological and behavioral processes, from fluctuating hormone levels to sleep-wake cycles and feeding patterns. While it's well known that circadian clock elements sense and respond to light cycles, much less is known about how daily temperature cycles affect the clock's timing mechanism in vertebrates. In the open-access...

Malfunctioning bone marrow cells sabotage nerve cells in diabetes

Malfunctioning bone marrow cells that produce insulin appear to cause a dangerous nerve condition called neuropathy that disables many people with diabetes, said a research team led by Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. The report from researchers at BCM, Shiga University of Medical Science in Japan, and the University of Chicago appears online today in the Proceedings of the National...

A novel method to measure circadian cycles

Everyone knows morning people and late-night owls. The variation in individual circadian rhythms is an anecdotal as well as experimentally verified fact. But, until now, to systematically study circadian differences (and thereby hope to rout out the underlying genetic causes), scientists have had to rely on prolonged behavioural observation. To screen for and identify circadian rhythm variation...

Duke Experiments Boost Radiation's Cancer-Killing Effects

Scientists have shown they can dramatically enhance radiation's cancer-killing effects by blocking a "master switch" in cancer cells that promotes cancer growth. Blocking a protein called HIF-1 after radiation therapy doubled the length of time it took for human cancers to begin growing again in mice, said the radiation biologists from the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center. Each therapy alo...

Industrial contaminants spread by seabirds in High Arctic, new Canadian study shows

Seabirds are the surprising culprits in delivering pollutants ?through their guano ?to seemingly pristine northern ecosystems, a new Canadian study shows. The most common form of wildlife in the Arctic, seabirds are responsible for transporting most of the human-made contaminants to some coastal ecosystems, the researchers found. "The effect is to elevate concentrations of pollutants such...

New imaging technology shown to detect pancreatic inflammation in type 1 diabetes

A key obstacle to early detection of type 1 diabetes - as well as to rapid assessment of the effectiveness of therapeutic intervention - has been the lack of direct, non-invasive technologies to visualize inflammation in the pancreas, an early manifestation of disease. Instead, clinicians have had to await overt symptoms before diagnosing an individual, by which time destruction of the insulin-pr...

Leading scientists rank endangered dolphins, porpoises most in need of immediate action

Leading marine scientists for the first time have assessed dolphin and porpoise populations around the world which are severely threatened by entanglement in fishing gear and recommended nine urgent priorities for action in a report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund. These nine projects highlight species threatened by bycatch that will most likely benefit from immediate action and will cont...