Gliomas are malignant brain tumors that arise from glial cells called astrocytes, found in the central nervous system. "In treating malignant gliomas, we currently combine radiotherapy with the anticancer drug temozolomide. However, in some patients, tumors rapidly become resistant to both treatment methods," says neurooncologist Professor Dr. Michael Platten, who leads a cooperation unit of the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) and the Department of Neurooncology of Heidelberg University Hospital. "We therefore urgently need new methods ...

NEW YORK-- A newly transferred associate from the Shanghai office nails his presentation to Mr. Smith from Chicago but stumbles in his pitch to Mr. Chen from San Francisco. A visiting professor from Taiwan lectures fluently about a slide of a Grecian urn, but falters and struggles to recall the word "translucent" when discussing a Ming vase. What is it about seeing a Chinese face or even a Chinese vase that can disrupt a Chinese immigrant's fluency in English? Research on how cultural knowledge operates in the mind increasingly focuses on the dynamics through which ...

In 2011 and 2012, research from China's Nanjing University made international headlines with reports that after mice ate, bits of genetic material from the plants they'd ingested could make it into their bloodstreams intact and turn the animals' own genes off. The surprising results from Chen-Yu Zhang's group led to speculation that genetic illness might one day be treated with medicinal food, but also to worry that genetically modified foods might in turn modify consumers in unanticipated ways. Now, though, a research team at Johns Hopkins reports that Zhang's results ...

DETROIT — A Wayne State University researcher has found that sleep apnea severity is higher among African-American men in certain age ranges, even after controlling for body mass index (BMI). A study by James A. Rowley, M.D., professor of internal medicine in WSU's School of Medicine, showed that being an African-American man younger than 40 years old increased the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) by 3.21 breathing pauses per hour of sleep compared to a white man in the same age range with the same BMI. Obstructive sleep apnea affects at least 4 percent of men and 2 percent ...

June 26, 2013—One in five adolescents surveyed in Ontario, Canada said they have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that left them unconscious for five minutes or required them to be hospitalized overnight, a statistic researchers in Toronto say is much higher than previously thought. Sports such as ice hockey and soccer accounted for more than half the injuries, said Dr. Gabreila Ilie, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral fellow at St. Michael's Hospital. Traumatic brain injuries, such as concussions, were reported more often by males than females, by ...

Washington, DC — Using a novel technique to promote the regeneration of nerve cells across the site of severe spinal cord injury, researchers have restored bladder function in paralyzed adult rats, according to a study in the June 26 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings may guide future efforts to restore other functions lost after spinal cord injury. It also raises hope that similar strategies could one day be used to restore bladder function in people with severe spinal cord injuries. For decades, scientists have experimented with using nerve grafts ...

Patients who have experienced a stroke spend a substantial amount of time and effort seeking out, processing, and reflecting on information about the management of their condition because the information provided by health services worldwide is currently inadequate, according to a study by UK and US researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Fragmented care and poor communication between stroke patients and clinicians, as well as between health-care providers, can mean that patients are ill-equipped to organize their care and develop coping strategies, which ...

New evidence supports a causal relationship between adiposity and heart failure, and between adiposity and increased liver enzymes, according to a study published this week in PLOS Medicine. The study, conducted by Inga Prokopenko, Erik Ingelsson, and colleagues from the ENGAGE (European Network for Genetic and Genomic Epidemiology) Consortium, also provides additional support for several previously shown causal associations such as those between adiposity and type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, dyslipidemia, and hypertension. The authors investigated whether adiposity ...

A drug developed to treat genetic diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis may need a radical rethink. In a new study published on 25 June in the open access journal PLOS Biology, researchers question the mechanistic basis of the drug called PTC124 (also known as Ataluren), casting doubt as to whether it has the molecular effects that are claimed for it. This may have implications for its effectiveness in treating genetic diseases. An estimated 10% of all human genetic diseases are caused by nonsense mutations. These cause ribosomes to stop dead ...

Use of advanced treatment technologies for prostate cancer, such as intensity-modulated radiotherapy and robotic prostatectomy, has increased among men with low-risk disease, high risk of noncancer mortality, or both, a population of patients who are unlikely to benefit from these treatments, according to a study in the June 26 issue of JAMA. "Prostate cancer is a common and expensive disease in the United States. In part because of the untoward morbidity of traditional radiation and surgical therapies, advances in the treatment of localized disease have evolved over ...

In 2 large studies, the association between aspirin use and risk of colorectal cancer was affected by mutation of the gene BRAF, with regular aspirin use associated with a lower risk of BRAF-wild-type colorectal cancer but not with risk of BRAF-mutated cancer, findings that suggest that BRAF-mutant colon tumor cells may be less sensitive to the effect of aspirin, according to a study in the June 26 issue of JAMA. Colorectal cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that aspirin use reduces the risk of colorectal ...

"Traumatic brain injury (TBI) among adolescents has been identified as an important health priority. However, studies of TBI among adolescents in large representative samples are lacking. This information is important to the planning and evaluation of injury prevention efforts, particularly because even minor TBI may have important adverse consequences," write Gabriela Ilie, Ph.D., of St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, Canada, and colleagues, who examined the prevalence of TBI, mechanisms of injury, and adverse correlates in a large representative sample of adolescents living ...

