Body

Several studies have shown that living donor liver transplant (LDLT) recipients required smaller doses of tacrolimus compared with deceased donor liver transplant (DDLT) patients, which indicated that liver regeneration could affect the metabolism of tacrolimus in LDLT. In recent years, living donor liver transplantation in adult patients with SFS liver grafts has become increasingly accepted. However, there are few studies in the existing literature on tacrolimus dosage requirements in LDLT with SFS grafts which require adequate liver regeneration.

At a time of alarming increases in obesity and associated diseases -- and fiery debates about the cost of health care -- a UCF research team has identified a new genetic mechanism that controls the body's fat-building process.

The discovery could open the door to new treatments for obesity and type 2 diabetes, and it has the potential to help hundreds of millions of people and dramatically cut health care costs.

Despite recent advances in diagnosis and treatment, the prognosis of patients with biliary tract cancer is still poor. Uncovering the biological characteristics of these carcinomas has become necessary to improve the prognosis of patients and to devise better treatment strategies. A recent study report that invasive front dominant expression of LNγ2 and LNβ3 and active MMP7 play a key role in the progression of biliary tract cancer.

"Your call is very valuable to us please stay on the line until one of our busy advisers becomes available to take your call". An all-too familiar initiation to the world of helpdesks and customer support. Now, researchers in Kuwait have discovered that adding just one more representative to a telephone call center for employee technical support was enough to cut queuing time and costs. Their findings might be extrapolated to the general case for call centers across the globe.

Recently, the potential of PPAR-γ as a target for the prevention and treatment of cancer has been widely studied. However, the potential therapeutic role of PPAR-γ agonists has been questioned, based on contradictory results. Studies using animal models of colon cancer found that PPAR-γ agonists increased the development of colon tumors. This contradictory result was supplemented by a recent report using transgenic mice expressing a constitutive active form of PPAR-γ in mammary glands which showed that PPAR-γ signaling accelerated tumor development in mammary glands.

It is known that I/R induces an inflammatory response deleterious to the organ involved but also to the system as a whole. Mesenteric ischemia occurs when the veins or arteries that supply blood to the intestine are obstructed. In transplants, the organ undergoes total (arterial and venous) I/R. Few available treatments exist. Greater knowledge of these conditions would aid in the search for new therapies. However, the precise nature of the response arises after venous, arterial or total ischemia is not fully understood.

Anti-microbial antibody formation has been reported in celiac disease. Relatively high positivity rates were observed for the conventional antibodies, for example, ASCA, anti-OmpW, and anti-I2, and they were known to decrease after a successful gluten free-diet. The importance of newly discovered inflammatory bowel disease-associated antibodies (including anti-glycan antibodies and anti-OMP) in celiac disease is not sure. The presence of anti-microbial antibodies in relation to clinical presentation of the disease and NOD2/CARD15 mutations was also not investigated.

It is still unknown why the natural history of chronic disease caused by hepatitis C virus (HCV), which currently infects 3% of the world's population, varies from mild in some patients to rapidly progressing in others. Age, sex, alcohol consumption, and liver sensitivity to gut-derived bacterial endotoxins, were the early factors defined to enhance the risk of fibrosis progression.

In view of low attendance rate for colonoscopy screening for colorectal cancer (CRC), it is necessary to establish effective intervention methods to increase colonoscopy compliance. Many studies have reported that subjective or objective barriers prevent high-risk subjects from undergoing colonoscopy examination, which indicates that barrier-focused intervention might be effective. However, such barrier-focused intervention has not been reported in China.

Many studies favor an extended lymphadenectomy at the time of a potentially curative gastrectomy for node-positive gastric cancer, and the risk of long-term death tends to decrease when the number of resected lymph nodes increases to about 25. However, few studies have assessed the relative contribution of the total number of resected lymph nodes to the outcome of patients with node-negative gastric cancer. Further studies are needed to know how the numbers of dissected LNs may affect the survival outcome of patients with node-negative gastric cancer.

WILMINGTON, Del.—Aug. 26, 2009—Mayo Clinic Proceedings published a peer-reviewed comparative effectiveness study performed by HealthCore, Inc. in its August edition. The study demonstrated that asthma patients in general had better clinical outcomes with oral controllers than inhaled corticosteroids.

AUSTIN, Texas—The complete asexuality of a widespread fungus-gardening ant, the only ant species in the world known to have dispensed with males entirely, has been confirmed by a team of Texas and Brazilian researchers.

Most social insects—the wasps, ants and bees—are relatively used to daily life without males. Their colonies are well run by swarms of sterile sisters lorded over by an egg-laying queen. But, eventually, all social insect species have the ability to produce a crop of males who go forth in the world to fertilize new queens and propagate.

Without at least a temporary reprieve from hunting, the world's largest species of fruit bat, Pteropus vampyrus or the "large flying fox", could be driven to extinction in Peninsular Malaysia at the current hunting rate, scientists have warned. Writing in the new issue of the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology, they say around 22,000 flying foxes are legally hunted (in addition to those illegally hunted) each year in Peninsular Malaysia, a level of hunting that is unsustainable based on their estimates of the number of bats in the country.

A new study published by researchers at the UCLA School of Dentistry substantiates the effectiveness of measuring the microRNAs present in saliva to detect oral squamous cell carcinoma. MicroRNAs are the molecules produced by cells that simultaneously asses the behavior of multiple genes and control their activity.

Scientists from Stanford University have teamed up with Israeli and Jordanian researchers to protect the Gulf of Aqaba, a strategic waterway whose fragile marine ecosystem is vital to both Israel and Jordan.

"The people involved are interested in international collaboration in science and protecting the place they live," said project co-director Stephen Monismith, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. "Nothing in the ocean understands political borders."