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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...

Making Sure Sacred Sheep Don't Become Extinct

Animal geneticist Harvey D. Blackburn is responsible for collecting and storing thousands of samples of animal germplasm -- mainly semen and embryos -- to make sure there's enough genetic material to reintroduce a species if necessary. Much of his collection deals with important livestock such as Holstein cattle and Yorkshire pigs. But one of the collections Blackburn, who is the coordinat...

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...

Scientists use manufacturing methods to reconstruct mastodon

Combining 13,000-year-old bones with 21st century auto manufacturing techniques, scientists and exhibit preparators at the University of Michigan Exhibit Museum of Natural history are reconstructing a male mastodon skeleton for an exhibit that opens to the public May 21. Meanwhile, museum visitors can peek through special viewing windows to watch preparators assemble the skeleton, which wi...

Why were the HIV prevention trials in commercial sex workers abandoned?

One promising approach to help stem the global HIV epidemic is to give commercial sex workers an HIV medication (such as the drug tenofovir) before they have high risk sex in the hope of reducing their chances of becoming infected, an approach called "pre-exposure prophylaxis" (PREP). But activist groups, including Act Up-Paris have "halted the progress of at least two important clinical trials o...

'Gadonanotubes' greatly outperform existing MRI contrast agents

Researchers at Rice University, the Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Houston and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have created a new class of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents that are at least 40 times more effective than the best in clinical use. The new agents -- dubbed gadonanotubes -- use the same highly toxic metal, gadolinium, t...

Past illegal blood donation in China linked to hepatitis C virus infection

Research in a rural province of central China has documented that illegal blood donation practices led to high hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection rates in blood and plasma donors during the 1980s and early 1990s, and that failure to screen for HCV in transfusion recipients increased their risk of infection as well, according to an article in the November 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Disea...

Marine conservation organizations team up to conduct Indonesia coral reefs assessment

Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Reef Check and World Conservation Union to examine damage to tsunami-affected coral reefs; mission set to start next week Three leading marine conservation organizations will complete an extensive survey next week along the west coast of Aceh Province, Indonesia, to determine the impact of last year's devastating earthquake and tsunami on the re...

UK sperm donor crisis

A study by a leading UK fertility centre has found that the numbers of men ?especially students ?coming forward as potential sperm donors fell sharply after 2000, almost certainly due to growing awareness that changes in the law would be removing the right to anonymity. The fall in applications, leading to a significant decline in the numbers recruited, has prompted researchers from the Ne...

Penguins waddle but they don't fall down, UH researchers say

With their feathery tuxedoes and charming Chilly Willy-waddle, penguins are the quintessence of cute. Small wonder they're featured in Coke commercials, movies like "Madagascar" and "March of the Penguins" and children's toys galore. But one University of Houston professor is looking into a serious side of these ultra-cute creatures. Dozens of teeter-tottering penguins are the subjects...

Nearly half of people who need cholesterol treatment don't get it

Even though treatment for cholesterol disorders can reduce the risk of heart and blood vessel disease by about 30 percent over five years, many at-risk people aren't getting adequate treatment, according to researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues reporting in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. "Under-treatment of cholesterol disorders...

Study: Paramedics save more lives when they don't follow the rules

Survival rates following the most common form of cardiac arrest increased three-fold when emergency medical personnel used a new form of CPR developed at The University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center. The new approach, called Cardiocerebral Resuscitation, is dramatically different from guideline-directed CPR procedures. Because of its importance, the editors of the American Journal of Med...

Don't hold your breath: Carp can manage without oxygen for months

How long can you hold your breath? Scientists at the University of Oslo have recently discovered how the Crucian Carp, a close relative of the goldfish, is able to live for months without oxygen. The researchers hope that understanding how some animals cope with a lack of oxygen might give clues as to how to solve this problem in humans. "Anoxia related diseases are the major causes of dea...

US woman gives birth to baby from world's first frozen donor egg bank

(Lexington, Kentucky, USA, 1/2/06) Wendy and Jared Kennedy are thrilled with their New Year baby girl, Avery Lee, born December 31, 2005, at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky. They are the first couple to deliver a baby from the first commercial donor egg bank in the world, which has offices in Lexington, Kentucky and Phoenix, Arizona. The technolo...

Predicting successful outcomes in living-donor liver transplants

A new study on identifying which patients were likely to have poor outcomes following a living-donor liver transplant (LDLT) found that measuring how a certain non-toxic dye was eliminated by the liver shortly after surgery was an accurate indicator of liver function, and therefore a reliable indicator of the outcome of the procedure. The study used a simple non-invasive device to measure the dye...

Stem cells can repair torn tendons or ligaments

Weekend athletes who overexert themselves running or playing basketball may one day reap the benefits of research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that shows that adult stem cells can be used to make new tendon or ligament tissue. Tendon and ligament injuries present a major clinical challenge to orthopedic medicine. In the United States, at least 200,000 patients undergo tendon or...

Even fish don't swim well when they're young!

Do you remember learning to swim? Thrashing around, floundering, until suddenly it all clicks into place and a few feeble strokes of doggy-paddle propel you away from your parent's arms. Surely, you think, fish must be born as expert swimmers. Actually, fish larvae are pretty feeble when it comes to an efficient mode of swimming called 'burst-and-coast'. Dr Ulrike Müller from Wageningen Universit...

