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Special computer algorithms can help doctors to make rapid diagnoses of known diseases

Just like urine and blood, breath contains traces of the products of metabolism. Such products can also be signs of infection, inflammation or cancer. For their analysis, computational bioinformatics researchers at the Cluster of Excellence "Multimodal Computing and Interaction" at Saarland University developed special computer algorithms that can help doctors to make diagnoses quickly and reliably.

5 Mar 2012

Bovine collagen can enhance gum healing

Receding gums often result in tooth sensitivity and can lead to decay of the root and persistent inflammation of the gum. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Head & Face Medicine demonstrates that a novel method using bovine collagen is able to enhance gum healing. This resulted in thicker margins around the tooth and, in over half the cases, complete coverage of exposed roots.

5 Mar 2012

X-rays help decipher how natural antibiotics defy a longstanding set of chemical rules

Researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used powerful X-rays to help decipher how certain natural antibiotics defy a longstanding set of chemical rules - a mechanism that has baffled organic chemists for decades.

4 Mar 2012

Polymer-based medical implants can produce harmful free radicals

A polymer is a mesh of chains, which slowly break over time due to the pressure from ordinary wear and tear. When a polymer is squeezed, the pressure breaks chemical bonds and produces free radicals: ions with unpaired electrons, full of untapped energy. These molecules are responsible for aging, DNA damage and cancer in the human body.

3 Mar 2012

Bacteria may be talking to each other with a contact-dependent language

What if bacteria could talk to each other? What if they had a sense of touch? A new study by researchers at UC Santa Barbara suggests both, and theorizes that such cells may, in fact, need to communicate in order to perform certain functions. The findings appear today in the journal Genes & Development.

2 Mar 2012

Scientists determine chemical features of DHPS enzyme's active site

More than 70 years after the first sulfa drugs helped to revolutionize medical care and save millions of lives, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have determined at an atomic level the mechanism these medications use to kill bacteria. The discovery provides the basis for a new generation of antibiotics that would likely be harder for bacteria to resist and cause fewer side effects.

2 Mar 2012

Researchers confirm how food poisoning bacteria hijack cell's sense of direction

Working in the emerging field of systems biology, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers mathematically predicted how bacteria that cause food poisoning hijack a cell's sense of direction and then confirmed those predictions in living cells.

2 Mar 2012

New prebiotic formula helps colonize newborn's gut with beneficial bacteria

Adding prebiotic ingredients to infant formula helps colonize the newborn's gut with a stable population of beneficial bacteria, and probiotics enhance immunity in formula-fed infants, two University of Illinois studies report.

1 Mar 2012

Pregnant women and oral health

Oral health doesn't always top the list of concerns that expectant mothers may have, but it certainly should. Proper dental health and control of oral disease can safeguard a mother's health before and during pregnancy and reduces the transmission of bacteria from women to their children.

1 Mar 2012

Glucose meter could be adapted to monitor DNA

An inexpensive device used by millions of people with diabetes could be adapted into a home DNA detector that enables individuals to perform home tests for viruses and bacteria in human body fluids, in food and in other substances, scientists are reporting in a new study.

1 Mar 2012

Researchers observe how cholera decimates competing bacteria and human cells

Bacteria live in a state of perpetual warfare, with different species battling for dominion over their competitors and when pathogen, over their infected host. New research suggests that the human pathogen Vibrio cholerae, which causes the disease cholera, kills off its microbial rivals by jabbing them with a spring-loaded poison dagger.

1 Mar 2012

Coloplast's InterDry textile receives Most Innovative New Product award from NAFC

The National Association For Continence (NAFC) presented the Most Innovative New Product award to Coloplast for its new product, InterDry Ag, a textile that helps reduce the risk of moisture-associated skin damage, most often diagnosed as intertriginous dermatitis (intertrigo).

29 Feb 2012

Breakthrough discovery about Rhizobium radiobacter

A new discovery involving two Simon Fraser University scientists could lead to a little known and benign bacterium becoming a vital new tool in the development of a vaccine against human immunodeficiency virus.

29 Feb 2012

Genome sequencing helps characterize S. aureus ST398-NM strain

Using genome sequencing and household surveillance, National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists and their colleagues from Columbia University Medical Center and St. George's University of London have pieced together how a newly emerging type of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria has adapted to transmit more easily among humans.

29 Feb 2012

Scientists discover new pathway necessary for infection to occur with N. gonorrhoeae

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have for the first time identified a novel pathway that is necessary for infection to occur with the pathogen Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which is responsible for the second most common infectious disease worldwide, gonorrhea.

28 Feb 2012

Low and high ID50 bacteria act through stealth and frontal attack

Why is it that Mycobacterium tuberculosis can cause tuberculosis with as little as 10 cells, whereas Vibrio cholerae requires the host to ingest up to tens of millions of cells to cause cholera? This is the question that two research teams, from the Pasteur Institute, in France, and the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia and the University of Lisbon, in Portugal, answer in the latest issue of the journal PLoS Pathogens.

28 Feb 2012

Study finds traces of bacteria listeria in ready-to-eat fish products in Vancouver

A University of British Columbia study has found traces of the bacteria listeria in ready-to-eat fish products sold in Metro Vancouver, Canada.

28 Feb 2012

USPTO issues two patents on 'Novel Shigella protein antigens and methods' to IVI

The International Vaccine Institute (IVI), an international organization based in Seoul devoted to research on the development and introduction of vaccines for the developing world, reached a milestone in its aim to prevent and control dysentery (also commonly called shigellosis or bloody diarrhea), a deadly disease that affects several million people worldwide.

27 Feb 2012

BioConnections, Yissum to commercialize kits that detect MDR and XDR infections

Yissum, the research and development company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, had signed a licensing agreement with BioConnections, a UK based microbiology company, for the commercialization of kits that enables immediate detection of all multidrug resistant (MDR) and of any extremely drug resistant (XDR) infections.

27 Feb 2012