Body

Doctors have discovered that patients with a particular genetic variation are four times more likely to develop pancreatitis if they are prescribed a widely used group of drugs.

Soldiers deployed to tropical and sunny climates are coming home with increased risk factors for a threat far from the battlefield: skin cancer.

At nearly 100 feet long and weighing as much as 170 tons, the blue whale is the largest creature on the planet, and by far the heaviest living thing ever seen on Earth. So there's no way it could have anything in common with the tiniest fish larvae, which measure millimeters in length and tip the scales at a fraction of a gram, right?

Not so fast, says L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and of Physics.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) —In what may be the largest study of sleep problems among individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS), researchers at UC Davis have found that widely undiagnosed sleep disorders may be at the root of the most common and disabling symptom of the disease: fatigue.

Conducted in over 2,300 individuals in Northern California with multiple sclerosis, the large, population-based study found that, overall, more than 70 percent of participants screened positive for one or more sleep disorders.

The age of the Anthropocene--the scientific name given to our current geologic age--is dominated by human impacts on our environment. A warming climate. Increased resistance of pathogens and pests. A swelling population. Coping with these modern global challenges requires application of what one might call a more-ancient principle: evolution.

Glaucoma, a leading cause of irreversible blindness, is associated with elevated pressure in the eye. This elevated pressure essentially is due to a plumbing problem. Fluid builds up in the eye, increasing pressure and eventually damaging the optic nerve. For nearly 150 years, researchers have been trying to understand what causes the blockage that prevents the eye from draining properly.

This news release is available in German.

Unlike salamanders, mammals can't regenerate lost limbs, but they can repair large sections of their ribs.

In a new study in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, a team directed by USC Stem Cell researcher Francesca Mariani takes a closer look at rib regeneration in both humans and mice.

The first author of the paper, USC medical student Marissa K. Srour, was a USC undergraduate when she started the project, which earned a 2011 USC Discovery Scholar Prize. Each year, 10 graduating seniors win these coveted prizes, which recognize exceptional new scholarship.

September 12, 2014 -- Humanitarian crises are becoming increasingly complex and a growing threat to the health and safety of populations. An improved evidence-base to guide interventions in the countries most vulnerable to these conditions is more critical than ever. A paper by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health published online in the journal Science, looks at the challenges of doing research in such settings and the strategies that must be adopted for scientific advance.

Metastatic melanoma is a highly aggressive skin cancer whose incidence is on the rise at an alarming rate. Research has revealed that metastatic tumor cells share similar signaling pathways with embryonic stem cells to sustain plasticity and growth. However, major regulators of these pathways are often missing in tumor cells, thus allowing uncontrolled tumor growth and spreading to occur.

Regenerative medicine researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have addressed a major challenge in the quest to build replacement kidneys in the lab. Working with human-sized pig kidneys, the scientists developed the most successful method to date to keep blood vessels in the new organs open and flowing with blood. The work is reported in journal Technology.

When active, the protein called Ral can drive tumor growth and metastasis in several human cancers including pancreatic, prostate, lung, colon and bladder. Unfortunately, drugs that block its activity are not available. A study published today in the journal Nature uses a novel approach to target the activation of these Ral proteins: "When you want to keep an alligator from biting you, you can tie its mouth shut.

Things can go downhill fast when a patient has sepsis, a life-threatening condition in which bacteria or fungi multiply in a patient's blood -- often too fast for antibiotics to help. A new device inspired by the human spleen and developed by a team at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering may radically transform the way doctors treat sepsis.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A potential way to treat muscular dystrophy directly targets muscle repair instead of the underlying genetic defect that usually leads to the disease.

Muscular dystrophies are a group of muscle diseases characterized by skeletal muscle wasting and weakness. Mutations in certain proteins, most commonly the protein dystrophin, cause muscular dystrophy in humans and also in mice.

Treating advanced small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) with thoracic (or chest) radiation therapy in addition to standard treatment significantly prolongs long-term survival and reduces cancer recurrence in the chest by almost 50%, according to new research published in The Lancet and being presented simultaneously at ASTRO's 2014 Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

The authors say that as the thoracic radiotherapy is well tolerated, it should to be routinely offered to all SCLC patients with extensive disease whose cancer responds to chemotherapy.