Body

STANFORD, Calif. — Current diagnostic tests for ovarian cancer are woefully ineffective for early detection of the disease, say researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine. A new study finds that in order to make a significant dent in the mortality rate for the deadly cancer, the tests would have to be able to detect tumors of less than 1 cm in diameter, or about 200-times smaller in mass than those currently used to assess potential new tests.

Some babies who are exposed to malaria before birth develop a tolerant phenotype that increases their susceptibility to malaria and anemia in childhood, says a new study in the open access journal PLoS Medicine.

Retroviruses such as HIV that are already within cells are much more easily transmitted when they are next to uninfected cells than if they are floating free in the bloodstream.

"Cell-to-cell transmission is a thousand times more efficient, which is why diseases such as AIDS are so successful and so deadly," said Walther Mothes, associate professor of microbial pathogenesis at the Yale School of Medicine. "And because the retroviruses are already in cells, they are out of reach of the immune system."

It is known that Retroviruses, such as HIV, that are already within cells are much more easily transmitted when they spread through direct contact between cells than if they are floating free in the blood stream. However, how this contact stimulates virus- spreading has up until now been poorly understood. In this week's edition of the online open-access journal PLoS Biology, researchers at Yale University, led by Dr.

Researchers have devised a scheme for identifying genes in yeast that could lead to the identification of new cancer genes in humans. The study is published online this week in the open-access journal PLoS Biology.

Some babies who are exposed to malaria before birth develop a tolerant phenotype that increases their susceptibility to malaria and anemia in childhood, says a new study in the open access journal PLoS Medicine.

Although macrophages are known as essential players in wound healing, their contribution to recovery from spinal cord injury is a subject of debate. Using a mouse model of spinal injury, Michal Schwartz and colleagues from the Weizmann institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel tested the effect of macrophages on the recovery process after injury and demonstrate an important anti-inflammatory role for a subset of infiltrating monocyte-derived macrophages that is dependent upon their expression of the anti-inflammatory molecule interleukin-10.

A new study by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers shows that most early-stage ovarian tumors exist for years at a size that is a thousand times smaller than existing tests can detect reliably.

But the researchers say their findings also point to new opportunities for detecting ovarian cancer—a roughly four-year window during which most tumors are big enough to be seen with a microscope, but have not yet spread.

The mechanism used by 'Natural Killer' immune cells in the human body to distinguish between diseased cells, which they are meant to destroy, and normal cells, which they are meant to leave alone, is revealed in new detail in research published today (Tuesday 28 July) in PLoS Biology.

Understanding how this aspect of the body's natural defences works could help medical researchers develop new ways of boosting these defences to treat disease.

A team of researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have solved the mystery of why some children are more susceptible to malaria infection and anemia. These novel findings suggest that some children who are exposed to Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum) malaria before birth become tolerant to the malaria parasites, or their soluble products. This tolerance, which persists into childhood, reduces the ability of the immune system to attack and destroy parasites and increases the susceptibility of these children to develop a malaria infection.

Daylight photoreceptors and UV sensitivity in the retinas of nocturnal bats

A model of influenza transmission and treatment suggests that, if the current swine flu pandemic behaves like the 1918 flu, antiviral treatment should be reserved for the young. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Infectious Diseases found that, in this situation, providing the elderly with antiviral drugs would not significantly reduce mortality, and may lead to an increase in resistance.

Since trade liberalization between Central and North America, imports and availability of processed, high-fat and high-sugar foods have increased dramatically. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Globalization and Health link this influx of American junk food to a 'nutrition transition' in Central American countries, with a growing burden diet-related chronic disease.

New research suggests that current regulations have failed to remove misleading information from cigarette packaging, revealing that a substantial majority of consumers believe cigarettes are less hazardous when the packs display words such as "silver" or "smooth," lower numbers incorporated into the brand name, lighter colours or pictures of filters.

WASHINGTON, D.C. July 27, 2009 -- Canadian scientists at the University of Alberta's Cross Cancer Institute are developing a new technology that integrates two existing medical devices -- medical linear accelerators, or "linacs," which produce powerful X-rays for treating cancer, and magnetic resonance imagers (MRIs), which are widely used to image tumors in the human body.