Body

Weekday delivery is no better than night or weekend delivery for infants with birth defects, according to a new study presented today at The Pregnancy Meeting, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's annual conference. The finding is good news for all parties – moms, babies and healthcare teams – and suggests that this high-risk population of women should deliver when their bodies are ready to deliver, regardless of the day or time.

A new study shows that Kineret (anakinra), a medication approved for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, is effective in stopping the progression of organ damage in people with neonatal-onset multisystem inflammatory disease (NOMID). This rare and debilitating genetic disorder causes persistent inflammation and ongoing tissue damage. The research was performed by scientists at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), part of the National Institutes of Health.

A research group in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta is hoping its latest discovery could one day be used to develop new therapies that target certain types of cancers.

The discovery by Mark Glover, his graduate student Zahra Havali-Shahriari and post-doctoral fellow Nicolas Coquelle has shed light on what happens in cells when DNA is damaged. They solved the structure of a DNA repair enzyme called polynucleotide kinase/phosphatase, or PNKP. This allows them to see what is happening when this enzyme is repairing DNA.

Augusta, Ga. – Cochlear implants may be a safe, effective option for some organ transplant patients who've lost their hearing as an unfortunate consequence of their transplant-related drug regime, researchers report.

The antibiotics and immunosuppressive drugs required by organ transplant patients can cause deafness, said Dr. Brian J. McKinnon, otologist and neurotologist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Health Sciences University.

HOUSTON – (Feb. 9, 2012) -- A Rice University undergraduate will depart with not only a degree but also a possible patent for his invention of an efficient way to create protein libraries, an important component of biomolecular research.

Rice senior Manan Mehta discovered a method to create libraries of "circularly permuted" proteins at the suggestion of his mentor, bioengineer Jonathan Silberg. The research was reported this week in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a new method for creating scaffolds for tissue engineering applications, providing an alternative that is more flexible and less time-intensive than current technology.

A paper describing the results, "Low-Pressure Foaming: A Novel Method for the Fabrication of Porous Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering," was featured in the February issue of the journal Tissue Engineering.

SAN FRANCISCO – In a new study presented today at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), researchers completed a systematic review of three major orthopaedic journals – the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (American and British editions) and the Journal of Arthroplasty (JOA) – for all articles related to metal-on-metal total hip replacement between October 1999 and May 2011.

PHILADELPHIA—Curcumin, an active component of the Indian curry spice turmeric, may help slow down tumor growth in castration-resistant prostate cancer patients on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), a study from researchers at Jefferson's Kimmel Cancer Center suggests.

Cancer risks. Investment alternatives. Calories. Numbers are everywhere in daily life, and they figure into all sorts of decisions. A new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, examines how people who are numerate—that's like literacy, but for numbers—understand numbers better and process information differently so that they ultimately make more informed decisions.

Athens, Ga. ¬– Researchers at the University of Georgia have taken a major step in the ongoing effort to find sources of cleaner, renewable energy by mapping the genomes of two originator cells of Miscanthus x giganteus, a large perennial grass with promise as a source of ethanol and bioenergy.

Excessive consumption of phosphate is damaging to health. Therefore, food that contains phosphate additives should be labeled, as recommended by Eberhard Ritz and coauthors in their article in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International [Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; (109 (4): 49-55].

At NYU Langone Medical Center the focus on quality, patient safety and patient experience are not just broad stroke initiatives – but measureable, quantifiable and concrete. Patients and health care professionals can learn about this commitment to world-class care and operational transparency in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery's recently published "2012 Quality and Outcomes Report," which is now available online as well as in hard copy at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) meeting taking place this week in San Francisco.

The group of Prof. Dr. Ralf Erdmann at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Faculty of Medicine, Department of Systems Biochemistry) discovered a connection of peroxisomal protein import and receptor export. In the Journal of Biological Chemistry, they disclosed that enzymes only get imported into certain cell organelles (peroxisomes) upon coupling of their import to the recycling of their transport protein (receptor).

Multi-functional tool peroxisome

DURHAM, NC -- Researchers at Duke University Medical Center used new tools they developed to analyze knees and hips and discovered that osteoarthritic knee joints are in a constant state of repair, while hip joints are not.

"This suggests the knee has capacity for repair we didn't know about and the main treatment strategy probably would need to focus on turning off the breakdown of knee tissue," said Virginia Kraus, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Rheumatology and Immunology at Duke. "I was hugely surprised to find this."

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest snake in the neighborhood – attracting dozens of other males eager to mate.

This experiment in the famed garter snake caverns of Manitoba, Canada, was one of the first in a field setting to ever quantify the effects of estrogen as a stimulant of pheromones, scientists said, in research just published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.