In the normal heart, the cycling of intracellular calcium in cardiac muscle cells is critical to the heart?s mechanical contraction and relaxation. Mutations in calcium-handling proteins in the heart have been linked to exercise-induced sudden cardiac death.
In the July 2 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Adrian Martineau, Robert Wilkinson, and colleagues from the Wellcome Trust Center for Research in Clinical Tropical Medicine in London report that the activity of white blood cells known as neutrophils is one reason why some individuals exposed to the infectious bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis resist developing evidence of tuberculosis (TB) infection for longer than their peers.
Aboriginal people who use heroin are less likely than their non-Aboriginal counterparts to use methadone maintenance therapy for treatment of their addiction, according to new research from British Columbia, Canada.
A new study on predicting outcomes of standard treatment for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection found that a number of factors impacted responses, including the form of the interferon given. However, for some genotypes of the disease, few of these factors play a role.
A new study on the effect of the anti-obesity drug rimonabant on liver function in obese rats found that it reduced markers of liver damage, decreased levels of pro-inflammatory proteins, and improved lipid profiles.
Can older patients with stable cardiovascular disease benefit from the same cholesterol lowering drugs used by younger patients? The answer is yes, according to a study report in the July 3, 2007 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
An overexpressed gene found at the scene of a variety of tumors is implicated in the development of two types of malignant brain cancer in a paper by researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
About 30 percent of Americans report having some form of alcohol use disorder at some point in their lifetimes, including 17.8 percent with alcohol abuse and 12.5 percent with alcohol dependence, according to a report in the July issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Protecting older children and adults with insecticide-treated bed nets may be an effective way to combat malaria, a study has shown. The research, published today in the open access journal PLoS Medicine, suggests that protecting half of all older children and adults would also protect the wider community from malaria, which kills over one million people each year.
An international group of fertility specialists has developed an easy-to use mathematical formula that allows a personalised approach to ovarian stimulation therapy for women seeking fertility treatment.