Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered that a protein produced by the influenza A virus helps it outwit one of our body's natural defense mechanisms. That makes the protein a potentially good target for antiviral drugs directed against the influenza A virus. Better antiviral drugs could help the millions of people annually infected by flu, which kills up to 500,000 people each year. When an influenza virus infects a human cell, it uses some of the host's cellular machinery to make copies of itself, or replicate. In this study, the researchers ...

Surgical decision making for sick, elderly patients should be orchestrated by a multidisciplinary team, including the patient, his or her family, the surgeon, primary care physician, nurses and non-clinicians, such as social workers, advocates Laurent G. Glance, M.D., in a perspective piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine. For this group of patients, surgery can be very risky. Glance, professor and vice-chair for research in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry believes a more patient-centered, ...

Lebanon, N.H. (April 10, 2014) – The methodology Medicare uses to adjust the billions of dollars it pays health plans and hospitals to account for how sick their patients are is flawed and should be replaced, according to a new study by Dartmouth investigators published in the journal BMJ that weighed the performance of Medicare's methodology against alternatives. The researchers from the Dartmouth Atlas Project compared Medicare's current risk-adjustment methodology, which is based on the diagnoses recorded in patients' claims records, against adjustment indices based ...

Washington, DC, April 10, 2014 -- The American College of Physicians (ACP) today released a policy paper on the medical liability crisis, which continues to have a profound effect on the medical system. "Medical Liability Reform—Innovative Solutions for a New Health Care System" provides an update of the medical liability landscape, state-based activity on medical liability reform, and summarizes traditional and newer reform proposals and their ability to affect system efficiency and encourage patient safety. "While medical liability premiums have leveled off in the ...

PHILADELPHIA — The consequences of modern life -- shift work, cell phone addiction, and travel across time zones -- all disturb internal clocks. These are found in the brain where they regulate sleep and throughout the body where they regulate physiology and metabolism. Disrupting the clocks is called circadian misalignment, which has been linked to metabolic problems, even in healthy volunteers. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Memphis describe in PLOS Genetics the development of new cell models ...

HOUSTON -- A tumor-suppressing protein acts as a dimmer switch to dial down gene expression. It does this by reading a chemical message attached to another protein that's tightly intertwined with DNA, a team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported at the AACR Annual Meeting 2014. The findings, also published in the journal Nature on April 10, provide evidence in support of the "histone code" hypothesis. The theory holds that histone proteins, which combine with DNA to form chromosomes, are more intimately involved in gene expression ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Conservation of coastal rivers of the northern Gulf of Mexico is vital to the survival of the alligator snapping turtle, including two recently discovered species, University of Florida scientists say. A new study appearing this week in the journal Zootaxa shows the alligator snapping turtle, the largest freshwater turtle in the Western Hemisphere and previously believed to be one species, is actually three separate species. The limited distribution of the species, known to weigh as much 200 pounds, could potentially affect the conservation of ...

Tax evasion is widely assumed to be an eternal problem for governments — but how widespread is it? For the first time, a new study, co-authored by an MIT professor, has put a cost on a particular kind of tax evasion, known as "round-tripping," that the U.S. government has been trying to thwart. In round-tripping, U.S. investors move funds to offshore tax havens, then invest in U.S. equity and debt markets with these "foreign" funds. In essence, the U.S. investors are disguising themselves as foreign investors, who are not subject to the same tax rates on capital gains ...

A team of international scientists, including a trio from Simon Fraser University, has published the world's first ranking of evolutionary distinct birds under threat of extinction. These include a cave-dwelling bird that is so oily it can be used as a lamp and a bird that has claws on its wings and a stomach like a cow. The research, published today in Current Biology, the shows that Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand all score high on responsibility for preserving irreplaceable species. The researchers examined nearly 10,000 bird species and identified more than 100 ...

The H5N1 bird flu virus has infected and killed hundreds of people, despite the fact that, at the moment, the virus can't spread easily between people. The death toll could become much worse if the virus became airborne. A study published by Cell Press April 10th in the journal Cell has revealed a minimal set of mutations allowing H5N1 to be transmitted through the air from one ferret to another. The findings will be invaluable for future surveillance programs and may provide early warning signals of the emergence of potential pandemic strains. "By gaining fundamental ...

In the midst of today's global extinction crisis, decisions about conservation should include prioritizing how best to preserve as much of the tree of life as possible. So say researchers who report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on the first application of an approach to identify the most evolutionarily distinct of the world's 9,993 bird species. At the very top of their list of the most evolutionary distinct birds is the South American oilbird, which represents almost 80 million years of evolution shared with no other bird on the planet. "Evolutionary distinctness ...

Flu epidemics cause up to half a million deaths worldwide each year, and emerging strains continually threaten to spread to humans and cause even deadlier pandemics. A study published by Cell Press on April 10 in the journal Immunity reveals that a drug that inhibits a molecule called prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) increases survival rates in mice infected with a lethal dose of the H1N1 flu virus. The findings pave the way for an urgently needed therapy that is highly effective against the flu virus and potentially other viral infections. "Drugs that specifically target PGE2 ...

