A first-of-its-kind antidepressant drug discovered by a Northwestern University professor and now tested on adults who have failed other antidepressant therapies has been shown to alleviate symptoms within hours, have good safety and produce positive effects that last for about seven days from a single dose. The novel therapeutic targets brain receptors responsible for learning and memory -- a very different approach from existing antidepressants. The new drug and others like it also could be helpful in treating other neurological conditions, including schizophrenia, ...

Durham, NC — Scientists say they have pinpointed genetic changes that allow some Ethiopians to live and work more than a mile and a half above sea level without getting altitude sickness. The specific genes differ from those reported previously for high-altitude Tibetans, even though both groups cope with low-oxygen in similar physiological ways, the researchers report. If confirmed, the results may help scientists understand why some people are more vulnerable to low blood oxygen levels caused by factors other than altitude — such as asthma, sleep apnea, heart problems ...

The largest living organisms on the planet, the big, old trees that harbour and sustain countless birds and other wildlife, are dying. A report by three of the world's leading ecologists in today's issue of the journal Science warns of an alarming increase in deathrates among trees 100-300 years old in many of the world's forests, woodlands, savannahs, farming areas and even in cities. "It's a worldwide problem and appears to be happening in most types of forest," says lead author Professor David Lindenmayer of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions ...

December 7, 2012 - Being a good partner may make you a better parent, according to a new study. The same set of skills that we tap to be caring toward our partners is what we use to nurture our children, researchers found. The study sought to examine how caregiving plays out in families – "how one relationship affects another relationship," says Abigail Millings of the University of Bristol, lead author of the work published online this week in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. "We wanted to see how romantic relationships between parents might be associated ...

PHILADELPHIA — Obese women might be able to eliminate their increased risk for postmenopausal breast cancer by taking measures during perimenopause to prevent weight gain and to therapeutically control the metabolic effects of their obesity, according to the results of a preclinical study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Obese postmenopausal women have increased risk for breast cancer and poorer clinical outcomes compared with postmenopausal women who are lean," said Paul S. MacLean, Ph.D., associate professor of ...

More patients can benefit from highly effective breast cancer drugs that are already available, according to DNA sequencing studies by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other institutions. The investigators found that some women with the HER2 negative subtype may benefit from anti-HER2 drugs even though standard tests don't indicate they are candidates for the drugs. "These patients are going to be missed by our routine testing for HER2 positive breast cancer," says Ron Bose, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine. "Currently ...

SAN ANTONIO, TX (December 7, 2012)—Blocking a specific protein renders tumors more vulnerable to treatment in mice, suggesting new therapies could eventually achieve the same in humans, according to new research from Fox Chase Cancer Center to be presented at the 2012 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium on Friday, December 7, 2012. "Hopefully, with further testing, this research could one day result in a new therapy that blocks the effect of this protein and, in turn, boosts the effects of cancer drugs," says study author Elizabeth Hopper-Borge, PhD, Assistant ...

(Lebanon, NH, 12/7/12) — Results from a phase III clinical trial comparing a newer chemotherapy agent called eribulin mesylate with capecitabine, a standard drug used for chemotherapy today in women with previously treated metastatic breast cancer, showed that eribulin demonstrated a trend toward improved overall survival. This study was presented today by Peter A. Kaufman, M.D., during the 2012 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. "We didn't show a statistically significant superiority of eribulin over capecitabine, which was our goal," said Peter A. Kaufman, ...

Alexandria, VA — Patients with head and neck cancer receiving radiation treatment at an academic center have a higher survival rate than those receiving treatment at a community center, according to a study in the December 2012 issue of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery. "Despite similar rates of treatment completion and rate of treatment breaks between groups, patients treated in academic centers had more advanced cancer but better survival," the authors state in their conclusion. The study evaluated differences in patient characteristics, treatment, and cancer ...

PASADENA, Calif.—As technology advances, it tends to shrink. From cell phones to laptops—powered by increasingly faster and tinier processors—everything is getting thinner and sleeker. And now light beams are getting smaller, too. Engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a device that can focus light into a point just a few nanometers (billionths of a meter) across—an achievement they say may lead to next-generation applications in computing, communications, and imaging. Because light can carry greater amounts of data more efficiently ...

"We believe that this knowledge may be important for the further understanding of complex interactions in some major public health issues, that modern science still hasn't been able to explain fully", says Antonio Barragan, researcher at the Center for Infectious Medicine at Karolinska Institutet and the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control. "At the same time, it's important to emphasize that humans have lived with this parasite for many millennia, so today's carriers of Toxoplasma need not be particularly worried". The current study, which is published ...

Electronic cigarettes are experiencing somewhat of a boom at the moment. An estimated two million people in Germany have already turned to the vapor cigarette, which many view as a healthy alternative to conventional smoking. However, a number of voices, primarily from the political sphere, are warning of possible health risks, claiming that the long-term consequences cannot yet be foreseen. Studies to date have come to mixed conclusions. There is a general lack of substantiated facts, fuelling an ongoing battle between supporters and opponents. By carrying out a new, independent ...

The health benefits of 'water clubs' in care homes for the elderly, where residents gather together regularly to drink water , owe as least as much to the social nature of the activity as to the value of drinking water itself, an investigation by psychologists has shown. The study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), supports other findings that interventions aimed at improving individuals' wellbeing and quality of life can be far more effective if they are carried out among groups of people in ways that generate a strong sense of group identity. A ...

