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Mina Bissell will never forget the reception she got from a prominent scientist visiting Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she worked. She gave him a paper she had just published on the genesis of cancer. “He took the paper and held it over the wastebasket and said, ‘What do you want me to do with it?’ Then he dropped it in.” That was 20 years ago, and ever since, Dr. Bissell and a few others have struggled for acceptance of what seemed a radical idea: Gene mutations are part of the process of cancer, but mutations alone are not enough....

By now, readers of Obesity Panacea (which just celebrated its 1 year anniversary!) have hopefully learned that excess weight is not directly predictive of health risk, and that excess fat mass is not in itself unhealthy. Recall that approximately 30% of individuals who are classified as obese by their body weight turn out to be metabolically healthy, and in fact seem not to get much metabolic benefit (or may even get worse) when they lose weight. Also consider that individuals who have NO fat tissue (e.g. lipodystrophy) have extremely elevated metabolic risk factors, meanwhile others who can apparently indefinitely grow...

While most of Europe and much of North America are currently in the middle of a cold snap, researchers trying to understand a heatwave that hit the northeastern United States in 2007 have found that Baltimore's sweltering temperatures were exacerbated by the presence of its neighbours, Washington DC and Columbia. Meteorologist Da-Lin Zhang at the University of Maryland in College Park and his colleagues used a three-dimensional meteorological model to investigate how weather and temperature change over time across the Baltimore and Washington DC region. Baltimore sits about 100 kilometres northeast of Washington, with Columbia about halfway between them.Zhang wanted...

In a developing animal, stem cells proliferate and differentiate to form the organs needed for life. A new study shows how a crucial step in this process happens and how a reversal of that step contributes to cancer. The study, led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center-Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, shows for the first time that three proteins, called E2f1, E2f2 and E2f3, play a key role in the transition stem cells make to their final, differentiated, state. These proteins help stimulate stem cells to grow and proliferate. But...

Researchers at National Jewish Health have discovered that a naturally occurring lipid in the lung can prevent RSV infection and inhibit spread of the virus after an infection is established. RSV is the major cause of hospitalization for children in the first two years of life, and is increasingly recognized as a dangerous pathogen in adults with chronic lung diseases, the elderly, and immunocompromised individuals. Currently, there is no effective vaccine for the virus. The findings, published in the December 21, 2009, issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also help explain how the lipid, known as...

Scientists seeking to understand how to make an AIDS vaccine have found the cause of a major roadblock. It turns out that the immune system can indeed produce cells with the potential to manufacture powerful HIV-blocking antibodies – but at the same time, the immune system works equally hard to make sure these cells are eliminated before they have a chance to mature. "These studies show that a potentially protective neutralizing antibody against a viral disease is under the control of immunological tolerance," said Barton Haynes, M.D., director of the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI) at Duke University Medical...

The human body may be equipped with a separate sensory system aside from the nerves that gives us the ability to touch and feel, according to a new study. Most of us have millions of different types of nerve endings just beneath the skin that let us feel our surroundings. However, the once-hidden and recently discovered skin sense, found in two patients, is located throughout the blood vessels and sweat glands, and most of us don’t even notice it’s there. “It’s almost like hearing the subtle sound of a single instrument in the midst of a symphony,” said senior author...

BUFFALO — Many 4-year-olds cannot count up to their own age when they arrive at preschool, and those at the Stanley M. Makowski Early Childhood Center are hardly prodigies. Most live in this city’s poorer districts and begin their academic life well behind the curve. But there they were on a recent Wednesday morning, three months into the school year, counting up to seven and higher, even doing some elementary addition and subtraction. At recess, one boy, Joshua, used a pointer to illustrate a math concept known as cardinality, by completing place settings on a whiteboard. “You just put one...

FRIDAY, Dec. 18 (HealthDay News) -- The brains of autistic people are less active than expected when they're engaged in self-reflective thought, a finding that helps explain autism-related social difficulties, say British researchers. Using functional MRI, they measured the brain activity of 66 males, half of whom had autism, while they were asked questions about their own or the Queen's thoughts, opinions,preferences, or physical characteristics. The researchers were particularly interested in an area of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is known to be active when people think about themselves. In non-autistic volunteers, this part of the brain...

