Clinical Research

A consistently high level of physical activity from young adulthood into middle age increases the odds of maintaining a stable weight and lessens the amount of weight gained over time, according to a new analysis from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. People who reported at least 30 minutes of vigorous activity a day such as jogging, bicycling or swimming were more than twice as likely to maintain a stable Body Mass Index (BMI) over 20 years. BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. But even highly active people who gained weight, gained 14 pounds less…

Baby Miriam's mother lost her amniotic fluid in the 20th week of pregnancy, giving the baby a very slim chance of surviving birth and, even if she had, because her lungs had stopped growing, she would probably have suffocated shortly afterward. Doctors at Bonn Univer-sity Clinic saved Miriam's life with surgery in the womb that stimulated lung growth - the first time this method has been used worldwide in a case of premature rupture of the fetal membrane. The baby is now one year old and very healthy. The doctors will report the case study in this month's Fetal Diagnosis and Therapy.…

Researchers at the Royal Veterinary College, London, have made a significant breakthrough in their understanding of how infection of the uterus damages fertility in cows. Their findings, which show that common uterine infections can damage the ovaries, may provide insights into how to treat infections such as Chlamydia in humans. Funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, researchers led by Professor Martin Sheldon studied the effect that uterine disease has on the reproductive system in cows. Their findings, published today in the journal…

Laboratory animals are the source of major discoveries and breakthroughs in biology, not just in tackling disease but also unravelling fundamental molecular processes. Delegates at a recent research conference organized by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and Wellcome Trust heard how technology capable of analyzing animal genes across the whole genome is yielding many benefits for agriculture and human society. In breeding both domestic and farm animals for example, it is now possible to select individuals with a wide spectrum of desirable traits in a single generation. In the past…

I have mixed feelings about the proliferation of the term "Open Notebook Science". I started using the term a year ago to describe our UsefulChem project because it had no hits on Google and so it offered an opportunity to start with a fresh definition. There are currently over 43 000 hits for that term and it is nice to see that the first hit is still the post with the original definition. The first part of the term, "Open Notebook", is meant to be taken literally. It refers to the ultimate information source used by a researcher to record their work. The fundamental philosophy of ONS is…

Adolescents have grown taller and put on weight over the last thirty years, but the problem of underweight teens may be worse, a study in the online open access journal BMC Public Health suggests. An analysis of the height, weight, and body-mass index of teenagers during 1966-1969 and 1995-1997 in Norway demonstrates a shift towards taller and heavier teenagers, but also hints that there are more underweight adolescents. Health researchers commonly use body mass index (BMI), calculated as weight in kilograms divided by the height in meters squared, in weight-related health studies. Sigrid…

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found nearly 350 genes related to female fertility. Their research may open the door to much wider study in the poorly understood field of infertility. “This study gives us a way to begin to understand the causes of female infertility,” said Dr. Diego Castrillon, assistant professor of pathology and senior author of a study appearing in the September issue of the journal Genetics. “It gives us a much more complete list of candidate genes to explore. Before, we didn’t even know where to look.” The study was done in mice, “but at the molecular…

According to new research, two key proteins join together at the precise location where energy of motion is turned into electrical impulses. These proteins, cadherin 23 and protocadherin 15, are part of a complex of proteins called “tip links” that are on hair cells in the inner ear. The tip link is believed to have a central function in the conversion of physical cues into electrochemical signals. “Mutations in [the genes] cadherin 23 and protocadherin 15 can cause deafness as well as Usher syndrome, the leading cause of deaf-blindness in humans,” says Professor Ulrich Mueller, of the…

Researchers may be able to tinker with a single amino acid of an enzyme that helps viruses multiply to render them harmless, according to molecular biologists who say the discovery could pave the way for a fast and cheap method of making vaccines. "We have successfully tested this technique with poliovirus," said Craig Cameron, the Paul Berg professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State. "And we think it is applicable to most other viruses." Viruses have a simple mission; infect a cell, make more viruses, and then break out of the cell to infect more cells. This calls for…

The impact of HIV in Zimbabwe since the early 1980s is explored in new research published this week in the journal PNAS. Researchers found that HIV’s impact on Zimbabwe’s population as a whole has not been quite as severe as some predicted in 1989, when a group of epidemiologists at a World Health Organisation meeting modelled its potential effects. Some of the models they created suggested that the population of Zimbabwe might start shrinking, with more people dying than being born. The new research shows that the population of the country continues to grow. However, in the worst affected…