Body

Thirty percent of severe alcoholics develop liver disease, but scientists have not been able to explain why only a subset is at risk. A research team from Northwestern University and Rush University Medical Center now has a possible explanation: disrupted sleep and circadian rhythms can push those vulnerable over the edge to disease.

ALEXANDRIA, VA — A multidisciplinary clinical practice guideline that helps physicians identify children most likely to benefit from tympanostomy tubes, provide the best care before and after surgery, and improve counseling and education for parents was published Monday in the journal Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery.

It is the first evidence-based guideline in the United States for tubes, the most common reason for outpatient surgery performed on children in the U.S.

Ethnic segregation in nations straddling the world's steepest terrains may be reinforced by the biological tolerance different peoples have to altitude, according to one of the first studies to examine the effect of elevation on ethnic demographics.

DENVER – The implementation of personalized health care in cancer relies on the identification and characterization of cancer biomarkers and the availability of accurate detection systems and therapies for those biomarkers. Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK), a tyrosine kinase, is a more recently characterized cancer biomarker in non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). To identifyNSCLC patients with ALK gene rearrangement in clinical trials, researchers have used the methods known as fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) or immunohistochemistry (IHC).

DENVER – Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) is considered the treatment of choice for early-stage non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) if patients are inoperable because of additional medical conditions. This is based on several prospective phase II trials, which reported consistently high rates of local tumor control. However, these studies only included small number of patients, the methodology of SBRT varied between the studies and SBRT was mainly practiced in specialized centers.

HOUSTON – Scientists have tracked down and quantified the diverse origins of cells that drive fibrosis, the incurable, runaway wound-healing that scars and ultimately destroys organs such as the lungs, liver and kidneys.

Findings from research conducted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and continued at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center are reported in an advance online publication at Nature Medicine on June 30.

Washington, DC, July 1, 2013 – Pregnant women with diabetes are more than three times as likely as mothers without diabetes to become infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) before hospital discharge, according to a study in the July issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).

(Lebanon, NH, 6/26/13) —The rapid increase in papillary thyroid cancer in the US, may not be linked to increase in occurrence, according to a head and neck surgeon at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center, instead it may be linked to an increase in the diagnosis of pre-cancerous conditions and to a person's insurance status.

Researchers at UCLA's Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research have successfully established the foundation for using hematopoietic (blood-producing) stem cells from the bone marrow of patients with sickle cell disease to treat the disease. The study was led by Dr. Donald Kohn, professor of pediatrics and of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics.

New Rochelle, NY, July 1, 2013—Among the increasingly valuable roles fungi are playing in the biotechnology industry is their ability to produce enzymes capable of releasing sugars from plants, trees, and other forms of complex biomass, which can then be converted to biofuels and biobased chemicals. Advances in fungal biology and in bioengineering fungal systems industrial applications are explored in a series of articles in Industrial Biotechnology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

DENVER – Personalized medicine in lung cancer relies on the identification and characterization of cancer biomarkers and the availability of accurate detection systems and therapies for those biomarkers. The standard procedure for detection of predictive anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-rearrangements is fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), but FISH is both expensive and often challenging to interpret. Lung cancer is often diagnosed by cytology necessitating predictive molecular marker analyses on cytological specimens.

Plants that emit an airborne distress signal in response to herbivory may actually attract more enemies, according to a new study published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Plant Science .

A team of researchers from Switzerland found that the odor released by maize plants under attack by insects attract not only parasitic wasps, which prey on herbivorous insects, but also caterpillars of the Egyptian cotton leafworm moth Spodoptera littoralis, a species that feeds on maize leaves.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - It's a GEMM of a system. Genetically engineered mouse models that is. Using them allows scientists to study cancer in a way that more naturally mimics how human tumors exist within the complex environment of the body.

UNC scientists used GEMMs to develop biomarkers for challenging molecular subtypes of human breast cancer, those for which there are fewer targets and therapies. Their work helps to further establish genetically engineered mouse models as predictors of human response to therapy.

Malaria, a mosquito-born infectious disease, kills over 600,000 people every year. Research has focused on the development of a vaccine to prevent the disease; however, many malaria vaccines targeting parasite antigens have failed because the antigen targets are highly variable.

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in hemoglobin (HBB) that deform red blood cells. A small number of patients have been successfully treated with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation; however, there are several drawbacks and complications associated with this procedure, including graft vs. host disease and long-term immune suppression.