Rats in Medical News

Stroke Damage Is Less in Rats Given Opioids

Drugs induce a state of hibernation that improves recovery, study shows WEDNESDAY, June 17 (HealthDay News) -- Hibernation induced by opioid drugs reduced brain damage and behavioral dysfunction in a study of rats that experienced an experimental stroke, researchers report. "Studies...

Scientists find city rats are loyal to their 'hoods

In the rat race of life, one thing is certain: there's no place like home. Now, a study just released in Molecular Ecology finds the same is true for rats. Although inner city rodents appear to roam freely, most form distinct neighborhoods where they spend the majority of their lives. Like an...

Team Regrows Neurons Controlling Movement in Rats

Goal is to one day develop a therapy to help with spinal cord injuries MONDAY, April 6 (HealthDay News) -- Using genetically engineered cells and a virus as a delivery method, researchers were able to regenerate a type of nerve fiber in rat brains that controls movement. This isn't ...

Mutant rats offer clues to medical mystery

HOUSTON (Feb. 17, 2009) A research project at Rice University has brought scientists to the brink of comprehending a long-standing medical mystery that may link cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and perhaps even Alzheimer's disease. And for that, we can thank the rat. The recent paper i...

Bound by attention: Bringing rats and humans together

When picking through a basket of fruit, it doesn't seem very difficult to recognize a green pear from a green apple. This is easy, thanks to "feature binding" a process by which our brain combines all of the specific features of an object and gives us a complete and unified picture of it. For exam...

A good ear: Rats identify specific sounds in noisy environments

A study conducted on hundreds of rats could help us understand how the brain identifies specific sounds in a noisy environment. The investigation, soon to be published in the journal Brain, was conducted by Alex Martin of the Universit de Montral Department of Psychology. "Our ears have thousan...

Gene Therapy in Rats Reduces Cocaine Use

Boosting brain's dopamine receptors could lead to treatments for other addictions as well FRIDAY, April 18 (HealthDay News) -- Using gene therapy to increase the level of dopamine -- a pleasure-related chemical -- receptors in rats' brains reduced their desire for cocaine by 75 percen...

Scientists from Europe, Israel and the US develop robotic rats to aid in rescue missions

A new initiative, bringing together nine research groups from seven countries, including teams of robotics and brain researchers from Europe, the USA and Israel, has recently been set up with the aim of imitating nature. Based on principles of active sensing adopted widely in the animal kingdom...

Calorie-Starved Rats Live Longer: Study

But most humans couldn't maintain such a low-cal diet, scientists say FRIDAY, Nov. 2 (HealthDay News) -- Cutting back drastically on daily calorie intake can lead to longer life, at least in rats, say University at Buffalo researchers. They speculate that this kind of diet can help maintain p...

Researchers find that eating high levels of fructose impairs memory in rats

ATLANTA Researchers at Georgia State University have found that diets high in fructose a type of sugar found in most processed foods and beverages impaired the spatial memory of adult rats. Amy Ross, a graduate student in the lab of Marise Parent, associate professor at Georgia State's Neuro...

Electroacupuncture protects acetylsalicylic acid-induced acute gastritis in rats

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are widely used as anti-inflammatory and analgesic agents. However, they often cause gastrointestinal injury in gastric lesions by inhibiting COX (cyclooxygenase) and detailed mechanism remains unclear. Thus, effective strategies are required to protec...

Vascular drug found to improve learning and memory in middle-aged rats

WASHINGTON A team of Arizona psychologists, geneticists and neuroscientists has reported that a safe and effective drug used to treat vascular problems in the brain has improved spatial learning and working memory in middle-aged rats. Although far from proving anything about human use of the drug...

Cherry-Enriched Diet Cut Heart Risks in Rats

Study finds tart powder reduced inflammation, cholesterol and belly fat SUNDAY, Oct. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Call it the "tart heart-smart diet." New research ties eating tart cherries to lowering cholesterol, reducing inflammation and cutting one's body weight and fat -- all major ...

