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Genetically engineered potatoes offer new hope in the fight against the Hepatitis B

Genetically engineered potatoes offer new hope in the fight against the Hepatitis B Virus (HBV), an acute sometimes fatal form of viral hepatitis caused by a DNA virus that persists in the blood serum and is transmitted by sexual contact or by transfusion or by ingestion of contaminated blood or other bodily fluids.

14 Feb 2005

Mushrooms help lower cholesterol and keep hearts healthy

An analysis of previously uncharted chemical contents, mostly carbohydrates, in U.S.-consumed mushrooms shows that these fruity edible bodies of fungi could be tailored into dietary plans to help fill various nutritional needs.

14 Feb 2005

Personality needs to be considered when treating men and women with depression

Clinically depressed women are more likely than depressed men to see themselves as anxious, self-conscious and vulnerable, say researchers at the University of Toronto and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

14 Feb 2005

Wine keeps women's hearts beating healthily

The Swedish research team studied 102 women under the age of 75, all of whom had survived a heart attack or heart surgery for blocked arteries. All participants were asked to record their alcohol intake for one week after a year.

14 Feb 2005

Novel approach to treating hearing loss

GenVec today reported that encouraging preclinical findings on a novel approach to treating hearing loss have been published in the March 2005 issue of Nature Medicine.

14 Feb 2005

Clot-dissolving drugs such as tPA may help detect potentially deadly leg clots

A possible diagnostic use for clot-dissolving drugs such as tPA has been found by Medical College of Georgia researchers working to improve a test that identifies potentially deadly blood clots in the legs.

14 Feb 2005

Older heart transplant recipients fare just as well as their younger counterparts

Policy makers who use age as a discriminating factor in determining eligibility for heart transplant surgery may want to reconsider their rules in the light of new research at the University of Alberta.

14 Feb 2005

Blips and AIDS therapy

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have concluded that sudden, temporary spikes in the amount of HIV in the body, commonly called blips, do not always mean the virus is developing resistance to AIDS drugs.

14 Feb 2005

Key insight into the process of normal synapse development may lead to improved treatment of conditions such as drug addiction and epilepsy

Communication in the brain travels from one nerve cell to another through critical connections called synapses. These neuron-to-neuron junctions form early in brain development, and their construction was thought to be guided by the nerve cells themselves.

13 Feb 2005

Visual recognition begins with categorization

Take a moment and look at a picture near you. What did you see? How long did it take you to understand what was in the image, meaning how long did it take you to realize the green blob was a tree? Or that the orange circle was a piece of fruit? Most likely you assume that it took you no time at all, you just knew.

13 Feb 2005

New way of transporting medicines into the brain

Dutch researcher Corine Visser investigated a new way of transporting medicines into the brain. Her approach made use of an iron transport system located on the blood-brain barrier. The smaller the medicine, the more easily it penetrates the brain.

13 Feb 2005

Speed dating offers researchers a systematic look at the genuine behavior of people selecting mates

It seems that the heart wants what the heart wants -- and it can figure it out fairly quickly, according to evolutionary psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania. The researchers studied dating data from 10,526 anonymous participants of HurryDate, a company that organizes "speed dating" sessions, and found rare behavioral data on how people genuinely act in dating situations.

13 Feb 2005

Alcohol drinkers three times as lkely to die from injury

People who regularly drink alcohol are three times as likely to die from injury as are non-drinkers and former drinkers of alcohol, according to new research from the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

10 Feb 2005

St John's Wort helps treat depression

A specially manufactured extract from the herb St John's Wort is at least as effective in treating depression as a commonly prescribed anti-depressant, according to new research published on bmj.com today.

10 Feb 2005

Mouse allergen is everywhere in your house and triggers asthma in children

The amount of mouse allergen found in the air in many inner-city homes could be high enough to trigger asthma symptoms in the children who live there, say researchers at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

10 Feb 2005

Experimental drug Revlimid showing promise as treatment for myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS)

Alan List, M.D., leader of the Hematologic Malignancies Program at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, recently conducted a phase I/II trial of the experimental drug Revlimid showing promise as an innovative way to treat patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a form of pre-leukemia.

10 Feb 2005

Protective equipment used in rugby union has only limited effectiveness

Rugby Union has much in common with U.S. football and is played in over 120 countries throughout the world. Much of its value comes from its rich history, traditions, camaraderie and community involvement with the sport.

10 Feb 2005

Researchers show how attention enhances visual perception

The researchers, from NYU's Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, found that attending to, or selectively processing information from a given location without directing our eyes to that location, enhances performance in visual tasks as well as the neural activity underlying the processing of ensuing images. The results are published in the latest issue of the journal Neuron.

10 Feb 2005

Sudden emotional stress can result in severe but reversible heart muscle weakness

Shocking news, such as learning of the unexpected death of a loved one, has been known to cause catastrophic events, such as a heart attack.

10 Feb 2005

First evidence of cardiac progenitor cells

The first evidence of cardiac progenitor cells – rare, specialized stem cells located in the newborn heart of rats, mice and humans – has been shown by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. The cells are capable of differentiation into fully mature heart tissue.

10 Feb 2005