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Gut bacteria may convert a nutrient found in red meat into a compound that can damage the heartThe link between red meat and poor heart health has traditionally been blamed on cholesterol, but new evidence suggests this isn't the whole story. US researchers found that carnitine, a nutrient found in red meat, is converted into a metabolite that promotes cardiovascular disease by gut bacteria. This may mean that the popular practice of taking carnitine supplements to build muscle is unwise.‘The cholesterol and saturated fat content of red meat is not sufficient to account for increased cardiac risk,’ says lead author...

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have made a discovery in neuroscience that could offer a long-lasting solution to eating disorders such as obesity. It was previously thought that the nerve cells in the brain associated with appetite regulation were generated entirely during an embryo's development in the womb and therefore their numbers were fixed for life. But research published today in the Journal of Neuroscience has identified a population of stem cells capable of generating new appetite-regulating neurons in the brains of young and adult rodents. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally. More than 1.4 billion adults...

Study could aid development of more effective vaccines. For the first time, scientists have tracked in a patient the evolution of a potent immune molecule that recognizes many different HIV viruses. By revealing how these molecules — called broadly neutralizing antibodies — develop, the research could inform efforts to make vaccines that elicit similar antibodies that can protect people from becoming infected with HIV. The researchers, led by Barton Haynes of Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, found that broadly neutralizing antibodies developed only after the population of viruses in the patient had diversified — something that...

U. MISSOURI (US) — Vitamin D supplements can help obese children and teens control their blood-sugar levels, which may help lower their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.“By increasing vitamin D intake alone, we got a response that was nearly as powerful as what we have seen using a prescription drug,” says Catherine Peterson, associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri. “We saw a decrease in insulin levels, which means better glucose control, despite no changes in body weight, dietary intake, or physical activity.”For the study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers...

Enlarge Image Microbe overhaul. Gastric bypass surgery changes the community of microbes in the gut, and a study suggests the new population might drive weight loss. Credit: Life in View/Science Source Usually, science starts in the lab and then moves to patients. Gastric bypass surgery has taken the opposite path. Originally offered as a radical treatment for severe obesity, the surgery's effects on the digestive system and metabolism have turned out to be far more mysterious and fascinating than anyone expected. Now, a new study probes another of the surgery's effects: its impact on microbes in the gut and...

About 1 in 4 deaths in the United States are due to cancer, but primary tumors are rarely fatal. Instead, it's when tumors metastasize that cancer becomes so deadly. To help patients and physicians make treatment decisions, teams of researchers have been working on various methods to detect cancer's spread – via the bloodstream – before secondary tumors develop. Now, one team reports a nearly perfect method for separating breast cancer cells from blood. They describe their proof-of-concept device in a paper accepted for publication in Biomicrofluidics, a journal of the American Institute of Physics. Detecting and separating circulating tumor...

Experts are puzzled by a new study in which influenza vaccination seemed to provide little or no protection against flu in the 2010-11 season—and in which the only participants who seemed to benefit from the vaccine were those who hadn't been vaccinated the season before. The investigators recruited 328 households in Michigan before the flu season started and followed them through the season. Overall, they found that the infection risk was nearly the same in vaccinated and unvaccinated participants, indicating no significant vaccine-induced protection, according to their report in Clinical Infectious Diseases. That contrasted sharply with several other observational studies...

Drawing on past toxicity problems scientists used an enlarged quinolone to improve selectivity for the malaria parasiteA new class of antimalarial drugs that is effective across various stages of the malaria parasite’s lifecycle has been developed by an international research team. Early indications also show that it may take longer for the parasite to develop resistance to the new molecules than it has for existing drugs targeting the same pathway.Malaria is a devastating disease worldwide, and the ability of the Plasmodium family of parasites that cause the disease to develop resistance to drugs leads to a constant arms race for...

For decades scientists around the world have attempted to regenerate primary liver cells known as hepatocytes because of their numerous biomedical applications, including hepatitis research, drug metabolism and toxicity studies, as well as transplantation for cirrhosis and other chronic liver conditions. But no lab in the world has been successful in identifying and growing liver stem cells in culture -- using any available technique – until now. In the journal Nature, physician-scientists in the Papé Family Pediatric Research Institute at Oregon Health & Science University Doernbecher Children's Hospital, Portland, Ore., along with investigators at the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology...

Scientists are reporting "laboratory resurrections" of several 2-3-billion-year-old proteins that are ancient ancestors of the enzymes that enable today's antibiotic-resistant bacteria to shrug off huge doses of penicillins, cephalosporins and other modern drugs. The achievement, reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, opens the door to a scientific "replay" of the evolution of antibiotic resistance with an eye to finding new ways to cope with the problem. Jose M. Sanchez-Ruiz, Eric A. Gaucher, Valeria A. Risso and colleagues explain that antibiotic resistance existed long before Alexander Fleming discovered the first antibiotic in 1928. Genes that contain instructions for...

