Body

CHICAGO --- Northwestern Medicine® scientists have newly identified a protein's key role in cell and physiological aging and have developed – in collaboration with Tohoku University in Japan -- an experimental drug that inhibits the protein's effect and prolonged the lifespan in a mouse model of accelerated aging.

The rapidly aging mice fed the experimental drug lived more than four times longer than a control group, and their lungs and vascular system were protected from accelerated aging, the new study reports.

A newly discovered molecule provides a new drug target for controlling both asthma-induced muscle thickening and cancerous tumor growth. This molecule, called "microRNA-10a," normally helps genes produce proteins or make copies of themselves, also play an important role in the growth or overgrowth of human airway smooth muscle cells and some forms of cancer.

A protein believed to be limited to the hematopoietic system, called Kindlin-3, has been identified as a major player in both the formation and spread of breast cancer to other organs. This discovery, published in the May 2014 issue of The FASEB Journal, could open the door to an entirely new class of breast cancer drugs that targets this protein's newly found activity.

Real freedom, gender-based violence, terrorism laws, and asylum seekers' rights are all considered in a report released today on vital human rights issues in Australia and around the world.

The 2014 Castan Human Rights Report, by Monash University's Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, highlights the Centre's research and its relevance to some of the most important human rights issues facing society.

A key finding of the report is that freedom in Australia is being undermined.

LIVERPOOL, UK – 30 April 2014: Scientists at the University of Liverpool have shown how the travel and socialisation patterns of people in Southern China can give greater insight into how new diseases such as bird flu may spread between populations.

Children who spend significant time outdoors could have a stronger sense of self-fulfillment and purpose than those who don't, according to new Michigan State University research linking children's experiences in nature with how they define spirituality.

In the study, published recently in the Journal of the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, children who played outside five to 10 hours per week said they felt a spiritual connection with the earth, and felt their role is to protect it.

In a new report published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, scientists lay the groundwork for the development of novel tumor therapies that may help rid the body of cancer by inhibiting the recruitment of a specific suppressive immune cell type called "regulatory T-cells." The approach described in the report shows that an immune molecule, called interleukin-27, promotes the recruitment of regulatory T-cells.

If you think the 1930s drought that caused The Dust Bowl was rough, new research looking at tree rings in the Rocky Mountains has news for you: Things can get much worse in the West.

In fact the worst drought of this century barely makes the top 10 of a study that extended Utah's climate record back to the year 1429.

ANN ARBOR—In the classic marriage vow, couples promise to stay together in sickness and in health. But a new study finds that the risk of divorce among older married couples rises when the wife—but not the husband—becomes seriously ill.

PHILADELPHIA — A new computational model that simulates bone metastasis of prostate cancer has the potential to rapidly assess experimental therapy outcomes and help develop personalized medicine for patients with this disease, according to data published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

PHILADELPHIA — Vitamin D deficiency was an indicator of aggressive prostate cancer and spread of the disease in European-American and African-American men who underwent their first prostate biopsy because of abnormal prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and/or digital rectal examination (DRE) test results, according to a study published in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

The butterfly (Dryas iulia) and the bee (Centris sp.) were most likely seeking scarce minerals and an extra boost of protein. On a beautiful December day in 2013, they found the precious nutrients in the tears of a spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus), relaxing on the banks of the Río Puerto Viejo in northeastern Costa Rica.

CHICAGO --- African-American and European-American men at high risk of prostate cancer have greater odds of being diagnosed with an aggressive form of the disease if they have a vitamin D deficiency, according to a new study from Northwestern Medicine® and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).

Results of the study will be published May 1 in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Very overweight teens face a social world of stigma, discrimination, and isolation because of their body size, reveals an analysis of their views, published in the online journal BMJ Open.

And they have to overcome many other additional barriers to lose weight, making it especially hard for them to shed the pounds, the findings suggest.

The latest figures suggest that roughly two out of ten 11 to 15 year olds in England are classified as obese. But evidence on what young people think about larger body size is hard to come by.

A distinctive genetic 'signature' found in the blood of children with tuberculosis (TB) offers new hope for improved diagnosis of the disease.

TB is very difficult to diagnose in children and is often recognised late when the child is already critically ill and the disease has spread from the lungs to the brain or other organs. Now an international team of researchers has shown that the disease can be identified in over 80 percent of cases by looking at 51 specific genes in the blood of affected children.