Health News

Genetic variants linked to educational level
Friday, May 31, 2013 - 09:11

An international collaboration involving data from, amongst other sources, the Swedish Twin Registry at Karolinska Institutet, has found several DNA variants that show a statistically significant association with educational attainment. The study is published in the scientific journal Science and is based on the results of 50 different sub-studies.

 

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Researchers Gain Insight into Key Protein Linked to Development of Cancers and Neurodegenerative Disorders
Thursday, May 30, 2013 - 15:44

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers studying a key molecular player called Hsp70 that is responsible for protein homeostasis have uncovered how it binds together with another molecule responsible for intracellular energy transfer to enhance its overall activity and efficiency – details that have previously not been well understood.

 

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Poor Sleep Linked to PTSD After Heart Attack
Thursday, May 30, 2013 - 09:03

Clinicians have long speculated that poor sleep may be a mechanism involved in the higher risk of further cardiac events or death among those with post-traumatic stress disorder following a heart attack, but the association between PTSD and sleep after a heart event has been unknown.

 

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Avatar therapy helps silence voices in schizophrenia
Thursday, May 30, 2013 - 07:02

An avatar system that enables people with schizophrenia to control the voice of their hallucinations was developed by Professor Julian Leff, Emeritus Professor, UCL Mental Health Sciences and Dr Mark Huckvale and Dr Geoffrey Williams from the UCL Department of Speech, Hearing and Phonetics research department. Professors Leff, Craig and colleagues have been awarded £1.3 million Translation Award from the Wellcome Trust to refine the system and evaluate this novel approach to schizophrenia therapy.

 

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Adult Stem Cells Could Hold Key to Creating Cure for Type 1 Diabetes
Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - 17:32

Millions of people with type 1 diabetes depend on daily insulin injections to survive. They would die without the shots because their immune system attacks the very insulin-producing cells it was designed to protect. Now, a University of Missouri scientist has discovered that this attack causes more damage than scientists realized. The revelation is leading to a potential cure that combines adult stem cells with a promising new drug.

 

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A molecular chain reaction in Alzheimer’s disease
Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - 10:53

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have identified the molecular mechanism behind the transformation of one of the components in Alzheimer's disease. They identified the crucial step leading to formations that kill brain cells.

 

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