LA JOLLA, CA—April 10, 2014—A team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has identified a long-sought protein that facilitates one of the most basic functions of cells: regulating their volume to keep from swelling excessively. The identification of the protein, dubbed SWELL1, solves a decades-long mystery of cell biology and points to further discoveries about its roles in health and disease—including a serious immune deficiency that appears to result from its improper function. "Knowing the identity of this protein and its gene opens up a broad ...

BOSTON – Cancer cells generate energy differently than normal cells, a characteristic that helps them to survive and metastasize. A major goal in the field of cancer metabolism is to find ways to overcome this survival advantage. Now a research team led by investigators in the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has found that targeting the enzyme responsible for the final step of glucose metabolism not only halts tumor growth in non-small-cell lung cancer, but actually leads to the regression of established tumors. Importantly, the new findings, ...

Working with human neurons and fruit flies, researchers at Johns Hopkins have identified and then shut down a biological process that appears to trigger a particular form of Parkinson's disease present in a large number of patients. A report on the study, in the April 10 issue of the journal Cell, could lead to new treatments for this disorder. "Drugs such as L-dopa can, for a time, manage symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but as the disease worsens, tremors give way to immobility and, in some cases, to dementia. Even with good treatment, the disease marches on," says ...

Scientists may have discovered how the most common genetic cause of Parkinson's disease destroys brain cells and devastates many patients worldwide. The study was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS); the results may help scientists develop new therapies. "This may be a major discovery for Parkinson's disease patients," said Ted Dawson, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease, Baltimore, MD. Dr. Dawson and ...

T-cells are the body's sentinels, patrolling every corner of the body in search of foreign threats such as bacteria and viruses. Receptor molecules on the T-cells identify invaders by recognizing their specific antigens, helping the T-cells discriminate attackers from the body's own cells. When they recognize a threat, the T-cells signal other parts of the immune system to confront the invader. These T-cells use a complex process to recognize the foreign pathogens and diseased cells. In a paper published this week in the journal Cell, researchers add a new level of understanding ...

The activity of four transcription factors – proteins that regulate the expression of other genes – appears to distinguish the small proportion of glioblastoma cells responsible for the aggressiveness and treatment resistance of the deadly brain tumor. The findings by a team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators, which will be published in the April 24 issue of Cell and are receiving advance online release, support the importance of epigenetics – processes controlling whether or not genes are expressed – in cancer pathology and identify molecular circuits ...

Newborns whose mothers were exposed during pregnancy to any one of a variety of environmental stressors — such as trauma, illness, and alcohol or drug abuse — become susceptible to various psychiatric disorders that frequently arise later in life. However, it has been unclear how these stressors affect the cells of the developing brain prenatally and give rise to conditions such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and some forms of autism and bipolar disorders. Now, Yale University researchers have identified a single molecular mechanism in the developing ...

New Haven, Conn.— A Yale-led research team has developed a new approach to species conservation that prioritizes genetic and geographic rarity and applied it to all 9,993 known bird species. "To date, conservation has emphasized the number of species, treating all species as equal," said Walter Jetz, the Yale evolutionary biologist who is lead author of a paper published April 10 in Current Biology. "But not all species are equal in their genetic or geographic rarity. We provide a framework for how such species information could be used for prioritizing conservation." Worldwide, ...

(PHILADELPHIA) – Researchers at Penn Medicine have discovered that the tumor suppressor gene folliculin (FLCN) is essential to normal lung function in patients with the rare disease Birt-Hogg-Dube (BHD) syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs, skin and kidneys. Folliculin's absence or mutated state has a cascading effect that leads to deteriorated lung integrity and an impairment of lung function, as reported in their findings in the current issue of Cell Reports. "We discovered that without normal FLCN the alveolar epithelial cells (AEC) in these patients' ...

VIDEO: This is a video showing the 305-million-year-old harvestman fossil. Click here for more information. Stunning images of a 305-million-year-old harvestman fossil reveal ancestors of the modern-day arachnids had two sets of eyes rather than one. The researchers say their findings, published in the journal Current Biology, add significant detail to the evolutionary story of this diverse and highly successful group of arthropods, which are found on every continent except Antarctica. University ...

There are both perfect and imperfect mimics in nature. An imperfect mimic might have a different body shape, size or colour pattern arrangement compared to the species it mimics. Researchers have long been puzzled by the way poor mimicry can still be effective in fooling predators not to attack. In the journal Current Biology, researchers from Stockholm University now present a novel solution to the question of imperfect mimicry. Mimicry is when animals have the appearance of another species in order to avoid being attacked. For instance, hoverflies have a similar ...

Builders and factory workers know that getting a job done right requires precision and specialized tools. The same is true when you're building antibiotic compounds at the molecular level. New findings from North Carolina State University may turn an enzyme that acts as a specialized "wrench" in antibiotic assembly into a set of wrenches that will allow for greater customization. By modifying this enzyme, scientists hope to be able to design and synthesize stronger, more adaptable antibiotics from less expensive, natural compounds. Kirromycin is a commonly known antibiotic ...

Surgery for frail, senior citizen patients can be risky. A new patient-centered, team-based approach to deciding whether these high-risk patients will benefit from surgery is championed in an April 10 Perspective of the New England Journal of Medicine. The Perspective suggests that the decision to have surgery must balance the advantages and disadvantages of surgical and non-surgical treatment as well as the patient's values and goals in a team-based setting that includes the patient, his or her family, the surgeon, the primary care physician and the physician anesthesiologist. One ...