Boston, Mass., Oct. 3, 2013 – In a paper in Cell Stem Cell, a team led by researchers in the Boston Children's Hospital's Stem Cell Transplantation Program reports a new approach for turning induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) into hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells for in vivo disease modeling. With this strategy—which they call re-specification—the team, including Sergei Doulatov, PhD, and George Daley, MD, PhD, of Boston Children's, may have overcome technical barriers to generating blood disease-specific animal models from the thousands of iPSC cell lines ...

MAYWOOD, Il. – An old home remedy called ipecac syrup, once stocked in medicine cabinets in case of accidental poisoning, is showing promise as a new chemotherapy drug for bladder cancer. Years ago, ipecac syrup was used to induce vomiting in poisoning cases. Now a Loyola University Medical Center study has found that the active ingredient of ipecac syrup effectively inhibits the growth of bladder cancer cells, especially when combined with a standard chemotherapy drug. The study by corresponding authors Kimberly Foreman, PhD, Gopal Gupta, MD, and colleagues is published ...

Since remote times humans have been interested in the weather and have used different strategies to predict bad storms. Some of these strategies rely on the observation that in anticipation of storms, birds fly at low heights and cows lie down. Some people even claim to feel their bones ache. These and other similar accounts have been reported but not scientifically tested. In a paper entitled Weather Forecasting by Insects: Modified Sexual Behaviour in Response to Atmospheric Pressure Changes, the group of Dr José Maurício Simões Bento at University of São Paulo (College ...

Insects modify calling and courting mating behavior in response to changes in air pressure, according to results published October 2 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ana Cristina Pellegrino and José Maurício Bento, University of São Paulo, and colleagues from other institutions. The bugs' ability to predict adverse weather conditions may help them modify their mating behavior during high winds and rain, reducing risk of injury or even death. Researchers studied mating behavior changes in the curcurbit beetle, the true armyworm moth, and the potato aphid under falling, ...

MINNEAPOLIS -- People who are depressed may have triple the risk of developing Parkinson's disease, according to a study published in the October 2, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Depression is linked in other studies to illnesses such as cancer and stroke," said study author Albert C. Yang, MD, PhD, with Taipei Veterans General Hospital in Taipei, Taiwan. "Our study suggests that depression may also be an independent risk factor for Parkinson's disease." Researchers analyzed the medical records of 4,634 ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Insects are repelled by N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide, also known as DEET. But exactly which olfactory receptors insects use to sense DEET has eluded scientists for long. Now researchers at the University of California, Riverside have identified these DEET-detecting olfactory receptors that cause the repellency — a major breakthrough in the field of olfaction. Further, the team of researchers has identified three safe compounds that mimic DEET and could one day be used to prevent the transmission of deadly vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue, ...

Barcelona, 03 October 2013. This international trial, published in The Lancet, is one of the largest phase III trials in second-line treatment of gastric cancer. Standard care for advanced gastric cancer, known as first-line treatment, is based on chemotherapy, but it only offers a median survival of 8 to 10 months. The trial investigated the use of ramucirumab, an antibody developed to treat solid tumours that targets Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor-2 (VEGFR-2), a key receptor in the angiogenesis process. It showed that ramucirumab effectively inhibits a ...

New Haven, Conn. – A Yale-led study has identified a gene expression profile that can predict outcomes and lead to better treatment for one of the most lethal lung diseases, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). The study appears in Science Translational Medicine. IPF causes progressive scarring of the lungs, leading to cough, shortness of breath, and potentially death. In most cases, the cause cannot be identified, and there is no cure other than a lung transplant. While some patients experience a progressive course that leads to death within one to two years, others ...

Patients treated in intensive care units across the globe are entering their medical care with no evidence of cognitive impairment but oftentimes leaving with deficits similar to those seen in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) or mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) that persists for at least a year, according to a Vanderbilt study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study, led by members of Vanderbilt's ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Group, found that 74 percent of the 821 patients studied, all adults with respiratory failure, cardiogenic ...

WASHINGTON (Oct. 2, 2013) — Statins, commonly prescribed medications for lowering cholesterol, also reduced inflammation associated with gum disease in a new study published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The study suggests that steps taken to reduce gum disease may also reduce inflammation in the arteries and vice versa. "Periodontal disease is characterized by chronic gum inflammation and affects approximately 50 percent of the U.S. adult population," said Ahmed Tawkol, MD, co-director of the Cardiac Imaging Trials Program at Massachusetts ...

Hamilton, ON (Oct. 2, 2013) -- A tuberculosis vaccine developed at McMaster University offers new hopes for the global fight against tuberculosis. "We are the first to have developed such a vaccine for tuberculosis," said Dr. Fiona Smaill, professor and chair of the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster. She led the phase one clinical study published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The vaccine, based on a genetically modified cold virus, was developed in the lab of Zhou Xing, professor ...

Rosemont, Ill – In late summer and early fall when youth and college sports begin, it's a similar refrain: a star on the varsity basketball team tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and is out for the season after surgery. A college football game stopped as a defensive safety hobbles off the field with an ACL injury. Annually in the U.S., more than 200,000 ACL injuries are reported, often by active young adult and adolescent athletes, though they can occur at any age. Depending on the severity of the injury, treatment may include rehabilitation or surgery and rehabilitation, ...

