A team of researchers has made a significant discovery which may have a dramatic impact on children stricken with Tay-Sachs disease, a degenerative and fatal neurological condition that often strikes in the early months of life.
Available drugs may dramatically ease a child's suffering, say scientists.
Since ancient times, the pressures of excessive hunting have contributed to the gradual decline of wildlife populations and even the extinction of certain species in many areas.
Researchers from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) and the Centre for Forestry Research (INIA-CIFOR) have studied the developments in big game in Spain between 1972 and 2007 to gain an understanding of the hunting trends of the last decades.
University of Adelaide researchers have developed a simple and cost-effective DNA test to identify kangaroo species from their droppings which will boost the ability to manage and conserve kangaroo populations.
The researchers developed the test using hundreds of collected droppings across north-eastern Australia and extracting DNA from the samples, published in the conservation journal Wildlife Research.
The drug ingenol mebutate (trade name: Picato) has been approved in Germany since November 2012 as a gel for the treatment of certain forms of actinic keratosis in adults. In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG) the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined whether this new drug offers an added benefit over diclofenac/hyaluronic acid gel.
ANN ARBOR—Efforts to restore sturgeon in the Great Lakes region have received a lot of attention in recent years, and many of the news stories note that the prehistoric-looking fish are "living fossils" virtually unchanged for millions of years.
But a new study by University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues reveals that in at least one measure of evolutionary change—changes in body size over time—sturgeon have been one of the fastest-evolving fish on the planet.
Patients battling cancer have a better experience of care at hospitals that employ more cancer specialist nurses.
Research from the University of Southampton, shows that patients of better staffed hospitals are more likely to report being given more emotional support by nurses who work well together on wards.
How and when evolution generates diversity or gives form to proteins, living beings' functional building blocks, are essential questions that still surround the theory of evolution. In humans, the majority of genes have emerged via genetic duplication, a strategy in which a gene generates two identical copies that can evolve to generate different proteins.
Cincinnati, OH, June 6, 2013 -- Sports-related concussion has been referred to as an "epidemic" by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Emergency department visits for concussions have increased 62% between 2001 and 2009. Despite the lack of data regarding the rates of concussions in youth football (children aged 8-12 years), concerns have been raised about the sport being dangerous for this age group.
Philadelphia, PA, June 6, 2013 – By analyzing biopsy specimens from patients with postmenopausal osteoporosis and primary hyperparathyroidism, investigators have begun to pay increasing attention to "reversal cells," which prepare for bone formation during bone remodeling. The hope is that these reversal cells will become critical therapeutic targets that may someday prevent osteoporosis and other bone disorders. This study is published in the July 2013 issue of The American Journal of Pathology.
A new Lancet series on maternal and childhood nutrition finds that over 3 million children die every year of malnutrition—accounting for nearly half of all child deaths under 5. Along with state-of-the-art global estimates on the long-term burden of malnutrition, the series presents a new framework for prevention and treatment that considers underlying factors, such as food security, social conditions, resources, and governance.
The act of describing a feeling such as anger may have a significant impact on the body's physiological response to the situation that elicits the emotion, according to research published June 5 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Karim Kassam from Carnegie Mellon University and Wendy Mendes from the University of California San Francisco.
The first case of a bone tumor of the ribs in a Neanderthal specimen reveals that at least one Neanderthal suffered a cancer that is common in modern-day humans, according to research published June 5 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by David Frayer from the University of Kansas and colleagues from other institutions.
In conflict-ridden countries around the world, rape and other forms of sexual violence are being used as weapons of war. In these settings, treatment services for victims are limited. A trial led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examined an evidence-based group psychotherapy treatment for sexual violence survivors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Survivors of sexual violence have long gone without treatment and suffered debilitating symptoms of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
But a randomized controlled study of 405 rape survivors in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo proves that short-term therapy delivered by para-professionals is effective at reducing mental health symptoms, according to a study released in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Tampa, FL (June 5, 2013) -- A combination of nontoxic dietary and hyperbaric oxygen therapies effectively increased survival time in a mouse model of aggressive metastatic cancer, a research team from the Hyperbaric Biomedical Research Laboratory at the University of South Florida has found.
The study, "The Ketogenic Diet and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Prolong Survival in Mice with Systemic Metastatic Cancer," was published online today in PLOS ONE.