Pharmacology
Computer simulations show how bacteria are able to destroy antibiotics, focusing on the role of enzymes in the bacteria which split the structure of the antibiotic and stop it working, making the bacteria resistant.
The new findings show that it's possible to test how enzymes react to certain antibiotics and thus design new antibiotics with a much lower risk of resistance, and even to choose the best medicines for specific outbreaks.
Using QM/MM - quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics simulations – the research team were able to gain a molecular-level insight into how enzymes called '…
Hank |
Canada, which has roughly 1,500 vials of an ebola vaccine called VSV-EBOV, has offered 1,000 vials to the World Health Organization and said the rest would be used for upcoming clinical trials in 5 locations: two in the United States, and one each in Germany, Switzerland and a non-Western-African country that isn't battling ebola.
VSV-EBOV, developed at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, is a cocktail of interferon-alpha, made by our immune system, and three cloned antibodies. Studies already done in primates found that it prevents infection when given before…
Young mice with the rodent equivalent of a rare autism spectrum disorder (ASD) called Rett syndrome that were fed a diet supplemented with the synthetic oil triheptanoin had physical and behavioral symptoms that were less severe after being on the diet - and they lived longer than mice on regular diets.
Researchers involved in the study think that triheptanoin improved the functioning of mitochondria, energy factories common to all cells. Since mitochondrial defects are seen in other ASDs, the researchers say, the experimental results offer hope that the oil could help not just people with…
Alerted by an announcement in several British newspapers, for example Honeysuckle tea could fight flu, Boiling honeysuckle releases molecule which can help fight influenza virus, study suggests, I started digging deeper. Although it has not yet appeared in the literature, I did find the following EurekaAlert:
‘Virological penicillin’: Plant MIR2911 directly targets influenza A viruses
“In a new study, Chen-Yu Zhang’s group at Nanjing University present an extremely novel finding that a plant microRNA, MIR2911, which is enriched in honeysuckle, directly targets influenza A viruses (IAV)…
Clinicians are just like anyone else. As the days goes on, they wear down a little. Numerous patient care decisions each day, and the cumulative demand of those decisions, take their toll.
In primary care, doctors often prescribe unnecessary antibiotics for acute respiratory infections (ARI) and now scholars at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston found that antibiotic prescribing rates increased as the days got later.
The researchers merged billing and electronic health record (EHR) data for patient visits to 23 different primary care practices over the course of…
Treatment approaches to reduce the risk of bone complications (metastasis) associated with breast cancer may be one step closer to becoming a reality. According to a study led by a team at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), findings show that medication used to treat bone deterioration in post-menopausal women may also slow skeletal metastasis caused from breast cancer.
This study, published in this month's issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI), is among the first to link bisphosphonate (a common osteoporosis medication) use with…
A new study has found that lungs become more inflammatory with age and that ibuprofen can lower that inflammation - and the difference can be dramatic.
Immune cells from old mouse lungs, after lung inflammation was reduced by ibuprofen, fought tuberculosis bacteria as effectively as cells from young mice. The ibuprofen had no effect on the immune response to TB in young mice. The researchers already knew that old mice had a harder time clearing TB from the lungs than young mice, but had not investigated the role of lung inflammation in that response.
"Very few researchers have linked…
The public may be critical of the War On Cancer and its hundreds of billions of government money, but pharmaceutical companies have continue to make progress. A new study finds that 80 percent of bowel cancers could be treated with existing JAK inhibitors.
The risk of getting colorectal cancer increases with age, more than 90% of cases occur in people 50 years old or older, and it is the second leading cause of cancer death in the US. But there is a genetic commonality in 80 percent of those, and that is where JAK inhibitors come into play.
Dr. Toby Phesse the Walter and Eliza…
An analysis of death certificates from 1999 to 2010 has found that medications are the leading cause of allergy-related sudden deaths in the U.S. The study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology also found that the risk of fatal drug-induced allergic reactions was particularly high among older people and African-Americans and that such deaths increased significantly in the U.S. in recent years.
Anaphylaxis is the term used for a severe, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction that can occur within seconds or minutes following exposure to an allergen. Until now,…
When a dog is rabid, it's time to run. Credit: Mytoenailcameoff, CC BY-NC-SA
By Katie Hampson, University of Glasgow
Chacha, a farmer and businessman from northern Tanzania, returned home from market one afternoon to find that his family’s newly adopted puppy had bitten five of his children. The puppy had been playful that morning, but by the evening it was clear that its behavior was abnormal, snapping at any passing movement and running with an awkward disorientated gait. The puppy was euthanized and tested positive for rabies.
Strange behavior. Katie Hampson, Author provided
Chacha then…