Researchers at the National Institutes of Health and the University of Hong Kong have discovered that high levels of a particular protein in cancer cells are a reliable indicator that a cancer will spread. By measuring the protein's genetic material in tumors that had been surgically removed from patients, along with measuring the genetic material from surrounding tissue, the researchers could predict at least 90 percent of the time whether a cancer would spread within two years. The findings raise the long term possibilities of new tests to gauge the likelihood that ...

Two separate studies – carried out in Burkina Faso and Mali– have found that combining intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in children (IPTc) with insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs) can substantially reduce the incidence of severe malaria. A third study carried out in The Gambia supported the findings, reporting that IPTc treatment was not only easily administered by village health workers, but could also significantly reduce the incidence of malaria among children. All three studies, published today in the journal PLoS Medicine, will further strengthen the ...

Three randomized controlled trials published in this week's PLoS Medicine show that intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in children adds to the benefit of sleeping under bednets and that this public health intervention is best delivered by community-based, volunteer village health workers. Two randomized controlled trials (with over 3000 children in each study) carried out by a team of researchers led by Diadier Diallo from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK, Amadou Konate from the Centre National de Recherche et de Formation sur le ...

When you think about organs with an important role in reproduction, the liver most likely doesn't spring to mind. But a new report in the February issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, shows that estrogen receptors in the liver are critical for maintaining fertility. What's more, the expression of those receptors is under the control of dietary amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The findings in mice may have important implications for some forms of infertility and for metabolic changes that come with menopause, the researchers say. "This is ...

After taking a small dose of inorganic nitrate for three days, healthy people consume less oxygen while riding an exercise bike. A new study in the February issue of Cell Metabolism traces that improved performance to increased efficiency of the mitochondria that power our cells. The researchers aren't recommending anyone begin taking inorganic nitrate supplements based on the new findings. Rather, they say that the results may offer one explanation for the well-known health benefits of fruits and vegetables, and leafy green vegetables in particular. "We're talking ...

Patients with cancer usually do not die as a result of their originally diagnosed tumor. However, many do so as a result of metastatic disease — tumors that arise at distant sites after spreading from the original tumor. Identifying biomarkers of tumor metastasis would therefore be of immense clinical benefit. In this context, a team of researchers — led by Peng Loh, at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda; and Ronnie Poon, at the The University of Hong Kong, China — has now identified a potential biomarker for predicting future metastasis in patients with the most ...

EDITOR'S PICK: Predicting liver cancer spread Patients with cancer usually do not die as a result of their originally diagnosed tumor. However, many do so as a result of metastatic disease — tumors that arise at distant sites after spreading from the original tumor. Identifying biomarkers of tumor metastasis would therefore be of immense clinical benefit. In this context, a team of researchers — led by Peng Loh, at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda; and Ronnie Poon, at the The University of Hong Kong, China — has now identified a potential biomarker for predicting ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Many patients with rheumatoid arthritis, a crippling disease that causes pain, swelling and eats away at the joints, aren't receiving the much-needed, low-cost medications that can prevent deformity. Despite medical guidelines recommending that patients receive early and aggressive treatment for rheumatoid arthritis with these medications, only 63 percent of Medicare-managed care patients diagnosed with the disease received any amount of the prescription drugs, according to a new study led by a researcher from the Stanford University School of Medicine ...

A parent's wise advice to never go to a hospital unless you want to get sick may be gaining support from scientific studies on a specific airborne virus. The results of a Virginia Tech study by environmental engineers and a virologist on the risk of airborne infection in public places from concentrations of influenza A viruses is appearing today in the on-line, Feb. 2 issue of the United Kingdom's Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Linsey Marr, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, http://www.cee.vt.edu/people/lmarr.html and ...

SAN FRANCISCO–German researcher Claus Cursiefen, MD, also affiliated with Harvard School of Medicine, reports good results with a new surgical strategy that uses a single donor cornea to help two patients with differing corneal diseases. In the United States keeping pace with demand for donated corneal tissue for use in transplant surgery is a cause for concern, while in Europe and Asia shortages lead to treatment delays. Dr. Cursiefen's new approach restored good vision to patients who had Fuchs' dystrophy (degeneration of certain corneal cells) or keratoconus (thin, cone-shaped ...

If you're a woman and your mother had a stroke, you may have a risk of heart attack in addition to a higher risk of stroke, according to new research on family history and heart disease published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics. In a study of more than 2,200 patients, female heart patients were more likely to have mothers who had suffered a stroke than fathers who did. "Our study results point towards sex-specific heritability of vascular disease across different arterial territories — namely coronary and cerebral artery ...

An examination of data from a nationally representative sample of patients discharged from hospices demonstrated that compared with nonprofit hospice agencies, for-profit hospices had a higher percentage of patients with diagnoses associated with lower skilled-care needs (such as dementia) and longer lengths of stay, according to a study in the February 2 issue of JAMA. During the past 10 years, the for-profit hospice sector has increased substantially, with a doubling of these types of hospices from 2000 to 2007, while the number of nonprofit hospices has remained essentially ...

After a good night's sleep, people remember information better when they know it will be useful in the future, according to a new study in the Feb. 2 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings suggest that the brain evaluates memories during sleep and preferentially retains the ones that are most relevant. Humans take in large amounts of information every day. Most is encoded into memories by the brain and initially stored, but the majority of information is quickly forgotten. In this study, a team of researchers led by Jan Born, PhD, of the University of ...

