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Enlarge ImageReal effect. Patients with a certain copy of a serotonin gene showed less amygdala activity (left), indicating reduced anxiety, after treatment with placebos. Credit: T. Furmark et al., Journal of Neuroscience To get a drug to market, pharmaceutical companies have to show that it works better than a placebo. But sometimes the placebo is just as powerful as the real thing. Just why our bodies respond so strongly to fake medicine has long been a mystery, but researchers are a step closer to solving that riddle, having picked out a particular gene that may be responsible for one...

ScienceDaily (Dec. 2, 2008) — A stunning discovery based on epigenetics (the inheritance of propensities acquired in the womb) reveals that consuming choline—a nutrient found in eggs and other foods—during pregnancy may significantly affect breast cancer outcomes for a mother's offspring. This finding by a team of biologists at Boston University is the first to link choline consumption during pregnancy to breast cancer. It also is the first to identify possible choline-related genetic changes that affect breast cancer survival rates. "We've known for a long time that some agents taken by pregnant women, such as diethylstibesterol, have adverse consequences for...

Convective mixing resumes after a decade due to massive loss of Arctic ice. North Atlantic overturning – back with a vengeance?Nature Scientists have found evidence that convective mixing in the North Atlantic, a mechanism that fuels ocean circulation and affects Earth's climate, has returned after a decade of near stagnation – thanks, perhaps, to a dramatic loss of sea-ice in the Arctic during the summer of 2007.Convective mixing, or 'overturning', of ocean waters at high latitudes helps to drive the Atlantic 'heat conveyor belt' that carries warm water northwards and cooler deep-water back south. The phenomenon also helps to remove...

Cardiologists have opened another front in the rancorous debate over expensive medical technologies, questioning the conclusions of a new study finding that high-resolution computer scans of the heart are almost as effective as conventional angiograms. The debate reveals a deep rift among heart specialists over the use of 64-slice or CT angiography, which produces mesmerizing 3-D images of the heart and blood vessels. CT scans are faster and less invasive than conventional angiograms, the gold standard for diagnosis and identification of blockages, but they expose patients to higher doses of radiation, which may increase the risk of cancer. Angiograms, on...

BOULDER, Colo. — When Donna Campiglia learned recently that a genetic test might be able to determine which sports suit the talents of her 2 ½-year-old son, Noah, she instantly said, Where can I get it and how much does it cost? “I could see how some people might think the test would pigeonhole your child into doing fewer sports or being exposed to fewer things, but I still think it’s good to match them with the right activity,” Ms. Campiglia, 36, said as she watched a toddler class at Boulder Indoor Soccer in which Noah struggled to take direction...

Results of most drug trials are unreported, inaccessible to clinicians and patients, a new study confirms Patients asking their doctors if a new drug is right for them would do well to also ask for supporting evidence. Conclusions about drug safety and effectiveness in reports submitted to the FDA are sometimes changed to favor the drug in the medical literature, a new analysis finds. And a quarter of submitted drug trials were never published at all, researchers report in the Nov. 25 PLoS Medicine. Information published in journals is the most accessible to health care professionals and also drives marketing...

The Evidence Gap The surprising news made headlines in December 2002. Generic pills for high blood pressure, which had been in use since the 1950s and cost only pennies a day, worked better than newer drugs that were up to 20 times as expensive. The findings, from one of the biggest clinical trials ever organized by the federal government, promised to save the nation billions of dollars in treating the tens of millions of Americans with hypertension — even if the conclusions did seem to threaten pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer that were making big money on blockbuster hypertension drugs. Six...

Researchers at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC have been able to effectively repair damaged heart muscle in an animal model using a novel population of stem cells they discovered that is derived from human skeletal muscle tissue. The research team - led by Johnny Huard, PhD - transplanted stem cells purified from human muscle-derived blood vessels into the hearts of mice that had heart damage similar to that which would occur in people who had suffered a heart attack. These transplanted myoendothelial cells repaired the injured muscle, stimulated the growth of new blood vessels in the heart and reduced...

