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Newly Published Study Looks At What Goes Wrong In Alzheimer’s

August 6, 2011 By

What goes wrong in Alzheimer’s disease? Scientists know some things – that abnormal plaques derived from fragments of a protein called APP build up in the Alzheimer’s brain, for example, and that tangles of another protein, tau, build up too.

But there’s a lot that scientists don’t yet understand. And, as we know, effective treatments for Alzheimer’s are thin on the ground.

A study just published in the journal Cell may offer a better way to study what goes wrong in Alzheimer’s, its authors say, and also potentially provide a source of replacement tissues down the road, as well as a way to test drugs in the lab.

The researchers started with cultures of human skin cells growing in a dish – and turned them into nerve cells. They did this by infecting the cells with a few key genes carried into the cells by a virus, and bathing the cells in the right cocktail of growth factors. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Disease, Health Care, Medical Research & Study

A Case For Camel Milk

July 19, 2011 By

Researchers from the Veterinary College at Anand Agricultural University (AAU), Gujarat, have found camel milk to be beneficial against a number of diseases, chief among them diabetes.

“We recently conducted in vitro tests, initiating diabetes in Wistar rats by injecting them with Streptozotocin. Then we fed them camel milk and found blood glucose levels dropped by 30 per cent,” said Professor K N Wadhwani, head of the college’s livestock production department.

The researchers, who have been working with conservationists to save the camels of Kutch district, also said that camel milk can be stored for 10 hours at room temperature and for 25 days at 4 degrees C. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Biotechnology, Medical Research & Study Tagged With: ,

U.S. Decrees That Marijuana Has No Accepted Medical Use

July 11, 2011 By

The decision by the DEA comes almost nine years after medical marijuana supporters asked the government to reclassify cannabis to take into account a growing body of research that shows its effectiveness in treating certain diseases.

Marijuana has been approved by California, many other states and the nation’s capital to treat a range of illnesses, but in a decision announced Friday the federal government ruled that it has no accepted medical use and should remain classified as a highly dangerous drug like heroin.

The decision comes almost nine years after medical marijuana supporters asked the government to reclassify cannabis to take into account a growing body of worldwide research that shows its effectiveness in treating certain diseases, such as glaucoma and multiple sclerosis. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Health Care, Humanities, Medical Research & Study

Uncovering The Neurobiological Basis Of General Anesthesia

December 30, 2010 By

The use of general anesthesia is a routine part of surgical operations at hospitals and medical facilities around the world, but the precise biological mechanisms that underlie anesthetic drugs’ effects on the brain and the body are only beginning to be understood. A review article in the December 30 New England Journal of Medicine brings together for the first time information from a range of disciplines, including neuroscience and sleep medicine, to lay the groundwork for more comprehensive investigations of processes underlying general anesthesia.

“A key point of this article is to lay out a conceptual framework for understanding general anesthesia by discussing its relation to sleep and coma, something that has not been done in this way before,” says Emery Brown, MD, PhD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, lead author of the NEJM paper. “We started by stating the specific physiological states that comprise general anesthesia – unconsciousness, amnesia, lack of pain perception and lack of movement while stable cardiovascular, respiratory and thermoregulatory systems are maintained – another thing that has never been agreed upon in the literature; and then we looked at how it is similar to and different from the states that are most similar – sleep and coma.” [Read more...]

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Why Women Live Longer Than Men: Male Bodies Are Much More Genetically ‘Disposable’

October 26, 2010 By

It is the ultimate battle of the sexes – and women usually win.

Now scientists have come up with a new theory for why woman live, on average, longer than men: men are more biologically ‘disposable’.

The controversial theory, developed by Professor Tom Kirkwood of the University of Newcastle, suggests that the female body is better at carrying out routine maintenance and keeping the body’s cells alive.

Professor Kirkwood believes there is now growing evidence to suggest that men are more disposable than women, because the cells of their bodies are not genetically programmed to last as long as they are in females. [Read more...]

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Smoking Quadruples A Woman’s Risk Of Having An Ectopic Pregnancy

September 27, 2010 By

The study shows how components of cigarette smoke enter the bloodstream and affect seemingly unconnected parts of the body like the reproductive tract

The study shows how components of cigarette smoke enter the bloodstream and affect seemingly unconnected parts of the body like the reproductive tract

Scientists have discovered why women who smoke have a higher risk of developing ectopic pregnancies.

Ectopic pregnancies occur when the fertilised egg becomes implanted outside the womb, usually in the fallopian tubes.

There are around 30,000 cases in the UK each year but female smokers have quadruple the risk of developing this condition. [Read more...]

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Scientists Use Synthetic Corneas To Restore Vision

August 28, 2010 By

Scientists in Canada and Sweden have used laboratory-made biosynthetic corneas to restore vision to patients in a small human trial, and shown for the first time that they can help to repair damaged eye tissue.

The scientists, whose work was published on Wednesday in the Science Translational Medicine journal, said their findings offered hope for the millions of people who go blind each year because of a worldwide shortage of corneas for donation.

“This study … is the first to show that an artificially fabricated cornea can integrate with the human eye and stimulate regeneration,” said May Griffith of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, who led the study. [Read more...]

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