(Boston)--Using patient-derived stem cells known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to study the genetic lung/liver disease called alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency, researchers have for the first time created a disease signature that may help explain how abnormal protein leads to liver disease. The study, which appears in Stem Cell Reports, also found that liver cells derived from AAT deficient iPSCs are more sensitive to drugs that cause liver toxicity than liver cells derived from normal iPSCs. This finding may ultimately lead to new treatments for the condition. IPSC's ...

Capitalizing on a rare opportunity to thoroughly analyze a tumor from a lung cancer patient who had developed resistance to targeted drug treatment, UC San Francisco scientists identified a biological escape hatch that explains the resistance, and developed a strategy in mice for shutting it down. In experiments that combined the drug the patient had taken with a second compound that blocks off this newly discovered resistance pathway, the researchers were able to durably wipe out cancer cells in mice implanted with cells from the drug-resistant tumor. "Even in cancers ...

CANCER RESEARCH UK scientists have discovered that a vital self-destruct switch in cells is hijacked - making some pancreatic and non small cell lung cancers more aggressive, according to research published in Cancer Cell today (Thursday)*. The team, from the Cancer Research UK Centre at the UCL (University College London) Cancer Institute, found that mutations in the KRAS gene interferes with protective self-destruct switches, known as TRAIL receptors, which usually help to kill potentially cancerous cells. The research, carried out in cancer cells and mice, shows ...

Researchers have identified a new genetic mutation at the heart of a severe and potentially deadly seizure disorder found in infants and young children. The finding, which was reported today in the journal American Journal of Human Genetics, may help scientists unravel the complex biological mechanism behind these diseases. "These findings allow us to open up what was, up to this point, a 'black box' and more fully understand the biological pathways associated with these disorders and why some individuals do not respond to treatment," said Alex Paciorkowski, M.D., an ...

In one of the first studies to examine the potential for using municipal wastewater as a feedstock for algae-based biofuels, Rice University scientists found they could easily grow high-value strains of oil-rich algae while simultaneously removing more than 90 percent of nitrates and more than 50 percent of phosphorous from wastewater. The findings, which are based on a five-month study at a wastewater treatment facility in Houston, are available online in the journal Algae. "Biofuels were the hot topic in algaculture five years ago, but interest cooled as the algae ...

WASHINGTON --Two new studies, published online Tuesday in Annals of Emergency Medicine, illustrate the power of social media and the Internet to promote scholarly dialogue around the world and the importance of establishing criteria for what constitutes high-quality blogs and podcasts ("Global Emergency Medicine Journal Club: A Social Media Discussion About the ADJUST-PE Trial" and "Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Blogs and Podcasts: Establishing an International Consensus on Quality"). "Our Global Emergency Medicine Journal Club creates a virtual space to allow ...

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5 viruses of Eurasian origin continue to circulate and evolve in North American wild birds. The U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Department of Agriculture published the genetic analysis of a mixed-origin HPAI H5N1 avian flu virus in the journal Genome Announcements today. This novel virus was discovered in a green-winged teal in Washington State that was sampled at the end of 2014. It is a mixed-origin virus containing genes from the Eurasian HPAI H5N8 and genes from North American low pathogenic avian influenza from wild birds. ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Shred a document, and you can piece it back together. Burn a book, and you could theoretically do the same. But send information into a black hole, and it's lost forever. That's what some physicists have argued for years: That black holes are the ultimate vaults, entities that suck in information and then evaporate without leaving behind any clues as to what they once contained. But new research shows that this perspective may not be correct. "According to our work, information isn't lost once it enters a black hole," says Dejan Stojkovic, PhD, associate ...

Researchers found that consuming the fish herring and mackerel, as well as three kinds of fish oils, raised blood levels of the fatty acid 16:4(n-3), which experiments in mice suggest may induce resistance to chemotherapy used to treat cancer, according to a study published online by JAMA Oncology. Patients with cancer often adopt lifestyle changes and those changes often include the use of supplements. But there is growing concern about the use of supplements while taking anticancer drugs and the possible effect on treatment outcomes, according to the study background. Emile ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A study of 4,500 U.S. children over 20 years has identified a single test that can predict which kids will become nearsighted by the eighth grade: a measure of their current refractive error. The refractive error, or eyeglasses prescription, results from mismatches in the size and optical power of the eye that lead to blurry vision. The study also counters the notion that near work such as frequent reading or sitting too close to the television can bring on myopia, or nearsightedness. "Near work has been thought to be a cause of myopia, or at least ...

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a set of enigmatic quasar ghosts -- ethereal green objects which mark the graves of these objects that flickered to life and then faded. The eight unusual looped structures orbit their host galaxies and glow in a bright and eerie goblin-green hue. They offer new insights into the turbulent pasts of these galaxies. The ethereal wisps in these images were illuminated, perhaps briefly, by a blast of radiation from a quasar -- a very luminous and compact region that surrounds a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy. ...

A new statistical analysis suggests that, in the short term, the Mexican government's war against drugs increased the average murder rate in regions subjected to military-style interventions. The study--"Did the Military Interventions in the Mexican Drug War Increase Violence?"--was conducted by Valeria Espinosa, a quantitative analyst at Google and a 2014 doctoral graduate of Harvard University's statistics department, and Donald B. Rubin, Harvard University John L. Loeb Professor of Statistics. The paper is published on the website of The American Statistician, a ...

