Body

Next month, in the Norwegian town of Rena, 12,000 elite cross-country skiers will line up for this year's Birkebeiner ski marathon, an annual endurance race which will take them through 54 kilometres of snow-covered countryside to the winter sports resort of Lillehammer. The race has been run almost every year since 1932, and in 1976 almost 150 participants were invited to take part in a long-term study designed to discover the extent of latent heart disease in these elite cross-country skiers.

Highlights from the Lymphoma Research Foundation (LRF) 2009 Mantle Cell Lymphoma Consortium (MCLC) Scientific Workshop will be published in the March 2010 issue of Leukemia & Lymphoma. Traditionally accessible to subscribers for period of one year, Leukemia and Lymphoma has agreed to make this report available to the public for one month -- Mantle Cell Lymphoma: Report of the 2009 MCL Consortium Workshop.

Just because you don't swallow the worm at the bottom of a bottle of mescal doesn't mean you have avoided the essential worminess of the potent Mexican liquor, according to scientists at the University of Guelph.

Researchers from U of G's Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO) have discovered that mescal itself contains the DNA of the agave butterfly caterpillar — the famously tasty "worm" that many avoid consuming. Their findings will appear in the March issue of BioTechniques, which is available online now.

A new study from The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro - at McGill University is the first to discover a molecular link between Parkinson's disease and defects in the ability of nerve cells to communicate. The study, published in the prestigious journal Molecular Cell and selected as Editor's Choice in the prominent journal Science, provides new insight into the mechanisms underlying Parkinson's disease, and could lead to innovative new therapeutic strategies.

(CHICAGO) –Doctors at Rush University Medical Center are offering pediatric patients diagnosed with chronic illnesses acupuncture therapy to help ease the pain and negative side effects like nausea, fatigue, and vomiting caused by chronic health conditions and intensive treatments. The confluence of Chinese and Western medicine at Rush Children's Hospital is part of a study to analyze and document how acupuncture might help in reducing pain in children and increase quality of life.

Scientists have shown that cells' DNA-reading machinery can skim through certain kinds of damaged DNA without skipping any letters in the genetic "text." The studies, performed in bacteria, suggest a new mechanism that can allow bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics.

Early life stress could be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease in adulthood, researchers report.

"We think early life stress increases sensitivity to a hormone known to increase your blood pressure and increases your cardiovascular risk in adult life," said Dr. Jennifer Pollock, biochemist in the Vascular Biology Center at the Medical College of Georgia and corresponding author on the study published online in Hypertension.

In 2007, researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology found a gene related to individual variation in exploratory behavior in great tits(Parus major), a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae.

Birds with a certain variant of this so-called "dopamine receptor D4 gene" (DRD4 gene) showed stronger novelty seeking and exploration behaviour than individuals with other variants. This association was originally tested and found in a lab-raised group of birds.

The drivers of tropical deforestation have shifted in the early 21st century to hinge on growth of cities and the globalized agricultural trade, a new large-scale study concludes. The observations starkly reverse assumptions by some scientists that fast-growing urbanization and the efficiencies of global trade might eventually slow or reverse tropical deforestation. The study, which covers most of the world's tropical land area, appears in this week's early edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.

DALLAS – Feb. 10, 2010 – A mutation in a single gene can cause endometrial cancer that is responsive to a specific drug therapy, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found in an animal study.

The finding suggests that eventually it might be possible to screen women with endometrial cancer to see if they have that mutation and use the drug as targeted therapy, the researchers said.

Corvallis, Oregon--A new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides yet more evidence that birds did not descend from ground-dwelling theropod dinosaurs, experts say, and continues to challenge decades of accepted theories about the evolution of flight.

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) are considered to be the most important etiological agents of chronic gastritis. The eradication of H. pyloridepends on the combination of antibiotics and acid suppression drugs. Unfortunately, the side effects of antibiotics reduce the curative effect and treatment compliance. Probiotics provides an alternative method which can inhibit H. pylori infection efficiently without antibiotics associated side effects.

Previous studies have shown that assessment of immunoglobulin subclasses in plasma cells by immunohistochemistry (IHC) may be useful in the histopathologic evaluation of autoimmune liver diseases. However, further studies are necessary in order to validate the diagnostic utility of IgM and IgG immunohistochemistry in this specific scenario.

The clinical outcome of gastric disease may involve differences in the prevalence or expression of bacterial virulence factors. Contrary to Asian studies, Western studies have disclosed associations between the presence of babA2 gene and gastric cancer. Evidence concerning BabA adhesin-associated genes is insufficient in Costa Rica, where the incidence of gastric cancer is very high, similar to Japan. The babA2 gene, which encodes BabA, may play a role in the development of gastric cancer in the Costa Rican population.

Gastric cancer, one of the most common types of cancer, is associated with high mortality rates. In the last decades, a decrease in the worldwide incidence has been observed with some changes in the therapeutic and diagnostic options. However, the prognosis for this disease still remains poor, mainly when the diagnosis is performed at advanced stages. The therapy most effective is still surgical resection and in a significant number of cases, especially in the advanced stage, it is only palliative.