Body

(PORTLAND, Ore.)—September 28, 2009—Diabetes increases by 26 percent the likelihood that women will develop atrial fibrillation (AF), a potentially dangerous irregular heart rhythm that can lead to stroke, heart failure, and chronic fatigue. These are the findings of a new Kaiser Permanente study, published in the October issue of Diabetes Care, a journal of the American Diabetes Association.

A new study of New York State data finds that the number of women opting for surgery to remove the healthy breast after a cancer diagnosis in one breast is rising, despite a lack of evidence that the surgery can improve survival. The study also finds that despite extensive press coverage of women who choose to have both breasts removed because of a strong family history of cancer, the rate of this surgery is relatively low and has changed little in the last decade. The study appears in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

B-Cell Lymphoma Protected by SPAK Silencing

A group led by Dr. Michael Teitell at UCLA has demonstrated that misregulation of the protein SPAK may contribute to B-cell lymphoma development. Their report can be found in the October 2009 issue of the American Journal of Pathology.

B-cell lymphomas are the most frequent human immune system cancers. Epigenetic changes, such as DNA hypermethylation, may promote B-cell transformation by silencing tumor suppressor genes.

Boston, MA and Newark, NJ – Current research suggests that the inflammatory molecule TNF-α may contribute to delayed bone fracture healing in diabetics. The related report by Alblowi et al, "High Levels of TNF-α Contribute to Accelerated Loss of Cartilage in Diabetic Fracture Healing" appears in the October 2009 issue of the American Journal of Pathology.

(Hamilton, Ontario – Sept. 25, 2009) - Antibiotic resistance has been a significant problem for hospitals and health-care facilities for more than a decade. But despite the need for new treatment options, there have been only two new classes of antibiotics developed in the last 40 years.

Now a promising discovery by McMaster University researchers has revealed an ideal starting point to develop new interventions for resistant infections.

PITTSBURGH—Regenerative medicine researchers at the University of Pittsburgh received two grants totaling more than $5 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to explore new methods for cultivating replacement cells from existing tissues and organs.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 25, 2009 – Late-breaking data from the landmark HORIZONS-AMI clinical trial, presented at the 21st annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium, demonstrated that after two years, in heart attack patients, the use of a drug-eluting stent (paclitaxel) was safer and more effective than a bare-metal stent; and that the administration of the anticoagulant medication bivalirudin enhanced safety and efficacy compared to the use of heparin + GPIIb/IIIa inhibitors.

(Boston) - Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) in collaboration with researchers from Lahey Clinic Northshore, Peabody, Mass., believe that androgen deficiency might be the underlying cause for a variety of common clinical conditions, including diabetes, erectile dysfunction, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease (CVD). These findings appear in the September/October issue of the Journal of Andrology.

Blacksburg, Va. – The Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium (PGSC), an international team of scientists from industry and academia in 14 countries, has released a draft sequence of the potato genome with the help of a Virginia Tech researcher.

Investigators at Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham), University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) and other institutions have constructed a complete model, including three dimensional protein structures, of the central metabolic network of the bacterium Thermotoga maritima (T. maritima). This is the first time scientists have developed such a comprehensive model of a metabolic network overlaid with an atomic resolution of network proteins.

PITTSBURGH—Regenerative medicine researchers at the University of Pittsburgh received two grants totaling more than $5 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to explore new methods for cultivating replacement cells from existing tissues and organs.

LA JOLLA, CA, September 23, 2009—Using clever chemistry, a Scripps Research team has pinpointed the enzyme target of a drug group that stops the progression of the devastating disease Friedreich's ataxia in mice and may do the same for humans. The findings, developed in collaboration with scientists from Repligen Corporation, help advance this treatment approach one step closer toward human clinical trials, which will be a welcome event for disease sufferers who currently have few treatment options.

Irvine, Calif. – UC Irvine researchers have created a new approach that vastly improves the targeting of chemotherapeutic drugs to specific cells and organs.

Kenneth Longmuir, associate professor of physiology & biophysics, and Richard Robertson, professor of anatomy & neurobiology, used liposomes, small spheres (less-than 100 nanometer in diameter) of naturally-occurring lipid molecules, as "packages" for the cancer chemotherapeutic agent doxorubicin, and a small peptide molecule to "address" the package to the targeted tissue.

GALVESTON, Texas — When most people think of insulin, they think of diabetes — a disease that arises when, for one reason or another, insulin can't do the critical job of helping the body process sugar. But the hormone has another, less well-known function. It's also necessary for muscle growth, increasing blood flow through muscle tissue, encouraging nutrients to disperse from blood vessels and itself serving as a biochemical signal to boost muscle protein synthesis and cell proliferation.

DALLAS – Sept. 25, 2009 – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that non-AIDS-defining malignancies such as anal and lung cancer have become more prevalent among HIV-infected patients than non-HIV patients since the introduction of anti-retroviral therapies in the mid-1990s.