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Vanadium may help prepare the body to recover speedily from infections

Dietary supplements containing vanadium are used by body builders to help beef up muscles and by some diabetic people to control blood sugar. New research now suggests the naturally occurring but easily toxic element may help prepare the body to recover speedily from infections from gram-negative organisms such as E. coli.

11 Oct 2005

Violent video games lead to brain activity pattern that may be characteristic for aggressive thoughts

A Michigan State University researcher and his colleagues have shown that playing violent video games leads to brain activity pattern that may be characteristic for aggressive thoughts.

11 Oct 2005

People only need to walk up to 12 miles per week or for about 125 to 200 minutes per week to improve their heart health

The amount of exercise may be more important than intensity to improve cardiovascular health, according to a new analysis of the first randomized clinical trial evaluating the effects of exercise amount and intensity in sedentary overweight men and women.

10 Oct 2005

Obesity linked to dementia and Alzheimer's disease

Individuals who were obese at midlife had an increased risk for dementia later in life compared to individuals of normal weight, according to an article in the October issue of Archives of Neurology.

10 Oct 2005

Astrocytes modulate adenosine - thought to be important in controlling wake-to-sleep transitions and epileptic seizures

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have demonstrated that star-shaped glial cells in the brain called astrocytes are directly involved in regulating communication between neurons.

10 Oct 2005

Electron-beam computed tomography - a more accurate replacement for coronary catheterizations

Electron-beam computed tomography (EBCT) is more accurate than conventional catheter angiography for detecting a dangerous congenital heart abnormality that could cause sudden death, according to research by a Saint Louis University radiologist published last month in Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions: Journal of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions.

10 Oct 2005

Depression both increases the risk for developing epilepsy and is also common among people with epilepsy who experience many seizures

Researchers have found provocative evidence that the brain dysfunction that underlies epilepsy may also determine whether people are at risk for suicide. The study, published online October 10, 2005 in the Annals of Neurology, also suggests that depression and suicide may have different brain mechanisms.

10 Oct 2005

Significant new research centre - the Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre

The centre, based at the UCL (University College London) Department of Human Communication Science, will see ESRC inject £4.5 million over an initial 5 year period into a study of deafness, linguistic systems and communication that will run over a 10 year programme.

10 Oct 2005

Dreams can help in coming to terms with major events and in taking difficult decisions in life

This is what Dutch-sponsored researcher Elizabeth Mohkamsing-den Boer concluded after her research into the function of dreams in indigenous Surinamese and Australian tribes.

10 Oct 2005

Important milestone towards more individually targeted and effective treatments for cancer patients

The research team has now identified crucial genes in a range of common cancers that have been reported to predict a patient's response to treatment. This follows the team's earlier success in studying a tumor suppressor gene associated with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) in children.

9 Oct 2005

Tonsils reveal information that helps understand lupus

By snipping out and analyzing tiny samples of patients' tonsils, scientists have identified a key cellular checkpoint that is somehow bypassed in lupus patients, where harmful immune cells that normally are squelched by the body are mistakenly granted access.

9 Oct 2005

Prozac helps learning and memory in people with Huntington's disease

People with Huntington's disease have progressive motor problems, cognitive deficits (dementia) and psychiatric symptoms (the most common is depression) that usually start to appear in mid-life. There is no cure and death usually results within 10 to 20 years of symptom onset, or faster in the childhood-onset form of the disease.

9 Oct 2005

Researchers reveal basis for hereditary coproporphyria

A research team led by scientists at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston has determined the structure of an enzyme that when defective causes an inherited disease that afflicts sufferers with severe abdominal pain, psychiatric symptoms, skin fragility, and light sensitivity.

9 Oct 2005

Researchers find CCL5 protein produced in the course of respiratory viral infections can serve to protect macrophages from an untimely death

Enlisted to help fight viral infections, immune cells called macrophages consume virus-infected cells to stop the spread of the disease in the body.

9 Oct 2005

Mitochondria and apoptosis research

The story of how mitochondria are recruited during times of stress to choreograph apoptosis--the cell's dance of death--is a story that fails to tell which particular set of steps the cells use most often, according to investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology (San Diego, CA).

9 Oct 2005

Obese Zucker rat model shares the symptoms of obesity with a growing number of Americans

A mutant rat that mimics a 400-pound human is helping scientists understand early vascular changes that make walking a pain for more than 2 million Americans.

9 Oct 2005

Discovery provides an understanding of the mechanisms of oocyte death and a way to identify potential clinical treatments for infertility

An immature egg's internal nutrient supply is critical to its survival, an insight that offers a new route to understanding and treating infertility due to egg death, according to Duke University Medical Center researchers.

9 Oct 2005

Employment gap may be due, in part, to the "poverty trap"

Between 2003 and 2004 the employment gap widened between the number of working-age Americans with disabilities who are employed and those workers without disabilities, a new report on Capitol Hill shows.

9 Oct 2005

Patients in level I trauma centers were nearly 20 percent less likely to die than those in level II centers

Patients who are taken to a level 2 trauma center after suffering serious injury are significantly more likely to die than comparable patients treated at a major level 1 trauma center, according to researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.

9 Oct 2005

SUVs should carry health warnings

Sports utility vehicles (SUVs) should carry health warnings to raise awareness of the increased risk to pedestrians compared with ordinary cars, argue researchers in this week's British Medical Journal.

9 Oct 2005

Medical Research News

Vanadium may help prepare the body to recover speedily from infections

Violent video games lead to brain activity pattern that may be characteristic for aggressive thoughts

People only need to walk up to 12 miles per week or for about 125 to 200 minutes per week to improve their heart health

Obesity linked to dementia and Alzheimer's disease

Astrocytes modulate adenosine - thought to be important in controlling wake-to-sleep transitions and epileptic seizures

Electron-beam computed tomography - a more accurate replacement for coronary catheterizations

Depression both increases the risk for developing epilepsy and is also common among people with epilepsy who experience many seizures

Significant new research centre - the Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre

Dreams can help in coming to terms with major events and in taking difficult decisions in life

Important milestone towards more individually targeted and effective treatments for cancer patients

Tonsils reveal information that helps understand lupus

Prozac helps learning and memory in people with Huntington's disease

Researchers reveal basis for hereditary coproporphyria

Researchers find CCL5 protein produced in the course of respiratory viral infections can serve to protect macrophages from an untimely death

Mitochondria and apoptosis research

Obese Zucker rat model shares the symptoms of obesity with a growing number of Americans

Discovery provides an understanding of the mechanisms of oocyte death and a way to identify potential clinical treatments for infertility

Employment gap may be due, in part, to the "poverty trap"

Patients in level I trauma centers were nearly 20 percent less likely to die than those in level II centers

SUVs should carry health warnings

Leveraging the power of automation to boost research

Automating research - solutions and best practices

How can microdialysis benefit drug development

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