Philadelphia, PA, April 2, 2015 - With each new amyloid-targeting treatment for Alzheimer's disease that has been developed, there has been a corresponding concern. For example, antibodies targeting amyloid-β peptide (Aβ) produce inflammation in the brain in some patients. Gamma secretase inhibitors tend to produce adverse effects by interacting with Notch, an important pathway for cellular signaling. Beta secretase 1 (BACE1) inhibitors are a new and promising target for Alzheimer's disease. Inhibiting BACE1 will limit the production of Aβ which, in turn, ...

SEATTLE - As the global population pushes past 7 billion and more people reach old age, the number of deaths from cardiovascular diseases is on the rise. Cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of premature death in the world, include heart attacks, strokes, and other circulatory diseases. At the same time, efforts to prevent and treat cardiovascular diseases appear to be working as the rise in deaths is slower than the overall growth of the population. Globally, the number of deaths due to cardiovascular diseases increased by 41% between 1990 and 2013, climbing ...

Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) and Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, one of Europe's largest and most prestigious medical universities, have discovered that an existing chemotherapy drug used to treat leukaemia could prevent and control the growth of colorectal tumours. Colorectal cancer commonly referred to as colon cancer is one of the three most common cancers worldwide and the most common in Singapore. Almost 95 per cent of colorectal cancers are from malignant tumours. The research team found that Imatinib, an enzyme blocker widely ...

Reporting under policy instruments to inform on the trends in biodiversity requires information from a range of different elements of biodiversity, from genetically viable populations to the structure of ecosystems. A new research looks into the Essential Biodiversity Variables as an analytic framework to identify ways in which gaps between biodiversity data and policy reporting needs could be bridged. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. The Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs, Pereira et al. 2013) which were previously developed by ecology experts ...

The findings, which have been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, are in line with previous studies of eating habits that indicated a link between high consumption of dairy products and a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes. However, the new study indicates that it is high-fat dairy products specifically that are associated with reduced risk. "Those who ate the most high-fat dairy products had a 23 per cent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those who ate the least. High meat consumption was linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes ...

Researchers at the University of Warwick and UHCW have discovered how body clock genes could affect women's ability to have children. The study, by medics at Warwick Medical School and University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust, pinpoints how body clock genes are temporarily switched off in the lining of the womb to allow an embryo to implant. Timing of this event is critical for pregnancy. The researchers examined endometrial cells from womb linings of healthy women, and also biopsies from women who had sadly suffered from recurrent pregnancy ...

Egg consumption may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, according to new research from the University of Eastern Finland. The findings were published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Type 2 diabetes is becoming increasingly widespread throughout the world. Research has shown that lifestyle habits, such as exercise and nutrition, play a crucial role in the development of the disease. In some studies, high-cholesterol diets have been associated with disturbances in glucose metabolism and risk of type 2 diabetes. In contrast, in some experimental studies, the consumption ...

An illuminating study compares the willingness of stage IV cancer patients, and their caregivers; to pay to extend their lives by one year against that of other end-of-life improvements. The research, led by members of the Lien Centre for Palliative Care (LCPC) and collaborators from the National Cancer Centre Singapore, was recently published in the journal, Palliative Medicine. Patients with advanced cancer or other life limiting illnesses often have to consider how much money they are willing to spend on high cost treatments that result in only moderate improvements ...

University of Adelaide researchers have shown there are two critical windows during the developmental pathway to adulthood when exposure to junk food is most harmful, particularly for female offspring. This work leads on from earlier findings which showed that mothers who eat junk food while pregnant are programming their babies to be addicted to a high fat, high sugar diet by the time they are weaned. Their latest laboratory studies reveal there may be a chance to turn around this junk food addiction in two critical windows--equating to late pregnancy and in adolescence ...

The use of technology in daily life is getting easier all the time as people accumulate knowledge and skills in information and communications technology. However, the most important thing in developing health care services, for example, is to take into account people's day to day lives and their subjective experience of the utility of using services. For example, people's previous bad experience of using a service is reflected for a long time in their use of the service in the future, and thus the dissemination of new service models is a lot slower than might be imagined. ...

DARIEN, IL - A new study suggests that symptoms of depression and insomnia are the strongest predictors of having frequent nightmares. Results show that 3.9 percent of participants reported having frequent nightmares during the previous 30 days, including 4.8 percent of women and 2.9 percent of men. Frequent nightmares were reported by 28.4 percent of participants with severe depressive symptoms and 17.1 percent of those with frequent insomnia. Further analysis that adjusted for potential confounders found that the strongest independent risk factors for nightmares were ...

Bethesda, MD (April 2, 2015) -- Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), the more severe form of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) that can progress to liver fibrosis and cirrhosis, is associated with leakiness of the intestinal wall, which in turn may worsen liver disease, according to research1 published in Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the new basic science journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. "Our study strengthens the clinical association between intestinal permeability and NASH, although we were unable to identify ...

Accurate blood pressure measurement (BP) is fundamental to the early diagnosis of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, says a review published 1 April, 2015, in The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (TOG). The diagnosis and management of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, as well as obstetric haemorrhage, sepsis and safe abortion, are guided in part by the measurement of BP. These conditions contribute to more than half of all maternal deaths globally, so the accuracy of BP measurement is vital, the review concludes. The review explains that BP monitoring is the most ...