A team of astronomers led by the University of Leicester has uncovered new evidence that suggests that X-ray detectors in space could be the first to witness new supernovae that signal the death of massive stars. Astronomers have measured an excess of X-ray radiation in the first few minutes of collapsing massive stars, which may be the signature of the supernova shock wave first escaping from the star. The findings have come as a surprise to Dr Rhaana Starling, of the University of Leicester Department of Physics and Astronomy whose research is published in the ...

Early results of a trial to treat leukaemia with a WT1 DNA vaccine, has shown robust vaccine-specific antibody responses in all vaccinated patients evaluated to date. Furthermore, T cell immune responses, including those of the "killer T cells," were detected. Antibody and T cell responses are strong signals of the DNA vaccine's potential to treat the disease. Presented at the DNA Vaccines 2012 conference in California by Christian Ottensmeier, the trial's principal investigator and Professor of Experimental Cancer Research at the University of Southampton, these interim ...

Since the start of 2012, a new drug called rilpivirine has been available for adult patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). It is marketed by two different pharmaceutical companies, by one as a single agent (trade name Edurant®) and by the other as a fixed combination with other HIV drugs (trade name Eviplera®). In two early benefit assessments pursuant to the "Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products" (AMNOG), the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has investigated whether the two new drugs have advantages ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Increased levels of the hormone aldosterone in young black males correlate with an unhealthy chain of events that starts with retaining too much salt and results in an enlarged heart muscle, researchers say. The findings indicate physicians may want to reach for aldosterone inhibitors early in their effort to control blood pressure and reduce cardiovascular risk in young black males. Their studies of a cohort of 191 healthy black and white 15- to 19-year-olds showed that only in the black males was higher aldosterone associated with impaired sodium excretion, ...

A new plant-parasitic nematode worm (Meloidoderita salina) was found in a tidal salt marsh at Mont Saint Michel Bay (MSMB) in France, where its abbey is a world-famous historical heritage. The species name 'salina' refers to salty soil and is derived from the Latin word 'sal' or 'salis' meaning 'salt'. The study was published in the peer-reviewed, open source scientific journal ZooKeys. The female nematode worm of Meloidoderita salina deposits its eggs in two different structures. One of them is called egg mass which is an external gelatinous matrix, the other one is ...

ANN ARBOR—Did different species of early humans interbreed and produce offspring of mixed ancestry? Recent genetic studies suggest that Neanderthals may have bred with anatomically modern humans tens of thousands of years ago in the Middle East, contributing to the modern human gene pool. But the findings are not universally accepted, and the fossil record has not helped to clarify the role of interbreeding, which is also known as hybridization. Now a University of Michigan-led study of interbreeding between two species of modern-day howler monkeys in Mexico is shedding ...

Most triple-negative breast cancer patients who were treated with chemotherapy to shrink the tumor prior to surgery still had multiple genetic mutations in their tumor cells, according to a study by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) investigators. Finding multiple mutations instead of just one primary mutation that can be targeted for therapy sheds more light on the challenges of treating triple-negative breast cancer. The study, led by Justin Balko, Pharm.D., Ph.D., and research faculty in the laboratory of Carlos Arteaga, M.D., director of the Breast Cancer Program ...

(Boston) – According to a new study from the Slone Epidemiology Center (SEC) at Boston University, African-American women who reported suffering abuse before age 11 had a greater likelihood of adult-onset asthma compared to women whose childhood and adolescence were free of abuse. The study, which is published online in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, was led by Patricia Coogan, DSc, senior epidemiologist at SEC and associate professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health. This study followed 28,456 African-American women, ...

New Rochelle, NY, December 6, 2012—Enzymes play a crucial role as biocatalysts, increasing the speed and efficiency and decreasing the energy consumption of biochemical reactions in many industrial processes. The advantages of using compressed propane to enhance the biocatalytic activity of an industrial enzyme are described in an article published in Industrial Biotechnology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers (http://www.liebertpub.com). The article is available free on the Industrial Biotechnology website (http://www.liebertpub.com/ind). ...

PHILADELPHIA — Periodontitis, a form of chronic gum disease that affects nearly half of the U.S. adult population, results when the bacterial community in the mouth becomes unbalanced, leading to inflammation and eventually bone loss. In its most severe form, which affects 8.5 percent of U.S. adults, periodontitis can impact systemic health. By blocking a molecular receptor that bacteria normally target to cause the disease, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have now demonstrated an ability in a mouse model to both prevent periodontitis from developing and ...

Highlights The incidence of the most severe form of acute kidney injury has increased 10% per year on average over the past decade. Deaths associated with the condition have doubled during that time. Washington, DC (December 6, 2012) — Acute kidney injury (AKI), an abrupt or rapid decline in kidney function, is a serious and increasingly prevalent condition that can occur after major infections, major surgery, or exposure to certain medications. The incidence rates of the most serious form of AKI—which requires dialysis—increased rapidly in all patient subgroups ...

The catastrophic drought last year in the Horn of Africa affected millions of people but also caused the extremely late arrival into northern Europe of several migratory songbird species, a study from University of Copenhagen published today in Science shows. Details of the migration route was revealed by data collected from small back-packs fitted on birds showing that the delay resulted from an extended stay in the Horn of Africa. The extensive 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa had significant consequences for European songbirds such as thrush nightingale and red-backed ...