Archives

Scientists have identified a mechanism controlling multidrug resistance in fungi, a discovery that could help advance treatments for opportunistic fungal infections that frequently plague individuals with compromised immunity, such as patients receiving chemotherapy, transplant recipients treated with immunosuppressive drugs, and AIDS patients.

What role do nanoparticles play in hardening of the arteries and in the formation of kidney stones? How may these super-small particles affect the body's physiology? Nanoparticles are a thousand times smaller than the bacteria, E. coli, but recent advances in microscopy have allowed researchers to watch them interact with cells in the body.

Proposed guidelines from the US Food and Drug Administration would allow companies to market more drugs for unapproved uses and are a step in the wrong direction, said a researcher from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

A family of small molecules called CFTR inhibitors show promising effects in slowing the progression of polycystic kidney disease, the most common genetic disease of the kidneys. Patients with PKD develop cysts on the kidneys, which progressively increase in size and number.

Nipah virus is a new and deadly brain and lung disease that emerged from Singapore and Malaysia ten years ago. It is now spreading into rural India and Bangladesh killing up to three-quarters of the people who become infected in some outbreaks.

As the major source of free radicals in cells, mitochondria contribute to the high levels of oxidative stress believed to play a role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. Now a study demonstrates that estrogen reduces this oxidative stress caused by the mitochondria while increasing the ability of the mitochondria to generate energy -- important since there is usually an energy deficit in the Alzheimer brain.

Neurons grafted into the brain of a patient with Parkinson's disease fourteen years ago have developed Lewy body pathology, the defining pathology for the disease, according to new research in Nature Medicine.

New research in monkeys suggests the feasibility of treating cocaine addiction with a "replacement" drug that mimics the effects of cocaine but has less potential for abuse -- similar to the way nicotine and heroin addictions are treated.

The "Freshman 15" -- the rapid weight gain believed to afflict many new college students when they begin school -- appears to be a bit of an urban legend: a cautionary tale often told but not well substantiated.

Alzheimer's disease may be what most people fear as they grow older, but autopsy data from a long-range study of 3,400 men and women in the Seattle region found that the brains of a third of those who had become demented before death showed evidence of small vessel damage: the type of small, cumulative injury that can come from hypertension or diabetes.