Body

DURHAM, N.C. – Even when treated with hormone therapy to suppress tumor growth, obese men face an elevated risk of their prostate cancer worsening, researchers at Duke University Medical Center have found.

The research, reported at the American Urological Association annual meeting Sunday (May 15, 2011), advances the link between obesity and prostate cancer, which has generated research interest in recent years as the incidence of both conditions remains high and often overlaps.

ATS 2011, DENVER – Researchers have linked a variant in the vitamin D receptor gene (VDR) with the onset of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in Caucasian men. The study population consisted of participants in the Veterans Administration Normative Aging Study, a multidisciplinary study of aging that began in 1963.

The VDR study will be presented at the ATS 2011 International Conference.

If pending clinical trials prove successful, a new discovery published in The FASEB Journal could represent a major scientific leap toward human tissue regeneration and engineering. In a research report appearing online, Yale scientists provide evidence to support a major paradigm shift in this specialty area from the idea that cells added to a graft before implantation are the building blocks of tissue, to a new belief that engineered tissue constructs can actually induce or augment the body's own reparative mechanisms, including complex tissue regeneration.

ATS 2011, DENVER – Changes in the ability of lung cells to divide may play a role in initiating or prolonging lung tissue inflammation, a hallmark of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to a study conducted by researchers in France.

The results will be presented at the ATS 2011 International Conference in Denver.

ATS 2011, DENVER –A simple, minimally-invasive technique using cells from the interior of the nose could help clinicians detect lung cancer in its earliest – and most treatable – stages, according to a study conducted by researchers in Boston.

The study will be presented at the ATS 2011 International Conference.

ATS 2011, DENVER – Researchers in Baltimore have identified new compounds whichrelax airway muscles and may provide relief from shortness of breath for patients with COPD and asthma. The bitter-tasting compounds are at least as, if not more, effective than currently available agents used to manage these diseases, and may present new options for treatment.

The study will be presented at the ATS 2011 International Conference in Denver.

A team of researchers, led by King's College London and the University of Oxford, have found that a gene linked to type 2 diabetes and cholesterol levels is in fact a 'master regulator' gene, which controls the behaviour of other genes found within fat in the body.

As fat plays a key role in susceptibility to metabolic diseases such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes, this study highlights the regulatory gene as a possible target for future treatments to fight these diseases.

A team of researchers have found that pre-existing malaria prevents secondary infection by another Plasmodium strain, the parasite responsible for malaria, by restricting iron availability in the liver of the host. This discovery will be published this Sunday, May 15, in Nature Medicine and has important implications for the management and prevention of malaria, a condition which affects millions of individuals worldwide.

Gene expression is the process of converting the genetic information encoded in DNA into a final gene product such as a protein or any of several types of RNA. Scientists have long thought that the gene programs regulated by different physiological processes throughout the body are robustly pre-determined and relatively fixed for every specialized cell. But a new study by researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine reveals the unsuspected plasticity of some of these gene expression programs.

Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have identified a class of compounds that could be a boon to basic research and drug discovery.

WASHINGTON — Long-term survival rates for patients with advanced prostate cancer suggest they can be good candidates for surgery, Mayo Clinic researchers have found. Their study found a 20-year survival rate for 80 percent of patients diagnosed with cancer that has potentially spread beyond the prostate, known as cT3 prostate cancer, and treated with radical prostatectomy, or surgery to remove the prostate gland. Previously, patients found to have cT3 prostate cancer were offered radiation or hormone treatment, but not radical prostatectomy.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have identified a bacterium in field-caught mosquitoes that stops the development of Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria in humans. According to the Science study, the Enterobacter bacterium is part of the naturally occurring microbial flora of the mosquito's gut and kills the parasite by producing reactive oxygen species (or free radical molecules).

A comprehensive report based on the National Survey of Children's Health conducted by children's health researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau finds insurance duration, consistency and adequacy, and the corresponding access to health care, are lacking for many US children and have a detrimental effect on their health and well-being.

Researchers have identified characteristic patterns of molecules called microRNA in the blood of people with lung cancer that might reveal both the presence and aggressiveness of the disease, and perhaps who is at risk of developing it. These patterns may be detectable up to two years before the tumor is found by computed tomography (CT) scans. The findings could lead to a blood test for lung cancer.

There is no practical, economic way to build structures that could stand up to the savagery of EF5 tornadoes like those that ripped through the South in late April, experts say, but damage from lesser storms could be reduced by better building practices and better enforcement of existing codes.