Body

Patients with Barrett's esophagus may have a lower risk of esophageal cancer than previously reported, according to a large, long-term study published online June 16 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

A gel that creates a watertight seal to close surgical wounds provides a significant advance in the treatment of patients following spinal procedures, effectively sealing spinal wounds 100 percent of the time, a national multicenter randomized study led by researchers at UC Davis has found.

The substance, a polyethylene glycol (PEG) hydrogel sealant, plugs miniscule leaks in the thin sheath inside the spinal column that encloses the spinal cord, called the dura. The spinal cord and nerves float in cerebrospinal fluid inside the sheath.

Chevy Chase, MD – Diabetes leaders today are responding to the announcement made by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday that the use of the diabetes medication Actos (pioglitazone) for more than one year may be associated with an increased risk of bladder cancer. According to the FDA's Safety Announcement, information about this risk will be added to the Warnings and Precautions section of the label for pioglitazone-containing medicines. The patient Medication Guide for these medicines will also be revised to include information on the risk of bladder cancer.

Bethesda, MD— "Super bugs," which can cause wide-spread disease and may be resistant to most, if not all, conventional antibiotics, still have their weaknesses. A team of Canadian scientists discovered that specific mixtures of antimicrobial agents presented in lipid (fatty) mixtures can significantly boost the effectiveness of those agents to kill the resistant bacteria. This discovery was published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org).

Porto Alegre, Brazil- Glycomics is the functional study of the entire set of sugars found in a given species. To some, the term may sound like a distant cousin of more familiar names such as genomics and proteomics. Indeed, while genomics and proteomics of several species have been extensively investigated in the last years, glycomics is still an emerging field. Now, a paper published in Science magazine by an international collaboration headed by Dr.

Two-year-old Owen Stark came to St. Louis Children's Hospital in the summer of 2010 near death from heart failure and dangerously high blood pressure in his lungs.

Washington University physicians and surgeons at St. Louis Children's Hospital knew they had to act fast to save his life. They collaborated to make several strategic and innovative decisions that led to the first successful use of an artificial lung in a toddler.

Their efforts are reported in the June 2011 issue of The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.

Stem cell technologies have been proposed for cell-based diagnostics and regenerative medicine therapies. However, being able to make stem cells efficiently develop into a desired cell type -- such as muscle, skin, blood vessels, bone or neurons -- limits the clinical potential of these technologies.

Avoiding germs to prevent sickness is commonplace for people. Wash hands often. Sneeze into your elbow. Those are among the tips humans learn.

But plants, which are also vulnerable to pathogens, have to fend it alone. They grow where planted, in an environment teeming with microbes and other substances ready to attack, scientists note.

Now, researchers are learning from plants' immune response new information that could help them understand more about humans' ability to ward off sickness and avoid autoimmune diseases.

Cells in the human body are constantly being exposed to stress from environmental chemicals or errors in routine cellular processes. While stress can cause damage, it can also provide the stimulus for undoing the damage. New research by a team of scientists at the University of Rochester has unveiled an important new mechanism that allows cells to recognize when they are under stress and prime the DNA repair machinery to respond to the threat of damage. Their findings are published in the current issue of Science.

Washington, D.C., 16 June 2011 – Fortunately, postnatal depression often resolves itself in the weeks following childbirth. But for mothers with more profound or prolonged postnatal depression the risk of subsequent development of depression in their children is strong. A recent study by Lynne Murray and colleagues published in the May 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) is the first to demonstrate that the effects of maternal depression on the likelihood of the child to develop depression may begin as early as infancy.

Innovative adult stem cell research by scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) could aid efforts to apply the brakes to stem cells that produce the type of fat ringing the waists of millions. Research appeared today online ahead of the print issue of Cell Stem Cell.

As everyone knows, the pharmaceutical industry is struggling to deal with bacteria that have become resistant to common antibiotics. Less well known is the similar struggle in agribusiness to deal with weeds that have become resistant to a herbicide that is widely used in farming practice.

NEW YORK (June 16, 2011) -- As many as 15 percent of men have varicoceles, masses of enlarged and dilated veins in the testicles. There is new evidence that varicoceles, long known to be a cause of male infertility, interfere with the production of testosterone -- a crucial hormone to maintaining men's health.

There is good news too: Microsurgery can increase testosterone levels in these men. Results of new research by physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center are in a recent edition of BJU International.

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences have uncovered how the body's immune system launches its survival response to the notorious and deadly bacterium anthrax. The findings, reported online today and published in the June 22 issue of the journal Immunity, describe key emergency signals the body sends out when challenged by a life-threatening infection.

Researchers may have found the key to developing a method to rid the body of stem cells responsible for driving fat expansion. According to a report in the June 16 Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, they've landed the first protein marker on the surface of those so-called adipose stromal cells (ASCs), which serve as progenitors of the cells that make up fat tissue.