A new study published in Nature Genetics on Sunday 16 September 2007 show that common, complex diseases are more likely to be due to genetic variation in regions that control activity of genes, rather than in the regions that specify the protein code.
Air pollution could be putting patients with heart disease at risk by affecting blood vessels and clotting, researchers warn. A study by the University of Edinburgh and Umeå University measured the effects of diesel exhaust on heart and blood vessel function in men who have previously experienced a heart attack.
A human peptide that acts as a natural antibiotic against invading microbes can also bind to the body’s own DNA and trigger an immune response in the absence of an infection, a research team led by scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reports in an early online publication in Nature.
GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) believes that conclusions drawn from the most recent meta-analyses published by Drs. Nissen et. al. and Furberg et. al. in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) do not confirm a difference in the safety profile of Avandia (rosiglitazone) and Actos (pioglitazone).
The number of people struck by a cholera outbreak in Northern Iraq has doubled to 16,000 people but the death toll remains the same at 10, the United Nations health agency reported.
A network meta-analysis of 38 randomized controlled trials encompassing more than 18,000 patients found that the mortality risks associated with drug-eluting stents and bare-metal stents are similarly low. This analysis, the largest of its kind to date comparing drug-eluting stents (the CYPHER® Sirolimus-eluting Coronary Stent and the Taxus Stent) to bare-metal stents, appears this week in the medical journal The Lancet.
Immune system police are as good at recognizing bad guys, such as bacteria and viruses, as they are our own tissue, researchers say.
Patients with high blood pressure respond very differently to anti-hypertensive medication, making treatment selection tricky for physicians. But new research published in the online open access journal, BMC Medical Genetics, pinpoints a number of gene-drug interactions that could allow medication to be tailored to individual patients based on their genetics.
VeriChip Corporation (NASDAQ: CHIP), a provider of RFID systems for healthcare and patient-related needs, responded in an effort to set the record straight in response to unbalanced press reports relating malignant tumors to the Company’s implantable microchips.
The Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee and the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held a meeting to discuss the risk /benefit profile of Trasylol(R) (aprotinin injection), a Bayer drug used in coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.