Body

An international research team led by Mount Sinai Heart at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is testing its novel sugar-based tracer contrast agent to be used with positron emission tomography (PET) imaging to help in the hunt for dangerous inflammation and high-risk vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque inside vessel walls that causes acute heart attacks and strokes.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Jan. 13, 2014 — Shoulder arthritis is a common problem for rheumatoid arthritis patients: pain and difficulty moving their arms can grow so severe that daily tasks and sleep become difficult. If medication and physical therapy aren't enough, shoulder replacement surgery is a common next step. Despite surgical challenges with some rheumatoid arthritis patients, the procedure improves range of motion and reduces pain in nearly all cases, especially for those with intact rotator cuffs, a Mayo Clinic study shows.

Augusta, Ga. - The retina can be bombarded by reactive oxygen species in diabetes, prompting events that destroy healthy blood vessels, form leaky new ones and ruin vision.

Now researchers have learned that those chemically reactive molecules must come from both the bone marrow as well as the retinal cells themselves to cause such serious consequences.

Geneticists from Ohio, California and Japan joined forces in a quest to correct a faulty chromosome through cellular reprogramming. Their study, published online today in Nature, used stem cells to correct a defective "ring chromosome" with a normal chromosome. Such therapy has the promise to correct chromosome abnormalities that give rise to birth defects, mental disabilities and growth limitations.

A research group at Biocenter Oulu in Finland has identified a mechanism related to a transcription factor that binds much more strongly onto a particular SNP variant, thereby initiating a genetic programme which enhances prostate cancer proliferation and metastasis. The study opens up an important new direction in investigating the mechanisms related to the way in which SNP variations cause an elevated risk of prostate cancer and other human diseases. Published in Nature Genetics, the study was partly funded by the Academy of Finland.

PISCATAWAY, NJ – School drug testing does not deter teenagers from smoking marijuana, but creating a "positive school climate" just might, according to research reported in the January issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Patients with head and neck cancer who are treated with an advanced form of radiation therapy may experience fewer side effects and be less likely to die from their disease than patients who receive standard radiation therapy. That is the finding of an analysis published early online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The study establishes so-called intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) as both a safe and beneficial treatment for patients with head and neck cancer.

HOUSTON — Patients with cancers of the head and neck who received intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) - a technology designed to more precisely target cancer cells and spare nearby tissue - experienced improved outcomes, as well as reduced toxicities, compared to patients receiving conventional radiation therapy, according to new research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

WASHINGTON – Teenage boys who think they're too skinny when they are actually a healthy weight are at greater risk of being depressed as teens and as adults when compared to other boys, even those who think they are too heavy, according to findings published by the American Psychological Association.

Scientists have discovered a genetic signature that implicates a key mechanism in the immune system as a driving force for a type of childhood leukaemia.

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have discovered a key difference in the biological mechanisms by which the immune system responds to viral and bacterial pathogens.

The study, published in the journal Nature Immunology and led by Professor Uwe Vinkemeier in the University's School of Life Sciences, centred on STAT1, a protein that can bind DNA and hence plays a vital role in regulating genes in the body.

Although antiviral therapy against HIV suppresses viral replication and allows infected individuals to live relatively healthy lives for many years, the virus persists in the body, and replication resumes if treatment is interrupted. Now investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard may have found where the virus hides - in a small group of recently identified T cells with stem-cell-like properties.

Variations in non-coding sections of the genome might be important contributors to type 2 diabetes risk, according to a new study.

DNA sequences that don't encode proteins were once dismissed as "junk DNA", but scientists are increasingly discovering that some regions are important for controlling which genes are switched on.

The new study, published in Nature Genetics, is one of the first to show how such regions, called regulatory elements, can influence people's risk of disease.

PHILADELPHIA - A multi-disciplinary team from the University of Pennsylvania have published in Nature Methods a first-of-its-kind way to isolate RNA from live cells in their natural tissue microenvironment without damaging nearby cells. This allows the researchers to analyze how cell-to-cell chemical connections influence individual cell function and overall protein production.

CAM use was more common among children with autism than children diagnosed with other types of developmental delay, 40 percent versus 30 percent respectively. Nearly 7 percent of children with autism were on the gluten-free/casein-free diet, particularly children with frequent gastrointestinal problems.

"We were pleased to find that most families utilizing CAM therapies were choosing ones that were low risk," said Kathleen Angkustsiri, assistant professor of developmental and behavioral pediatrics and a study co-author.