Body

Invasive species can disrupt natural and human-made ecosystems, throwing food webs out of balance and damaging the services they provide to people. Now scientists have begun to put a price tag on this damage. In a study published this week in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment e-view, ecologists have listed the invasive species that cause the most harm to environment and cost the most money to control.

Scientists at the Cambridge University have discovered that freshwater algae can form stable groupings in which they dance around each other, miraculously held together only by the fluid flows they create. Their research was published today in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have developed a new method to help researchers identify genes that can help protect the body during the ageing process.

The team developed a method of analysing genes in multiple ageing tissue types in both animals and humans. The analysis, which included more than five million gene measurements, highlighted the mechanisms used by the body to protect against cellular changes with age that can result in conditions such as muscle degeneration and cognitive ageing.

However, the downside is that up a quarter of people with alcohol-related cirrhosis die before they get the chance to stop drinking. Alcohol-related cirrhosis develops silently but usually presents with an episode of internal bleeding or jaundice - which is often fatal.

The study, led by Dr Nick Sheron, senior lecturer at the University of Southampton and consultant hepatologist at Southampton General Hospital, found that abstinence from alcohol is the key factor in long-term prognosis, even with relatively severe alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver.

Treatment of chronic wounds is a continuing clinical problem and socio-economic burden with diabetic foot ulcers alone costing the NHS £300 million a year. Scientists in Bristol have found that human foetal stem cells can effectively be used to treat back leg ischaemic ulcers in a model of type 1 diabetes.

Previous studies on shikonin, a chemical derived from the Chinese medicinal herb had anti-tumor effects although it was found to be toxic. However, an acetyl derivative, acetylshikonin had less toxicity and prevented the growth of sarcomas. However, knowledge of the effect of acetylshikonin on gastric cancer in vitro and especially in vivo is unknown.

Paracetamol is one of the most widely used, studied, and arguably the most notorious hepatotoxic drugs, which is safe at therapeutic doses but causes liver failure when overdosed. When administered at normal doses, paracetamol is metabolized extensively by conjugation with sulphate and glucuronic acid. Exposure to high doses of paracetamol results in increased levels of N-acetyl-p-benzo-quinoneimine (NAPQI), a highly electrophilic metabolite that is considered to be responsible for triggering the ensuing liver damage.

In the initial staging of esophageal cancer, preoperative PET scan may be useful in detecting additional cases of metastatic disease before costly and toxic definitive therapy. Currently, 18F-FDG PET and PET/CT also seem to be the best available tools for neoadjuvant therapy response assessment in esophageal cancer. However, the utility and limitation of 18F-FDG PET/CT in patients with esophageal cancer treated by surgical resection and post operation radiation is not clear.

Recently, it has been demonstrated that TACE improves survival compared with best supportive care in meta-analyses of randomized trials and in two individual clinical trials. However, although selective TACE is currently widely used, there are no reported extensive data from large series on both short and long term effects of this treatment on liver function. Equally, because the optimal number of sessions is not known, it is debatable if repeated courses of selective TACE may progressively impair liver function and if they are well tolerated or are limited by major side effects.

Stomach cancer (SC) is the main cancer killer among men in many countries, both developing (such as Chile, Mexico and Costa Rica) and developed (such as Japan). This is the first report of the 5-year survival after diagnosis of SC in Chile. Researchers from the Health Service of Valdivia and from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile have found that only 10% of cases survived 5 years, with late consultation being the main cause of this high mortality. This research shows that currently the only strategy to diminish stomach cancer mortality is early detection.

There are a cluster of metabolic syndrome, that include obesity, high level of fasting plasma glucose, hypertriglyceridemia and hypertension, which is closely associated with the increased morbidity and mortality caused by several of the most common diseases including diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and gallstone disease. However, there are regional and ethic variables in incidence and metabolic risk factors of gallstone disease. No study explores it in china has been reported.

The "humanized mouse" developed by Dr. J. Victor Garcia-Martinez has allowed the University of Texas Southwestern physician-scientist to conduct HIV/AIDS studies that would have been impossible without such a small animal model of HIV infection. The virus only infects humans and chimpanzees, which are protected as endangered species.

NEW ORLEANS – At Experimental Biology 2009, Dr. Maureen Storey, senior vice president of science policy for the American Beverage Association, today briefed colleagues on her new analysis indicating that consumers of all ages are drinking more lower-calorie beverages than they did several years ago. The data are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) – the largest and longest-running national, publicly available source of health and nutrition data in the United States.

An international consortium of scientists, including researchers from The University of Queensland (UQ), have probed further into the human genome than ever before.

They have discovered how genes are controlled in mammals, as well as the tiniest genetic element ever found.

Their discoveries will be published in three milestone papers in leading journal Nature Genetics.

DENVER - A national team of researchers led by Mayo Clinic has found that patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) are more likely to have similar DNA changes or variants in up to six genes, compared to people who do not have the cancer.

The findings, being presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, are an independent validation of an earlier European study that found a link to seven different gene variants. Six were replicated in the Mayo Clinic study.