Gene therapy reduces cocaine use in rats

UPTON, NY - Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have shown that increasing the brain level of receptors for dopamine, a pleasure-related chemical, can reduce use of cocaine by 75 percent in rats trained to self-administer it. Earlier research by this team ...

Marijuana increases alcohol toxicity in young rats

Marijuana is among the most frequently used illicit drugs by women during their childbearing years and there is growing concern that marijuana abuse during pregnancy, either alone or in combination with other drugs, may have serious effects on fetal brain development. There is strong evidence that...

Stem Cells Repair Stroke Damage in Rats

Study suggests same technique might one day work in humans WEDNESDAY, Feb. 20 (HealthDay News) -- Human stem cells helped repair stroke-related brain damage in rats, Stanford University researchers report. The use of neural cells derived from human embryonic stem cells led to improv...

Human stem cells aid stroke recovery in rats

Neural cells derived from human embryonic stem cells helped repair stroke-related damage in the brains of rats and led to improvements in their physical abilities, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. This study, to be published in the Feb. 20 i...

Food restriction increases dopamine receptor levels in obese rats

UPTON, NY -- A brain-imaging study of genetically obese rats conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory provides more evidence that dopamine - a brain chemical associated with reward, pleasure, movement, and motivation - plays a role in obesity. The scientists foun...

Combination therapy reverses effects of portal hypertension in rats

A combined treatment with rapamycin and Gleevec might reverse the effects of portal hypertension in patients with chronic liver disease, according to the results of a new study on rats. The study is in the October issue of Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the Ameri...

Researchers Training Rats To Diagnose TB

The Seattle Times recently examined how researchers in Tanzania are training rats to diagnose tuberculosis by sniffing sputum samples. The researchers' efforts "capitalize" on the rats' strong sense of smell and appetite, according to the Times. Bart Weetjens, a former industrial designer,...

Officials Indicted for Allowing a Fast Food Joint Teeming With Rats in New York to Function

Third Word Officials may take heart. Their counterparts in the Health department of the much-vaunted New York have been blamed for allowing// a fast-food joint swarming with rats to continue to function. The city health inspector responsible for the “shoddy audit” resigned Monday. The infe...

Smoking Out Rats from Fields to Mizoram’s Dining Table

Aizawl: There's smoked salmon, smoked ham, smoked bacon and other kinds of smoked meats that are an epicurean delight//, but smoked rats? It's true, the rodent is much in demand in kitchens in India's northeastern Mizoram with some vendors in this capital selling as many as 200 smoked rats a day. ...

Bone Strength Increases In Rats With Citrus Juice Breakfast – Study Say

2 Texas A&M University's Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center researchers revealed when Orange and grapefruit juice were given to lab rats, it improves bone strength and prevents osteoporosis//. Osteoporosis affects about 2 million men and 8 million women in the United States, according to th...

Designer Rats Reveal Possible Heart Disease Genes

Heart disease claims about 7 million lives every year, according to the WHO. Scientists have been trying to identify the precise genes that are behind this complex disease. Now they have a new research ally: the designer rat. // In a study published in the January 15 advance online publication o...

Better Research Rats To Help In Learning About Hypertension

Scientists have bred a new kind of rat that will help them to study the effects of lower levels of estrogen in postmenopausal women that can lead to hypertension and heart failure. Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine // have created a better research rat by changing a sing...

Recent Study On Rats May Lead To Future Robotics

The findings of a recent study done on rats has shed light on how brain controls movement say researchers. By activating a single brain cell in a rat can make its whiskers twitch, a discovery researchers say //could help decipher how the brain controls movement. Eventually this could help scientist...

Scientists Find Single Circuit Channeling Depression in Rats

Scientists and doctors long baffled by the multiple causes and brain processes for depression may now have a single "holy grail" brain pathway to focus on for treatment, according to a new research study released Thursday. Studying the brains of rats, researchers at the Stanford University...