Scientists have discovered that Crohn's disease, the inflammatory bowel disorder, can originate from specialised intestinal cell type called Paneth cells. As such, they propose that small intestinal Crohn's disease might be a specific disorder of this cell type, providing a possible new target for treatments. The study, by researchers from the University of Cambridge and Harvard University, was published today in the journal Nature. "If we are able to break down Crohn's disease into subsets by understanding the underlying mechanisms, which we have done here, we hope to ...

A chemical found in red wine remains effective at fighting cancer even after the body's metabolism has converted it into other compounds. This is an important finding in a new paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine by Cancer Research UK-funded researchers at the University of Leicester's Department of Cancer Studies and Molecular Medicine. The paper reveals that resveratrol – a compound extracted from the skins of red grapes – is not rendered ineffective once it is metabolised by the body. This is an important development, as resveratrol is ...

Nocturnal animals need their noses to stay alive. Mice, among others, depend on their impressive olfactory powers to sniff out food or avoid danger in the dark. Hard-wired to flee a predator or fight a mating rival in response to a whiff of urine, mice use a streamlined system that sends the sensory cue to neural centers in the brain that need only a few synapses to rapidly initiate the instinctive behavior. By comparison, the visual system on which humans rely to sense a threat must process many more variables, detecting the edges and colors and contrast of that looming ...

PHLADELPHIA (October 2, 2013)—The second-most-common catch on Costa Rica's longline fisheries in the last decade was not a commercial fish species. It was olive ridley sea turtles. These lines also caught more green turtles than most species of fish. These findings and more, reported in a new study in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, indicate that the Costa Rican longline fishery represents a major threat to the survival of eastern Pacific populations of sea turtles as well as sharks. The researchers argue that time and area closures for the fisheries ...

Boulder, Colorado, USA – In the October issue of GSA Today, Grant Young of the University of Western Ontario discusses the possible causes of the numerous glaciations that characterized the Neoproterozoic and concludes that a dramatic shift in Earth's climate may have occurred during the Ediacaran, in part due to a large marine impact. According to Young, this shift separates Proterozoic glaciations, which were likely triggered by the effect of supercontinent assembly and breakup on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Young notes that this suggests strong seasonality ...

Most of us think of honey bees as having a bucolic, pastoral existence—flying from flower to flower to collect the nectar they then turn into honey. But while they're capable of defending themselves with their painful stings, honey bees live in a world filled with danger in which predators seize them from the sky and wait to ambush them on flowers. Such fear drives bees to avoid food sources closely associated with predators and, interestingly, makes colonies of bees less risk-tolerant than individual bees, according to a study published in this week's issue of the open-access ...

A team of engineers led by computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, has developed a new approach that marries computer vision and hardware optimization to sort cells up to 38 times faster than is currently possible. The approach could be used for clinical diagnostics, stem cell characterization and other applications. The approach improves on a technique known as imaging flow cytometry, which uses a camera mounted on a microscope to capture the morphological features of hundreds to thousands of cells per second while the cells are suspended in a ...

JUPITER, FL – October 2, 2013 – Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered some key features that explain just what turns on a protein that is considered to be a master regulator of how the human body uses and stores energy. The new discoveries could help in the design and development of new therapeutics to treat metabolic disease such as diabetes and obesity—and perhaps some cancers as well. The new study, led by Patrick R. Griffin, chair of the TSRI Department of Molecular Therapeutics, was published recently online ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Examining a long-lived forest, researchers have found that Black Spruce trees, which dominate the northern forests of North America, succumb about five years after being weakened by environmental stresses. Without rejuvenating fire, the dead trees aren't being replaced by new ones. The result will help researchers better understand how climate change affects the health of forests, and how forests affect the severity of climate change. The study also suggests trees might be storing more carbon than currently estimated. "The take away from this is that ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 1, 2013—People suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) face a greater risk of cardiovascular disease and death. A new study involving a comprehensive review of the medical literature shows that PTSD also increases an individual's risk of metabolic syndrome. What links these two disorders is not clear, according to a study published in Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders website at http://www.liebertpub.com/met. Francesco ...

This news release is available in French. Quebec City, October 2, 2013—Researchers from Université Laval's Faculty of Medicine and CHU de Québec have shown that it is possible to treat venous ulcers unresponsive to conventional treatment with wound dressings made from human skin grown in vitro. A study published recently in the journal Advances in Skin and Wound Care demonstrates how this approach was successfully used to treat venous lower-extremity ulcers in patients who had been chronically suffering from such wounds. About 1% of the population suffers from lower-extremity ...

In a recent study, two different strains of non-toxigenic Clostridium difficile provided protection against both historic and epidemic C. difficile strains. The research was conducted by researchers at Hines VA Hospital and is published ahead of print in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. Studies show colonization with a non-disease-causing strain of C. difficile can prevent infection by the more dangerous strains. Patients who are not colonized by benign strains may risk become infected by the harmful strains. The harmless strains occupy the same niches ...

A genetic condition that attacks multiple organs and usually results in fatal heart problems can be detected using a new MRI technique that was developed at the University of Alberta. The discovery of this new diagnostic tool has resulted in updated clinical guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of Fabry disease in Canada. Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry researchers Gavin Oudit and Richard Thompson worked with Faculty colleagues Kelvin Chow and Alicia Chan on the discovery, as well as Aneal Khan from the University of Calgary. The findings were recently published ...