Much like flipping a light switch, the hepatitis C virus turns on human immune defenses upon entering the body but also turns off those defenses by manipulating interaction of key cellular proteins, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.
Despite the explosive growth in size and complexity of the human brain, the pace of evolutionary change among the thousands of genes expressed in brain tissue has actually slowed since the split, millions of years ago, between human and chimpanzee, an international research team reports in the December 26, 2006, issue of the journal, PLOS Biology.
Methamphetamine use may be associated with increased risks of major neck artery tears and stroke, according to an article published in the December 26, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
By age 10, some black children already have high nighttime blood pressure, an early signal of impending cardiovascular disease, a new study shows.
The New York City trans fat ban is a step in the right direction, but the regulation that requires some restaurants to display calories as prominently as price is just as important. Also missing in the discussion? Replacing trans fat will saturated fat would be problematic.
Psychological interventions for chronic low back pain are effective, a new review of studies has found. Not only do these approaches improve psychological outcomes such as depression and health-related quality of life, they also reduce patients’ experience of pain.
Fat zapping to shed excess weight, miniature telescopes to restore vision, and smart nappies to detect common childhood infections — these are some of the new technologies that promise to transform medicine, according to this week’s Christmas issue of the BMJ.
The natural herb black cohosh is commonly used by women to treat menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, but the molecular mechanisms underlying its action have eluded scientists — until now.
A new study co-authored by Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute senior scientist, Elizabeth Theil, Ph.D., is the first to show that partial copies of DNA called mRNA (or messenger RNA) morph into specific three dimensional shapes when it combines with a protein regulator called IRP1. This discovery is incredibly important to researchers who design medications based on the specific characteristics of a disease.
Mice with neuroblastoma tumors have been successfully treated with genetically modified cells that sought out the cancer cells and activated a chemotherapy drug directly at those sites, according to investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and their colleagues at City of Hope National Medical Center (Duarte, Calif.) and the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada). Neuroblastoma is a solid tumor that arises in the part of the nervous system outside the brain.