Immunology
By boosting a protein called oligoadenylate synthetases-like (OASL) that naturally exists in our cells, researchers may have found a way to enhance our ability to inhibit viral infections like the flu.
OASL appears in increased quantities in people with liver cancer caused by the hepatitis C virus.
Hepatitis C, influenza, the childhood respiratory illness RSV, and many other viruses are known as ribonucleic acid (RNA) viruses, which use RNA as their genetic material when they replicate. The OASL protein enhances cells' ability to detect virus RNA, activating the immune system…
Heart attack is the leading natural killer worldwide, with up to one in two men and one in three women past the age of 40 having heart attacks in their lifetimes. What if one shot, similar to a vaccine, could prevent that?
Writing in Circulation Research, researchers show they have developed a “genome-editing” approach for permanently reducing cholesterol levels in mice through a single injection, a development that could reduce the risk of heart attacks in humans by 40 to 90 percent.
Don't start drinking bacon smoothies just yet, it will be at least a decade before this even gets to a phase…
One of the hazards of summer is picking up an itchy poison ivy rash but researchers say they have found a natural and effective way to kill it - a fungus named
olletotrichum fioriniae
that grows on the fleshy tissue surrounding the plant's seed.
For being so annoying, poison ivy has had surprisingly little research done on it. John Jelesko, an associate professor of plant pathology at Virgina Tech, began studying the plant after experiencing a nasty poison ivy rash himself while doing some yard work. He found that most of the work was focused on urushiol, the rash-causing chemical found…
A bovine TB control strategy under consideration risks spreading the disease rather than supressing it, according to researchers who predict that culling badgers which test positive for TB could increase the movement of remaining badgers, potentially infecting more cattle with the disease.
The paper PNAS says that small-scale, selective culling may have the same effect on badger behavior as the Randomised Badger Culling Trial, where the removal of large numbers of animals led to expanded badger ranging. The Test-Vaccinate/Remove (TVR) pilot will carry out live TB tests on badgers, aiming to…
Liver cancer is among the fastest-growing and deadliest cancers in the United States with a 17 percent three-year survival rate. Vaccines help direct the immune system to attack invaders by showing it a representative substance, called an antigen, that the body will recognize as foreign, in this case, Alpha-Fetoprotein (AFP) – normally expressed during development and by liver cancer cells.
AFP is expressed by about 80 percent of most common liver cancer cells but not typically by healthy adults. For cancer to flourish, cells must revert to an immature state, called…
There is a joke among abortion proponents that if men could get pregnant, abortion clinics would be more common on city streets than Starbucks coffee shops. If that is so, the best way to get something done about insects in developing nations would be to send environmentalists there. Sitting in cozy western offices, it is easy to rail against DDT and genetic modification but the first time a Union of Concerned Scientists fundraiser gets dengue fever they would be all for science solutions to mosquitoes.
Of course, that will never happen, it is easier to do important work criticizing…
The germ Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most stomach ulcers, but a new review of the literature published in Alimentary Pharmacology&Therapeutics suggests that treating the bacteria is linked to weight gain.
The idea that Helicobacter pylori infection may have an effect on body mass index (BMI) is still controversial. A study found that individuals who underwent H. pylori eradication developed significant weight gain as compared to subjects with untreated H. pylori colonization.
It is estimated that 50% of the global population may be infected with H. pylori but only 20% of infected…
Snakebite is one of the most neglected of all tropical diseases, with nearly 5 million people bitten by snakes each year and fatalities globally up to 30 times higher than that of land mines and comparable to AIDS in some developing countries. It has been estimated that more than 75 percent of snakebite victims who die do so before they ever reach the hospital so a new approach may dramatically reduce the number of global snakebite fatalities, currently estimated to be as high as 94,000 per year.
Such a fast, accessible, and easy-to-administer treatment for venomous snakebite may be…
Researchers have devised a way to watch newly forming AIDS virus particles emerge or "budd" from infected human cells.
They have also found that a protein named ALIX gets involved during the final stages of virus replication, not earlier, as was believed previously.
The finding is basic research and has no immediate clinical significance for AIDS patients because ALIX is involved in too many critical functions like cell division to be a likely target for new medications.
University of Utah physics doctoral student Pei-I Ku prepares a sample for the digital microscope she uses to make…
Zinc supplements reduce diarrhea, one of the biggest killers of kids under five, and other infections in malnourished children, according to a review in The Cochrane Library.
Zinc is a micronutrient with important roles in growth and in the immune, nervous and reproductive systems. The human body cannot make it, so it has to come from our diet. It is estimated that more than 1 in 6 people globally are deficient in zinc and that around 1 in every 58 deaths in children under five is related to zinc deficiency. Zinc deficiency is common in Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of…