Montreal, March 27, 2013 – Women tend to carry excess fat in their hips and thighs, while men tend to carry it on their stomachs. But after menopause, things start to change: many women's fat storage patterns start to resemble those of men. This indicates that there's a link between estrogen and body fat storage. This connection is well documented, but the underlying mechanisms remained poorly understood until now.
The European Collaborative Oncological Gen-Environmental Study (COGS) project, whose main goal is to decipher the complex genetic bases of breast, prostate and ovarian cancers, publishes today a total of 12 research articles in several prestigious journals, including Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, The American Journal of Human Genetics and PLOS Genetics. Using mass sequencing techniques, the study has identified up to 80 new regions of the genome associated with an increased susceptibility to developing breast, prostate and ovarian cancers.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Engineers at Oregon State University have developed a new interactive system to create networks of small wetlands in Midwest farmlands, which could help the region prevent massive spring floods and also retain water and mitigate droughts in a warming climate.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Researchers at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center have identified new DNA sequences associated with breast cancer -- the most common cancer among women, with an average risk of developing the disease of 10 percent -- and ovarian cancer, the most common cause of death from gynecological cancers in the U.S. The findings, which appear in three studies in the journals Plos Genetics and Nature Genetics, will help reveal the underlying causes of these diseases and help researchers build better risk models to support new prevention strategies.
More than 80 genetic 'spelling mistakes' that can increase the risk of breast, prostate and ovarian cancer have been found in a large, international research study within the framework of the EU Network COGS. For the first time, the researchers also have a relatively clear picture of the total number of genetic alterations that can be linked to these cancers. Ultimately the researchers hope to be able to calculate the individual risk of cancer, to better understand how these cancers develop and to be able to generate new treatments.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Researchers at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center have identified a novel gene that can contribute to a woman's susceptibility for developing ovarian cancer. Researchers identified the gene, called HNF1B, through large-scale analysis of more than 16,000 women with ovarian cancer and more than 26,000 healthy women. Results of the study are published in the current issue of the journal Nature Communications.
An international team of scientists led by the University of Leicester has found new evidence that links faster 'biological' ageing to the risk of developing several age-related diseases - including heart disease, multiple sclerosis and various cancers.
The study involved scientists in 14 centres across 8 countries, working as part of the ENGAGE Consortium (list of research teams is give below). The research is published online today (27th March) in the journal Nature Genetics.
In collaboration with an international research team, University of Copenhagen researchers have for the first time mapped telomerase, an enzyme which has a kind of rejuvenating effect on normal cell ageing. The findings have just been published in Nature Genetics and are a step forward in the fight against cancer.
DURHAM, N.C. -- An international research collaboration has found five new regions of the human genome that are linked to increased risks for developing ovarian cancer. Duke Medicine researchers played a leading role analyzing genetic information from more than 40,000 women.
SCIENTISTS at the University of York have discovered the driving force behind the development of prostate cancer.
Their research, published in Nature Communications today (Wednesday)* and funded by the charity Yorkshire Cancer Research, reveals the existence of a cancer inducing DNA re-alignment in stem cells taken from human prostate cancers.
This opens the way to the development of drugs that target the stem cells, leading to more effective therapies that work against the root cause of the disease.
Working with an international consortium conducting research on breast, ovarian and prostate cancer among 200,000 people, Professor Jacques Simard, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Oncogenetics at Laval University, was actively involved in the discovery of DNA "spelling mistakes" linked to breast cancer. These mistakes – known as genetic variations – are directly involved in the risk of developing breast cancer.
For around 50 million years, placodonts populated the flat coastal regions of the Tethys Ocean, in modern day Europe and China. The most distinctive feature of these dinosaurs was their teeth: The upper jaw had two rows of flattened teeth – one on the palate and one on the jawbone – while the lower jaw only had one set of teeth ideal for crushing shellfish and crustaceans.
Stronger protections are needed to prevent people with HIV from also becoming infected with hepatitis, researchers argue in a new study led by Michigan State University.
Behaviors that put people at higher risk of contracting HIV – sharing needles, having unprotected sex or getting blood transfusions, for instance – also raise their risk of getting hepatitis B or C, diseases that attack the liver and, if untreated, can be deadly.
Pregnant women who experienced financial, emotional, or other personal stress in the year before their delivery had an increased chance of having a stillbirth, say researchers who conducted a National Institutes of Health network study.
Stillbirth is the death of a fetus at 20 or more weeks of pregnancy. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2006, there was one stillbirth for every 167 births.
WORCESTER, MA – Important new research from UMass Medical School demonstrates how exosomes shuttle proteins from neurons to muscle cells where they take part in critical signaling mechanisms, an exciting discovery that means these tiny vehicles could one day be loaded with therapeutic agents, such as RNA interference (RNAi), and directly target disease-carrying cells. The study, published this month in the journal Neuron, is the first evidence that exosomes can transfer membrane proteins that play an important role in cell-to-cell signaling in the nervous system.