New tooth enamel dating technique could help identify disaster victims
Remnants of above-ground nuclear testing provide a way to determine age at time of death The radioactive carbon-14 produced by above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s is providing forensic scientists with a more precise way to determine a person's age at the time of death. The method could help in the identification of victims of Hurricane Katrina and other large-scale disast...Spray-on skin relieves emotional trauma for child burn victims
Spray-on skin is helping child burns victims cope with the trauma of scarring, according to a study by University of Queensland researchers at the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane. The new liquid spray-on skin technology, whi...Malaria vaccine prompts victims' immune system to eliminate parasite from mosquitoes
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have developed an experimental vaccine that could, theoretically, eliminate malaria from entire geographic regions, by eradicating the malaria parasite from an area's mosquitoes. The vaccine, so far tested only in mice, would prompt the immune system of a person who receives it to eliminate the parasite from the digestive tract of a malaria...New hope for cancer victims – will vaccine cure the deadly bug
One very deadly form of cancer is pancreatic cancer, though it isn’t very common. Globally it kills lakhs of people every year. And now there is some hope for the unfortunate victims. A new vaccine has been successfully tested on the pancreatic cancer victims and it has increased the survival rates in many. Vaccines are typically thought of as a way of preventing disease. In cancer, howe...Blood Pressure Drug may slow wasting in burn victims
A widely used blood pressure drug shows strong potential for slowing the metabolic overdrive that makes patients waste away after severe burns and other major injuries. In a study, researchers at Shriners Hospital for Children in Galveston, Texas, tried propranolol on 13 children with bad burns and left 12 untreated to compare. The drug, one of a class known as beta blockers, checks the stimulati...Stroke victims have new hope with activated protein C
A new study by researchers from the University of Rochester, New York suggests that the activated protein C (APC), a protein with anti-inflammatory and anti-coagulant properties,which until now is being used to treat septic infections, may also help reduce the damage caused by stroke. Researchers who conducted the study on mice found that APC could protect brain cells from the secondary damage as...New hope for spinal cord injury victims
A special report in the online edition of The Anatomical Record has put together a collection of articles on the subject of spinal cord injury repair in animals. Spinal cord injury affects millions of people and, until now, has left them with little hope of living a normal life. However, recent research has begun to suggest that maybe stem cells - primitive cells that can turn into specific cell...Snail venom Found To Ease Pain In Cancer Victims
Laboratory research has found evidence that the venom that the snails inject to immobilize their prey might have beneficial effects // on some heart problems, strokes, central nervous system disorders and other ills. The latest study involved the experimental drug ziconotide, a laboratory-made equivalent of a compound in the venom of the small Conus Magus cone snail, which lives in shallow t...