Nerve News and Research

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Danube Pharmaceuticals starts trial of DNB-001 in patients with ocular hypertension

Danube Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has announced the initiation of a multi-center, randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled Phase II study with DNB-001 in 60 patients with ocular hypertension (elevated intraocular pressure).

18 May 2007

Some children who are born deaf recover from their deafness

There are two causes of congenital deafness among children. One is the lack of hair cells, receptors in the inner ear that convert sounds into pulse signals that activate the auditory nerve.

17 May 2007

Culture techniques can significantly affect cell growth and function

When it comes to growing cells in a lab, technique matters. A new Brown University study shows that nerve cells grown in three-dimensional cultures use 1,766 genes differently compared to nerve cells grown in standard two-dimensional petri dishes.

17 May 2007

Study revises dynamin's role in nerve cell function

An unexpected finding on how nerve cells signal to one another could rewrite the textbooks on neuroscience, says a collaborative team of researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and Yale University.

17 May 2007

Cedars-Sinai helps Doug Fieger battle brain tumors

When singer/songwriter/guitarist Doug Fieger, lead singer of The Knack, found out last year that he had two brain tumors, he was concerned that either the tumors or the side effects of surgery would leave him unable to pursue his livelihood.

16 May 2007

Exercise shows beneficial effects in patients with Parkinson's disease

A new study from researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) shows that treadmill exercises may benefit patients with Parkinson's Disease and those with similar movement disorders.

16 May 2007

Chemical maps hint at drug's effects on schizophrenia

Antipsychotic drugs do most of their work in the brain, but they also leave behind in the bloodstream a trail of hundreds of chemicals that may be used in the future to direct better treatment for schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions, say Duke University Medical Center researchers.

16 May 2007

Nerves controlling muscles are best repaired with similar nerves

When repairing severed or damaged motor nerves with a donor nerve graft, surgeons have traditionally used a sensory nerve from another area of the patient's body.

16 May 2007

Fictive learning may play a role in addiction

"What might have been" or fictive learning affects the brain and plays an important role in the choices individuals make, and may play a role in addiction, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers and others in a report that appears online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

16 May 2007

Eating lots of fish plus vitamin D reduces risk of age-related macular degeneration

Individuals who have higher dietary intake of foods with omega-3 fatty acids and higher fish consumption have a reduced risk of advanced age-related macular degeneration, while those with higher serum levels of vitamin D may have a reduced risk of the early stages of the disease, according to two reports in the May issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

15 May 2007

Breakdown of myelin implicated in Alzheimer's

Wisdom comes with age (doesn't it"), but not without a process that takes place in the brain called myelination.

15 May 2007

Raynaud's disease review by Mayo Clinic Health Letter

There's a medical reason behind cold fingers and toes, when a chill seems to instantly turn extremities white.

10 May 2007

Researchers develop first antibody that detects gene mutations that cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Researchers at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Medicine have developed the first antibody that detects the only known cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig's disease.

9 May 2007

First comprehensive profile of cell movement

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have developed new technology which, combined with proteomics, the large-scale study of the structure and function of proteins and their functions, has allowed them to map an extensive network of the signaling proteins that control cell movement.

8 May 2007

Current approach to drug discovery for Lou Gehrig's disease be re-examined

Most research on Lou Gehrig's disease therapeutics has been based on the assumption that its two forms (sporadic and hereditary) are similar in their underlying cause.

8 May 2007

Brain cells 'talk' with each other in more ways than previously thought

Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered to their surprise that nerves in the mammalian brain's white matter do more than just ferry information between different brain regions, but in fact process information the way gray matter cells do.

8 May 2007

Antidepressants induce new nerve cell growth in the hippocampus

The growth of new nerve cells in the hippocampus has been suggested as the way antidepressants work in rodents, says Eric Nestler, MD, PhD, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

8 May 2007

Facts about rheumatoid arthritis and aging

For the better part of three decades, Sherrie Kossoudji has endeavored each day to manage the inflammation, chronic pain, tight joints and other types of physical strife caused by rheumatoid arthritis.

8 May 2007

Increasing SUMO protein in brain could be a way of treating epilepsy and schizophrenia

The brain contains about 100 million nerve cells, each having 10,000 connections to other nerves cells. These connections, called synapses, chemically transmit the information that controls all brain function via proteins called receptors. These processes are believed to be the basis of learning and memory.

7 May 2007

Tight diabetes control does not impact cognitive ability in type 1 diabetes

A study led by researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center provides good news for patients with type 1 diabetes who want to maintain tight blood glucose control and thus significantly reduce their risk of developing the devastating complications of the disease, heart disease, kidney failure, eye disease and blindness and nerve damage.

4 May 2007