Body

Two Oxford University scientists have proposed a solution to a puzzle of the human immune system: how our immune system scales its response in proportion to any threat to our health to make it 'just right'. Their ideas, published in the journal Trends in Immunology, could support a range of medical research.

Research from a University of North Texas historian supports the idea that the nation and region of origin of your ancestors contributes to your risk of developing, or not developing, a growing list of medical conditions.

A mother's high-fat diet during pregnancy could have a lasting impact on the bacteria living in her baby's gut, according to a study published in the open access journal Genome Medicine. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in the US examined a cohort of 157 women and their newborn babies, and found an association between the mothers' diets and distinct changes in their offspring's microbiome, which could affect energy extraction from food and early immune development.

HOUSTON - (Aug. 8, 2016) - The community of microbes - the microbiome - living in a baby's gut can be influenced by the mother's diet during pregnancy. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine found that babies born to mothers who consumed a high-fat diet during pregnancy had a gut microbiome that was distinctly different from the one in babies of mothers on a non-high-fat diet. This is important because the microbiome can affect the development of babies' immune system and their ability to extract energy from food. The study appears in Genome Medicine.

A study led by researchers at The University of Nottingham has discovered that the fertility of dogs may have suffered a sharp decline over the past three decades.

The research, published in the academic journal Scientific Reports, found that sperm quality in a population of stud dogs studied over a 26-year period had fallen significantly.

Many breast tumors grow in response to female hormones, especially estrogen. Drugs that reduce estrogen levels in the body often are effective in reducing tumor size and preventing recurrence of the cancer. But some tumors become resistant to these therapies and continue to grow and spread.

The transient form of genetic information, the RNA, is processed in a similar manner in the cells of both organisms. These mechanisms seem to be at work throughout the whole animal kingdom. Scientists from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) and their international partners showed this in a genome-wide study on flatworms whose results have now been published in the scientific journal eLife.

A molecular switch that flips between different versions of genes could be crucial for maintaining stem cells across all animals from simple flatworms to humans, according to a study from scientists at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, that will be published on August 9, 2016, in the journal eLife.

While the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pandemic fuels tuberculosis (TB) outbreaks, it does not drive the development and transmission of multidrug-resistance in TB patients as previously suspected, according to a study published in eLife.

The findings, from a collaboration between Norwegian, British and Argentinian scientists, also show that TB drug resistance is not more likely to evolve in HIV-positive patients compared to HIV-negative patients.

Accumulation of fat deposits in muscle tissue is strongly linked to the onset of insulin resistance, a hallmark of Type 2 diabetes. Identifying the muscle-specific molecular pathways that contribute to insulin resistance may lead to potential therapies that reduce the risks and complications for Type 2 diabetes and other obesity-related disorders.

Washington, DC - August 8, 2016 - For the first time in Brazil, a particular antibiotic resistance mechanism conferring resistance to the important antibiotic, colistin, has been detected in a human. It was in a strain of Escherichia coli that was isolated from a diabetic patient's foot infection. The mechanism, called MCR-1, was incorporated into a plasmid, a short piece of DNA that exists independent of the genome, which can jump from one bacterium to another, spreading the resistance.

Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. (August 8, 2016)--A bird species that does a poor job spreading West Nile virus (WNV) but is particularly likely to get mosquito bites may explain why human infections with the disease are relatively uncommon in Atlanta, Georgia--despite evidence of high rates of virus circulating in the local bird population, according to a new study published online today in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Lake Nona, Fla., August 8, 2016 (embargoed until 4:00 P.M. EST) -- Researchers at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) have identified a new potential target for drugs to prevent type 2 diabetes. A paper published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation shows that blocking a cellular glucose sensor in muscle improves insulin responsiveness.

DALLAS, August 8, 2016 -- For the first time in history, people living in low- and middle-income countries have a higher prevalence of hypertension - or high blood pressure - than people living in high-income countries, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation.

A 2010 data analysis involving more than 968,000 participants from 90 countries found that more than 30 percent of adults worldwide live with high blood pressure, and 75 percent of those adults live in low- and middle-income countries.

People who live in provinces with policies that allow pharmacists to administer influenza vaccines are more likely to be vaccinated, according to a new study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal)