DURHAM, N.C. - A growing body of evidence in the medical community holds that greater diversity of bacteria and even worms in the digestive tract offers protection against a variety of allergic and autoimmune problems. Germs from healthy people can be used to heal people with digestive disorders and other conditions caused by the loss of their own germs, and worms that live in the gut, called helminths, have shown success in quelling inflammatory diseases. With this in mind, researches at Duke Medicine hypothesized that enhancing biodiversity in laboratory rats, including ...

An over-the-counter drug indicated to treat allergy symptoms limited hepatitis C virus activity in infected mice, according to a National Institutes of Health study. The results suggest that the drug, chlorcyclizine HCl (CCZ), potentially could be used to treat the virus in people. Results were published April 8 in Science Translational Medicine. The hepatitis C virus (HCV) causes liver inflammation and often leads to serious complications such as cirrhosis. Early diagnosis and treatment of HCV can prevent liver damage. Drugs are available to treat HCV, but costs can ...

Male offspring appear to benefit more than females from the positive effects of exercise during pregnancy, an animal study by UNSW medical researchers has found. The study in rats also found mothers who exercised moderately while pregnant reduced their offspring's body weight, insulin and blood glucose levels, potentially lessening their risk of developing metabolic disorders such type-2 diabetes later in life. The findings were published today in the journal PLOS ONE. The UNSW team led by Professor Margaret Morris, Head of Pharmacology from the School of Medical ...

Given the alarming rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the long lead-in time for developing novel drugs, the discovery of new ways to use the antibiotics already available and approved for use in humans is paramount. It is generally believed that to eliminate a bacterial infection before the onset of drug resistance one must treat with large doses of antibiotics, but recent research has indicated that this type of treatment might actually be driving the emergence of drug-resistant pathogens. New research publishing April 8th in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology ...

Pioneering new research has unlocked a new technique to help combat the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, that cause debilitating and often life-threatening human illness. Researchers from the University of Exeter has shown that the use of 'sequential treatments' - using alternating doses of antibiotics - might offer effective treatment against bacterial infection. Crucially, the research also demonstrates this technique for administering treatment also reduces the risk of the bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics, and so maintaining the long-term effectiveness ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- A new approach to analyzing baseball-pitching biomechanics may one day give players more personalized feedback and help prevent elbow injuries. In a computer simulation study of baseball pitching, Northwestern University biomedical engineers found that the strength of the elbow muscles of a baseball pitcher likely play a bigger role in injury risk and prevention than previously thought. The motion analysis approach currently used in the baseball industry to provide athletes with injury-risk feedback is not sophisticated enough to estimate what an ...

WELLESLEY, Mass. - A new study by Heather Mattila, a leading honey bee ecologist and Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at Wellesley College, published on April 8 in PLOS ONE, reveals that inadequate access to pollen during larval development has lifelong consequences for honey bees, leading not only to smaller workers and shorter lifespans, but also to impaired performance and productivity later in life. For the first time, this study demonstrates a crucial link between poor nutrition at a young age, and foraging and waggle dancing, the two most important activities ...

In early childhood, the neurons inside children's developing brains form connections between various regions of brain "real estate." As described in a paper published last week in the journal Biological Psychiatry, cognitive neuroscientists at San Diego State University found that in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, the connections between the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum appear to be overdeveloped in sensorimotor regions of the brain. This overdevelopment appears to muscle in on brain "real estate" that in typically developing children is more ...

A single infusion of an experimental anti-HIV antibody called 3BNC117 resulted in significantly decreased HIV levels that persisted for as long as 28 days in HIV-infected individuals, according to Phase 1 clinical trial findings published online today in Nature. Major funding for the research was provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller University, and supported in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a component of the NIH. The research was led by long-time NIAID grantee Michel C. Nussenzweig, M.D., Ph.D., ...

The four collaborating organizations are the American College of Nurse-Midwives; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses; and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Additionally, these organizations partnered with VitalSmarts, a research and training organization. The report, "Transforming Communication and Safety Culture in Intrapartum Care: A Multi-organization Blueprint," follows previous research on safety concerns during childbirth and communication among labor and delivery teams. ...

Washington, DC--Pesticide exposure, not obesity alone, can contribute to increased cardiovascular disease risk and inflammation in premenopausal women, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. The study looked at the effects of exposure to polychlorinated pesticides such as DDT. Although DDT was banned in many countries in the 1970s, it remains widespread in the environment and food supply. DDT was one of the first recognized endocrine-disrupting chemicals, according to the introductory guide to endocrine-disrupting ...

A collaboration led by Shigeyuki Yokoyama of RIKEN and Takashi Kadowaki and Toshimasa Yamauchi of the University of Tokyo has used the SPring-8 synchrotron facility in Harima, Japan to elucidate the structure of two receptors of adiponectin, a protein that is associated with obesity and diabetes. The researchers hope that in the future this work, which was published in Nature today, will pave the way toward designing drugs that target these two receptors, AdipoR1 and AdipoR2, to reduce the early mortality associated with diabetes. Adiponectin, a hormone secreted by fat ...

In the first results to emerge from HIV patient trials of a new generation of so-called broadly neutralizing antibodies, Rockefeller University researchers have found the experimental therapy can dramatically reduce the amount of virus present in a patient's blood. The work, reported this week in Nature, brings fresh optimism to the field of HIV immunotherapy and suggests new strategies for fighting or even preventing HIV infection. In a person infected with HIV, there is an ongoing arms race between the virus and the body's immune system. Even as the body produces new ...

In a feat that would have been unachievable only a few years ago, researchers at UC San Francisco have pulled aside the curtain on a protein informally known as the "wasabi receptor," revealing at near-atomic resolution structures that could be targeted with anti-inflammatory pain drugs. Officially named TRPA1 (pronounced "trip A1"), the newly visualized protein resides in the cellular membrane of sensory nerve cells. It detects certain chemical agents originating outside our bodies--pungent irritants found in substances ranging from wasabi to tear gas--but is also triggered ...

A new scientific synthesis suggests a gradual, prolonged release of greenhouse gases from permafrost soils in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, which may afford society more time to adapt to environmental changes, say scientists in an April 9 paper published in Nature. "Twenty years ago there was very little research about the possible rate of permafrost carbon release," said co-author A. David McGuire, U.S. Geological Survey senior scientist and climate modeling expert with the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "In 2011, we assembled an ...

Fish are the key ingredients in a new recipe to diagnose and restore degraded coral reef ecosystems, according to scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, WCS, James Cook University, and other organizations in a new study in the journal Nature. For overfished coral reef systems, restoring fish populations that perform key roles will in turn restore ecological functions critical to recovery. For moderately or lightly fished reefs, the recipe requires knowing which fish to catch, how many, and which to leave behind. The authors assessed fish biomass ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- A new approach to analyzing baseball-pitching biomechanics may one day give players more personalized feedback and help prevent elbow injuries. In a computer simulation study of baseball pitching, Northwestern University biomedical engineers found that the strength of the elbow muscles of a baseball pitcher likely play a bigger role in injury risk and prevention than previously thought. The motion analysis approach currently used in the baseball industry to provide athletes with injury-risk feedback is not sophisticated enough to estimate what an ...

April 8, 2015--Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia Business School studied bed capacity --measured by the number of staffed beds -- in New York City hospital obstetrics units and found a significant excess number of beds, which overall cost the city an estimated $26.4 million each year. The findings, coupled with the current trends of an aging population and the declining birth rate, suggest that many obstetrics units could reduce their bed capacity and still assure timely access to care. Study findings are published in the ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass--Biologists at MIT and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have discovered a vulnerability of brain cancer cells that could be exploited to develop more-effective drugs against brain tumors. The study, led by researchers from the Whitehead Institute and MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, found that a subset of glioblastoma tumor cells is dependent on a particular enzyme that breaks down the amino acid glycine. Without this enzyme, toxic metabolic byproducts build up inside the tumor cells, and they die. Blocking this enzyme ...

BOSTON (April 8, 2015) -- A two-year epidemiological study of Puerto Rican adults with type 2 diabetes in the greater Boston area who were using insulin and lived next to roads with heavy traffic had markedly increased C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, compared to those living in lower traffic areas. Individuals taking oral diabetes medications did not experience increases in CRP concentration. The study, published online in Environmental Pollution, builds on the research team's previous work suggesting that oral diabetes medications may provide a protective ...

Since 2007, California has had one of the most aggressive incentive programs in the country for putting solar-electric panels on the rooftops of homes and businesses. Its $2.2 billion California Solar Initiative (CSI)has provided a per-watt rebate for installing residential and commercial photovoltaic systems. During this period, the solar industry in the state has experienced double-digit growth and to date has installed more than 245,000 systems capable of producing 2,365 megawatts of electricity. As a result, CSI has been widely touted as a major success. However, ...

Numerous studies over the past 30 years have linked exposure to nature with improved human health and well-being. These findings are of growing importance: In the near future, 70% of the world's population will live in cities, where they will face a rising tide of lifestyle-related disease. Still, little is known about the mechanisms underlying the nature-health connection, and confusion awaits those who would transform existing findings into action. In the June issue of BioScience, a group of biologists and public health experts led by Danielle F. Shanahan address this ...

The ceremonial opening kick of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Sao Paolo, Brazil, which was performed--with the help of a brain-controlled exo-skeleton--by a local teen who had been paralyzed from the waste down due to a spinal cord injury, was a seminal moment for the area of neuroscience that strives to connect the brain with functional prosthetics. The public display was a representative of thousands of such neuroprosthetic advances in recent years, and the tens of years of brain research and technological development that have gone into them. And while this display was quite ...

Strong vertical wind shear has taken a toll on Tropical Cyclone Ikola and that was pretty clear in a visible-light image from NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite today, April 8. When Suomi NPP flew over Tropical Cyclone Ikola at 07:05 UTC (3:05 a.m. EDT), the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite or VIIRS instrument aboard captured a visible image of the storm. VIIRS is a scanning radiometer that collects visible and infrared imagery and "radiometric" measurements. Basically it means that VIIRS data is used to measure cloud and aerosol properties, ocean color, sea and ...

A University of Calgary study has found that rats fed a fibre supplement while on a high fat and high sugar diet show a much lower weight gain than those who did not eat the fibre. A team of researchers from the university's Cumming School of Medicine and the Faculty of Kinesiology says the study helps scientists better understand the mechanisms of weight control and energy balance. "Our data shows that a simple dietary intervention, with a prebiotic oligofructose fibre, reduced weight gain, and this may also lead to the long-term maintenance of a lower body weight in ...