Body

The overuse of antibiotics has created strains of bacteria resistant to medication, making the diseases they cause difficult to treat, or even deadly. But now a research team at the University of Rochester has identified a weakness in at least one superbug that scientists may be able to medically exploit.

Biologists Gloria Culver at Rochester and Keith Connolly, now at Harvard University, thought one key to stopping the bacteria may lie with proteins, so they studied the mechanism behind the development of bacterial ribosomes—the cell's protein-manufacturing machine.

(24 February 2013) An estimated 50 per cent of patients consulting a gastroenterologist suffer from functional bowel disorders (FBD), such as dyspepsia or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). It is characteristic for these conditions that underlying physiological mechanisms are hard to be found. "However, recent research shows that the gut microbiota is a likely candidate for filling some of the gaps in the causal chain leading to FBD," says Professor Fernando Azpiroz, Chairman of the Gut Microbiota & Health Section of the European Society of Neurogastroenterology & Motility (ESNM).

STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a group of progenitor cells in the inner ear that can become the sensory hair cells and adjacent supporting cells that enable hearing. Studying these progenitor cells could someday lead to discoveries that help millions of Americans suffering from hearing loss due to damaged or impaired sensory hair cells.

In a substudy of the STAMPEDE trial (Surgical Therapy And Medications Potentially Eradicate Diabetes Efficiently), Cleveland Clinic researchers have found that gastric bypass surgery reverses diabetes by uniquely restoring pancreatic function in moderately obese patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes.

New research delivers a sting in the tail for queen wasps. Scientists have sequenced the active parts of the genome – or transcriptome – of primitively eusocial wasps to identify the part of the genome that makes you a queen or a worker. Their work, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology, shows that workers have a more active transcriptome than queens. This suggests that in these simple societies, workers may be the 'jack-of-all-trades' in the colony - transcriptionally speaking - leaving the queen with a somewhat restricted repertoire.

A protein involved in the internal cell scaffold is associated with increased risk of metastasis and mortality in a range of common cancers finds a meta-analysis published in Biomed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force recommends against daily supplementation with doses of vitamin D ≤ 400 IU and calcium ≤ 1,000 mg for the primary prevention of fractures in postmenopausal women living in the community setting.

The Task Force found insufficient evidence to assess the benefits and harms of daily supplementation with higher doses in this population. Evidence also was insufficient to recommend for or against daily vitamin D and calcium supplementation to prevent fractures in premenopausal women or in men.

• Currently, doctors have no way to accurately measure damage to the body soon after a person is exposed to ionizing radiation.
• It is therefore difficult to know whether a person is likely to suffer serious effects after an occupational or accidental exposure.
• This animal study shows that radiation exposure alters the levels of certain small molecules in the blood, perhaps offering a reliable measure of damage to the body.

Up to 10% of all women experience some form of elevated blood pressure during pregnancy. Researchers from the Centre for Social Evolution at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen show that mild maternal hypertension early in pregnancy actually benefits the fetus, but that late-pregnancy hypertension has negative health consequences for the child. The study is based on more than 750,000 births in Denmark, with follow-up data on children's hospital diagnoses for up to 27 years.

New research examines the role of PKC in airway smooth muscle contraction and raises the possibility that this enzyme could be a therapeutic target for treating asthma, COPD, and other lung diseases.

Targeting CPR education in high-risk neighborhoods could increase the number of bystanders giving CPR and decrease deaths from cardiac arrest, according to a new American Heart Association scientific statement published in its journal Circulation.

Survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest vary widely in the United States, from 0.2 percent in Detroit, Mich., to 16 percent in Seattle, Wash. The variance is due in part to whether a bystander does CPR. For every 30 bystanders who do, one life is saved, researchers said.

People who take the newest class of diabetes drugs to control blood sugar are twice as likely as those on other forms of sugar-control medication to be hospitalized with pancreatitis, Johns Hopkins researchers report.

More consistent use of condoms, oral contraception or both was reported by a group of teenage girls who took part in a youth development intervention aimed at reducing pregnancy risk in high-risk adolescents, according to a report of a randomized controlled trial published Online First by JAMA Pediatrics, a JAMA Network publication.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. — From the point of view of its ultimate (human) host, the parasitic flatworm Schistosoma mansoni has a gruesome way of life. It hatches in feces-tainted water, grows into a larva in the body of a snail and then burrows through human skin to take up residence in the veins. Once there, it grows into an adult, mates and, if it's female, starts laying eggs. It can remain in the body for decades.

LA JOLLA, CA – February 25, 2013 – Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a telltale molecular marker for Onchocerciasis or "river blindness," a parasitic infection that affects tens of millions of people in Africa, Latin America and other tropical regions. The newly discovered biomarker, detectable in patients' urine, is secreted by Onchocerca volvulus worms during an active infection. The biomarker could form the basis of a portable, field-ready test with significant advantages over current diagnostic methods.