Body

Among African Americans with type 1 diabetes mellitus, narrower central retinal arteriolar equivalent (average diameter of the small arteries in the retina) is associated with an increased risk of six-year incidence of any cardiovascular disease and lower extremity arterial disease, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, a JAMA Network publication.

WASHINGTON – A drug that has been shown to prevent HIV infection in a significant number of cases must be combined with behavioral approaches if the U.S. health care establishment is to succeed in reducing the spread of the virus, according to the American Psychological Association.

New Rochelle, NY, May 7, 2012—Vaccine testing and development is an extremely lengthy and complex process that costs billions of dollars every year. In an effort to dramatically improve the speed and success of vaccine research and development, researchers have created an innovative biomimetic model of the human immune system known as the MIMIC® system.

New Rochelle, NY, May 7, 2012—The body's natural inflammatory response is an essential reaction to injury and infection. When acute inflammation escalates out of control, such as in sepsis, it causes nearly 10% of deaths in the U.S. and more than $17 billion in healthcare costs each year.

PITTSBURGH, May 14 - A small, external bioreactor holding human cells pumped out an anti-inflammatory protein to prevent organ damage and other complications in a rat with acute inflammation caused by bacterial products in a model of sepsis, according to a report from researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The findings were published today in the inaugural issue of Disruptive Science and Technology.

INDIANAPOLIS — A new study from the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University has found that, at time of death, individuals with dementia are more likely to be living at home than in a nursing home. This contradicts the commonly held view that most individuals with dementia in the United States eventually move to nursing homes and die there.

"Transitions in Care for Older Adults With and Without Dementia" appears online in advance of publication in the May 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

A study by a team of university and government scientists led by a Kansas State University researcher, indicates that genes responsible for seed shattering -- the process by which grasses disseminate their seeds -- were under parallel selection during sorghum, rice and maize domestication.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Letting autoworkers sit while they reach into a car's interior could help prevent shoulder and back strain - but another solution might be to tilt the entire car so that workers can stand up.

That's the finding of two recent studies, which tested two ways to protect autoworkers from injury.

AMES, Iowa – Research groups from Iowa State University and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have uncovered the function of three plant proteins, a discovery that could help plant scientists boost seed oil production in crops, thereby benefitting the production of food, biorenewable chemicals and biofuels.

URBANA – A new University of Illinois study shows that human milk oligosaccharides, or HMO, produce short-chain fatty acids that feed a beneficial microbial population in the infant gut. Not only that, the bacterial composition adjusts as the baby grows older and its needs change.

Even though HMO are a major component of human milk, present in higher concentration than protein, many of their actions in the infant are not well understood. Furthermore, they're virtually absent from infant formula. The scientists wanted to find out what formula-fed babies were missing.

A curious twist in a family of plant proteins called chalcone-isomerase recently was discovered by Salk Institute for Biological Studies scientist Joseph Noel and colleagues at Iowa State University led by Eve Wurtele.

Pursuing basic scientific discovery, they found three similar proteins that could soon translate into positive results for bio-renewable fuels, commodity chemicals like plastics, food security and nutrition and biomedicine.

Jerusalem, May 13, 2012 – That overweight during pregnancy can lead to overweight children and adolescents has been known for some time, but new research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in the US indicates that excess weight before and during pregnancy can have long-lasting health consequences for the offspring of such mothers even later in life.

Scientists at A*STAR's Institute of Medical Biology (IMB), in collaboration with doctors and scientists in Jordan, Turkey, Switzerland and USA, have identified the genetic cause of a birth defect known as Hamamy syndrome . Their groundbreaking findings were published on May 13th in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics. The work lends new insights into common ailments such as heart disease, osteoporosis, blood disorders and possibly sterility.

Berkeley — The competition between farmers and fish for precious water in California is intensifying in wine country, suggests a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.

The findings, published in the May issue of the journal Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, link higher death rates for threatened juvenile steelhead trout with low water levels in the summer and the amount of vineyard acreage upstream.

In their study, Noel and his collaborators identified three promising genes through analysis of plant genomic data, and then used a variety of techniques, including protein x-ray crystallography, computational biology, biochemistry, mutant plant analysis, metabolomics and gene expression profiling, to functionally characterize the proteins these genes produce.