news 2012

Medicine/Pharmacology - Life Sciences - 23.05
Stroke clot-buster trial shows benefits
Researchers find that stroke survivors are more able to look after themselves following treatment with rt-PA. Patients given a clot-busting drug within six hours of a stroke are more likely to make a better recovery than those who do not receive the treatment.

Medicine/Pharmacology - Life Sciences - 23.05
The power of thinking big
Population studies on a vast scale are providing the power to provide accurate risk assessment - and intervention - into cardiovascular disease. —Professor John Danesh Scientists have learned a great deal about the risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD), the group of conditions that includes heart disease and stroke and which kills one in three people in the UK, through studying the health of large numbers of people.

Life Sciences - Medicine/Pharmacology - 22.05
Getting smarter while getting older
Brains that maintain healthy nerve connections as we age help keep us sharp in later life. An Age UK-funded project at the University has found that older people with robust brain wiring - that is, the nerve fibres that connect different, distant brain areas - can process information quickly and that this makes them generally smarter.

Agronomy/Food Science - Medicine/Pharmacology - 22.05
Study suggests one-third of US homeless are obese
A new study dispels the myth that in general the homeless are starving and underweight. New research by Oxford University and Harvard Medical School has found that obesity is just as common among the homeless as it is among the general non-homeless population.

Medicine/Pharmacology - 21.05
Cycling may negatively affect male reproductive health, UCLA study finds
A study by researchers at the UCLA School of Nursing has found that serious male cyclists may experience hormonal imbalances that could affect their reproductive health. The study, "Reproductive Hormones and Interleukin-6 in Serious Leisure Male Athletes," was recently published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology.

Medicine/Pharmacology - Life Sciences - 21.05
Drug Found for Parasite that is Major Cause of Death Worldwide
Research by a collaborative group of scientists from UC San Diego School of Medicine, UC San Francisco and Wake Forest School of Medicine has led to identification of an existing drug that is effective against Entamoeba histolytica .

Medicine/Pharmacology - 21.05
Asthma drug discovery
Researchers from King's College London have uncovered a new mechanism of action for a group of asthma drugs already on the market, which could enable more effective treatment for patients with a particular type of allergic asthma – between 30 to 50 per cent of sufferers.

Life Sciences - Medicine/Pharmacology - 19.05
Oxytocin improves brain function in children with autism
Preliminary results from an ongoing, large-scale study by Yale School of Medicine researchers shows that oxytocin - a naturally occurring substance produced in the brain and throughout the body - increased brain function in regions that are known to process social information in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

Life Sciences - Medicine/Pharmacology - 18.05
Genetic safety in numbers, platypus study finds
Platypuses on the Australian mainland and in Tasmania are fighting fit but those on small islands are at high risk of being wiped out from disease, according to a University of Sydney study. The finding has important implications, not only for the management of the platypus but for other populations with limited genetic variation, including the iconic koala.

Life Sciences - Medicine/Pharmacology - 17.05
Slew of rare DNA changes following population explosion holds clues to common diseases
One-letter switches in the DNA code occur much more frequently in human genomes than anticipated, but are often only found in one or a few individuals. Science. “This is a dramatic example of how recent human history has profoundly shaped patterns of genetic variation,” said Joshua Akey, University of Washington associate professor of genome sciences and a senior author of the study.

Medicine/Pharmacology - Life Sciences - 17.05
Fighting bacteria’s strength in numbers
Scientists at The University of Nottingham have opened the way for more accurate research into new ways to fight dangerous bacterial infections by proving a long-held theory about how bacteria communicate with each other.

Medicine/Pharmacology - 17.05
Researchers Recognized for Improving Nanotech Design Principles
Targeted drug delivery is one of the more enticing applications of nanotechnology; by designing pharmaceuticals on an atomic scale, engineers hope to get them attacking diseases with newfound precision and efficiency.

Life Sciences - Medicine/Pharmacology - 16.05
New Understanding of ’Copper Pump’ in Cells Could Prime Discovery of Anti-Cancer Drugs
Researchers at UC San Diego used experimental results and modeling studies to discover that the human copper transporter protein forms a trimer (purple, aqua, and red) in a cell's membrane, with one end (top) extending outside the cell and the other end (bottom) extending into the cell's cytoplasm.

Medicine/Pharmacology - Environmental Sciences - 16.05
New advice on medication disposal: Trash beats take-back, new study suggests
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Returning extra medicine to the pharmacy for disposal might not be worth the extra time, money or greenhouse gas emissions, according to a University of Michigan study that is the first to look at the net effects of so-called take-back programs.

Medicine/Pharmacology - Life Sciences - 15.05
FDA-approved Drug Makes Established Cancer Vaccine Work Better, Penn Study Finds
A team from the Perelman School of Medicine and the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania found that the FDA-approved drug daclizumab improved the survival of breast cancer patients taking a cancer vaccine by 30 percent, compared to those patients not taking daclizumab.