Clinical trial » Researchers are searching for patients who have few other options for a remedy. University of Utah researchers are going to be the first in the country to inject patients' own stem cells into their hearts to treat two types of heart failure. After drawing about 3 tablespoons of patients' own bone marrow, researchers will grow cardiac-repair cells -- believed to help heart muscles and improve blood flow -- in culture for about 12 days. The cells that survive culture are healthier than the original ones extracted from the patient, said Amit N. Patel, director of cardiovascular regenerative...

Enlarge ImageTradeoff. The protein SIRT1 rushes to repair broken DNA in aging mammals like this mouse, but the shifting proteins (in red, inset) let gene expression go awry. Credit: Courtesy of Philipp Oberdoerffer/Harvard Medical School It seems there's just no way to beat Father Time. As we age, our chromosomes fracture, and specialized proteins rush in to reverse the damage. But new research shows that in doing so, these proteins inadvertently switch on genes that can contribute to aging, allowing senescence to march ever onward. The idea that a protein might patch up a rickety, aging chromosome is not...

A new insight into the reason for aging has been gained by scientists trying to understand how resveratrol, a minor ingredient of red wine, improves the health and lifespan of laboratory mice. They believe that the integrity of chromosomes is compromised as people age, and that resveratrol works by activating a protein known as sirtuin that restores the chromosomes to health. The finding, published online Wednesday in the journal Cell, is from a group led by David Sinclair of the Harvard Medical School. It is part of a growing effort by biologists to understand the sirtuins and other powerful agents...

The new medicine shows that we’re biochemically separate and unequal—and regulators are starting to catch on. Life is unfair, and while others have suspected as much before, biochemists can now prove it. You have colon cancer—possibly because a flawed APC gene failed to produce the protein that helps prevent the disease. When the cancer spreads to your liver, you need Pfizer’s Camptosar. But if you’re the one-in-ten patient with a flawed UGT1A1 gene—find out with a Food and Drug Administration–approved test kit—you lack an enzyme to purge the drug from your body before it accumulates to toxic levels. Your oncologist...

Sylvia Syvenky went for a routine dental appointment in early October, expecting to have two caps on her teeth replaced. But something went terribly wrong. “I felt like I was choking,” Mrs. Syvenky said. “I couldn’t take a breath. All sorts of gurgly sounds were coming out of me.” She was rushed by ambulance to University Hospital near her home in Edmonton, Alberta, where doctors placed a mask on her face and forced air into her lungs. They told her she had heart failure. After her condition improved, they asked her to sign up for a study of a new...

Cancer researchers have known for years that it was possible in rare cases for some cancers to go away on their own. There were occasional instances of melanomas and kidney cancers that just vanished. And neuroblastoma, a very rare childhood tumor, can go away without treatment. But these were mostly seen as oddities — an unusual pediatric cancer that might not bear on common cancers of adults, a smattering of case reports of spontaneous cures. And since almost every cancer that is detected is treated, it seemed impossible even to ask what would happen if cancers were left alone. Now,...

Correct calculation strengthens theory of quark-gluon interactions in nuclear particles When it comes to weighty matters, quarks and gluons rule the universe, a new study confirms. One of the largest computational efforts to calculate the masses of protons and neutrons shows that the standard model of particle physics predicts those masses with an uncertainty of less than 4 percent. Christian Hoelbling, affiliated with the Bergische Universtät Wuppertal in Germany, the Eötvös University in Budapest and the CNRS in Marseille, France, and his colleagues report their findings in the Nov. 21 Science. Nearly all the mass of ordinary matter consists of...

New data from the JUPITER study demonstrated that CRESTOR (rosuvastatin calcium) 20 mg significantly reduced major cardiovascular (CV) events (defined in this study as the combined risk of myocardial infarction, stroke, arterial revascularization, hospitalization for unstable angina, or death from CV causes) by a dramatic 44% compared to placebo (p<0.001) among men and women with elevated hsCRP but low to normal cholesterol levels. Results also showed that for patients in the trial taking rosuvastatin: the combined risk of heart attack, stroke or CV death was reduced by nearly half (47%, p<0.001). risk of heart attack was cut by more than...