LET me start by saying I’m a fan of generic drugs. They save Americans billions of dollars each year and give us access to wonderful drugs at affordable prices. I’ve recommended generics in this column many times and use them myself when possible. But there is a gnawing concern among some doctors and researchers that certain prescription generic drugs may not work as well as their brand-name counterparts. The problem is not pervasive, but it’s something consumers should be aware of — especially now that more insurers insist that patients take generic medications when they are available. Let me also......

Russia has reneged on an agreement to deliver a total of 10 kilograms of plutonium-238 to the United States in 2010 and 2011 and is insisting on a new deal for the costly material vital to NASA’s deep space exploration plans. The move follows the U.S. Congress’ denial of President Barack Obama’s request for $30 million in 2010 to permit the Department of Energy to begin the painstaking process of restarting domestic production of plutonium-238. Bringing U.S. nuclear laboratories back on line to produce the isotope is expected to cost at least $150 million and take six years to seven...

A mysterious blue spiral light that appeared in the skies above Norway was likely the result of a failed test launch of a jinxed new Russian missile, the UK’s Mail Online reported. Several newspapers in Moscow today ran a story explaining that the Bulava missile was test-fired from the Dmitry Donskoi submarine in the White Sea early on Wednesday but failed at the third stage. However, earlier reports from Moscow denied a missile launch yesterday and even early today there was no formal confirmation from the Russian Defense Ministry. Some speculators felt the lights were connected with the aurora borealis,...

New species might arise as a result of single rare events, rather than through the gradual accumulation of many small changes over time, according to a study of thousands of species and their evolutionary family trees. This contradicts a widely accepted theory of how speciation occurs: that species are continually changing to keep pace with their environment, and that new species emerge as these changes accrue. Known as the 'Red Queen' hypothesis, it is named after the character in Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There who tells a surprised Alice: "Here, you see, it takes...

A temporal twist to a therapeutic technique could block old terrors. Fearful memories can be wiped out for at least a year using a drug-free technique, according to a study done in the United States. The technique exploits the way that human brains store and recall memories. When a long-term memory is recalled, it goes through a brief period of vulnerability, after which it must be stored anew to be remembered again. While the memory is in its fragile state, it can be modified or disrupted. Studies in animals1 have used drugs to interfere with this reconsolidation process, stirring hope...

Researchers have come up with a completely new way to thwart hepatitis C: Go after the host, not the virus. Genetically silencing a small piece of RNA in chimpanzees effectively suppresses the hepatitis C virus (HCV), a new study shows--and the virus appears unable to become resistant to the treatment. But experts caution that the approach needs to be scrutinized carefully for side effects. New drugs against HCV are badly needed. More than 170 million people worldwide have contracted the virus, which is transmitted primarily via injection drug use and through the transfusion of blood and blood products. The virus...

Autism and schizophrenia may be two sides of the same coin, suggests a review of genetic data associated with the conditions. The finding could help design complementary treatments for the two disorders. Though autism was originally described as a form of schizophrenia a century ago, evidence for a link has remained equivocal. One theory puts the conditions at opposite ends of a developmental spectrum. To investigate, Bernard Crespi, an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues gathered data on all known genetic variants associated with each condition, then looked for patterns of co-occurrence. The researchers found...

Patient Money WHEN I stock up on ibuprofen (my painkiller of choice), I typically buy a 500-count bottle of a store brand like Kirkland or Rite Aid. After all, ibuprofen is ibuprofen. Each pill costs me about 3 cents — or only one-third the cost of 9-cent Advil. Yet, when it comes to vitamins — which I take only when I feel run down — I turn to name brands like Centrum or Nature Made. My thinking has been: Why mess around with quality when it comes to the essential ABCs? But now that I’ve done some research, I might...

