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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...

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...

UCSD research reveals mechanism involved with type of fatal epilepsy

Researchers at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have found that Lafora disease, an inherited form of epilepsy that results in death by the age of 30, can be caused by mutations in a gene that regulates the concentration of the protein laforin. These findings are reported in the current issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Lafora disease is characterize...

Microarrays as phenotype

Microarrays provide a method of quantifying the expression and order of genes in a particular genome -- acting as a surrogate measure of cell physiology, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in a report that appears online today in the journal Nature Genetics. "Microarray data are good phenotypes to determine the order of genes and are a good surrogate measure of cell status," sa...

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...

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...

Higher risk for cervical cancer seen among women infected with multiple HPV types

Although doctors have known that the cervical tissue at the opening to the womb can harbor multiple HPV types, this study is the first to document that the risk for developing cervical cancer, the second most common form of cancer in women worldwide, is higher in females infected with multiple HPV types than those infected with just one HPV type. In addition, the study's findings provide...

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...

UCSD study clarifies insulin's role in blocking release of energy in patients with type II diabetes

Chronically high levels of insulin, as is found in many people with obesity and Type II diabetes, may block specific hormones that trigger energy release into the body, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. Their findings, which may point to new approaches to developing improved treatment options for the disease, will be published in the Se...

Virginia Tech football player uses prototype cast

Virginia Tech's starting running back Cedric Humes was able to play against Boston College despite a broken arm (the ulna bone) thanks, in part, to a prototype composite brace designed for him by Virginia Tech engineers. Brian Love, a professor of materials science and engineering in the College of Engineering, and his biomaterials class met with Mike Goforth, Virginia Tech's director of a...

Tiny roundworm's telomeres help scientists to tease apart different types of aging

The continual and inevitable shortening of telomeres, the protective "caps" at the end of all 46 human chromosomes, has been linked to aging and physical decline. Once they are gone, so are we. But there are more ways than one to grow old. Researchers at Salk Institute for Biological Studies demonstrate for the first time that the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans succumbs to the trials of...

The first laugh: New study posits evolutionary origins of two distinct types of laughter

In an important new study from the forthcoming Quarterly Review of Biology, biologists from Binghamton University explore the evolution of two distinct types of laughter ?laughter which is stimulus-driven and laughter which is self-generated and strategic. "Laughter that occurs during everyday social interaction in response to banal comments and humorless conversation is now being studied...

Phenotype is influenced by nature, nurture and noise

Unscripted biochemical variations, or noise, leads to oscillations in gene regulation that couldn't otherwise be predicted In a paper in Proceeding...

Computers to save unique type of American red squirrel

UK expertise is being exported to North America to help prevent a unique type of red squirrel dying out in as little as 30 years time. Det...

Infused spleen cells found not to impact islet recovery and reversal of type 1 diabetes in mice

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...

Neuroscientists discover new cell type that may help brain maintain memories of smells

Neuroscientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have discovered a new cell type in the part of the brain that processes our sense of smell. This new cell type, the Blanes cell, is a member of a group of previously unstudied brain cells described by the Spanish neuroanatomist Blanes (pronounced blon ?es) in the late 1800s. Blanes cells have unusual properties which may help...

HPV subtype associated with squamous cell skin cancers

Infection with human papillomavirus (HPV) types called beta HPVs may be associated with an increased risk of developing a major type of skin cancer known as squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), according to a new study in the March 15 issue of the In addition, the presence of antibodies to multiple types of HPV was associated with the highest risk of S...

Scientists discover new genetic subtypes of common blood cancer

Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and collaborators have identified four distinct genetic subtypes of multiple myeloma, a deadly blood cancer, that have different prognoses and might be treated most effectively with drugs specifically targeted to those subtypes. A new computational tool based on an algorithm designed to recognize human faces plucked the four distinguishing gene pa...

Toxic molecule may cause most common type of muscular dystrophy

Doctors at the University of Virginia Health System have shown for the first time that getting rid of poisonous RNA (ribonucleic acid) in muscle cells can reverse myotonic dystrophy, the most common type of muscular dystrophy in adults. About 40,000 people in the United States have myotonic muscular dystrophy (MMD). The disease can cause a slow, progressive wasting of the muscles, irregul...