Enlarge ImageIn a bubble. Tracking tiny vessicles of genetic material emitted by tumor cells could help doctors better diagnose and treat brain cancer patients. Credit: Skog et al., Nature Cell Biology Doctors may soon be able to use blood tests rather than invasive biopsies to figure out what type of brain tumors their patients have. The findings, which come thanks to new insights about how tumor cells communicate with their environment, may also bring physicians closer to the goal of more personalized medicine. Cells are chatty, constantly exchanging proteins or electrical signals with their neighbors. For example, tumor cells...

The Physicians' Health Study II is a large-scale, long-term, randomized clinical trial that included 14,641 physicians who were at least 50 years old at enrollment. These physicians were given 400 IU of vitamin E every other day or its placebo, or 500 mg of vitamin C daily or its placebo. Researchers followed these patients for up to 10 years for the development of cancer with high rates of completion of annual questionnaires, and the confirmation of reported cancer endpoints. Analyses indicate that randomization to vitamin E did not have a significant effect on prostate cancer. This lack of effect for...

Extensively drug-resistant disease deadlier and more common than thought, researchers find FRIDAY, Nov. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), is becoming more common and more deadly than previously thought, new research shows. People with XDR-TB are three times more likely to die than patients with other forms of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), according to the findings, published in the second November issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Researchers reviewed medical records of more than 1,400 patients in South Korea with both types of tuberculosis. MDR-TB patients who didn't respond to ofloxacin and at least...

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study on human lead levels of hunters in North Dakota has confirmed what hunters throughout the world have known for hundreds of years, that consuming game harvested with traditional ammunition poses absolutely no health risk to people, including children, and that the call to ban lead ammunition was and remains a scare tactic being pushed by anti-hunting groups to forward their political agenda. Today, additional information became available about the CDC study, originally released yesterday, that is important to disseminate to hunters, their families and the general public about the total and...

NEW ORLEANS — Reduced serum selenium is an independent predictor of hypertension, according to an analysis of data from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. The findings from this and other studies, that serum selenium concentrations are reduced in African Americans, compared with those in with whites, may in part explain the increased incidence of hypertension in African Americans, Dr. Chizobam Ani said in a poster at a meeting sponsored by the International Society on Hypertension in Blacks. Serum selenium is an essential component in substances shown to mediate the incidence of cardiovascular disease, such as glutathione peroxidase...

Clot busting drug reduces number of amputations from severe frostbite A blood thinner routinely used to prevent brain damage in strokes dramatically reduced the risk of amputation from severe frostbite in a preliminary study. Researchers report that only 10 percent of frostbitten toes and fingers had to be amputated in patients who were given tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), an anti-clotting agent, in addition to standard frostbite treatment (rewarming, rehydrating and cleaning the wounded areas); in contrast, 41 percent of frostbitten digits had to be amputated in victims who received only conventional care. "No substantial improvement in the outcomes of these...

Measured by a simple blood test, c-reactive protein (CRP) has vexed scientists for years. People with elevated CRP levels tend to be at higher risk of a heart attack, but does that mean the protein is causing arteries to clog and these people require medication? A study of nearly 51,000 people in Denmark says no. Although the study is far from the last word, researchers say it will likely shift the debate about how to use CRP in guiding treatment. The work also underscores a relatively new way to uncover a single factor's influence on disease: by isolating it genetically...

Spearheading: scanning electron microscopy reveals a large magnetofossil from an unknown organism surrounded by smaller magnetofossils from bacteria. Scientists have unearthed giant magnetic fossils, the remnants of microbes buried in 55-million-year-old sediment. The growth of these unusual structures during a period of massive global warming provides clues about how climate change might alter the behaviour of organisms. Some bacteria, both living and fossilized, contain magnetite — magnetic iron oxide crystals — that the organisms are thought to use to navigate, orienting themselves along the magnetic field lines of the Earth. But the new fossils are "unlike any magnetite crystal...

