Body

A drug designed to specifically hit a protein linked to the life-extending benefits of a meager diet can essentially trick the body into believing food is scarce even when it isn't, suggests a new report in the November Cell Metabolism.

By injecting a hormone produced by fat and other tissues into mice, researchers report in the November Cell Metabolism that they significantly lowered blood sugar levels in normal and obese mice. The findings suggest that the hormone known as apelin might be a promising target for managing insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.

Insulin resistance, in which normal amounts of insulin are insufficient to lower blood sugar (glucose) levels, is a precursor to diabetes.

A study appearing November 5 in the journal Cell Metabolism demonstrates that a synthetic new chemical entity protects against diet-induced obesity, improves glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity and enhances exercise endurance by enhancing fat utilization in certain target tissues.

The new chemical entity was developed by Sirtris, a a GSK company, and the research study was led by EPFL professor Johan Auwerx, MD.

Researchers at the University of Virginia Health System report that a daily single oral dose of an investigational drug, MK-677, increased muscle mass in the arms and legs of healthy older adults without serious side effects, suggesting that it may prove safe and effective in reducing age-related frailty.

PHILADELPHIA – Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine can now explain how the body determines whether there are enough mature B-cells in the blood stream at any one time. These are the cells that produce antibodies against germs to fight infections.

Princeton, N.J. and Jamaica Plain, Mass., November 3, 2008 — Medarex, Inc. (Nasdaq: MEDX) and The Massachusetts Biologic Laboratories (MBL) of the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) today announced that a Phase 2 trial of an anti-C. difficile antibody combination treatment in patients with C. difficile Associated Diarrhea (CDAD) successfully met its primary objective.

Multidetector CT (MDCT) scans are highly accurate in detecting airway stent complications according to a recent study performed at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA.

MDCT correctly identified 29 (97%) of 30 complications in 21 patients, including all cases of intraluminal narrowing, migration, invasion by neoplasm and tracheal perforation; MDCT also identified three of four cases of stent fracture," according to Vandana Dialani, MD, lead author of the study.

(Kingston, ON) –High blood pressure experienced during pregnancy could be a woman's earliest warning that she is at risk of developing heart disease – the number one killer of Canadian women – says Queen's University professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Graeme Smith.

Called pre-eclampsia, this type of high blood pressure occurs in 5-10 per cent of all pregnancies.

Doctors use diagnostic sonography or ultrasound to visualise organs and other internal structures of the human body. Dutch researcher Koos Huijssen has developed a computer model that can predict the sound transmission of improved designs for ultrasound instruments. The computer model is capable of processing large quantities of data and can be run on both a PC and a parallel supercomputer. Erasmus University Medical Centre and Oldelft Ultrasound are now using this program to design a new sonographic transducer.

In the near future it will be possible to customise the food we eat to individual needs, based on the genetic profile of the individual. Dutch researcher Amber Ronteltap suggests that the consumer market is not yet ready for this so-called nutrigenomics. Ronteltap concludes that many obstacles must be overcome before products based on nutrigenomics become a reality.

TORRANCE – (Nov. 4, 2008) In the first-ever study of its kind, a team led by researchers at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (LA BioMed) report in November's Psychiatric Services journal that Spanish-speaking Hispanics took longer to respond to medication for depression and were less likely to go into remission than English-speaking Hispanics.

Hip resurfacing is often seen as a modern alternative to the more conventional total hip replacement, but new data from a study led by Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, USA, suggest that a patient's age and gender are key to the operation's success. The study will be published in the December issue of the Springer journal Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research.

Vitamin D is essential to good health but needs to be activated to function properly in the human body. Until recently, this activation was thought to happen primarily in the kidneys, but a new University of Iowa study finds that the activation step can also occur in lung airway cells.

The study also links the vitamin D locally produced in the lung airway cells to activation of two genes that help fight infection. The study results appear in the Nov. 15 issue of the Journal of Immunology, now online.

New York University biologists have identified genes that prevent physical traits from being affected by environmental changes. The research, which studied the genetic makeup of baker's yeast, appears in the latest issue of the Public Library of Science's journal, PloS Biology.

NYU biologists Mark Siegal, an assistant professor, and Sasha Levy, a post-doctoral fellow, who are part of NYU's Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, conducted the study.

Snakebites cause considerable death and injury worldwide and pose an important yet neglected threat to public health, says new research published in this week's PLoS Medicine. The study used the most comprehensive methods yet to estimate that at least 421,000 envenomings and 20,000 deaths from snakebites occur each year, especially in South and South East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.