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Carbon nanotubes may change the way doctors treat broken bones

Scientists have shown for the first time that carbon nanotubes make an ideal scaffold for the growth of bone tissue. The new technique could change the way doctors treat broken bones, allowing them to simply inject a solution of nanotubes into a fracture to promote healing.

11 Jul 2005

Lack of a blood clotting protein may protect against clogged arteries

Reporting in the July 18 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine, a group of scientists in Wurzburg, Germany show that the lack of a blood clotting protein may protect against clogged arteries with no risk of excessive bleeding.

11 Jul 2005

Newly discovered gene mutation may account for many cases of immune deficiency

...in particular two syndromes known as immunoglobulin A (IgA) deficiency and Common Variable Immunodeficiency (CVID), report researchers in the July issue of Nature Genetics. The discovery may lead to a new diagnostic test for these conditions, which make people highly susceptible to infections and often go unrecognized because of a lack of good tests.

11 Jul 2005

Molecules that give certain bugs their color also help them resist attack by immune cells called neutrophils

A new study in the July 18 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine shows that gold-colored bacteria are more harmful than their unpigmented relatives.

11 Jul 2005

Research explains one of the fundamental mysteries of multiple sclerosis

Scientists have pinpointed a chemical messenger that frees some white blood cells from the body's normal constraints, allowing the cells to act like renegades that could damage nerves in the central nervous system. The work, to be published in the July 15 issue of the Journal of Immunology and just published on-line, helps explain one of the fundamental mysteries of multiple sclerosis (MS).

11 Jul 2005

Identical twins lose some fundamental similarities as they grow older

...a new study reports. They may start to look and act less alike. The changes could leave one twin susceptible to diseases like cancer, while the other twin remains healthy.

11 Jul 2005

Genes play an overriding role in cholesterol response

Why does it seem like some people can eat all the ice cream they want without increasing their cholesterol or gaining much weight, while others with high cholesterol have to watch their diets like a hawk? Because no matter what their lifestyle, people's genes play an overriding role in their cholesterol response.

11 Jul 2005

PSA screening of asymptomatic men reduced risk of metastatic prostate cancer by 35 per cent

Early screening of prostate cancer in asymptomatic men may reduce their risk of death from metastatic prostate cancer by as much as 35 per cent, researchers from the University of Toronto have found.

11 Jul 2005

New roles for granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) in treating stroke

In a study appearing online on July 7 in advance of print publication of the August 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Armin Schneider and colleagues from Axaron Biosciences describe new roles for granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) in treating stroke and other central nervous system roles of this protein.

11 Jul 2005

Scientists discover how an HIV protein fragment shuts down an immune response

The HIV virus hides out in the very immune system cells that are meant to protect the body from viral infection. But how does it prevent these cells from mounting a full-scale attack against the invader?

11 Jul 2005

New approach to preventing or reversing heart failure

Duke University Medical Center researchers have identified a new protein that plays a critical role in enabling the heart to respond to such external stimuli as exercise or stress, as well as in the progressive loss of heart function that is heart failure, the researchers said.

11 Jul 2005

Meth abuse biggest drug problem in country USA

In a recent crime survey of 45 states and 500 county law enforcement agencies in the U.S., it has been found that as far as rural and small town America is concerned, methamphetamine has overtaken cocaine as the biggest drug problem.

11 Jul 2005

Northerners in the UK more prone to certain cancers

According to the office for National Statistics (ONS) ' "Cancer Atlases" for the 1990s, people in the north of England and Scotland are far more likely to get certain cancers than those living in the south.

11 Jul 2005

Anti-tobacco advertising reduces smoking

According to a recently released study, young people were found to reduce their cigarette smoking and had a more positive attitude to anti-smoking after they were exposed to state-sponsored anti-tobacco advertising.

11 Jul 2005

Prescription drug abuse in the USA exceeds 15 million

A recently released report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University suggests between 1992 and 2003, more Americans were abusing controlled prescription drugs than cocaine, hallucinogens, inhalants and heroin put together.

11 Jul 2005