Enlarge ImageHumble beginnings. An experiment in the 1950s with primordial gases and sparks produced some of life's building blocks.Credit: Ned Shaw/Indiana University/Science A once-discarded idea about how life started on our planet has been given a new life of its own, thanks to a serendipitous find. The story traces back to the early 1950s, when chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey of the University of Chicago in Illinois tried to recreate the building blocks of life under conditions they thought resembled those on the young Earth. The duo filled a closed loop of glass chambers and tubes with water...

Should women be allowed access to a genetic test for breast cancer risk?Last week, the Icelandic company deCODE Genetics began offering a new breast cancer gene test that it claims measures genetic risk for the common forms of the disease. The new test assesses seven single-letter variations (a.k.a., single nucleotide polymorphisms) in the human genome that researchers have linked to higher risk of breast cancer. The average lifetime risk for women of European descent is 12 percent. The company claims that its new test can tell a woman if her lifetime risk of breast cancer is as low as 5...

Study finds Parkinson’s patients are more commonly lacking in the vitamin than Alzheimer’s patients or healthy peopleA vitamin D shortage is more likely to show up in people with Parkinson’s disease than in healthy people or those with Alzheimer’s disease, scientists report in the October Archives of Neurology. The study is the most recent contribution to a torrent of findings linking vitamin D deficiency with health risks. It’s well documented that such a deficiency can cause osteoporosis. Studies in recent years have also implicated a shortage of vitamin D in heart disease, stroke, multiple sclerosis, cancer and even respiratory problems....

The nation's leading pediatricians group says children from newborns to teens should get double the usually recommended amount of vitamin D because of evidence that it may help prevent serious diseases. To meet the new recommendation of 400 units daily, millions of children will need to take daily vitamin D supplements, the American Academy of Pediatrics said. That includes breast-fed infants — even those who get some formula, too, and many teens who drink little or no milk. Baby formula contains vitamin D, so infants on formula only generally don't need supplements. However, the academy recommends breast-feeding for at least...

Sole member of world's first single-species ecosystem depends on rocks and radioactivity for life. The rod-shaped D. audaxviator was recovered from thousands of litres of water collected deep in the Mponeng Mine in South Africa.Greg Wanger, J. Craig Venter Institute / Gordon Southam, University of Western Ontario Nestled kilometres down in the hot, dark vaults of Earth's crust, scientists have discovered a remarkably lonely bacterium species. The rod-shaped bacterium, Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator, lives independently of any other organism in a part of the Mponeng gold mine near Johannesburg, South Africa, some 2.8 kilometres beneath Earth's surface. There, water flows from...

Enlarge ImageAltered perceptions? Minimally conscious patients may have a greater capacity to feel pain than do those in a vegetative state (such as Terri Schiavo, above).Credit: Reuters Most of the time, doctors have a simple way to determine if a patient needs pain medication: They ask. But when a brain injury renders someone unable to respond to questions, the right course of action becomes murkier. Now a study finds that the brains of some patients with brain injuries respond to an unpleasant electrical shock much as do the brains of healthy people, suggesting that these patients may feel pain...

BEIJING — China said Wednesday that it had established limits for the allowable trace amounts of melamine in dairy products that officials assured would make the items safe. The toxic industrial chemical is at the heart of one of this country’s worst food contamination crises. The imposition of the limits, announced by the Health Ministry at a news conference, was the latest in a series of steps undertaken by the government to rebuild consumer confidence after revelations last month that at least three babies had died and 53,000 children had been sickened by drinking milk products adulterated with melamine, which...

Enlarge ImageBreaking their way. Makoto Kobayashi (left), Toshihide Maskawa (center), and Yoichiro Nambu share the prize for work on two different aspects of "broken symmetry."Credit: KYODO/Reuters This year's Nobel Prize in physics honors three particle theorist of Japanese origin, one for pioneering the use of a key conceptual tool and the other two for making, in essence, an inspired educated guess that expanded the family of fundamental subatomic particles. Yoichiro Nambu, 87, of the University of Chicago in Illinois receives half the $1.4 million prize for, in the early 1960s, applying to particle physics the concept of spontaneous symmetry...

