Body

A novel imaging probe developed by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators may make it possible to diagnose accurately a dangerous infection of the heart valves. In their Nature Medicine report, which is receiving advance online publication, the team from the MGH Center for Systems Biology describes how the presence of Staphylococcus aureus-associated endocarditis in a mouse model was revealed by PET imaging with a radiolabeled version of a protein involved in a process that usually conceals infecting bacteria from the immune system.

CLEVELAND – Aug. 21, 2011 –Groundbreaking research encompassing Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and University Hospitals Case Medical Center, has uncovered a natural defense mechanism that is capable of inactivating the toxin that spreads Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, an increasingly common bacterial infection in hospitals and long-term care settings. The research has immediate implications for developing a new form of treatment for antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

An international team of researchers, including physical oceanographers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), has confirmed the presence of a deep-reaching ocean circulation system off Iceland that could significantly influence the ocean's response to climate change in previously unforeseen ways.

Researchers at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have discovered a molecular process by which the body can defend against the effects of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), pointing the way to a promising new approach for treating an intestinal disease that has become more common, more severe and harder to cure in recent years.

DURHAM, N.C. – For years, researchers have published papers that associate chronic stress with chromosomal damage.

Now researchers at Duke University Medical Center have discovered a mechanism that helps to explain the stress response in terms of DNA damage.

A species of rat makes its own poison by gnawing on a toxic tree and then slathering poisonous spit onto special absorbent hairs on its flanks, a team of Oxford University and East African scientists have discovered.

The Crested Rat, Lophiomys imhausi, is the first mammal ever found to acquire lethal toxin from a plant. It acquires the poison, ouabain, from the bark of ‘Poison-arrow trees’, Acokanthera, so-called because human hunters extract ouabain from them to coat arrows that can kill an elephant.

For the first time ever, scientists are using computers and genomic information to predict new uses for existing medicines.

That’s the idea behind a National Institutes of Health-funded computational study that analyzed genomic and drug data to predict new uses for medicines that are already on the market. A team led by Atul J. Butte, M.D., Ph.D., of Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif., reports its results in two articles in Science Translational Medicine.

Babies of mothers with a higher pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) are fatter and have more fat in their liver, a study published in September’s issue of the journal Pediatric Research has found. The researchers from Imperial College London say that the effect of a mother’s BMI on her child’s development in the womb might put them on a trajectory towards lifelong metabolic health problems.

Danish researchers from the University of Copenhagen have become the first in the world to regulate a special receptor or bio-antenna that plays a vital part when the Epstein Barr herpes virus infects us and when this infection appears to be mutating into cancer of the immune system. Using a biochemical blueprint and a tiny bio-molecule the Danish researchers have succeeded in blocking the receptor concerned. This will make it possible to adjust and regulate the memory cells of the immune system.

Collaborative research between LSTM and the University of Copenhagen, published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, have answered a long standing mystery, why and how malaria parasites go unnoticed by the immune defenses of pregnant mothers. Maternal malaria kills 10,000 women and between 10,000 to 200,000 babies every year. Malaria is a preventable and treatable disease and every life lost is needless.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Adcetris (brentuximab vedotin) to treat Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) and a rare lymphoma known as systemic anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL).

Lymphomas are cancers of the lymphatic system. Adcetris is an antibody-drug conjugate that combines an antibody and drug, allowing the antibody to direct the drug to a target on lymphoma cells known as CD30.

Metabolic syndrome comprises a group of medical disorders that increase people's risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and premature death when they occur together. A patient is diagnosed with the syndrome when he or she exhibits three or more of the following characteristics: high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat in the waist/abdomen, low good cholesterol, and higher levels of fatty acids (the building blocks of fat).

A minocycline-EDTA solution prevents bacterial infections in the catheters of dialysis patients. A multicenter, randomized, controlled trial compared minocycline-EDTA with heparin as catheter solutions. Catheter-related infections present major challenges in dialysis care; infections represent the second leading cause of death in dialysis patients.

The presence of calcium in coronary arteries is a much better predictor of heart attack and stroke than C-reactive protein among people with normal levels of LDL cholesterol, according to a study of more than 2,000 people led by a Johns Hopkins heart specialist.

B chromosomes have a functional effect on sex determination in a species of cichlid fishes from Lake Victoria, according to a study in PLoS Genetics. The researchers found sex-ratio distortions caused by B chromosomes in the breeding line of the cichlids, as well as several protein-coding genes in the B chromosomes. The resultant ratio was female biased, suggesting a role for B chromosomes in female sex determination.