Internal body clock dictates timing of different types of stroke

The internal body clock, or circadian rhythm, seems to influence the timing of different types of stroke, suggests research published ahead of print in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. These patients' data had been...

Joslin discovers signs of residual islet cell function in people with long-term type 1 diabetes

Scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center have discovered that a surprisingly high percentage of people with type 1 diabetes (insulin-dependent) who have had the disease for 50 years or longer (The Joslin Medalists) may still have residual functioning, insulin-producing islet cells and/or islet cell antibodies. The findings will be presented June 12 at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 66th Annu...

Herbal medicine silymarin may help sugar-control in people with type II diabetes

Diabetes is a growing health problem. Giving antioxidants is recognised as one way of helping people with diabetes to control their blood sugar levels. The herbal medicine extracted from seeds of the Milk Thistle, Silybum marianum (silymarin) is known to have antioxidant properties and research published this week in Phytotherapy Research shows that this extract can help people significan...

New data from NIH lab confirms protocol to reverse type 1 diabetes in mice

New data published in the Nov. 24 issue of Science provide further support for a protocol to reverse type 1 diabetes in mice and new evidence that adult precursor cells from the spleen can contribute to the regeneration of beta cells. In 2001 and 2003, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) demonstrated the efficacy of a protocol to reverse of type 1 diabetes in diabetic mice....

Prototype just-in-time medical device enables untrained bystanders to save lives

Human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) researchers at the University of Utah have created a prototype device that could make it possible for anyone ?even those with no emergency medical training ?to perform life-saving actions for victims of sudden cardiac arrest. The just-in-time support, or JITS, device provides bystanders with guidance and information on how to administer CPR and assess the state an...

Breakthrough in understanding type-2 diabetes as key genes identified

The most important genes associated with a risk of developing type-2 diabetes have been identified, scientists report today in a new study. The research, published online in Nature, is the first time the genetic makeup of any disease has been mapped in such detail. It should enable scientists to develop a genetic test to show an individual their likelihood of developing diabetes mellitus t...

New cell type identified in cancer development

Scientists have discovered a new type of cell that appears to play a role in the development of cancer ?a highly volatile, precancerous stem cell that can either remain benign or become malignant, depending upon environmental cues. The finding may help define the role of cancer stem cells in the growth and recurrence of the disease as well as offer new options for cancer prevention, detection an...

Vasectomy may put men at risk for type of dementia

Northwestern University researchers have discovered men with an unusual form of dementia have a higher rate of vasectomy than men the same age who are cognitively normal. The dementia is Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), a neurological disease in which people have trouble recalling and understanding words. In PPA, people lose the ability to express themselves and understand speech. It dif...

Antibody therapy prevents type 1 diabetes in mice

University of Pittsburgh investigators have successfully prevented the onset of type 1 diabetes in mice prone to developing the disease using an antibody against a receptor on the surface of immune T-cells. According to the investigators, these findings, which are being published in the January issue of the journal Diabetes, have significant implications for the prevention of type 1 diabetes. </p...

'Marathon mice' elucidate little-known muscle type

Researchers report in the January issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, published by Cell Press, the discovery of a genetic "switch" that drives the formation of a poorly understood type of muscle. Moreover, they found, animals whose muscles were full of the so-called IIX fibers were able to run farther and at higher work loads than normal mice could. The findings could ultimately lead to...

Type of stem cell found to reside in transplanted lungs

A new study involving a type of stem cells from the lungs of transplant patients demonstrates for the first time that these progenitor cells reside in adult organs and are not derived from bone marrow, which leads to the possibility that the cells may be able to help with the rejection of donated organs and with various kinds of lung disease. The study by University of Michigan Health Sys...

Risk of stroke doubles if diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes

For this study, the researchers entered 12,27...

Snoring in children might be an allergic type disease

The study published in the latest edition of the international medical journal, Pediatric Pulmonology has established children with rhinitis who were first born, were...