Origin of Theiler hepatitis was a century-old puzzle. For almost 100 years, veterinarians have puzzled over the cause of Theiler disease, a mysterious type of equine hepatitis that is linked to blood products and causes liver failure in up to 90% of afflicted animals. A team of US scientists has now discovered that the disease is caused by a virus that shares just 35% of its amino acid sequences with its closest-known relative. The team named it Theiler disease-associated virus (TDAV), and published the discovery in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1. Led by Amy Kistler at the...

Enlarge Image Plainly. An event display shows a Higgs candidate decaying to four electrons in the ATLAS detector. New measurements confirm that the Higgs is a Higgs. Credit: ATLAS Collaboration/CERN Eight months ago, physicists working with the world's biggest atom smasher—Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—created a sensation when they reported that they had discovered a particle that appeared to be the long-sought Higgs boson, the last missing piece in their standard model of particles and forces. Today, those researchers reported that the particle does indeed have the basic predicted properties of the standard model Higgs boson, clinching the identification....

Aspirin-related drugs suggest a way towards more effective stem-cell transplants. Aspirin-like drugs could improve the success of stem-cell transplants for patients with blood or bone-marrow disorders, a study suggests. The compounds coax stem cells from bone marrow into the bloodstream where they can be harvested for use in transplantation — and they do so with fewer side effects than drugs now in use. For patients with blood disorders such as leukaemia, multiple myeloma or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, transplantation of haematopoietic stem cells — precursor cells that reside in the bone marrow and give rise to all types of blood cell —...

Recent advances in genomic and post-genomic technologies have facilitated a genome-wide analysis of the insecticide resistance-associated genes in insects. Through bed bug, Cimex lectularius transcriptome analysis, we identified 14 molecular markers associated with pyrethroid resistance. Our studies revealed that most of the resistance-associated genes functioning in diverse mechanisms are expressed in the epidermal layer of the integument, which could prevent or slow down the toxin from reaching the target sites on nerve cells, where an additional layer of resistance (kdr) is possible. This strategy evolved in bed bugs is based on their unique morphological, physiological and behavioral characteristics and has...

Enlarge Image Don't pass the salt. The food flavoring prompts generic T cells like these to specialize into TH17 cells that stimulate autoimmune diseases, new findings suggest. Credit: N. Yosef et al., Nature 495 (6 March) © 2013 Nature Publishing Group For decades, doctors have been admonishing us to cut back on salt to reduce the odds of a heart attack or stroke. Now, there may be a new reason to avoid the seasoning: Studies on rodents and cultured cells, reported today, reveal that dietary salt might promote autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowel disease. The...

More than 350 million people worldwide are believed to have diabetes, and for years health experts have debated on what the exact driver of the illness has been. While sugar intake has been viewed as a culprit in many eyes, scientists have long refuted that conjecture and attributed the global health crisis to too much overall food intake and obesity. But a new finding by three California universities – Stanford, UC-Berkeley and UCSF – suggests through compelling evidence that Type 2 diabetes is being largely driven by the rising consumption of sugary foods and drinks. This evidence comes in the...

Microglia eat neural stem cells in developing rat and monkey brains Zombies aren’t the only things that feast on brains. Immune cells called microglia gorge on neural stem cells in developing rat and monkey brains, researchers report in the Mar. 6 Journal of Neuroscience. Chewing up neuron-spawning stem cells could help control brain size by pruning away excess growth. Scientists have previously linked abnormal human brain size to autism and schizophrenia. “It shows microglia are very important in the developing brain,” says neuroscientist Joseph Mathew Antony of the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the research. Scientists have...

JACKSON, Miss. —Doctors at the University of Mississippi Medical Center said they have cured a baby suffering from HIV and the breakthrough is reverberating worldwide. Related Woman says ex kidnapped her 18-wheeler overturns off of I-20 3 arrested in Jackson drug bust Grenade launcher found during drug bust Fire hydrant testing begins in West... "There is excitement around this," said Dr. Deborah Persaud of John's Hopkins Children's Center. Doctors across the country are heralding the medical breakthrough in Jackson. "We have, perhaps inadvertently, but in fact, cured the child," said Dr. Hannah Gay, associate professor of pediatrics. "We don't know...

Enlarge Image Counting calories. Our bodies may take more energy to process the carbohydrates in garbanzo beans than in cereal, which suggests all carbohydrate calories are not alike. Credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock BOSTON—When it comes to weight loss, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. That's been the mantra of nutritionists, dietitians, and food regulators in the United States and Europe for more than a century. But when it comes to comparing raw food with cooked food, or beans with breakfast cereals, that thinking may be incorrect. That was the consensus of a panel of researchers who listed the many...

Having established the presence of fungi in the lungs of patients with asthma, researchers now hope this could lead to new lines of research and eventually, better treatments for sufferers. "In the future it is conceivable that individual patients may have their sputum tested for fungi and their treatment adjusted accordingly," says Hugo van Woerden of Cardiff University. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)CARDIFF U. (UK) — Healthy lungs are full of fungi, but some species are more common in people with asthma, new research finds. Hundreds of tiny fungal particles found in the lungs of asthma sufferers could offer new clues in...