Body

BOSTON, MA—Scientists from Brigham and Women's Hospital are on the brink of the next treatment advancement that may spell relief for the nearly nineteen million adults and seven million children in the United States suffering from asthma. The scientists discovered two new drug targets in the inflammatory response pathway responsible for asthma attacks.

The study will be published on February 27, 2013 in Science Translational Medicine.

Obesity rates across Canada are reaching alarming levels and continue to climb, according to a new University of British Columbia study.

Published today in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, the study provides the first comprehensive look at adult obesity rates across Canada since 1998, complete with "obesity maps."

Rosemont, Ill. – Patients with diabetes were no more likely to suffer infection, deep vein thrombosis (a deep vein blood clot) or other complications following total knee replacement (TKR) than patients without diabetes, according to new research published online today, in advance of its publication in the March 2013 Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS).

Research indicates that half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14, well before adulthood. Three new studies investigate the cognitive, genetic and environmental factors that may contribute to mental health disorders in adolescence. The studies are published in Psychological Science and Clinical Psychological Science, journals of the Association for Psychological Science.

STANFORD, Calif. — Hailed as a major step forward in the effort to develop targeted cancer therapies, a recently approved drug for the most common type of skin cancer has been a mixed blessing for patients. Although the initial response is usually dramatic, the tumors often recur as the cancer becomes resistant to treatment.

An extraordinary find allowing scientists to see through the head of the 'fuxianhuiid' arthropod has revealed one of the earliest evolutionary examples of limbs used for feeding, along with the oldest nervous system to stretch beyond the head in fossil record.

Until now, all fossils found of this extremely early soft-bodied animal featured heads covered by a wide shell or 'carapace', obscuring underlying contents from detailed study.

Chronic or acute, liver failure can be deadly. Toxins take over, the skin turns yellow and higher brain function slows.

"There is no effective therapy at the moment to deal with the toxins that build up in your body," said Neil Talbot, a Research Animal Scientist for the USDA Agricultural Research Service. "Their only option now is to transplant a liver."

Water bottles may claim to be BPA-free and personal care products may declare that phthalates are not among their ingredients, but assurances are not enough. According to a study in Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, people may be exposed to chemicals in their diets, even if their meals are organic and foods are prepared, cooked and stored in non-plastic containers.

Too much antibiotic can decimate the normal intestinal microbiota, which may never recover its former diversity. That, in turn, renders the GI tract vulnerable to being colonized by pathogens. Now researchers from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, and Centro Superior de Investigación en Salud Pública, Valencia, Spain, show that reintroducing normal microbial diversity largely eliminated vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) from the intestinal tracts of mice. The investigators showed further that the findings may apply to humans.

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center studied patients with metastatic gastric cancer and found that those who have both surgery and radiation have better survival than those who receive one or no form of treatment.

The study appeared in an online issue of Cancer.

"There were an estimated 21,000 new cases of gastric cancer in the United States in 2010 and 11,000 deaths from the disease," said Ravi Shridhar, M.D., Ph.D., of the Radiation Oncology Department at Moffitt. "Most gastric cancers are diagnosed at advanced stages, when surgery may not be an option."

It's common knowledge that a child who misses a meal can't concentrate in school. But what happens years down the road? Does that missed meal have any bearing on health in adulthood?

A new University of Nebraska-Lincoln study shows that missed meals in childhood can be linked to experiencing pain and depression in adulthood. Depression and chronic pain are experienced by 44 percent of working-aged adults and the study shows a correlation between childhood conditions and pain and depression in adulthood.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Inspired by a chemical that fungi secrete to defend their territory, MIT chemists have synthesized and tested several dozen compounds that may hold promise as potential cancer drugs.

Leipzig/Halle. Pregnant women should avoid taking vitamin D supplements. Substitution appears to raise the risk of children developing a food allergy after birth. This was the conclusion drawn from a new survey carried out by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research and the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg in Germany which was published in the February issue of the medical journal Allergy.

A team led by Dr. Marie-Josée Hébert from the University of Montreal Hospital* Research Centre (CRCHUM) has discovered a new cause of organ rejection in some kidney transplant patients. Her team has identified a new class of antibodies – anti-LG3 – which when activated lead to severe rejection episodes associated with a high rate of organ loss. This discovery, which holds promise for organ recipients, was published in the online version of the American Journal of Transplantation.

Preclinical, laboratory studies suggest a novel immunotherapy could potentially work like a vaccine against metastatic cancers, according to scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center. Results from a recent study show the therapy could treat metastatic cancers and be used in combination with current cancer therapies while helping to prevent the development of new metastatic tumors and train specialized immune system cells to guard against cancer relapse.