Body

Artificial heart pacemakers have saved and extended the lives of thousands of people, but they have their shortcomings – such as a fixed pulse rate and a limited life. Could a permanent biological solution be possible?

Richard Robinson and colleagues at New York's Columbia and Stony Brook Universities certainly think so, and their work published in the latest issue of The Journal of Physiology brings the dream a step closer to reality.

Amsterdam, 9 April 2009 – A recent special edition of the Elsevier journal Virology (www.elsevier.com/locate/viro), reviews the past, present, and future of the exciting field of small DNA tumor viruses. Many of the leaders in the field, including Dr Harald Zur Hausen, who was honored with the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of the role of human papillomaviruses in cervical cancer, contributed to this comprehensive state-of-the-art publication.

AMES, Iowa -- Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a concern to many environmentalists who research global warming.

The lack of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, however, actually limits the growth of plants and their aquatic relatives, microalgae.

For plants and microalgae, CO2 is vital to growth. It fuels their photosynthesis process that, along with sunlight, manufactures sugars required for growth.

Scientists from the University of Wisconsin, USA, report in the journal Development (dev.biologists.org) the successful generation from human embryonic stem cells of a type of cell that can make myelin, a finding that opens up new possibilities for both basic and clinical research.

PITTSBURGH, April 9 – Stem cells collected from human corneas restore transparency and don't trigger a rejection response when injected into eyes that are scarred and hazy, according to experiments conducted in mice by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Their study will be published in the journal Stem Cells and appears online today.

Patient-to-patient transmission of hepatitis B virus (HBV) can occur as the result of routine clinical practices incorrectly thought to be risk-free. A review of 33 HBV outbreaks, published in the open access journal BMC Medicine, has shown that the most frequent HBV transmission routes are administration of drugs using multi-vial compounds and capillary blood sampling (e.g. for glucose monitoring) using non-disposable devices.

Soy aglycons of isoflavone (SAI), a group of soybean constituent chemicals, have been shown to promote health in a rat model of the menopause. The research, described in BioMed Central's open access journal Nutrition & Metabolism, shows how dietary supplementation with SAI lowers cholesterol, increases the anti-oxidative properties of the liver and prevents degeneration of the vaginal lining.

BOSTON – April 8, 2009 – Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have demonstrated that adult humans still have a type of "good" fat previously believed to be present only in babies and children. Unlike white fat, which stores energy and comprises most body fat, this good fat, called brown fat, is active in burning calories and using energy. The finding, reported in the April 9th issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, could pave the way for new treatments both for obesity and type 2 diabetes.

HOUSTON (April 10, 2009) – The so-called purple pill, known popularly as Nexium and and esomeprazole to physicians, did not reduce asthma symptoms in patients who did not have symptoms of heartburn, said researchers, including one from Baylor College of Medicine (www.bcm.edu), in a report that appears today in The New England Journal of Medicine (www.nejm.org).

Lung experts from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere are calling on physicians to suspend the routine use of potent heartburn medications in asthmatics solely to temper recurrent attacks of wheezing, coughing and breathlessness.

CHICAGO—For nearly 20 years, doctors believed severe asthma symptoms such as coughing, sneezing and breathlessness were triggered, in part, by acid reflux. Asthma sufferers were often prescribed heartburn medication in an effort to help their asthma symptoms.

A commonly used treatment for acid reflux does not improve asthma symptoms or control in patients who do not have symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux (GER), according to a new study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health and by the American Lung Association (ALA). This suggests that silent GER (acid reflux that causes only minimal or no reflux symptoms) does not play a role in asthma, as has previously been thought.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research suggests that a widely used treatment for persistent acid reflux among asthmatics doesn't actually improve their quality of life. The finding that as many as one-third of those studied showed no improvement makes a strong case arguing that physicians should change how they currently treat these patients.

Measuring kidney function by assessing two different factors—glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and urinary albumin levels—helps determine which patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) will develop end-stage renal disease (ESRD), according to a study appearing in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). This combination test could help physicians identify patients at high risk of serious kidney trouble and allow them to intervene at an early stage.

For men with Fabry disease, enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) with agalsidase alfa slows deterioration of kidney function, reports a study in the online edition of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). "The results provide further evidence that ERT with agalsidase alfa may slow the progression of kidney disease, provided that ERT is initiated early in the disease process," comments Michael L. West, MD (Dalhousie University, Canada).