An analysis of previous studies indicates that compared with chemotherapy alone, use of the cancer drug bevacizumab in combination with chemotherapy or biological therapy is associated with an increased risk of treatment-related death, according to an article in the February 2 issue of JAMA. A fatal adverse event (FAE) is defined as a death caused in all likelihood by a drug and is a major cause of fatality in the United States. Bevacizumab was approved in combination with chemotherapy for treating many types of advanced cancer, including colorectal cancer, non-small ...

An analysis of data from more than 90,000 Medicare managed care enrollees who received care for rheumatoid arthritis finds that more than one-third did not receive the recommended treatment with a disease-modifying antirheumatic drug, and that receipt varied by demographic factors, socioeconomic status, geographic location and health plan, according to a study in the February 2 issue of JAMA. Despite evidence-based guidelines recommending early and aggressive treatment of active rheumatoid arthritis (RA), recent population-based studies of disease-modifying antirheumatic ...

SALT LAKE CITY—As day-old embryos, fruit flies called Drosophila enter a stage in which their cells freely divide and proliferate as the insect grows dramatically in size. This is true for all animals, which undergo most of their growth prior to sexual maturation. Until now, researchers have known nothing about the metabolic state that occurs when cells divide during early development. But in a study published online Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2011, in Cell Metabolism, University of Utah human genetics researchers show that this cell division in Drosophila depends on a metabolic ...

PHILADELPHIA—Medical physicists at Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson's Kimmel Cancer Center have demonstrated a new real-time tumor tracking technique that can help minimize the amount of radiation delivered to surrounding healthy tissue in a patient—up to 50 percent less in some cases—and maximize the dose the tumor receives. Respiratory and cardiac motions have been found to displace and deform tumors in the lung, pancreas, liver, breast, and other organs. Because of this, radiation oncologists must expand the margin during radiotherapy. Consequently, a large ...

BOSTON – For-profit hospice agencies had a higher percentage of patients with diagnoses associated with less skilled care and longer lengths of stay (LOS) in hospice, than their nonprofit counterparts, a difference that may leave "nonprofit hospice agencies disproportionately caring for the most costly patients," Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center researchers report. The findings appear in the Feb.2 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). "There was a big increase in the number of for-profit hospice agencies from 2000 to 2007, and previous ...

As Internet authorities prepare to announce that they have handed over all of the available addresses, a USC research group that monitors address usage has completed the latest in its series of Internet censuses. There is some good news, according to computer scientist John Heideman, who heads a team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering Information Sciences Institute that has just released its results in the form of a detailed outline, including a 10-minute video and an interactive web browser that allows users to explore the nooks and crannies of Internet space themselves. video: ...

"Look to the ant thou sluggard and consider her ways and be wise." This proverbial wisdom was taken to heart recently by an international group of ant experts who have published the genome sequences of four ants in a series of coordinated releases in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The quartet includes the genomes of the red harvester ant Pogonomyrmex barbatus; the Argentine ant Linepithema humile; the fire ant Solenopsis invicta, and the leaf-cutter ant Atta cephalotes, whose genome will be published on Feb. 10 in Public Library of Science ...

In a global recession, most people are thankful to have a job, but a new study published in Interdisciplinary Environmental Review suggests that employees are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs if they are working for a company that is perceived to be "green", whereas the financial performance of companies fails to correlate with employee happiness. Cassandra Walsh and Adam Sulkowski, both of the Charlton College of Business at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, wanted to know whether employee morale is typically affected when a company is perceived as taking ...

Researchers from the Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine and the UAB Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology have developed and patented a method using Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast to detect in human proteins the formation of oligomers, small toxic aggregations of molecules which can initiate the assembly of amyloid fibres found in neurodegenerative diseases. The test allows validating the efficacy of compounds which could dissolve or inhibit these aggregates, as well as studying at basic level the therapeutic potentiality of a large number of molecules. ...

Invasive plant species present a serious environmental, economic and social problem worldwide as their abundance can lead to lost native biodiversity and ecosystem functions, such as nutrient cycling. Despite substantial research, little is known about why some species can dominate new habitats over native plants that technically should have the advantage. A common but rarely tested assumption is that these plants are more abundant in introduced versus native communities, because they are behaving in special way. If this true and introduced species are behaving in a special ...

Philadelphia, PA, 1 February 2011 - Opiate abuse is a chronic disorder and maintaining abstinence represents a major challenge for addicts. Individuals recovering from opiate dependence have long reported that while the acute withdrawal symptoms from opiates may pass relatively quickly, they do not feel quite right for several weeks or even months thereafter. Called the "protracted abstinence syndrome," this cluster of vague depressive-like symptoms can include reduced concentration, low energy level, poor sleep quality, and anhedonia. New data in animals, reported ...

Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have revealed a novel molecular mechanism that triggers plant infection by Pseudomonas syringae, the bacteria responsible for bacterial speck in tomatoes. The scientists from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London have revealed how two genes in the bacteria work together to launch the infection process that ultimately kills the plant's cells and causes disease, significantly reducing crop quality and yield. Pseudomonas syringae is responsible for major disease ...