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The disease familial combined hyperlipidemia is a common cause of disturbed metabolism of fat and early heart attacks. Swedish scientists have now developed a pioneering method and can show for the first time what genes are regulated by the gene USF1, which is known to cause the disease.

New research shows that an interaction between fetal brain cells and maternal antibodies could be linked with the repetitive behavior -- also called stereotypes -- that is characteristic of autism. While additional studies are needed to confirm the outcome, this result leads investigators to suspect that brain-directed antibodies during the prenatal period could be a causal factor for the disorder.

Patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia who were treated with a gene therapy protocol began making antibodies that reacted against their own leukemia cells. Researchers inserted a gene with the potential to activate an immune response into six patients with CLL, the most common form of adult leukemia. Several of the patients started making antibodies that reacted against their own leukemia cells. When tested in the lab, the antibodies also reacted with the leukemia cells of other patients with the disease.

Patients with a certain gene variant drank less and experienced better overall clinical outcomes than patients without the variant while taking the medication naltrexone. About 87 percent of patients with the variant who received naltrexone experienced good outcomes, compared with about 49 percent of those who received a placebo.

What do marathoners and heart failure patients have in common? More than you think according to new findings. A new study shows that the fatigue that marathoners and other extreme athletes feel at the end of a race is caused by a tiny leak inside their muscles that probably also saps the energy from patients with heart failure.

With the aid of computerized image analysis, it may be possible in the future for radiologists to feel images with the help of a three-dimensional mouse. The new technology should make it easier to diagnose and plan the treatment of cancer, and other diseases. Computerized image analysis can be used to determine the size of organs like the liver, or to construct three-dimensional models of organs when surgery or radiation is being planned.

Antibodies in the blood of mothers of children with autism bind to fetal brain cells, potentially interrupting healthy brain development. Study authors also found that the reaction was most common in mothers of children with the regressive form of autism, which occurs when a period of typical development is followed by loss of social and/or language skills.

With its promises of more effective, low-cost therapies for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's and other medical conditions, personalized medicine is moving forward but at a slow pace that's not keeping up with its high expectations. Personalized medicine, the practice of catering medical therapies to the specific genetic and disease profiles of patients, represents a major shift from the one-size-fits-all model of traditional medicine.

Scientists have found another important clue to why nerve cells die in neurodegenerative diseases, based on studies of the developing brain. "It appears that if a cell is not appropriately stimulated by other cells, it self-destructs" said one of the researchers.

A comprehensive new study documents in detail the dynamics of parts of Greenland's ice sheet, important data that have long been missing from the ice sheet models on which projections about sea level rise and global warming are based. "If current climate models from the IPCC included data from ice dynamics in Greenland, the sea level rise estimated during this century could be twice as high as what they are currently projecting," she said.