Researchers from Yale University School of Medicine have demonstrated that vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is highly competent at finding, infecting, and killing human melanoma cells, both in vitro and in animal models, while having little propensity to infect non-cancerous cells. "If it works as well in humans, this could confer a substantial benefit on patients afflicted with this deadly disease," says Anthony van den Pol, a researcher on the study. The research was published online ahead of print in the Journal of Virology. Most normal cells resist virus infection ...

Tamoxifen is a time-honored breast cancer drug used to treat millions of women with early-stage and less-aggressive disease, and now a University of Rochester Medical Center team has shown how to exploit tamoxifen's secondary activities so that it might work on more aggressive breast cancer. The research, published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, is a promising development for women with basal-like breast cancer, sometimes known as triple-negative disease. This subtype has a poor prognosis because it is notoriously resistant to treatment. In fact, basal-like cancers ...

Infants who sweat less in response to scary situations at age 1 show more physical and verbal aggression at age 3, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Lower levels of sweat, as measured by skin conductance activity (SCA), have been linked with conduct disorder and aggressive behavior in children and adolescents. Researchers hypothesize that aggressive children may not experience as strong of an emotional response to fearful situations as their less aggressive peers do; because they have ...

Medical interns spend just 12 percent of their time examining and talking with patients, and more than 40 percent of their time behind a computer, according to a new Johns Hopkins study that closely followed first-year residents at Baltimore's two large academic medical centers. Indeed, the study found, interns spent nearly as much time walking (7 percent) as they did caring for patients at the bedside. Compared with similar time-tracking studies done before 2003, when hospitals were first required to limit the number of consecutive working hours for trainees, the researchers ...

Researchers at Georgia Tech and the University of Minnesota have released a new study that uses statistical data to help understand the motivations behind Pinterest activity, the roles gender plays among users and the factors that distinguish Pinterest from other popular social networking sites. Led by Assistant Professor Eric Gilbert of Georgia Tech's School of Interactive Computing, working in collaboration with Professor Loren Terveen from the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering, the study reveals findings that could have implications for both ...

BOSTON — A potential new way to fight obesity-related illness has been uncovered, thanks to serendipitous research led by investigators at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The collaborators, from Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and Cornell University, discovered the essential nutrient vitamin E can alleviate symptoms of liver disease brought on by obesity. "The implications of our findings could have a direct impact on the lives of the approximately 63 million Americans who are at potential risk for developing obesity-related ...

WASHINGTON - When scientists torched an entire 22-acre watershed in Portugal in a recent experiment, their research yielded a counterintuitive result: Large, hot fires do not necessarily beget hot, scorched soil. It's well known that wildfires can leave surface soil burned and barren, which increases the risk of erosion and hinders a landscape's ability to recover. But the scientists' fiery test found that the hotter the fire-and the denser the vegetation feeding the flames-the less the underlying soil heated up, an inverse effect which runs contrary to previous ...

ST. LOUIS – A group of 50 researchers from around the globe, including biology professors Daniel Warren, Ph.D., from Saint Louis University and Leslie Buck, Ph.D., from the University of Toronto, have spent the last several years sequencing and analyzing the genome of the western painted turtle and the results of their research point to some important conclusions that may be important for human health. The western painted turtle, one of the most widespread and well-studied turtles, exhibits an extraordinary ability to adapt to extreme physiological conditions and it is ...

1. Benefits of Suicide Screening in Primary Care Settings Unknown The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force reviews evidence for upcoming recommendations on suicide screening and treatment for adults and adolescents An evidence review finds that there are screening tools to help physicians identify adults at risk for suicide, but there's no evidence that using these screening tools in primary care will actually prevent suicides in adults. There are still no proven primary care-relevant screening tools to identify suicide risk in adolescents. Suicide is the 10th leading ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a method for assessing the effect of tamoxifen, a common drug to prevent the relapse of breast cancer. The key lies in monitoring changes in the proportion of dense tissue, which appears white on a mammogram, during treatment. Women who show a pronounced reduction in breast density during tamoxifen treatment have a fifty per cent reduction in breast cancer mortality. This tool provides doctors with the possibility to assess whether a patient is responding to tamoxifen at an early phase of treatment. Tamoxifen is a common ...

It sounds like science fiction but a team from the University of Exeter, with support from Shell, has developed a method to make bacteria produce diesel on demand. While the technology still faces many significant commercialisation challenges, the diesel, produced by special strains of E. coli bacteria, is almost identical to conventional diesel fuel and so does not need to be blended with petroleum products as is often required by biodiesels derived from plant oils. This also means that the diesel can be used with current supplies in existing infrastructure because engines, ...

VIDEO: Claudia Gravekamp, Ph.D., discusses her research on a new therapy for pancreatic cancer that uses Listeria bacteria to selectively infect tumor cells and deliver radioisotopes into them. Dr. Gravekamp is... Click here for more information. April 22, 2013 — (BRONX, NY) — Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have developed a therapy for pancreatic cancer that uses Listeria bacteria to selectively infect tumor cells and deliver radioisotopes ...

As many as one in 50 people around the world is infected with some type of hepacivirus or pegivirus, including up to 200 million with hepatitis C virus (HCV), a leading cause of liver failure and liver cancer. There has been speculation that these agents arose in wildlife and jumped species to infect humans; however, little was known about their distribution in other species. In two new papers published in the journals mBio and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, investigators at the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) at Columbia University's Mailman ...

