A Mountlake Terrace, Wash., teenager accidentally swallowed a piece of grill brush wire while eating, which ultimately got stuck in his intestines – “stabbing him from the inside out,â€� The Seattle Times reported. It all happened innocently enough. …
They say their study, published online May 10 in Human Molecular Genetics, offers a unique and exciting strategy to treat neurodegenerative diseases that feature abnormal buildup of proteins in Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), frontotemporal dementia, Huntington disease and Lewy body dementia, among others. "This drug, in very low doses, turns on the garbage disposal machinery inside neurons to clear toxic proteins from the cell. By clearing intracellular proteins, the drug prevents their accumulation in pathological inclusions called Lewy bodies and/or tangles, and also prevents amyloid secretion into the extracellular space between neurons, so proteins do not form toxic clumps or plaques in the brain," says the study’s senior investigator, neuroscientist Charbel E-H Moussa, MB, PhD. Moussa heads the laboratory of dementia and Parkinsonism at Georgetown. …
Their results will soon be published in the trade magazine The Journal of Pathology. The response of cancer patients to a specific chemotherapy line can vary dramatically…
"A lot of people in this field would agree that no one has a right to withhold your health information from you," said Megan Allyse from the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics. "But it’s problematic to suggest the inverse: that the medical system should give you information you didn’t ask for and don’t want. No one should be able to interfere with your ability to accept or decline access…
After an egg has been fertilized, it divides repeatedly to give rise to every cell in the human body — from the patrolling immune cell to the pulsing neuron. Each functionally distinct generation of cells subsequently differentiates itself from its predecessors in the developing embryo by expressing only a selection of its full complement of genes, while actively suppressing others…
In the earliest stages, embryo cells have the potential to develop into any type of cell, a state called totipotency. Later, this potency becomes restricted through a process called differentiation…
The protein, called TR4 (testicular orphan nuclear receptor 4), is one of the human body’s 48 nuclear receptors, a class of proteins found in cells that are responsible for sensing hormones and, in response, regulating the expression of specific genes. Using a genome scan, the Salk team discovered that TR4 regulates a gene that produces adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which is overproduced by pituitary tumors in Cushing’s disease (CD). …
The discovery of this subtype of immune cells, called CD8+ T cells, opens a new avenue of research to develop a vaccine to prevent and treat herpes simplex virus type 2, or HSV-2. Identifying these T cells’ specific molecular targets, called epitopes, is the next step in developing a vaccine. The findings are described in the May 8 advance online edition of Nature…
"This study provides research-based evidence that social support helps with physical symptoms," said lead author Candyce H. Kroenke, ScD, MPH, staff scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. …
Kansas State University researchers Jeroen Roelofs, assistant professor, and Chingakham Ranjit Singh, research assistant professor — both in the Division of Biology — led part of the study. …