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New research has shown why people with the greatest number of moles are at increased risk of the most dangerous form of skin cancer.

The study, led by Professors Julia Newton Bishop and Tim Bishop of the Melanoma Genetics Consortium (GenoMEL) at the University of Leeds, looked at more than 10,000 people, comparing those who have been diagnosed with melanoma to those who do not have the disease.

Research is increasingly becoming a networked process. The big genome studies are a good example of the need to pool the efforts of gold standard centers around the world. Only in this way is it possible to achieve results as solid as those obtained by the GenoMEL project, which is funded by the European Commission to study the genetic and environmental risk factors for melanoma. The objective is to translate this knowledge into recommendations based on evidence and healthier habits.

Scientists from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) have found two new genes that together double a person's risk of developing melanoma.

As part of an international study, a team at QIMR, led by Professors Nick Hayward and Grant Montgomery, studied the genes of almost 6,000 people together with their mole count. Specific changes in two genes were found to make people more susceptible to developing moles. The researchers went on to show, in another 4,000 people, the same two genes increased the risk of developing melanoma – the most deadly form of skin cancer.

A study of elderly patients receiving CPR in the hospital shows that rates of survival did not improve from 1992 to 2005. During that period, the proportion of hospital deaths preceded by CPR rose, and the proportion of patients who were successfully resuscitated and later discharged home fell. The researchers found that 18.3 percent of the Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and older who underwent in-hospital CPR survived to discharge.

Heart transplant recipients' cardio-respiratory fitness is around 30 to 50 per cent lower than age-matched healthy sedentary individuals. As a result, exercise rehabilitation should be very important to these patients, and a University of Alberta study shows they can improve their overall physical fitness.

Wake Forest University scientists have developed a new research tool in the pursuit of heart medications based on the compound nitroxyl by identifying unique chemical markers for its presence in biological systems.

Nitroxyl, a cousin to the blood-vessel relaxing compound nitric oxide, has been shown in studies to strengthen canine heart beats, but research into its potential benefits for humans has been slowed by a lack of specific detection methods.

Providence, RI – A new study by researchers at Rhode Island Hospital have found a substantial link between increased levels of nitrates in our environment and food with increased deaths from diseases, including Alzheimer's, diabetes mellitus and Parkinson's. The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (Volume 17:3 July 2009).

Washington, DC – In a discovery that they say rebuffs conventional scientific thinking, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) have discovered a novel way to block the activity of the fusion protein responsible for Ewing's sarcoma, a rare cancer found in children and young adults.

Researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease (GICD) have discovered a key switch that causes stem cells to turn into the type of muscle cells that reside in the wall of blood vessels. The same switch might be used in the future to limit growth of vascular muscle cells that cause narrowing of arteries leading to heart attacks and strokes, limit formation of blood vessels that feed cancers, or make new blood vessels for organs that are not getting enough blood flow.

PITTSBURGH, July 5 – Using zebrafish, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have identified and described an enzyme inhibitor that allows them to increase the number of cardiac progenitor cells and therefore influence the size of the developing heart. The findings are described in the advance online version of Nature Chemical Biology.

A newly discovered mechanism controls whether muscle cells in blood vessels hasten the development of both atherosclerosis and Alzheimer's disease, according to an article published online today in the journal Nature.

The study was led by the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease (GICD) in San Francisco, with key contributions from the Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Scientists at Singapore's Bioprocessing Technology Institute (BTI) have made a novel discovery about how the gene, "Fas-apoptosis inhibitory molecule" (FAIM), protects both immune and liver cells from apoptosis, or programmed cell death.

Their research is published in the current journal Cell Death and Differentiation.

The scientists, Jianxin Huo, Ph.D., and Shengli Xu, Ph.D., also discovered that this process may possibly be manipulated for clinical application and proposed the first-to-be-published in-animal model to study the role of FAIM in detail.

Existing drugs used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease could be repositioned for use in the treatment of extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis, which kills about 2 million people each year, according to a study led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego. The rise of these strains of TB throughout the world, including industrialized countries, poses a great threat to human health.

Research led by the German Institute of Human Nutrition (DIfE) has identified a new gene associated with diabetes, together with a mechanism that makes obese mice less susceptible to diabetes. A genomic fragment that occurs naturally in some mouse strains diminishes the activity of the risk gene Zfp69. The researchers also found that the corresponding human gene (ZNF642) is especially active in overweight individuals with diabetes.

UCSF researchers have identified a new "feed-forward" pathway linking estrogen receptors in the membrane of the uterus to a process that increases local estrogen levels and promotes cell growth.

The research is significant in helping determine why tamoxifen and other synthetic estrogens are linked to increased rates of endometriosis and uterine cancer, and identifies a pathway that could be targeted in drug therapies for those diseases, researchers say.