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MDThere is more evidence that breastfeeding benefits moms as well as their babies.Breastfeeding was shown to significantly lower a woman's risk for developing metabolic syndrome in a study reported today by researchers with Kaiser Permanente.The longer the women in the study breastfed, the more protection they seemed to derive. Is Your Type 2 Diabetes Under Control? Get Your Health Score Insulin Resistance, Belly Fat Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors linked to both diabetes and heart disease, including elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance, and belly fat.The new study is one of the most rigorously...

Seismic experiment gives best evidence yet for mantle plumes. Geologists have obtained the best image yet of a plume of hot rock that rises from Earth's deep mantle and fuels the volcanoes of the Hawaiian islands. The study, led by geophysicist Cecily Wolfe at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, reveals the structure of the plume down to at least 1,500 kilometres. Critics have questioned in recent years whether such plumes even exist. "This is a spectacular experiment that succeeded in getting data for putting the plume theory to the test," says Wolfe. The results are published this...

Rinderpest will be only the second disease to be wiped out. Rinderpest, the world's most devastating cattle disease, will be declared eradicated within 18 months, according to world health bodies. The effort will make it only the second disease to be wiped from the globe — the first was smallpox, eradicated in 1980. "Rinderpest tops the list of killer diseases [in animals]," says Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome. It not only kills cattle and other wildlife, it also causes famines when people in developing countries lose the...

At A Glance A large-scale clinical trial has found that annual screening with ultrasound in addition to mammography may find more cancers in women with dense breasts who are at elevated risk for breast cancer.For some groups of women, screening with MRI in addition to mammography helps detect breast cancer at an earlier stage.Supplemental screening with ultrasound or MRI increases the risk of false-positive findings. Media Contacts: RSNA Media Relations: (630) 590-7762 Maureen Morley (630) 590-7754mmorley@rsna.org Linda Brooks1-630-590-7738lbrooks@rsna.org CHICAGO — Results of a large-scale clinical trial presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America...

At A Glance Two studies explored ultrasound as an alternative to invasive biopsies for young women with lumps or other specific, localized signs or symptoms.Targeted breast ultrasound successfully distinguished between benign and cancerous tumors in all cases across both studies.The researchers recommend ultrasound as the tool of choice for evaluating palpable lumps in the under-40 population. Media Contacts: RSNA Newsroom 1-312-949-3233 Before 11/28/09 or after 12/03/09: RSNA Media Relations: 1-630- 590-7762 Linda Brooks1-630-590-7738lbrooks@rsna.org Maureen Morley1-630-590-7754mmorley@rsna.org CHICAGO — Targeted breast ultrasound of suspicious areas of the breast, including lumps, is a safe, reliable and cost-effective alternative to invasive biopsies for...

For young women who have a high risk of breast cancer because of genetic mutations or family history, the radiation from yearly mammograms may make the risk even higher, researchers reported at a radiology conference on Monday. The report is particularly troubling because it suggests that the very women who are told they need mammograms most may also be the most vulnerable to harm from them. Doctors routinely urge high-risk women to have mammograms earlier in life and more often than women judged to be at average risk. Researchers caution that the new report is not conclusive, and that the...

Global Update A new drug-resistant strain of bacteria has emerged in the last decade in Africa and is causing unusual numbers of deaths there, British and African researchers said on Monday. The strain, a variant of Salmonella typhimurium, is named ST313. Its genome was decoded by researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and researchers in Kenya and Malawi. While most salmonella bacteria cause diarrhea and are rarely fatal, this one causes death in one of four cases among children and vulnerable adults in some African regions, the researchers said. Many of its victims have been weakened by the AIDS...

The World Health Organization tried this week to dampen fears about mutations seen in the swine flu virus in several countries, noting that both mutations had been found in very few people. A change that created Tamiflu resistance has been found in about 75 people around the world, said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, chief flu adviser to the W.H.O.’s director general. Two clusters, in cancer units at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina and a hospital in Wales, were both among patients whose immune systems had been severely suppressed by cancer treatment; some had had their bone marrow, which produces...

