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People with diagnosed diabetes are nearly twice as likely to have arthritis, and the inactivity caused by arthritis hinders the successful management of both diseases, according to a new Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report study. This is one of the first studies of its kind to look at the relationship between arthritis and diabetes and the outcomes associated with physical activity.

Scientists working with diabetic mice have examined in unprecedented detail the immune cells long thought to be responsible for type 1 diabetes. They caught the immune cells, known as dendritic cells, "red-handed": they were carrying insulin and fragments of insulin-producing cells known as beta cells. This can be the first step in a misdirected immune system attack that destroys the beta cells, causing diabetes.

Wouldn't it be nice if our doctors could predict accurately whether we would respond to a particular medication? This question is important because research studies provide information about how groups of patients tend to respond to treatments, but inevitably, differences among groups of patients with the same diagnosis mean that findings about groups of patients may not apply to individuals from those groups.

Viruses are masters of deception, duping their host's cells into helping them grow and spread. A new study has found that human cytomegalovirus can mimic a common regulatory protein to hijack normal cell growth machinery, disrupting a cell's primary anti-cancer mechanism.

A virologists and cancer biologists was on his way to the American Association of Cancer Research in San Diego recently when he decided to check out the in-flight movie I Am Legend. The premise of the sci-fi horror movie is that a virus successfully used to fight cancer in clinical trials has gone out of control, pushing humankind to the edge of extinction. Early on in the movie, survivor Robert Neville (Will Smith) replays a three-year-old TV interview which foreshadows the impending disaster.