Scientists in the US have developed a novel vaccination method that uses tiny gold particles to mimic a virus and carry specific proteins to the body's specialist immune cells. The technique differs from the traditional approach of using dead or inactive viruses as a vaccine and was demonstrated in the lab using a specific protein that sits on the surface of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The results have been published today, 26 June, in IOP Publishing's journal Nanotechnology by a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University. RSV is the leading viral cause ...

Death rates from heart disease in the European Union have more than halved in many countries since the early 1980s, according to new research published online today (Wednesday) in the European Heart Journal [1]. In the majority of countries, there have been ongoing steady reductions in heart disease death rates in both sexes and most age groups, including among younger people, despite increases in obesity and diabetes during this time. However, heart disease remains a leading cause of death in Europe. The authors of the study say their analysis shows little evidence ...

In the light of Novel Corona Virus, concerns over H7N9 Influenza in S.E. Asia, and more familiar infections such as measles and seasonal influenza, it is as important as ever to be able to predict and understand how infections transmit through the UK population. Researchers at the University of Warwick and University of Liverpool have mapped the daily contact networks of thousands of individuals to shed light on which groups may be at highest risk of contracting and spreading respiratory diseases. These scientists used an anonymous web and postal survey of 5,027 UK residents ...

An international research team led by Swedish scientists has used a new method to investigate obesity and overweight as a cause of cardiovascular disease. Strong association have been found previously, but it has not been clear whether it was overweight as such that was the cause, or if the overweight was just a marker of another underlying cause, as clinical trials with long-term follow-ups are difficult to implement. A total of nearly 200,000 subjects were included in the researchers' study of the causality between obesity/overweight and diseases related to cardiovascular ...

The appearance of cutlery can affect perception of a food's taste, reports BioMed Central's open access journal Flavour. Food tastes saltier when eaten from a knife, and denser and more expensive from a light plastic spoon. Taste was also affected by the color of the cutlery. The crockery we use has been shown to alter our perception of food and drink. Beverages in cold colored glasses were rated more refreshing and the weight and color of a plate can alter how dense, salty or sweet food tastes. In this study, researchers from the University of Oxford demonstrated that ...

WASHINGTON (June 25, 2013) — Heart failure patients are surviving more often with the heart condition but they are increasingly more likely to be diagnosed with cancer, a trend that could be attributed to increased surveillance, side effects of treatments, or other causes, according to a study published online today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. "Heart failure patients are not only at an increased risk for developing cancer, but the occurrence of cancer increases mortality in these patients," explained Dr. Veronique Roger, MD, director of the Mayo ...

A group of investigators from San Diego State University's Brain Development Imaging Laboratory are shedding a new light on the effects of autism on the brain. The team has identified that connectivity between the thalamus, a deep brain structure crucial for sensory and motor functions, and the cerebral cortex, the brain's outer layer, is impaired in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Led by Aarti Nair, a student in the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, the study is the first of its kind, combining functional and anatomical magnetic ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Researchers with the UC Davis MIND Institute and Agilent Laboratories have found that Prader-Willi syndrome — a genetic disorder best known for causing an insatiable appetite that can lead to morbid obesity — is associated with the loss of non-coding RNAs, resulting in the dysregulation of circadian and metabolic genes, accelerated energy expenditure and metabolic differences during sleep. The research was led by Janine LaSalle, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology who is affiliated with the MIND Institute. ...

VIDEO: A new method for single pixel terahertz (THz) imaging developed by Boston College researchers uses a set of instructions delivered by a laser beam to tune THz waves in order... Click here for more information. CHESTNUT HILL, MA (June 25, 2013) – The universe is awash in terahertz (THz) waves, as harmless as they are abundant. But unlike other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, THz has proven to be extremely difficult to manipulate in order to capture novel images ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio—A new study has found that chasing down a moving object is not only a matter of sight or of sound, but of mind. The study found that people who are blindfolded employ the same strategy to intercept a running ball carrier as people who can see, which suggests that multiple areas of the brain cooperate to accomplish the task. Regardless of whether they could see or not, the study participants seemed to aim ahead of the ball carrier's trajectory and then run to the spot where they expected him or her to be in the near future. Researchers call this a "constant ...

DENVER – ALK rearrangement has been demonstrated to be a potent oncogenic driver and a promising therapeutic target in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). It defines a distinct molecular subset of NSCLC, in particular adenocarcinoma that can benefit by the treatment of ALK-inhibitors. Development of robust and reliable laboratory tests for predictive biomarkers is essential to select appropriate patients for targeted therapy. Researchers from the Chinese University of Hong King evaluated the practical usefulness of immunohistochemistry to detect ALK expression as a reliable ...

DENVER – The incidence of lung cancer in women affects an estimated 516,000 women worldwide, of which 100,000 are in the United States and 70,000 in Europe. Until now, lung cancers occurring in women have been treated similarly to lung cancers in men. However, numerous studies have highlighted different characteristics of lung cancer in women. Researchers at the University of Toulouse III in France aim to compare clinical, pathological and biological characteristics of lung cancer in cohorts of women smokers and women never-smokers. They looked at a total of 140 women, ...

DENVER – Each year, 13 percent of all newly diagnosed lung cancer patients are diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer (SCLC). Approximately 39 percent of patients with SCLC are diagnosed with limited-stage disease, meaning the cancer is only present in one lung, but may have spread to lymph nodes or tissue between the lungs. These patients are often treated with chemotherapy and definitive radiation therapy. Staging information is essential because of the high propensity for metastatic disease in SCLC, and the identification of metastases can spare patients from the toxicity ...