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Ancient DNA suggests earth was warmer than previously believed

A team of international researchers has collected the oldest ever recovered DNA samples and used them to show that Greenland was much warmer at some point during the last Ice Age than most people have believed.

9 Jul 2007

How the HIV virus mutates to escape the body's immune system

A pioneering collaborative study has discovered how the HIV virus evades the human body's immune system.

9 Jul 2007

Discovery of enzyme critical in DNA replication

In this week's issue of Science, researchers from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and Umea University in Sweden report an important discovery about a critical new role that an enzyme called DNA polymerase epsilon plays in replicating DNA in higher organisms such as yeast and perhaps even humans.

9 Jul 2007

People with damage to blood vessels in the brain more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease

A recent study in Journal of Neuroimaging suggests that cognitively normal adults exhibiting atrophy of their temporal lobe or damage to blood vessels in the brain are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease.

9 Jul 2007

NanoSIMS instrument clarifies nutrient cycle

Scientists at the University of Southern California have applied a nanoscale imaging method to a biological system, helping to clear up an old puzzle of the global carbon and nitrogen cycle.

9 Jul 2007

QRISK score more accurate than Framingham or ASSIGN for heart attacks

A new score for predicting the risk of heart disease gives a more accurate measure of how many UK adults are at risk of developing the disease and which adults are most likely to benefit from treatment.

9 Jul 2007

Researchers discover why some mosquitoes are resistant to malaria

A team led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers has discovered why some mosquitoes are resistant to malaria, a finding that may one day help fight a disease that afflicts and kills millions of people.

9 Jul 2007

Leading-edge treatment for Crohn's disease at Pediatric Infusion Center

Seventeen-year-old Eliot Drieband explains what it's like to have Crohn's disease - a type of inflammatory bowel disease - in the same matter-of-fact way she describes preparing for an advanced placement exam, working on the school newspaper, starting an organ donor awareness club for teens and being a peer counselor for other kids facing chronic, life-altering illnesses.

9 Jul 2007

New insight into neural stem cells

Scientists have discovered that adult neural stem cells, which exist in the brain throughout life, are not a single, homogeneous group.

9 Jul 2007

Include children in research to make breakthroughs in child medicine

Scientists will only make real breakthroughs in children's medicine if they include children in research programmes as well as adults, according to a leading paediatric expert.

9 Jul 2007

Researchers pinpoint brain region responsible for pain's ability to affect cognitive processing

Anybody who's tried to concentrate on work while suffering a headache knows that pain compellingly commands attention,which is how evolution helped ensure survival in a painful world.

9 Jul 2007

Hospital operators may fail to steer people with stroke symptoms to call 9-1-1

Nearly a quarter of hospital or ,healthline, operators mistakenly routed a caller describing classic stroke symptoms to primary care doctors rather than to 9-1-1, according to a research project published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

9 Jul 2007

Abiraterone reduces levels of prostate specific antigen

For prostate cancer patients whose tumors have continued to grow despite medical or surgical castration, a new drug candidate that inhibits production of male hormones anywhere in the body is showing promise in early trials.

9 Jul 2007

High-risk patients need improved guidance on heart attacks

Varying advice means patients at high-risk of having a heart attack are unclear about when symptoms are potentially life threatening and when they should call an ambulance, argue a group of heart specialists in this week's BMJ.

9 Jul 2007

Smoking cessation clinics provide a new opportunity to detect early carbon monoxide poisoning

Results from routine carbon monoxide (CO) testing in the breath of people attending such clinics or GP support services can alert healthcare professionals to patients who are suffering from chronic, low-level CO poisoning.

9 Jul 2007

Exercise improves quality of life for seniors

A new study appearing in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society compares the efficacy of three programs designed for reducing falls and improving quality-of-life among the elderly; education, home safety assessment and modification (HSAM) and exercise training.

9 Jul 2007

Engineered blood vessels work like native tissue

Blood vessels that have been tissue-engineered from bone marrow adult stem cells may in the future serve as a patient's own source of new blood vessels following a coronary bypass or other procedures that require vessel replacement, according to new research from the University at Buffalo Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

9 Jul 2007

Chromosome disorders can arise when sex cells are formed

Chromosome disorders in sex cells cause infertility, miscarriage and irregular numbers of chromosomes (aneuploidy) in neonates.

9 Jul 2007

Warning on Chikungunya virus

Fever, arthritis, and other symptoms occurring in people to who have recently traveled to islands in the Indian Ocean may signal infection with an imported virus called "chikungunya," reports a study in the May/June issue of the journal Medicine, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

9 Jul 2007

Orlistat weight loss drug points to new cancer treatments

Based on their surprising discovery that an obesity drug can kill cancer cells, scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have made a new finding about the drug's effects and are working to design more potent cancer treatments.

9 Jul 2007