Body

Over the past decade various pieces of the puzzle how signal transmission controls immunity have been coming together. Now, in Cell an international team reports a paradigm shift in the regulation of immune response. Their results show that interaction with a linear ubiquitin chain is crucial for nuclear factor kappa B activation. Their findings may also contribute towards structure-based drug design to target the defective NF-κB pathway in diseases such as cancer, inflammation and immunodeficiency.

March 19, 2009 – (BRONX, NY) – Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and The University of Pittsburgh have developed an onsite method to quickly diagnose tuberculosis (TB) and expose the deadly drug-resistant strains that can mingle undetected with treatable TB strains. This study will be published in PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed online journal from the Public Library of Science.

Berkeley -- Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have identified a gene that plays a critical regulatory role in the process of converting dietary carbohydrates to fat. In a new study, they disabled this gene in mice, which consequently had lower levels of body fat than their normal counterparts, despite being fed the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat pasta buffet.

Not all stem cells are completely blank slates. Some, known as adult stem cells, have already partially embraced their fates, and are capable of becoming only cells of a particular type of tissue. So how do these tissue-specific stem cells restrict their fate? In research to appear in the March 20 issue of Cell, scientists at Rockefeller University have uncovered a gene control mechanism that guides the development and differentiation of epidermal skin stem cells in mouse embryos, and shown that this mechanism tempers the development of the skin barrier.

PITTSBURGH, March 19 – Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have begun testing a vaccine that might be able to prevent colon cancer in people at high risk for developing the disease. If shown to be effective, it might spare patients the risk and inconvenience of repeated invasive surveillance tests, such as colonoscopy, that are now necessary to spot and remove precancerous polyps.

(Boston) – Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), Boston Medical Center, Harvard University and the Cambridge Health Alliance found that more than 75 percent of emergency responder candidates for fire and ambulance services in Massachusetts are either overweight or obese. The findings, which appear online in the journal Obesity on March 19, have significant consequences for public health and safety.

New evidence by researchers at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and researchers in Germany shows that drinking alcohol is the greatest risk factor for acetaldehyde-related cancer. Heavy drinkers may be at increased risk due to exposure from multiple sources.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Prenatal exposure to an insecticide commonly used up until the 1970s may play a role in the obesity epidemic in women, according to a new study involving several Michigan State University researchers.

More than 250 mothers who live along and eat fish from Lake Michigan were studied for their exposure to DDE – a breakdown of DDT. The study, published as an editor's choice in this month's edition of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, analyzed DDE levels of the women's offspring.

The year is 2065. Nearly two-thirds of Earth's ozone is gone -- not just over the poles, but everywhere. The infamous ozone hole over Antarctica, first discovered in the 1980s, is a year-round fixture, with a twin over the North Pole. The ultraviolet (UV) radiation falling on mid-latitude cities like Washington, D.C., is strong enough to cause sunburn in just five minutes. DNA-mutating UV radiation is up 650 percent, with likely harmful effects on plants, animals and human skin cancer rates.

Eating out, lack of social support and high-risk lifestyles are just some of the barriers that stop patients with type 2 diabetes from controlling their condition, according to a research review that covered 8,900 patients and 4,550 healthcare providers from 28 countries.

The study, published in the March issue of the Journal of Nursing and Healthcare of Chronic Illness, shows that psychosocial, socioeconomic, physical, environmental and cultural factors can provide major barriers to effective care.

Alcohol-related deaths in England and Wales are twice as high among people born in Scotland or Ireland compared with the rest of the population, a study has shown.

Research, conducted by the University of Edinburgh and the Office for National Statistics, also found that men born in India – but living in England and Wales – had similar rates of alcohol-related death as Scottish- and Irish-born people.

The bacterium Escherichia coli is part of the healthy human intestinal flora. However, E. coli also has pathogenic relatives that trigger diarrhea illnesses: enterohemorrhagic E.coli bacteria. During the course of an infection they infest the intestinal mucosa, causing injury in the process, in contrast to benign bacteria.

New research on the reporting of medical treatments in the media shows slight improvements in accuracy but the overall quality of health reporting remains poor.

The study of more than 1,200 health news stories published by Australian media outlets is the most comprehensive investigation of the quality of medical news stories. It found that over the past four years there was only small improvement in quality of coverage of the availability of new treatments, the potential harm of interventions and accurate analysis of any benefits.

San Diego, CA (March 19, 2009) - Findings from the first in-depth study of patient sharing show that hospitals share large numbers of patients with other acute care facilities without knowing it. In the new study released today at the annual meeting of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), researchers found that only one in nine shared patients is directly transferred from one hospital to another, whereas most patients were discharged before being readmitted to another hospital.

Tobacco isn't famous for its health benefits. But now scientists have succeeded in using genetically modified tobacco plants to produce medicines for several autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, including diabetes. The research is published in the open access journal BMC Biotechnology.