<p>The blueprint of a small organism's cellular machinery has been unveiled, offering the most comprehensive view yet of the molecular essentials of life. But the research also shows just how far biologists have to go before they understand the complete biochemical basis of even the simplest of creatures.</p>

Scientists in the US have discovered a new class of biological antifreeze molecules - the first that do not contain proteins. The antifreeze, extracted from an Alaskan beetle capable of surviving at -60°C, consists of linked mannopyranose and xylopyranose sugars, termed xylomannan, associated with a lipid. Large molecules that cause thermal hysteresis - a difference between the melting and freezing points of a solution - have been identified in many organisms that survive in the cold, from Antarctic fish to plants and bacteria. In all cases identified so far, thermal hysteresis appears to be caused by proteins, known as antifreeze proteins or...

Boosting the level of a brain chemical reverses learning impairments in a mouse model of Down syndrome, researchers report. The work adds to emerging evidence that cognition-enhancing drugs may one day help humans with Down syndrome lead more independent lives. Down syndrome is the most common cause of mental retardation, affecting approximately one in 800 babies at birth. People with the disorder have an extra copy of chromosome 21, giving them additional copies of hundreds of genes. This somehow alters brain development and causes mild to severe learning disabilities. To investigate what goes wrong in the brain of someone who...

Enlarge ImageGreen gold. A complex geological process produced this sample of nickel sulfide. Credit: Marco Fiorentini, Science Those spare nickels in your pocket might not be there without the help of ancient volcanoes that blasted sulfur dioxide into the sky billions of years ago. The discovery solves a mystery that has dogged researchers for decades, says geochemist Edward Ripley of Indiana University, Bloomington, who was not affiliated with the study. The nickel in ore deposits is actually nickel sulfide, a compound that is rich in sulfur. The sulfur is "critically important," says geochemist Douglas Rumble of the Carnegie Institution...

The findings led to an early halt of a small study comparing Niaspan and Zetia, two compounds commonly used along with statins to reduce heart attack risk ORLANDO, Fla. — Adding a pharmaceutical form of the B vitamin niacin — but not the drug ezetimibe — to a cholesterol-lowering statin drug appears to reduce artery plaque buildup in patients with coronary artery disease, according to much-anticipated results announced at a press conference November 15. The results were from a study that was relatively small — only 208 patients — but provided a head-to-head comparison of niacin and ezetimibe, known by...

SAN FRANCISCO — Only 21% of Massachusetts women older than age 40 years were not in mammographic screening programs. Yet unscreened women accounted for 75% of the breast cancer deaths in an analysis of data on 6,997 invasive breast cancers diagnosed in 1990-1999 and followed through 2007. “The most effective method for women to avoid death from breast cancer is to have regular mammographic screening,” Dr. Blake Cady said at a breast cancer symposium sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, where he presented the data. Extrapolation from the study's results suggests that for the projected 192,370 women nationwide...

Controversy over the benefits of screening for breast cancer and prostate cancer hit the headlines and the blogosphere when the New York Times reported that the American Cancer Society is planning to temper its proscreening message for breast and prostate cancers, and a prominent representative of the society denied it on his blog. By the end of the day, the society's chief medical officer, Dr. Otis W. Brawley, posted a firm statement that the ACS stands by its screening guidelines. “The bottom line is that mammography has helped avert deaths from breast cancer, and we can make more progress against...

Tufts University researchers have identified a gene-diet interaction that appears to influence body weight and have replicated their findings in three independent studies. Men and women carrying the CC genotype demonstrated higher body mass index (BMI) scores and a higher incidence of obesity, but only if they consumed a diet high in saturated fat. These associations were seen in the apolipoprotein A-II gene (APOA2) promoter. "We believe this is the first time a gene-diet interaction influencing BMI and obesity has been replicated in as many as three independent study populations," says corresponding and senior author Jose Ordovas, PhD, director of...