Enlarge ImageColorblind? Researchers found white subjects shrink from using relevant racial descriptors when looking at cards like these.Credit: Flickr.com After Barack Obama's landmark speech on race on 18 March, it was hard to tell what got more media attention: What the Democratic presidential candidate said or that he had said it at all. Regardless, many pundits agreed that as an African-American, Obama could discuss race in ways few white people would dare. That's because most white Americans today have learned not to talk about race for fear of seeming racist, says Samuel Sommers, a social psychologist at Tufts University...

To understand where fat comes from, you have to start with a skinny mouse. By using such a creature, and observing the growth of fat after injections of different kinds of immature cells, scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Rockefeller University have discovered an important fat precursor cell that may in time explain how changes in the numbers of fat cells might increase and lead to obesity. The finding could also have implications for understanding how fat cells affect conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. "The identification of white adipocyte progenitor cells provides a means for identifying...

I think I speak for more than a few here when I say: I think I'm going to scream if I see another vanity thread on the bailout bill! Crap. I just saw one. AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I feel better now. Thank you.

The principal rationale for the $3 billion spent to decode the human genome was that it would enable the discovery of the variant genes that predispose people to common diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s. A major expectation was that these variants had not been eliminated by natural selection because they harm people only later in life after their reproductive years are over, and hence that they would be common. This idea, called the common disease/common variant hypothesis, drove major developments in biology over the last five years. Washington financed the HapMap, a catalog of common genetic variation in the human...

A new government study published Monday has found that the medicines most often prescribed for schizophrenia in children and adolescents are no more effective than older, less expensive drugs and are more likely to cause some harmful side effects. The standards for treating the disorder should be changed to include some older medications that have fallen out of use, the study’s authors said. The results, being published online by The American Journal of Psychiatry, are likely to alter treatment for an estimated one million children and teenagers with schizophrenia and to intensify a broader controversy in child psychiatry over the...

Bruised and bleeding: Watching for von Willebrand disease The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute recently issued guidelines to raise awareness about this often overlooked bleeding disorder. By Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli, AMNews correspondent. Sept. 1, 2008. The simplest of assaults -- a nick while shaving or a too-close encounter with the bread knife -- starts a coagulation cascade, sending help to the endothelial wound. A few seconds of pressure or a piece of wet tissue on the gash and the cut seems fine. It's often an automatic response, rarely triggering any thought of the complicated clot-forming process.But even when this...

When Claire, a pixie-faced 6-year-old in a school uniform, heard her older brother, James, enter the family’s Manhattan apartment, she shut her bedroom door and began barricading it so swiftly and methodically that at first I didn’t understand what she was doing. She slid a basket of toys in front of the closed door, then added a wagon and a stroller laden with dolls. She hugged a small stuffed Pegasus to her chest. “Pega always protects me,” she said softly. “Pega, guard the door.” James, then 10, had been given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder two years earlier. He was...

An unsettling fact about lung cancer is that not even clean living can guarantee a free pass. A significant proportion of cases — 10 to 15 percent — occur in people who never smoked, and just in the United States, 16,000 to 24,000 a year die. What causes the disease in nonsmokers is not known, though researchers suspect genetic susceptibility combined with exposure to cancer-causing substances like asbestos, radon, certain solvents and other people’s tobacco smoke. A huge new study conducted in Europe, North America and Asia, based on 2.4 million nonsmokers who had lung cancer, provides new information about...

A new type of drug could alleviate pain in a similar way to cannabis without affecting the brain, according to a new study published in the journal Pain on Monday 15 September. The research demonstrates for the first time that cannabinoid receptors called CB2, which can be activated by cannabis use, are present in human sensory nerves in the peripheral nervous system, but are not present in a normal human brain. Drugs which activate the CB2 receptors are able to block pain by stopping pain signals being transmitted in human sensory nerves, according to the study, led by researchers from...

OKLAHOMA CITY — Doctors at the OU Cancer Institute announced Friday that they have discovered a way to find cancer stem cells in tumors, destroy them and keep them from reoccurring. The team of researchers, led by Dr. Courtney Houchen, M.D. and Shrikant Anant, Ph.D., are using the Mushashi-1 protein, which only appears in adult stem cells, to develop a compound that can kill the stem cells and cancer cells, while leaving normal cells untouched. This is the first time doctors have been able to separate the cancer forming stem cells from normal cells. Houchen said they are going after...

