Body

(Toronto – March 18, 2009) – For women with recurrent breast cancer, the treatment the doctor chooses is usually based on the properties of their original breast cancer. A group from Toronto has recently completed the world's first study that compared original breast cancer tumors with a biopsy of suspected tumors that recurred elsewhere in the body.

Characteristics associated with proteinuria—a predictor of decline in child kidney function—have been identified, according to a study appearing in the March 2009 issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The findings indicate that the level of kidney impairment, the cause of kidney disease, and race are linked to proteinuria—the presence of protein in the urine.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- A new vaccine has the potential to be the first to prevent maternal and congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, according to a University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) study published in the March 19 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Each year in the US, nearly 30,000 babies are born with congenital CMV, the most common virus transmitted by a pregnant woman to her unborn child, and nearly 8,000 of these children suffer permanent hearing, cognitive or motor impairments.

Each year, approximately 8,000 infants in the United States develop severe hearing, mental or movement impairments after becoming infected with cytomegalovirus (CMV), a common virus passed onto them while still in the womb. Now, published results of a trial involving 441 CMV-negative women give rise to optimism that a vaccine to prevent congenital CMV may be closer. Women who received the trial vaccine were 50 percent less likely to later become infected with CMV than were women who received a saline injection.

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Photodetectors -- devices found in cell phones, digital cameras and other consumer gadgets that utilize photoconducting materials -- are a green technology in performance (converting light into electricity), but the manufacture of very powerful photodetectors needs to be improved before they can qualify for solid green status.

This is especially true if photoconducting materials are to be widely used for producing solar energy.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Scientists are closer to understanding which proteins help control blood sugar, or glucose, during and after exercise. This understanding could lead to new drug therapies or more effective exercise to prevent Type 2 diabetes and other health problems associated with having high blood sugar.

Millions more patients could benefit from taking statins, drugs typically used to prevent heart attacks and strokes, than current prescribing guidelines suggest, Johns Hopkins doctors report in a new study.

New Orleans, LA – Research conducted by Allison Berrier, PhD, Assistant Professor of Oral and Craniofacial Biology at the LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Dentistry, and colleagues, provides insights that may help scientists design novel approaches to control wound healing and fight diseases such as cancer and fibrosis. The paper, β1 Integrin Cytoplasmic Domain Residues Selectively Modulate Fibronectin Matrix Assembly and Cell Spreading through Talin and Akt-1, will be published in the March 20, 2009 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

ATLANTA— Although paying finder's fees to researchers and clinicians to identify study participants could compromise the recruitment process and harm human lives, many medical schools fail to address this conflict of interest in their Institutional Review Board (IRB) policies.

CLEVELAND—Creating a family life incorporating the care needs of a child dependent on technology is a daunting task. Much of this task seems to fall upon mothers to help everyone in the family adjust. However, mothers often need help of their own to cope with the challenges of raising these children, a research study from Case Western Reserve University has found.

"The family takes its cues from me," one mother told Valerie Toly, PhD, R.N., C.P.N.P., an Instructor of Nursing at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University.

Hippos spend lots of time in the water and now it turns out (or researchers argue), they are the closest living relative to whales. It also turns out, the two are swimming in a bit of controversy.

Jessica Theodor, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary, and her colleague Jonathan Geisler, associate professor at Georgia Southern University are disputing a recent study that creates a different family tree for the hippo.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., MARCH 18, 2009 -- The nation's preterm birth rate declined slightly in 2007 – a finding that the March of Dimes hopes will prove to be the start of a new trend in improved maternal and infant health.

The preterm birth rate declined for babies born at 34-36 weeks gestation (late preterm) and among babies born to African American and white women.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Scientists have used a popular kids swimming pool game to guide their development of a system for controlling moving robots that can autonomously detect and capture other moving targets.

Engineers from Duke University and the University of New Mexico have used the simple pursuit-evasion game "Marco Polo" to solve a complex problem -- namely, how to create a system that allows robots to not only "sense" a moving target, but intercept it.