More than a decade after Congress directed the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to carry out assessments of endocrine disrupting chemicals, the agency has announced the first set of compounds to be screened under its Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP). Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can affect hormones produced by the endocrine system, which regulate growth, metabolism and reproduction.The EPA has requested that manufacturers screen seven compounds under this  first round, including atrazine - a widely used herbicide that may be associated with birth defects, low birth weight and menstrual problems. Although banned in Europe, atrazine remains prevalent in the US, with...

Enlarge ImageHigh anxiety. Rats "addicted" to sugary food spent less time on the open parts of this maze. Credit: Pietro Cottone If you're constantly starting new diets, then breaking them, you may have more in common with a drug addict than you know. A new study suggests that yo-yo dieters experience the same stressful pangs of withdrawal when they go on a diet that addicts experience when they go cold turkey. The idea that bad food can be addictive is not new. But previous studies have tended to focus on the positive reinforcement side of the equation--for example, the...

Move over, red wine. Make room for chocolate milk. A new study suggests that regular consumption of skim milk with flavonoid-rich cocoa may reduce inflammation, potentially slowing or preventing development of atherosclerosis. Researchers noted, however, that the effect was not as pronounced as that seen with red wine. Scientists in Barcelona, Spain, recruited 47 volunteers ages 55 and older who were at risk for heart disease. Half were given 20-gram sachets of soluble cocoa powder to drink with skim milk twice a day, while the rest drank plain skim milk. After one month, the groups were switched. Blood tests found...

Many strokes cannot be explained by known risk factors like high blood pressure and smoking, and scientists have speculated that infection could play a role. A new study is linking cumulative exposure to five common pathogens with an increased risk for stroke. The infections in order of significance are Chlamydia pneumoniae, Helicobacter pylori, cytomegalovirus and herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2, according to the study, published online on Nov. 9 in The Archives of Neurology. “Each of these common pathogens may persist after an acute infection and contribute to perpetuating a state of chronic low-level infection,” said the paper’s lead...

Scientists from Germany and Israel have caught a fleeting glimpse of carbonic acid, the simple yet elusive molecule that plays a key role in nature, from regulating the pH of blood to mediating crucial events in the global carbon cycle. And it appears that the acid is not as weak as the textbooks would have us believe.Carbonic acid, the hydrated form of carbon dioxide, is an important molecule that is involved in buffering biological fluids such as blood and is a key intermediate in the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the oceans. However, it is so short-lived in solution...

Forty Years' War Many Americans do not think twice about taking medicines to prevent heart disease and stroke. But cancer is different. Much of what Americans do in the name of warding off cancer has not been shown to matter, and some things are actually harmful. Yet the few medicines proved to deter cancer are widely ignored. Take prostate cancer, the second-most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States, surpassed only by easily treated skin cancers. More than 192,000 cases of it will be diagnosed this year, and more than 27,000 men will die from it. And, it turns out,...

AP Science Writer Male factory workers in China who got very high doses of a chemical that's been widely used in hard plastic bottles had high rates of sexual problems, researchers reported Wednesday. Heavy exposure to BPA, or bisphenol A, on the job was linked to impotence and lower sexual desire and satisfaction, according to the study, which adds to concerns about BPA's effects on most consumers. The men in the study experienced BPA levels about 50 times higher than those faced by typical American men, said researcher Dr. De-Kun Li. "We don't know" whether more typical doses have similar...

Induced pluripotent stem cells could be a boon for regenerative medicine.REUTERS/Junying Yu/University of Wisconsin-Madison Given the right conditions, any adult cell can be coaxed into becoming stem-cell like, according to a team of researchers based in the United States. The team, led by Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were also able to speed up the process, cutting the time required for cells to become stem-cell like by around half. The results are good news for those battling to work out the complex biology of these cells, know as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells...

A treatment based on HIV finds first success in humans.Researchers have halted a fatal brain disease by delivering a therapeutic gene to the stem cells that mature into blood cells. The gene was transferred using a virus derived from HIV, a technique that researchers have pursued for more than a decade but has not been successful in humans until now. Together with his colleagues, paediatric neurologist Patrick Aubourg at INSERM — France's main biomedical research agency — and at the Saint-Vincent de Paul Hospital in Paris, developed the system to treat X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), a neurodegenerative disease that affects young...