Really? THE FACTS Aloe vera has been a common skin-care remedy since the Greek physician Dioscorides advocated using it for burns in the first century A.D. But only in recent years have scientists conducted research to determine whether it lives up to its reputation. Some have found that aloe contains certain anti-inflammatory compounds and may act as an antibacterial agent. But studies on its effects on minor and moderate burns have been mixed. In 2007, for example, a study in the journal Burns analyzed data from four controlled clinical trials involving a total of 371 patients, some were treated with...

An unusually detailed study of people newly infected with H.I.V. in the United States has confirmed that the majority of new cases occur among gay and bisexual men and that blacks are most at risk. But the data show that whites and blacks tend to be infected at different times in their lives with the virus that causes AIDS. Most new infections of white gay and bisexual men occur when the men are in their 30s and 40s, the study found, while black gay and bisexual men are more likely to be infected in their teens and 20s. The results...

Switchgrass could be an excellent source of biofuels - if only it were easier to break down its cellulose.US Govt A genuine revolution in biofuels is currently hindered by the difficulty of converting the most recalcitrant parts of plants, primarily the cellulose of their fibres, into useful fuel. Two chemists in California now claim that it might be remarkably easy to do just that with little more than a strong acid to break down the cellulose. Mark Mascal and Edward Nikitin of the University of California, Davis say their new process is the most efficient way yet described for...

When men and women take personality tests, some of the old Mars-Venus stereotypes keep reappearing. On average, women are more cooperative, nurturing, cautious and emotionally responsive. Men tend to be more competitive, assertive, reckless and emotionally flat. Clear differences appear in early childhood and never disappear. What’s not clear is the origin of these differences. Evolutionary psychologists contend that these are innate traits inherited from ancient hunters and gatherers. Another school of psychologists asserts that both sexes’ personalities have been shaped by traditional social roles, and that personality differences will shrink as women spend less time nurturing children and more...

When people envision using human embryonic stem cells for “regenerative medicine,” they often talk about making neurons to treat Parkinson’s disease, cardiac cells to... --snip-- The idea faces other challenges beyond the huge volume of cells needed. The red cells produced from embryonic stem cells so far tend to resemble embryonic or fetal red cells more than adult ones. They tend to be larger and often contain nuclei, which could impede their passage through the body. And they have a different form of the globin molecule, which carries oxygen. --snip-- “The real test is in vivo,” said Dr. Thalia Papayannopoulou,...

Human brains appear to come in at least two flavours: male and female. Now variations in the density of the synapses that connect neurons may help to explain differences in how men and women think. Even when intelligence levels are equal, women and men excel at different cognitive tasks. But although brain size and neuron density differ between the sexes, these don't seem to correlate with cognitive differences. So, Javier DeFelipe at Complutense University in Madrid, Spain, and colleagues counted the number of synapses instead. The brain tissue they analysed came from the left temporal cortex, a region of the...

Low levels of the sunshine vitamin, vitamin D, may contribute to chronic pain among women, scientists believe. The link does not apply to men, suggesting hormones may be involved, according to a study published in the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases said. The team from the Institute of Child Health in London said studies were now needed to see if vitamin D supplements can guard against chronic pain. About one in 10 people are affected by chronic pain at any one time in the UK. The causes are not well understood and much of the focus to date has been on...

LIZETTE IRVIN, HEAVILY PREGNANT, reclined on a hospital bed, relaxed, considering the circumstances. A bag of fluid dripped into her blood through an IV line as Irvin sucked on ice cubes, trying to pass the time. The ice helped to minimize the metallic taste and heat in her mouth from 5-fluorouracil, an antimetabolite, which entered her bloodstream via a catheter inserted in her chest. It was June 16, Irvin’s fourth round of chemotherapy. She was 32 weeks pregnant and had breast cancer. Before she left the chemo suite at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Irvin, who is...