University of Arizona researcher Michael Worobey and his team have discovered that the key to understanding influenza pandemics may lie in flu exposure during childhood
Just as the world was recovering from the devastation of World War I, another killer swept across the globe. A deadly flu virus attacked more than one-third of the world’s population, and within months had killed more than 50 million people – three times as many as the war – and had done it more quickly than any other illness in recorded history.(more…)
Researchers were able to improve walking and prolong survival in a mouse model by tweaking potassium levels
By boosting the ability of a specific type of cell to absorb potassium in the brain, UCLA researchers were able to improve walking and prolong survival in a mouse model of Huntington’s disease.
Their findings, published March 30 in the online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, could point to new drug targets for treating the devastating disease, which strikes one in every 20,000 Americans. (more…)
Hunderte Wirkstoffe und Abbauprodukte belasten Gewässer und Böden nahezu weltweit
Welches Ausmaß die Umweltbelastung mit Arzneimitteln erreicht, zeigt ein Forschungsprojekt im Auftrag des Umweltbundesamtes: Spuren von mehr als 630 verschiedenen Arzneimittelwirkstoffen sowie deren Abbauprodukte lassen sich in vielen Teilen der Erde nachweisen. Sie sind in Gewässern, Böden, Klärschlamm und Lebewesen zu finden. (more…)
Proteins called TAFs were once thought to be generic cogs in the machinery of gene expression, but in a new study Brown University scientists propose that they may be important suspects in the progression of ovarian cancer that should not continue to be overlooked.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In the complex genomic and molecular conspiracy that gives rise to ovarian cancer, what if researchers have been missing a whole set of suspects because they’ve been hiding in plain sight? That’s the argument made by Brown University biologists in a new paper that combines evidence from original research and prior studies to raise new suspicions about a set of proteins that assist in regulating gene expression. (more…)
People who care about justice are swayed more by reason than emotion, according to new brain scan research from the Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience.
Psychologists have found that some individuals react more strongly than others to situations that invoke a sense of justice—for example, seeing a person being treated unfairly or mercifully. The new study used brain scans to analyze the thought processes of people with high “justice sensitivity.” (more…)
Eating seven or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day reduces your risk of death at any point in time by 42% compared to eating less than one portion, reports a new UCL study.
Researchers used the Health Survey for England to study the eating habits of 65,226 people representative of the English population between 2001 and 2013, and found that the more fruit and vegetables they ate, the less likely they were to die at any age. Eating seven or more portions reduces the specific risks of death by cancer and heart disease by 25% and 31% respectively. The research also showed that vegetables have significantly higher health benefits than fruit. (more…)
Die detaillierte dreidimensionale Struktur des Transport-Proteins TSPO
eröffnet neue Wege für die Diagnostik und Therapie bestimmter Krankheiten
Wenn sie das Wort „Cholesterin“ hören, denken die meisten Menschen unvermittelt an zu fettiges Essen, schlechte Blutwerte und Herz-Kreislauf-Erkrankungen. Trotz seines Rufs ist Cholesterin für uns jedoch unverzichtbar: Es stabilisiert die Membranen unserer Zellen und ist Rohstoff für die Produktion verschiedener Hormone in den Kraftwerken der Zelle, den Mitochondrien. Göttinger Forscher haben nun erstmals im atomaren Detail die Struktur des molekularen Transporters TSPO aufgeklärt, der Cholesterin in die Mitochondrien einschleust. Zugleich dient TSPO als Andockstelle für diagnostische Marker und verschiedene Medikamente wie zum Beispiel Valium. Die detaillierten Kenntnisse seiner dreidimensionalen Form und Funktion eröffnen neue diagnostische und therapeutische Perspektiven. (Science, 21. März 2014) (more…)
New York City continues to battle an HIV epidemic, including among drug users. There are many possible interventions. Researchers have developed a sophisticated predictive computer model to help policymakers figure out which interventions, or combinations of interventions, would have the most meaningful impact.
Brandon Marshall, assistant professor of epidemiology at Brown University, has led the simulation effort ever since he was a postdoctoral scholar at Columbia University. In a new paper in the March edition of the journal Health Affairs a team from Brown and Columbia published the results of the simulation, which projects that New York can significantly reduce new infections among drug users by 2040 by implementing certain combinations of interventions. Marshall spoke with David Orenstein about what the predictive computer model shows. (more…)
