Health

Clinical trial aims to prevent type 2 diabetes through medication
05/23/2013 - 20:57

A clinical trial at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System and the University of Washington will address new approaches to prevent the development of type 2 diabetes or slow its progression. Participants will be treated with medications normally used for people who have had diabetes for at least one year. The study will enroll individuals who have prediabetes or have been recently diagnosed with diabetes, but who are not taking medications to treat the condition.

 

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Surveying cells, one at a time
05/22/2013 - 12:52

When studying any kind of population — people or cells — averaging is a useful, if flawed, form of measurement. According to the US Census Bureau, the average American household size in 2010 was 2.59. Of course, there are no homes with exactly 2.59 people. By inspecting each house individually, one would see some homes occupied by a single individual, and others by large families. These extremes get lost when values are averaged over a population.

 

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New test better detects elephantiasis worm infection
05/22/2013 - 10:46

A new diagnostic test for a worm infection that can lead to severe enlargement and deformities of the legs and genitals is far more sensitive than the currently used test, according to results of a field study in Liberia, in West Africa, where the infection is endemic. The new test found evidence of the infection – lymphatic filariasis – in many more people that the standard test had missed.

 

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Going live – immune cell activation in multiple sclerosis
05/22/2013 - 10:21

Biological processes are generally based on events at the molecular and cellular level. To understand what happens in the course of infections, diseases or normal bodily functions, scientists would need to examine individual cells and their activity directly in the tissue. The development of new microscopes and fluorescent dyes in recent years has brought this scientific dream tantalisingly close. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have now presented not one, but two studies introducing new indicator molecules which can visualise the activation of T cells.

 

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“Plastic” sensors for diagnosis of genetic and infectious diseases
05/21/2013 - 22:43

In recent years, molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) have attracted much attention due to their multifarious potential applications including in sensors, separations, catalysis, drug delivery and waste management. To prepare MIPs, functional monomers are initially self-assembled around the template molecule via interaction between functional groups on both the template and the monomers. The self-assembled functional monomers are subsequently cross-linked.

 

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Changing cancer's environment to halt its spread
05/21/2013 - 15:24

By studying the roles two proteins, thrombospondin-1 and prosaposin, play in discouraging cancer metastasis, a trans-Atlantic research team has identified a five-amino acid fragment of prosaposin that significantly reduces metastatic spread in mouse models of prostate, breast and lung cancer. The findings suggest that a prosaposin-based drug could potentially block metastasis in a variety of cancers.

 

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