Sanfilippo disease is a rare disorder caused by the failure of enzymes to break down specific kinds of complex carbohydrates, resulting in their accumulation in cells and often severe physical and neurological problems – and sometimes early death. In a paper published in the March 4 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, led by Jeffrey D. Esko, PhD, professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, describe the build-up of a novel secondary metabolite in Sanfilippo disease, ...

A Wayne State University School of Medicine physician-researcher has developed a personalized therapy to treat a wide range of cancers. The treatment is based on a naturally occurring human enzyme that has been genetically modified to fool cancer cells into killing themselves. The unique concept, patented by Wayne State University, was successfully demonstrated on melanoma cells that are resistant to routine treatments such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Melanoma is a perfect model for testing this new therapy because it is considered the most aggressive form of human ...

If Dr. Doolittle is famous for talking to animals, then here's a story that might make him hold his tongue: According to new research published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), scientists have successfully fused human stem cells derived from subcutaneous adipose (fat) tissue with muscle cells from rat hearts. Not only did these cells "talk" to form new muscle cells altogether, but they actually beat. "Recovery of regenerative cells located in the stromal vascular fraction of a patient's own subcutaneous tissue is relatively simple and can be used for ...

University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers have identified two genes associated with binge drinking that may open doors to new, more effective treatments for excessive alcohol drinking. The scientists found that manipulating two receptors in the brain, GABA receptors and toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), "caused profound reduction" of binge drinking for two weeks in rodents that had been bred and trained to drink excessively. The study was published online the week of Feb. 28 in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. About 30 percent of ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Excessive weight gain isn't healthy at any stage of life, but during pregnancy it can do lasting harm to the mother and baby alike. Now researchers at Brown University and The Miriam Hospital are encouraged by a new study describing an intervention that helped pregnant women control their weight. "This study suggests that a lifestyle intervention can help women manage their weight during pregnancy, prevent health problems during pregnancy, and reduce weight retention after having a baby," said study lead author Suzanne Phelan, adjunct ...

Same-sex erotic relationships are as old as humanity, but our modern understanding of what it means to be homosexual—and the earliest gay rights movement—started in nineteenth-century Germany, according to an article by historian Robert Beachy from Goucher College. The article, "The German Invention of Homosexuality," is published in a recent issue of The Journal of Modern History. Beachy's book on the subject, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (Knopf), is due out next year. According to Beachy, modern conceptions of homosexuality began, ironically, with an ...

A new peptide developed by researchers in Temple University's College of Science and Technology has demonstrated efficacy against triple negative breast cancer. The leptin receptor antagonist peptide, developed by researchers Laszlo Otvos and Eva Surmacz, could become an attractive option for triple negative breast cancer treatment, especially in the obese patient population. The researchers published their findings online in the European Journal of Cancer. According to the researchers, triple-negative breast cancers—which represent 10󈞀 percent of all mammary ...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28—With worldwide Internet data traffic increasing by 50 percent each year, telecommunications companies that handle this digital torrent must be able to economically expand the capacities of their networks while also adapting to new, more-efficient data-handling technologies. Over the last decade, a development team at Infinera Corp. in Sunnyvale, Calif. has pioneered the design and manufacture of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) aimed at meeting that need. This technology has enabled the team to achieve a record one trillion bits per second (1 Terabit/s) ...

BETHESDA, Md., Feb. 28, 2011 – Science fiction novelist and scholar Issac Asimov once said, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny.' " This recently rang true for an international team of researchers when they observed something they did not expect. In a Journal of Biological Chemistry "Paper of the Week," the Berlin-based team reports that it has uncovered surprising new details about a key protein-protein interaction in the retina that contributes to the exquisite sensitivity of vision. ...

What should you do when you really, REALLY have to "go"? Make important life decisions, maybe. Controlling your bladder makes you better at controlling yourself when making decisions about your future, too, according to a study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Sexual excitement, hunger, thirst—psychological scientists have found that activation of just one of these bodily desires can actually make people want other, seemingly unrelated, rewards more. Take, for example, a man who finds himself searching ...

Cambridge, MASS- When your brain encounters sensory stimuli, such as the scent of your morning coffee or the sound of a honking car, that input gets shuttled to the appropriate brain region for analysis. The coffee aroma goes to the olfactory cortex, while sounds are processed in the auditory cortex. That division of labor suggests that the brain's structure follows a predetermined, genetic blueprint. However, evidence is mounting that brain regions can take over functions they were not genetically destined to perform. In a landmark 1996 study of people blinded early ...

Bacteria in the human gut may not just be helping digest food but also could be exerting some level of control over the metabolic functions of other organs, like the liver, according to research published this week in the online journal mBio®. These findings offer new understanding of the symbiotic relationship between humans and their gut microbes and how changes to the microbiota can impact overall health. "The gut microbiota enhances the host's metabolic capacity for processing nutrients and drugs and modulates the activities of multiple pathways in a variety of organ ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---In the mating game, some female mites are mightier than their mates, new research at the University of Michigan and the Russian Academy of Sciences suggests. The evidence comes, in part, from 40 million-year-old mating mites preserved in Baltic amber. In a paper published March 1 in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, researchers Pavel Klimov and Ekaterina Sidorchuk describe an extinct mite species in which the traditional sex roles were reversed. "In this species, it is the female who has partial or complete control of mating," said Klimov, ...

LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, February 28, 2011—There's an old saying that if you don't like the weather in New Mexico, wait five minutes. Maybe it should be amended to 10,000 years, according to new research. In a letter published recently in the journal Nature, Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers and an international team of scientists report that the Southwest region of the United States undergoes "megadroughts"—warmer, more arid periods lasting hundreds of years or longer. More significantly, a portion of the research indicates that an ancient period of warming may ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---By mimicking the structure of the silk moth's antenna, University of Michigan researchers led the development of a better nanopore---a tiny tunnel-shaped tool that could advance understanding of a class of neurodegenerative diseases that includes Alzheimer's. A paper on the work is newly published online in Nature Nanotechnology. This project is headed by Michael Mayer, an associate professor in the U-M departments of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering. Also collaborating are Jerry Yang, an associate professor at the University of California, ...

DALLAS – March 1, 2011 – Will Marshall saw a physician about his blood pressure at his barber's urging. Yes, his barber. "The barber and beauty shops for men and women are kind of their own private escapes," Mr. Marshall said. "Every conversation you can imagine goes on in the barbershop. I wouldn't have put the barbershop and blood pressure together – but that visit to my physician for my blood pressure saved my life." Mr. Marshall now has a healthy blood pressure thanks to lifestyle and dietary changes. He is one of about 1,300 participants in a study described ...

This release is available in French. MONTREAL, March 1, 2011 – By working with Canadians of French ancestry who suffer a rare genetic disease, researchers have discovered how three genes contribute to abnormal growth, making a breakthrough that will improve our understanding of many disorders such as foetal and childhood growth retardation, abnormal development of body parts and cancer. "As a result of the Human Genome Project, we know the basic identity of essentially all the genes in the human body, but we don't automatically know what they do in detail," explained ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Women who received one of three treatments for uterine fibroids at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston said their symptoms diminished and their quality of life significantly increased, according to a new study published in the May issue of Radiology. Uterine fibroids are benign pelvic tumors that occur in as many as one in five women during their childbearing years. Although not all fibroids cause symptoms, some women experience heavy bleeding, pain and infertility. Treatment options include hysterectomy, minimally invasive uterine artery embolization ...

Reston, VA (Feb. 23, 2011) — Despite the absence of Medicare coverage, hospital use of computed tomographic colonography (CTC), commonly referred to as virtual colonoscopy, is on the rise, according to a study in the March issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (www.jacr.org). Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. CTC, a minimally invasive alternative to optical colonoscopy for colorectal cancer screening, employs virtual reality technology to produce a 3-D visualization that permits a thorough evaluation of the entire ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Why is it that the same teams seem to dominate the annual men's collegiate basketball tournament? For that matter, why does the same small group of institutions seem to top annual best-college rankings? According to a theory developed by a Duke University engineer, these hierarchies are not only natural, but predictable. Just as continually growing streams flow into a larger river, or smaller and smaller branches grow out from a single tree trunk, examples of these hierarchies abound in the natural world. Whether it is a river or basketball rankings, ...

Alexandria, VA — Depression is a common problem in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) and negatively impacts patients' symptom burden, ability to function, and quality of life (QOL), according to new research published in the March 2011 issue of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery. Nearly 14 percent of Americans suffer from chronic sinusitis and may have the following symptoms for 12 weeks or more; facial pain/pressure, facial congestion/fullness, nasal obstruction/blockage, thick nasal discharge/discolored post-nasal drainage, and periodic high fever. If ...

A survey of how farmers could protect themselves by growing a greater diversity of crops, published in the March issue of BioScience, has highlighted economical steps that farmers could take to minimize the threat to crops from global climate change, including a greater frequency of extreme climate events. Adaptation to ongoing climate change is considered a policy priority for agriculture. The survey, by Brenda B. Lin of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, documents multiple instances of farmers protecting economically important ...

Emory University experts predict that rates of depressive disorders among men will increase as the 21st century progresses. In an editorial published in the March, 2011 issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry http://bjp.rcpsych.org/, author Boadie Dunlop, MD, writes "Compared to women, many men attach a great importance to their roles as providers and protectors of their families. Failure to fulfill the role of breadwinner is associated with greater depression and marital conflict." Research shows that since the beginning of the recession in 2007, roughly 75 percent ...

SMOKING CESSATION HIGHER WITH VARENICLINE COMPARED WITH PLACEBO IN PATIENTS WITH COPD New research shows that patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have higher smoking cessation rates with varenicline compared with placebo. In a multinational study involving 27 centers, researchers from UCLA followed 504 patients with mild to moderate COPD who were randomized to receive either varenicline (N=250) or placebo (N=254). At weeks 9-12, abstinence rates for patients treated with varenicline were higher than for the placebo group (42.3 percent vs 8.8 percent), ...

Bethesda, MD (March 1, 2011) — Endoscopic removal of pre-cancerous cells in patients with confirmed, high-risk Barrett's esophagus is recommended rather than surveillance, according to a new "Medical Position Statement on the Management of Barrett's Esophagus," published by the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute. The medical position statement was published in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the AGA Institute. In patients with Barrett's esophagus, the normal cells lining the esophagus are replaced with tissue that is similar to the lining ...