Indonesia - disaster relief aid in action

ISN's immediate response to this latest quake - to strike the Indonesian island of Java - was to call once again on its Renal Disaster Task Force (RDRTF). Under the leadership of Dr. Raymond Vanholder, the Task Force acted rapidly by sending two scouts to join a team from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The two Task Force members Dr. Arjan van der Tol, Nephrologist, (who also participated...

One-third of adults with diabetes still don't know they have it

The prevalence of diagnosed diabetes in U.S. adults age 20 and older has risen from about 5.1 percent to 6.5 percent, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who analyzed national survey data from two periods--1988 to 1994 and 1999 to 2002. However, the percentage of adults with undiagnosed diabetes did not cha...

Survival of the selfless - scientists find cheats don't always prosper

Selfishness is not necessarily the best survival trait for microorganisms, according to researchers studying the comparative effectiveness of 'cheating' and 'cooperating' strains of yeast. Writing in the journal Nature today, the team reports that studies of lab-grown yeast populations suggest the benefits of cheating are eventually counterbalanced by the costs. This contradicts classic ev...

Why mice don't get cancer of the retina

Humans are more susceptible to developing the eye cancer retinoblastoma than mice because, unlike humans, mice can compensate for the loss of activity of a gene critical to normal retinal development , according to results of a study by investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The study, published today in the open access journal BMC Biology, explains why humans with a defective co...

Cigarette smoking impedes tendon-to-bone healing

Orthopaedic surgery researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified yet another reason not to smoke. Studying rotator cuff injury in rats, the research team found exposure to nicotine delays tendon-to-bone healing, suggesting this could cause failure of rotator cuff repair following surgery in human patients. Smoking is implicated in a host of physical...

Heavy smoking cuts women's chance of pregnancy -- even with donated oocytes

Heavy smoking may reduce female fertility by directly affecting the uterus ?making it less receptive and reducing the chances the embryo will implant, according to research published on line (Thursday 9 November) in Europe's leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction. The finding, from a team of fertility experts in Portugal and Spain, comes as a result of comparing the preg...

Why don't all moles progress to melanoma?

Everyone has moles. Most of the time, they are nothing but a cosmetic nuisance. But sometimes pigment-producing cells in moles called melanocytes start dividing abnormally to form a deadly form of skin cancer called melanoma. About one in 65 Americans born this year will be diagnosed with melanoma at some point during their lifetime. Scientists know that 30 percent of all melanomas begin...

Many couples choose to donate surplus embryos for stem cell research

Nearly 50% of couples who were interviewed at least 3 years after undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) chose to donate their surplus, stored embryos for stem cell research, according to a report by the Spanish Stem Cell Bank in an April 26, 2007, advanced online publication of Cell Stem Cell, a new publication of Cell Press in affiliation with the International Society for Stem Cell Research....

Scientists discover new virus caused deaths of transplant recipients from single donor

Scientists in the Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and colleagues in the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory in Melbourne, Australia and 454 Life Sciences have discovered a new virus that was responsible for the deaths of three transplant recipients who received organs from a single donor in Victoria, Australia. <p...

New cigarette designs don't offer lower predicted cancer risks

The tobacco company's description of its new cigarette brand seems to promise a lot. "May present less risk of cancer associated with smoking," the company boasts on its Web site, making it a natural choice "for smokers who have decided not to quit, but who are interested in a cigarette that responds to concerns about certain smoking-related illnesses, including cancer." Another tobacco firm, in...

Some caterpillers just don't want to grow up

For many years, ecologists from the Centre of Environment and Hydrology (CEH) have investigated the ecology of Maculinea rebeli, a Lycaenid butterfly whose caterpillars live as parasites inside colonies of Myrmica ants, where they feed on regurgitations from the nurse ants. One of the peculiar features of this species' ecology is that only about 25% of the caterpillars complete development within...

Mosquito repellents that emit high-pitched sounds don't prevent bites

A Cochrane Systematic Review of the use of electronic mosquito repellents (EMRs) failed to find any evidence that they work. The researchers therefore say that there is no reason for recommending their use, and that there is no reason for even trying to do more research with the devices. Malaria is transmitted when a person is bitten by an infected female mosquito. Manufacturers of electro...

When your brain talks, your muscles don't always listen

Have your neurons been shouting at your muscles again? It happens, you know. "As a result of age-re...

OHSU surgeon implants donated tissue allografts

Over the years, orthopedic surgeon Dennis Crawford, M.D., Ph.D., of Oregon Health & Science University found it difficult to obtain tissue for transplant to treat some of his patients suffering with severe joint disorders. "I found this unfortunate and ironic," explained Crawford, assistant professor of orthopedics and rehabilitation in the OHSU School of Medicine, and a specialist in...

Flies don't buzz about aimlessly!

How you ever stopped to wonder how a fruit fly is able to locate and blissfully drown in your wine glass on a warm summer evening, especially since its flight path seems to be so erratic? Mark Frye at the University of California and Andy Reynolds at Rothamsted Research in the United Kingdom have been pondering this very question. Fruit flies explore their environment using a series of st...