Human Stem Cell Therapy Restores Motor Function to Paralyzed Rats

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have successfully restored motor function in paralyzed rats by grafting human spinal stem cells (hSSCs) in them. "We demonstrated that when damage has occurred due to a loss of blood flow to the spines neural c...

Stress Produces PTSD-like Symptoms in Rats

Researchers at the University of South Florida and the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital in Tampa have developed new ways of assessing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder// (PTSD). These new studies show that strong, purely psychological stress produces behavioral symptoms in animal models similar to th...

Anti-Obesity Vaccine Successful In Rats

Researchers Kim Janda and her colleagues at the Scripps Research Institute in California developed three vaccinations against ghrelin//, a hormone that stimulates hunger and facilitates the storage of sugar as fat. The effectiveness of the vaccine was tested in laboratory rats and the study res...

Garlic Helps To Reduce Cholesterol in Rats

According to the research conducted by a team of researchers at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products at Hebrew University //in Jerusalem it was found that eating garlic is beneficial in reducing the cholesterol levels in our body. The report was published in WebMD website. She...

Gut Hormone Could be Key to Blood Sugar

...he small intestine, triggering a message to the brain which, in turn, tells the liver to stop producing glucose. Lam and colleagues also found that rats fed a high-fat diet for a few days became resistant to CCK. They said their findings suggest that CCK resistance, like insulin resistance, may be a...

Crucial Finding Advances Spinal Cord Injury Research

... Scientists guide axons to re-form nerve connections in rats MONDAY, Aug. 3 (HealthDay News) -- In a finding that is a major advance in spinal cord injury research, U.S. scientists report that regene...

Blue Dye Halts Worsening Paralysis in Animal Study

...information provided in a news release from the University of Rochester. rats with damaged spinal cords that were injected with oxidized ATP recovered mu...alk again, although with a limp. There was a side effect, however. Injected rats had a blue tinge to their skin for a while. While more study is needed, ...

New Anesthesia May Be Safer for Critically Ill

...lthDay News) -- A new variation of a common general anesthesia has been developed that may be safer for some patients. Preclinical studies done on rats put under with MOC-etomidate, a chemically altered version of the anesthetic etomidate, found the drug does not cause blood pressure to drop suddenly...

FDA Approves Expanded Use of Lilly's FORTEO(R) [teriparatide (rDNA origin) injection] to Treat Glucocorticoid-Induced Osteoporosis

...in the United States.(8) Important Safety Information about FORTEO During the drug testing process, the medicine in FORTEO caused some rats to develop a bone cancer called osteosarcoma. In people, osteosarcoma is a serious but rare cancer. Osteosarcoma has been reported rarely in people wh...

Mass. General team develops potentially safer general anesthetic

...etabolized by adding a molecule that causes the drug to broken down by natural enzymes soon after producing its effects. Experiments in tadpoles and rats showed that the new agent, MOC-etomidate, quickly produced anesthesia from which the animals recovered rapidly after administration ceased. The rat s...

Lighter Meals May Bring Longer Life

...ating and longer lifespan has been far from proven. "The idea that dietary restriction extends lifespan in all species is not true. Many strains of rats and mice do not respond. In some strains, it's actually deleterious," explained Felipe Sierra, director of the biology of aging program at the U.S. Na...

CU-Boulder study shows brain's immune system may cause chronic seizures

...ctually stop the process of developing epilepsy in the first place." The research team came to its conclusions through a series of experiments with rats in which they applied a bacteria called lipopolysaccharide, or LPS, to the brain, activating the micro-glial cells. The glial cells very rapidly clust...

Stemedica Discovers Significant Breakthrough in the Use of Stem Cells and Stem Cell Factors for the Treatment of Retinal Degeneration

...study - retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), neural (NSC) and cilliary body (CB) - all obtained from human donor tissue. Various cells were injected into rats with hereditary pigmented degradation of retina. One eye of each participating rat served the treatment eye and the other eye served as the control ey...