The disrupted metabolism of sugar, fat and calcium is part of the process that causes the death of neurons in Alzheimer's disease. Researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now shown, for the first time, how important parts of the nerve cell that are involved in the cell's energy metabolism operate in the early stages of the disease. These somewhat surprising results shed new light on how neuronal metabolism relates to the development of the disease. In the Alzheimer's disease brain, plaques consisting of so called amyloid-beta-peptide (Aβ) are accumulated. ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a method of predicting which patients with heart disease would benefit more from surgery and which would benefit more from angioplasty. Drawing on Medicare records of more than 100,000 patients with heart disease, the team demonstrated that the effectiveness of coronary bypass surgery varied widely based on each individual's characteristics. The data enabled them to predict which type of intervention — coronary bypass surgery or coronary angioplasty — increased the chances of an ...

LA JOLLA, CA – April 22, 2013 – In a serendipitous discovery, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a way to turn bone marrow stem cells directly into brain cells. Current techniques for turning patients' marrow cells into cells of some other desired type are relatively cumbersome, risky and effectively confined to the lab dish. The new finding points to the possibility of simpler and safer techniques. Cell therapies derived from patients' own cells are widely expected to be useful in treating spinal cord injuries, strokes and other conditions ...

Nearly thirty-four million years ago, the Earth underwent a transformation from a warm and high-carbon dioxide "greenhouse" state to a lower-CO2, variable climate of the modern "icehouse" world. Massive ice sheets grew across the Antarctic continent, major animal groups shifted, and ocean temperatures decreased by up to 5 degrees. But studies of how this drastic change affected temperatures on land have had mixed results. Some show no appreciable terrestrial climate change; others find cooling of up to 8 degrees and large changes in seasonality. Now, a group of American ...

Ocean biology alters the chemical composition of sea spray in ways that influence their ability to form clouds over the ocean. That's the conclusion of a team of scientists using a new approach to study tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols that can influence climate by absorbing or reflecting sunlight and seeding clouds. "After many decades of attempting to understand how the ocean impacts the atmosphere and clouds above it, it became clear a new approach was needed to investigate the complex ocean-atmosphere system—so moving the chemical complexity of the ocean ...

Long-term use of highly active antiretroviral therapies (HAART) does not appear to be associated with impaired heart function in children and adolescents in a study that sought to determine the cardiac effects of prolonged exposure to HAART on children infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), according to a report published Online First by JAMA Pediatrics, a JAMA Network publication. Prior to contemporary antiretroviral therapies (ARTs), children infected with HIV were more likely to have heart failure. Steven E. Lipshultz, M.D., of the University of Miami ...

A matched cohort study by William W. Hung, M.D., M.P.H., of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, and colleagues examined the use of the Mobile Acute Care of the Elderly (MACE) service compared with general medical service (usual care). (Online First) Patients were recruited for the study if they were 75 years or older and were admitted because of an acute illness to either the MACE service, a novel model of care delivered by an interdisciplinary team and designed to deliver specialized care to hospitalized older adults to improve patient outcomes, or usual care. ...

In reviewing 25 years of U.S. malpractice claim payouts, Johns Hopkins researchers found that diagnostic errors — not surgical mistakes or medication overdoses — accounted for the largest fraction of claims, the most severe patient harm, and the highest total of penalty payouts. Diagnosis-related payments amounted to $38.8 billion between 1986 and 2010, they found. "This is more evidence that diagnostic errors could easily be the biggest patient safety and medical malpractice problem in the United States," says David E. Newman-Toker, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor ...

Predicting the winner of a sporting event with accuracy close to that of a statistical computer programme could be possible with proper training, according to researchers. In a study published today, experiment participants who had been trained on statistically idealised data vastly improved their ability to predict the outcome of a baseball game. In normal situations, the brain selects a limited number of memories to use as evidence to guide decisions. As real-world events do not always have the most likely outcome, retrieved memories can provide misleading information ...

Alternative therapies such as aerobic exercise, resistance or strength training, and isometric hand grip exercises may help reduce your blood pressure, according to the American Heart Association. In a new scientific statement published in its journal Hypertension, the association said alternative approaches could help people with blood pressure levels higher than 120/80 mm Hg and those who can't tolerate or don't respond well to standard medications. However, alternative therapies shouldn't replace proven methods to lower blood pressure — including physical activity, ...

New results from a retrospective study conducted in Europe suggest that anti-HER2 treatments, like the widely used breast cancer agent trastuzumab (Herceptin), have anti-cancer effects in a small subset of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring specific HER2 protein mutations. Although genetic changes cause tumor cells to make too much of the HER2 protein in up to 20% of lung cancers, mutations in the HER2 gene occur in only 1-2% of lung cancers. Such mutations in the HER2 gene lead to continuous activation of the protein, which keeps tumor ...

Researchers from Dartmouth's Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Sciences (iQBS) and the Center for Genomic Medicine have helped to discover three unique genetic variations that influence body size and obesity in men and women of African ancestry. This study, a meta-analysis that examined 3.2 million genetic variants in over 30,000 people with African heritage for links to body-mass index or BMI—by professors Jason Moore, Christopher Amos and Scott Williams—was the largest ever done on this population to date. The study was published online in April 2013 by Nature Genetics, ...