Body

CLEVELAND, Ohio (October 3, 2013) -- The mix of bacteria in the vagina changes as women go through menopause. And a certain mix is typical after menopause in women who have vulvovaginal atrophy (VVA), a common cause of vaginal dryness and sexual pain, finds a team at Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland. They suspect these bacteria may play a role in causing VVA and that personalized probiotics or other ways to manage the bacterial mix might prevent or treat VVA in the future.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Traditionally, honey bee research has focused on environmental stressors such as pesticides, pathogens and diseases. Now a research team led by entomologists at the University of California, Riverside has published a study that focuses on an anthropogenic pollutant: selenium (Se).

The researchers found that the four main forms of Se in plants — selenate, selenite, methylselenocysteine and selenocystine — caused mortality and delays in development in the honey bee.

MAYWOOD, Il. – An old home remedy called ipecac syrup, once stocked in medicine cabinets in case of accidental poisoning, is showing promise as a new chemotherapy drug for bladder cancer.

Years ago, ipecac syrup was used to induce vomiting in poisoning cases. Now a Loyola University Medical Center study has found that the active ingredient of ipecac syrup effectively inhibits the growth of bladder cancer cells, especially when combined with a standard chemotherapy drug.

The stresses that come with aging, chemotherapy treatments, and environmental exposures all threaten fertility. But what if there were a way to preserve women's limited egg supply? Researchers reporting on studies conducted in frog and mouse eggs in the Cell Press journal Molecular Cell on October 3rd may have found a way.

The findings come at an important time when many women are waiting longer and longer to have children, renewing interest in the development of strategies to preserve oocytes—immature egg cells.

Boston, MA – For decades, there has been a significant effort led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing. Despite this work, new research from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) finds only incremental improvement in antibiotic prescribing for adults with acute bronchitis and sore throat. These findings were presented at IDWeek on October 3, 2013 and the sore throat data was published online in JAMA Internal Medicine.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (October 3, 2013) – Whitehead Institute researchers have redefined the function of a gene whose mutation causes Rett syndrome, a neurodevelopmental autism spectrum disorder. This new research offers an improved understanding of the defects found in the neurons of Rett syndrome patients and could lead to novel therapies for the disease.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A tiny but unexpected change to a segment of RNA in a single-cell organism looks a lot like a mistake, but is instead a change to the genetic information that is essential to the organism's survival.

Scientists have discovered this RNA "edit" in Trypanosoma brucei, a parasite that causes sleeping sickness in Africa and Chagas disease in Latin America. Though the organism is a model system for this work, the finding could lead to a new drug target to fight the parasite if higher species don't share this genetic behavior.

Often deadly "triple-negative" breast cancers might be effectively treated in many cases with a drug that targets a previously unknown vulnerability in the tumors, according to a UC San Francisco researcher who described her discovery in a study published online October 3, 2013 in the journal Cancer Cell.

The two new species described from Uruguay, Chaco castanea and Chaco costai, are middle sized spiders that range between 1 and 2 cm in body size. Like all Nemesiids they have elongated body and robust legs with predominantly black-brownish coloration. A recent study in the open access journal Zookeys provides a detailed description of the two news species and a rare glimpse into their living habits.

New research reports that liver transplant recipients who receive substance abuse treatment before and after transplantation have much lower alcohol relapse rates than those untreated or only treated prior to transplantation. A second study determines that continued alcohol abuse following liver transplantation decreases graft survival, further highlighting the importance of preventing alcohol relapse. Both studies are published in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society.

While most freshwater mussels react stressfully and weaken when exposed to the toxins in blue-green algae in their water environment, the little zebra mussel is rather indifferent. It is not affected by the toxins, and this helps it outmatch stressed and weakened mussels, report researchers from the University of Southern Denmark. This is bad for the biodiversity, and in some countries the superior zebra mussels imposes great costs to the industry.

New Orleans, LA – Research led by Charles Nichols, PhD, Associate Professor of Pharmacology at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, describes a powerful new anti-inflammatory mechanism that could lead to the development of new oral medications for atherosclerosis and inflammatory bowel disorders (IBS). The findings are published in PLOS ONE, available online at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0075426

The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS') award-winning Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast series describes the development and successful lab tests on the first potential drug to pack a lethal one-two punch against melanoma skin cancer cells.

This news release is available in French.

A study concerning the evolution of mitochondrial DNA, performed by researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), has allowed to determine the frequency and pattern of heteroplasmy in the complete mitochondrial genome using a representative sample of the European population.