Body

As a child grows, a short stature is not usually cause for concern, but it is often the only sign of a condition called Turner syndrome. Prevalent in girls, Turner syndrome is a genetic defect that short-circuits normal growth and leads to cardiac and renal problems. It is not commonly detected until age 10 or older when a youngster's unusually short height raises suspicions.

A recent multicenter clinical trial of atorvastatin, a type of cholesterol-lowering drug, found that although the drug did not inhibit plasma HIV RNA levels, it did inhibit expression of cellular markers of immune activation and inflammation in patients with HIV infection. Since immune activation and inflammation are associated with progression of HIV infection, the implication is that the statin may inhibit disease progression and help in the infection's management. The findings are in a study, available online, published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

A 22-year study of abnormally short individuals suggests that growth-stunting mutations also may stunt two of humanity's worst diseases.

Published in Science Translational Medicine, part of the Science family of journals, the study raises the prospect of achieving similar protection in full-grown adults by other means, such as pharmaceuticals or controlled diets.

STANFORD, Calif. — A recently discovered biomarker could help doctors diagnose a common type of knee injury, according to a new study.

Almost 600 million years ago, before the rampant evolution of diverse life forms known as the Cambrian explosion, a community of seaweeds and worm-like animals lived in a quiet deep-water niche under the sea near what is now Lantian, a small village in Anhui Province of South China. Then they simply died, leaving some 3,000 nearly pristine fossils preserved between beds of black shale deposited in oxygen-free waters.

"Too simple" and "not so fast" suggest biological anthropologists from the George Washington University and New York University about the origins of human ancestry. In the upcoming issue of the journal Nature, the anthropologists question the claims that several prominent fossil discoveries made in the last decade are our human ancestors. Instead, the authors offer a more nuanced explanation of the fossils' place in the Tree of Life. They conclude that instead of being our ancestors the fossils more likely belong to extinct distant cousins.

When doctors discover high concentrations of regulatory T cells in the tumors of breast cancer patients, the prognosis is often grim, though why exactly has long been unclear.

Now new research at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine suggests these regulatory T cells, whose job is to help mediate the body's immune response, produce a protein that appears to hasten and intensify the spread of breast cancer to distant organs and, in doing so, dramatically increase the risk of death.

Northwestern University scientists have discovered a new mechanism in the core gears of the circadian clock. They found the loss of a certain gene, dubbed "twenty-four," messes up the rhythm of the common fruit fly's sleep-wake cycle, making it harder for the flies to awaken.

The circadian clock drives, among other things, when an organism wakes up and when it sleeps. While the Northwestern study was done using the fly Drosophila melanogaster, the findings have implications for humans.

The research will be published Feb. 17 in the journal Nature.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Nobody enjoys colonoscopies, including mice. University of Missouri researchers are excited about the potential of using genetic biomarkers to predict colon cancer caused by inflammation. A new method developed at the MU Research Animal Diagnostic Laboratory (RADIL) could eventually lead to a method that might eliminate colonoscopies altogether.

Pneumococcus (Streptococcus pneumoniae) accounts for as much as 11 percent of mortality in young children worldwide. While successful vaccines like Prevnar® exist, they are expensive and only work against specific pneumococcal strains, with the risk of becoming less effective as new strains emerge.

INDIANAPOLIS – Researchers from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (U.S.A) and Umea° University (Sweden) report in a study published in the February 15, 2011, issue of PLoS Biology that a method by which cells repair breaks in their DNA, known as Break-induced Replication (BIR), is up to 2,800 times more likely to cause genetic mutation than normal cell repair.

Scientists are reporting for the first time that previously unrecognized substances released by algae blooms have the potential to act as endocrine disruptors, which can interfere with the normal activity of reproductive hormones. The effect is not caused by microcystin toxins, long recognized as potentially harmful to humans and aquatic animals, but as yet unidentified substances. As a result, the scientists are calling for a revision of environmental monitoring programs to watch for these new substances.

A long, urgent search for proteins in the blood of pregnant women that could be used in early diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy (EP) has resulted in discovery of biomarkers that seem to be specific enough to begin testing in clinical trials, scientists are reporting in a new study in ACS's Journal of Proteome Research.

Scientists in Hungary are reporting that the potential health effects of last October's Red Mud Disaster, one of the worst environmental accidents in Europe, may be less dangerous than previously feared. Their study, reported in ACS's journal Environmental Science & Technology, concludes that the dust from the mud may be no more harmful than particles of ordinary urban air pollution.