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Oily fish protect Japanese men against clogged arteries

If you're fishing for ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, you might start with the seafood-rich diet typically served up in Japan. According to new research, a lifetime of eating tuna, sardines, salmon and other fish appears to protect Japanese men against clogged arteries, despite other cardiovascular risk factors.

28 Jul 2008

Obesity gene makes it harder to tell if you feel full

A study involving more than 3,000 children in Britain has found those with a gene linked to obesity find it harder than others to tell when they are full.

28 Jul 2008

Genome sequencing study reveals new genetic typhoid fever signatures

For the first time, next-generation DNA sequencing technologies have been turned on typhoid fever - a disease that kills 600,000 people each year. The results will help to improve diagnosis, tracking of disease spread and could help to design new strategies for vaccination.

27 Jul 2008

Hyperactive immune resistance brings blindness in old age

Age-dependent macular degeneration (AMD) is the commonest cause of blindness in the western industrialised nations. Hereditary changes in the regulation of the immune system influence the risk of contracting AMD.

24 Jul 2008

Suprising finding on aging

Age may not be rust after all. Specific genetic instructions drive aging in worms, report researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Their discovery contradicts the prevailing theory that aging is a buildup of tissue damage akin to rust, and implies science might eventually halt or even reverse the ravages of age.

24 Jul 2008

Open access to large-scale drug discovery data

The Wellcome Trust has awarded £4.7 million (€5.8 million) to EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) to support the transfer of a large collection of information on the properties and activities of drugs and a large set of drug-like small molecules from publicly listed company Galapagos NV to the public domain.

23 Jul 2008

No doubt: sun causes melanomas

A leading University of Sydney researcher writes in the prestigious British Medical Journal today that claims that the sun is not the key cause of melanomas are false.

22 Jul 2008

Is staying out of the sun causing us more harm than good?

We are continuously bombarded with messages about the dangers of too much sun and the increased risk of melanoma (the less common and deadliest form of skin cancer), but are these dangers real, or is staying out of the sun causing us more harm than good?

22 Jul 2008

Roche acquires Mirus to advance RNAi delivery research

Roche (Basel) and Mirus Bio Corporation (Madison, WI, USA) announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Roche will acquire Mirus Bio Corporation, a privately-owned US company based in Madison, Wisconsin, that focuses on the discovery and development of innovative nucleic acid based technologies, including a proprietary RNAi (Ribonucleic Acid interference) delivery platform.

22 Jul 2008

Tobacco plant vaccine a cure for cancer?

Scientists in the U.S. say the tobacco plant could be used to "grow" key components of a cancer vaccine; they suggest that the same plant which is responsible for causing cancer may offer a way to treat the disease.

22 Jul 2008

Genetic mechanisms at play in blood cells important in Parkinson’s disease

What does the genetics of blood cells have to do with brain cells related to Parkinson's disease? From an unusual collaboration of neurologists and a pharmacologist comes the surprising answer: Genetic mechanisms at play in blood cells also control a gene and protein that cause Parkinson's disease.

21 Jul 2008

Gene expression test could help determine who needs more aggressive treatment

Researchers from four leading cancer centers have confirmed that an analysis involving a panel of genes can be used to predict which lung cancer patients will have the worst survival. The finding could one day lead to a test that would help determine who needs more aggressive treatment.

21 Jul 2008

21 new genes found for Crohn's disease

A consortium of researchers from the United States, Canada, and Europe has identified 21 new genes for Crohn's disease, a chronic disease of the large and small intestines.

21 Jul 2008

Evolutionary back-and-forth for humans and viruses

For millennia, humans and viruses have been locked in an evolutionary back-and-forth - one changes to outsmart the other, prompting the second to change and outsmart the first.

21 Jul 2008

Obsessive compulsive disorder linked to activity in lateral orbitofrontal cortex

Cambridge researchers have discovered that measuring activity in a region of the brain could help to identify people at risk of developing obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

19 Jul 2008

A glimpse of ancient RNA

Some bacterial cells can swim, morph into new forms and even become dangerously virulent - all without initial involvement of DNA. Yale University researchers describe Friday in the journal Science how bacteria accomplish this amazing feat - and in doing so provide a glimpse of what the earliest forms of life on Earth may have looked like.

19 Jul 2008

Functional human blood vessels grown in mice using cells from adult human donors

For the first time, researchers have successfully grown functional human blood vessels in mice using cells from adult human donors - an important step in developing clinical strategies to grow tissue, researchers report in Circulation Research: Journal of the American Heart Association.

19 Jul 2008

Breast cancer researchers call for ethnicity to be taken into account when developing treatments

Breast cancer research needs to investigate how a person's ethnicity influences their response to treatment and its outcome, according to a new Comment piece in today's Lancet by researchers from Imperial College London.

17 Jul 2008

Ovulation blocking gene found

A group of Canadian and European researchers have unlocked the mystery of a gene with the potential to both regulate and block ovulation.

17 Jul 2008

Selective face processing abnormalities in parents of autistic children

Some parents of children with autism evaluate facial expressions differently than the rest of us - and in a way that is strikingly similar to autistic patients themselves, according to new research by psychiatrist Dr. Joe Piven of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and neuroscientist Ralph Adolphs, Ph.D., of the California Institute of Technology.

17 Jul 2008