With new studies showing the sun vitamin may slow come cancers, some physicians are eager to add it to treatment programs Responding to research indicating that vitamin D may slow the progression of breast, colon and other common cancers, some doctors have begun adding the supplement to their tool kit of cancer therapies alongside more conventional treatments such as radiation, surgery and chemotherapy. While not all physicians are convinced the evidence is strong enough to warrant taking an extra dollop of the sunshine vitamin, those recommending the course say popping the pills is a simple health strategy that has few,...

Scientists from the UK are waging war on hospital 'superbugs' with a highly effective antimicrobial organo-silver coatingToby Jenkins and colleagues at the University of Bath have used a plasma to create a simple means to deposit a silver maleimide complex onto three-dimensional objects. An added benefit is that it can be done at room temperature so can be used on plastic and fabric, such as catheters and dressings too. 'Our system is, to the best of our knowledge, the only one to use plasma to deposit an organo-silver film,' says Jenkins. And as only a small amount of the silver monomer...

Myriad of Compounds Intended to Stop the Progression of Metabolic Diseases Moves Through the PipelineThe competition to develop new therapeutics targeting metabolic disease is heating up. Here’s why: the latest estimates from the American Diabetes Association state that there are nearly 24 million Americans with diabetes. In addition, approximately 32% of American adults are medically obese. Many companies have honed in on this large and growing market, and several of them presented their latest findings at IQPC’s “Groundbreaking Advances and Key Opinions in Metabolic Diseases Drug Discovery and Development� held recently in San Francisco. “When we founded the company, we...

Tumor-Specific Antigens Could Positively Impact Diagnosis, Imaging, and TherapyThe medical literature abounds with examples of the benefits of early cancer detection. Cure rates are always dramatically higher before the tumor has spread and while surgery is still an option. For example in cervical cancer, detection at the earliest stages of the disease is associated with a 99% five-year survival rate. Similarly encouraging statistics may be found for cancers of the breast, ovaries, colon, skin, and other sites. Cancer detected through physical examination or medical imaging is usually too advanced for hope of a cure, which has led to an explosion...

High rates of premature birth are the main reason the United States has higher infant mortality than do many other rich countries, government researchers reported Tuesday in their first detailed analysis of a longstanding problem. In Sweden, for instance, 6.3 percent of births were premature, compared with 12.4 percent in the United States in 2005, the latest year for which international rankings are available. Infant mortality also... --snip-- Dr. Fleischman said the smallest, earliest and most fragile babies were often born to poor and minority women who lacked health care and social support. The highest rates of infant mortality occur...

I don’t often write about alternative remedies for serious medical conditions. Most have little more than anecdotal support, and few have been found effective in well-designed clinical trials. Such trials randomly assign patients to one of two or more treatments and, wherever possible, assess the results without telling either the patients or evaluators who received which treatment. Now, however, in describing an alternative treatment for asthma that does not yet have top clinical ratings in this country (although it is taught in Russian medical schools and covered by insurance in Australia), I am going beyond my usually stringent research criteria...

Concern over the H1N1 swine flu has inundated the airwaves and the newspapers since active swine flu was first identified in Mexico in April. And though the panic has waned slightly in recent weeks because this variant of the flu is not living down to its deadly predictions (in fact, it’s not even as deadly as the seasonal flu), for many people, if not most people, perception trumps facts and statistics, and so there have been mass mobilizations to combat the contagion.  The campaign has included classes to convince people to avoid unnecessary contact with others; a huge expenditure to...

Death from the flu is often heartrending for those who have to watch: the victim, having been weakened from the flu virus, contracts pneumonia from bacteria or viruses that have taken hold in the lungs, and he or she struggles for every breath.  The victim’s breathing is often raspy, and it is abnormally fast, like the panting of a worn-out dog. As the victim’s body fights the lung infection, the lungs fill with pus and other fluids, cutting off the flow of oxygen and causing the victim to turn colors — from shades of gray to a bluish purple. The...