Social Sciences
Nerve signals that tell the brain that we are being slowly stroked on the skin have their own specialised nerve fibres in the skin. This is shown by a new study from the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The discovery may explain why touching the skin can relieve pain.
The specialised nerve fibres in the skin are called CT nerves (C-tactile) and they travel directly to the areas in the brain that are important in the emergence of feelings.
"Basically the signals that tell the brain that we are being stroked on the skin have their own direct route to the brain, and are…
Routine screening for coronary artery disease in type 2 diabetes patients with no symptoms of angina or a history of coronary disease is unnecessary and may lead initially to more invasive and costly heart procedures, according to researchers at Yale School of Medicine. They report their findings in the April 15 Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Patients with type 2 diabetes with no symptoms who are feeling well can generally be managed effectively with preventive therapies such as lipid-lowering drugs, blood pressure medication, aspirin and diabetes treatment," said Lawrence…
Ann Arbor, MI--Patients with a rare, blinding eye disease saw their vision improve after treatment with drugs to suppress their immune systems, according to researchers at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center. Because autoimmune retinopathy (AIR) is difficult to diagnose, the biggest challenge now is to find biologic markers that identify patients who can benefit from treatment.
In a review of 30 patients with autoimmune retinopathy, 21 individuals showed improvement after receiving treatment with immunosuppression therapy. The study, reported in the April issue of Archives of…
Fast food and soft drinks may be making children fatter but they also make them happy. Programs aimed at tackling childhood obesity, by reducing children's consumption of unhealthy food and drink, are likely to be more effective if they also actively seek to keep children happy in other ways, according to Professor Hung-Hao Chang from National Taiwan University and Professor Rodolfo Nayga from the University of Arkansas in the US. Their findings are published in Springer's Journal of Happiness Studies.
Childhood obesity is a major public health issue worldwide. It is well accepted that…
COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research shows that human teeth lost some enamel hardness after the application of several different products used in the home to whiten teeth. The study suggests that future generations of such products might be reformulated in an effort to reduce these side effects.
The researchers noted that teeth typically can restore their previous hardness after losing small amounts of enamel calcification. But this is the first study to show at a nanometer scale – measuring in billionths of a meter – how human teeth are affected by the popular home whiteners.
"There is some…
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — In three new studies — including one appearing online today in the Public Library of Science - Biology (PLoS - Biology) — UC Davis researchers provide compelling evidence of how low levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) alter the way brain cells develop.
The findings could explain at last — some 30 years after the toxic chemicals were banned in the United States — the associations between exposure of the developing nervous system to PCBs and behavioral deficits in children.
"We've never really understood the mechanism by which PCBs produce neurobehavioral problems…
In research published in PLoS Medicine, Cally Roper of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and colleagues use genetic analyses to trace the emergence and dispersal of drug-resistant Plasmodium falciparum malaria in Africa.
They find that resistance to the antimalarial drug sulfadoxine has emerged independently in multiple sites in Africa during the past 10-20 years, and that the molecular basis of resistance differs between east and west Africa. Given the potential for different levels of drug resistance associated with these different parasite strains, the results suggest…
Patients with heart disease who are subsequently diagnosed with depression are at greater risk for heart failure (HF), a condition in which the heart can't pump enough blood throughout the body, according to a new study published in the April 21, 2009, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. This study—the first to investigate the influence of depression after heart disease on the likelihood of developing HF—also found that taking antidepressant medications to ease depressive symptoms did not appear to mitigate this risk.
"Our data suggest that depression is an important…
EDITOR'S PICK: Enhancing the effects of the drug used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia
Individuals with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) are first treated with a drug known as imatinib mesylate. Although very effective, as the disease progresses it often becomes resistant to the drug. However, a team of researchers, at the University of Leicester, United Kingdom, and Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, has identified a class of drugs that might enhance the therapeutic effects of imatinib mesylate and other drugs that target the same molecule.
The team, led by Paolo Salomoni and Bruno…
New therapeutic approaches in Alzheimer's disease are urgently needed. Work led by Professor Mark Pepys FRS over more than 20 years has identified a protein known as serum amyloid P component (SAP) as a possible therapeutic target in Alzheimer's disease. In collaboration with Roche he developed a new small molecule drug, CPHPC, which specifically targets SAP and removes it from the blood. In the exciting new work reported now in the PNAS, the Pepys team together with Professor Martin Rossor and colleagues from the Dementia Research Centre of UCL's Institute of Neurology, have shown that the…