Body

A multicenter research team has announced encouraging results for an experimental therapy using elements of the body's immune system to improve cure rates for children with neuroblastoma, a challenging cancer of the nervous system.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Researchers have discovered a novel molecular path that predisposes patients to develop primary biliary cirrhosis, a disease that mainly affects women and slowly destroys their livers. Primary biliary cirrhosis has no known cause.

The finding, significant because it is a first step toward developing a targeted treatment and a cure, will be published in the June 11, 2009, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

CHICAGO --- Research from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine has found that a less toxic, solvent-free chemotherapy drug more effectively prevents the progression of metastatic breast cancer and has fewer side effects than a commonly used solvent-based drug.

NEW YORK, May 27, 2009 – People with type 1 diabetes who have already been successful in achieving recommended blood sugar goals can further benefit from using continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices, according to results of a major multi-center clinical trial by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Findings of the study were published online by the journal Diabetes Care, available at http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/recent.

In the rat race of life, one thing is certain: there's no place like home.

Now, a study published this week in the journal Molecular Ecology finds the same is as true for rats as for humans.

Although inner city rodents appear to roam freely, most form distinct neighborhoods where they spend the majority of their lives.

ORLANDO – The majority of men who receive one of the standard treatments for localized prostate cancer – surgery or radiation therapy – have an excellent outcome.

But for the small group whose prostate cancer returns, a new study offers insight as to why treatment isn't effective.

An international team of scientists has cracked the problem of pod shatter in brassica crops such as oilseed rape.

Just before harvest, oilseed rape pods are prone to shatter, causing a 10-25% loss of seeds and up to 70% in some cases.

That's one conclusion from a new study that looked at how virulence evolves in parasites. The research examined whether parasites evolve to be more or less aggressive depending on whether they are closely connected to their hosts or scattered among more isolated clusters of hosts.

The research was led by Geoff Wild, an NSERC-funded mathematician at the University of Western Ontario, with colleagues from the University of Edinburgh. Their paper will be published on Nature's Web site on May 27.

Premature ejaculation can be embarrassing, but a new study suggests that it might be a genetic disorder.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – A plant's immune system protects the plant from harmful pathogens. If the system overreacts to pathogens, it can stunt plant growth and reduce seed production. Now, University of Missouri researchers have identified important suppressors that negatively regulate the responses of the immune system in the plant species Arabidopsis thaliana. Understanding the immune system of plants would allow breeders to create better yielding crop plants.

New Rochelle, NY, May 27, 2009—New guidelines designed to standardize and optimize the diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of patients with Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma (MTC), an uncommon and challenging form of thyroid cancer, have been developed by the American Thyroid Association and published online ahead of print in Thyroid, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com).

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Sulfolobus islandicus, a microbe that can live in boiling acid, is offering up its secrets to researchers hardy enough to capture it from the volcanic hot springs where it thrives. In a new study, researchers report that populations of S. islandicus are more diverse than previously thought, and that their diversity is driven largely by geographic isolation.

The findings open a new window on microbial evolution, demonstrating for the first time that geography can trump other factors that influence the makeup of genes an organism hosts.

A legal loophole is counteracting Canada's ban on direct-to-consumer drug advertising and has exposed Canadians to more than $90 million worth of ads, including those for drugs with life-threatening risks, according to a study by UBC researchers.

Barbara Mintzes, Steve Morgan and James M. Wright from UBC's Centre for Health Services and Policy Research analyzed advertising spending on prescription drugs from 1995 to 2006 and saw spending rise from less than $2 million per year prior to 1999 to more than $22 million in 2006.

A study forthcoming in the Journal of Labor Economics suggests that high-quality teachers tend to leave schools that experience inflows of black students. According to the study's author, C. Kirabo Jackson (Cornell University), this is the first study to show that a school's racial makeup may have a direct impact on the quality of its teachers.

Are you a man or a mouse? A new paper, published in PLoS Biology, explores exactly what distinguishes our genome from that of the lab mouse. In the first comprehensive comparison between the genes of mice and humans, scientists from institutions across America, Sweden and the UK reveal that there are more genetic differences between the two species than had been previously thought. One-fifth of mouse genes are new copies that have emerged in the last 90 million years of mouse evolution.