Social Sciences
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A precise, new nanotechnology treatment for drug addiction may be on the horizon as the result of research conducted at the University at Buffalo.
Scientists in UB's Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics and UB's Department of Medicine have developed a stable nanoparticle that delivers short RNA molecules in the brain to "silence" or turn off a gene that plays a critical role in many kinds of drug addiction.
The UB team's in vitro findings were published online the week of March 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"These findings mean that…
Compound Found in Plant Products May Offer New Treatment for Malaria
In a new study researchers from France suggest that ellagic acid, a compound found in plant products, may be effective against malaria and ultimately lead to new forms of treatment. They report their findings in the March 2009 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
Malaria is considered to be one the most significant causes of infectious disease worldwide. Increasing resistance to current drugs has emphasized the need for new forms of treatment. Recently initiated collaborative programs with West…
OTTAWA, ONTARIO, CANADA – Intensive insulin therapy significantly increases the risk of hypoglycemia in critically ill patients, found a new study in CMAJ (http://www.cmaj.ca/press/cmaj.090206.pdf).
Intensive insulin therapy is used in many intensive care units around the world as a means to tightly regulate blood sugar. Although labour intensive, it has been recommended as a standard of care for critically ill patients by many organizations including the American Diabetes Association and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.
A randomized trial in 2001 reported that…
CHICAGO (March 24, 2009) – New research published in the March issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons reveals shortages of qualified surgeons in many regions of Maryland, especially in rural areas. Excessive administrative demands and an aging physician and general population could push these shortages to critical levels over the next 10 years.
Over the past two decades, the American population has grown by approximately 50 million people, yet the number of practicing physicians has remained the same, at about 750,000. Medical education programs, limited by the 1997 Balanced…
St. Louis, March 20, 2009 — Detectives on television shows often spray crime scenes with a compound called luminol to make blood glow. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have applied the same compound to much smaller crime scenes: sites where the immune system attacks the body's own tissues.
The authors report in Nature Medicine that injected luminol glows blue at sites of active immune inflammation in living mice, and that they can detect this glow from outside the mice with scientific cameras.
Immune inflammation is thought to be a critical component of…
Cancer patients who are malnourished experience significantly greater levels of psychological distress than those who are more adequately nourished, according to new results reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology's Symposium on Cancer and Nutrition (Zurich, 20-21 March 2009).
Malnutrition is a common problem in cancer. It is estimated that between 31% and 87% of cancer patients will experience weight loss and malnutrition during the course of their disease. Such patients are left with a poorer response to treatment, worse quality of life and reduced survival. Yet the problem…
Irvine, Calif., March 18, 2009 – Single events account for many of our most vivid memories – a marriage proposal, a wedding toast, a baby's birth. Until a recent UC Irvine discovery, however, scientists knew little about what happens inside the brain that allows you to remember such events.
In a study with rats, neuroscientist John Guzowski and colleagues found that a single brief experience was as effective at activating neurons and genes associated with memory as more repetitive activities.
Knowing how the brain remembers one-time events can help scientists design better therapies for…
Kids love sweet-tasting foods and new research indicates that this heightened liking for sweetness has a biological basis and is related to children's high growth rate.
Liking sweets is a cross-cultural phenomenon for kids, a pattern that declines during adolescence. To explore the biological underpinnings of this shift, Researchers looked at sweet preference and biological measures of growth and physical maturation in 143 children between the ages of 11 and 15.
The findings suggest that children's heightened liking for sweet taste is related to their high growth rate and that sweet…
(Toronto – March 18, 2009) – For women with recurrent breast cancer, the treatment the doctor chooses is usually based on the properties of their original breast cancer. A group from Toronto has recently completed the world's first study that compared original breast cancer tumors with a biopsy of suspected tumors that recurred elsewhere in the body.
Researchers found that the biopsy resulted in 20% of the women having a significant change in their treatment. In some cases, this was a change in drug treatment and in others, the biopsy showed the woman did not actually have an advanced cancer…
Each year, approximately 8,000 infants in the United States develop severe hearing, mental or movement impairments after becoming infected with cytomegalovirus (CMV), a common virus passed onto them while still in the womb. Now, published results of a trial involving 441 CMV-negative women give rise to optimism that a vaccine to prevent congenital CMV may be closer. Women who received the trial vaccine were 50 percent less likely to later become infected with CMV than were women who received a saline injection.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the…