Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have created a mouse model of muscular dystrophy in which degenerating muscle tissue gives off visible light. The observed luminescence occurs only in damaged muscle tissue and in direct proportion to cumulative damage sustained in that tissue, permitting precise monitoring of the disease's progress in the mice, the researchers say. While this technique cannot be used in humans, it paves the way to quicker, cheaper and more accurate assessment of the efficacy of therapeutic drugs...

Pancreatic beta cells store and release insulin, the hormone responsible for stimulating cells to convert glucose to energy. The number of beta cells in the pancreas increases in response to greater demand for insulin or injury, but it is not clear if the new beta cells are the result of cell division or the differentiation of a precursor cell, a process known as neogenesis. Knowledge of how beta cells are created and maintained is critical to understanding diseases in which these cells are lost, such as diabetes...

Peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) is a deterioration in cardiac function that occurs in pregnant women during the last month or in the months following their pregnancy. This disorder can occur in women with no prior history of heart disease and the causes are not well understood. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Ingrid Struman and colleagues at the University of Liege in Liege, Belgium, identified a molecule, miR-146a, that can serve as a biomarker for peripartum cardiomyopathy...

The production of a certain kind of brain cell that had been considered an impediment to healing may actually be needed to staunch bleeding and promote repair after a stroke or head trauma, researchers at Duke Medicine report. These cells, known as astrocytes, can be produced from stem cells in the brain after injury. They migrate to the site of damage where they are much more effective in promoting recovery than previously thought. This insight from studies in mice, reported online in the journal Nature, may help researchers develop treatments that foster brain repair...

Neurodegenerative and central nervous system (CNS) diseases represent a major public health issue affecting at least 20 million children and adults in the United States alone. Multiple drugs exist to treat and potentially cure these debilitating diseases, but 98 percent of all potential pharmaceutical agents are prevented from reaching the CNS directly due to the blood-brain barrier...

Antibiotic resistance is a global problem. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that for tuberculosis alone multi-drug resistance accounts for more than 150,000 deaths each year. WHO warns of "a doomsday scenario of a world without antibiotics," in which antibiotic resistance will turn common infections into incurable killers and make routine surgeries a high-risk gamble. Certain types of bacteria are a scourge of the hospital environment because they are extremely resistant to antibiotics and consequently difficult, if not impossible, to treat...

Biologists at UC San Diego have identified eight genes never before suspected to play a role in wound healing that are called into action near the areas where wounds occur. Their discovery, detailed this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, was made in the laboratory fruit fly Drosophila. But the biologists say many of the same genes that regulate biological processes in the hard exoskeleton, or cuticle, of Drosophila also control processes in human skin...

More than a quarter of a century after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, many children and teenagers who developed thyroid cancer due to radiation are in complete or near remission, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).. Following the April 26, 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the former Soviet Union, the number of children and teenagers diagnosed with differentiated thyroid cancer spiked in Ukraine, Belarus and western areas of Russia...

The stem cell transplant regimen that was commonly used in the United States to treat advanced neuroblastoma in children appears to be more toxic than the equally effective regimen employed in Europe and Egypt, according to a new study being presented at the 26th annual meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology in Miami April 24-27. The U.S. regimen was associated with more acute toxicity to the kidneys and liver...

When the eye cancer retinoblastoma is diagnosed in racial and ethnic minority children whose families don't have private health insurance, it often takes a more invasive, potentially life-threatening course than in other children, probably because of delays in diagnosis, Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center (DF/CHCC) researchers report at the 26th annual meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology being held in Miami, April 24-27...

By 2030, every U.S. taxpayer could be paying $244 a year to care for heart failure patients, according to an American Heart Association policy statement. The statement, published online in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Heart Failure, predicts: The number of people with heart failure could climb 46 percent from 5 million in 2012 to 8 million in 2030. Direct and indirect costs to treat heart failure could more than double from $31 billion in 2012 to $70 billion in 2030...

An Autistica consultation published this month found that 24% of children with autism were non-verbal or minimally verbal, and it is known that these problems can persist into adulthood. Professionals have long attempted to support the development of language in these children but with mixed outcomes. An estimated 600,000 people in the UK and 70 million worldwide have autism, a neuro-developmental condition which is life-long...

T2 Biosystems, a company developing direct detection products enabling superior diagnostics, has announced the publication of research supporting the Company's flagship diagnostic test, T2Candida®, in Science Translational Medicine. The research highlights T2Candida as a breakthrough approach to rapid and sensitive identification of species-specific Candida, a sepsis-causing fungus, directly from whole blood in approximately three hours, or up to 25 times faster than the current gold standard of blood culture...

Stimulating a region of the brain known to be involved in reward decreases binge eating behavior in mice, according to a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings add to a growing body of evidence supporting the role of the brain's reward system in driving the consumption of palatable food. It could one day pave the way for more effective and lasting treatments for obesity. The numbers of people worldwide living with obesity continues to climb. Recent studies suggest that the consumption of high calorie foods activates regions of the brain associated with reward...

Clenching your right hand may help form a stronger memory of an event or action, and clenching your left may help you recollect the memory later, according to research published April 24 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Ruth Propper and colleagues from Montclair State University. Participants in the research study were split into groups and asked to first memorize, and later recall words from a list of 72 words...

An article published today on bmj.com argues that forcing nurses to undergo work experience before their studies will not improve nursing standards. Following a suggestion from the Francis report that nurses should undergo paid work as healthcare assistants prior to study, Elaine Maxwell says that there is no reason to think it makes them better practitioners. She argues that it plays to the popular conception that nursing is purely about caring: without recognising the cognitive skills required...

Clenching your right hand may help create a stronger memory of an event or action, and clenching your left hand may help you recall the memory later, according to a new study. The research was conducted by a team of experts from Montclair State University, led by Ruth Propper, and was published in the journal PLOS ONE. A previous study from UCLA demonstrated that stimulating key areas of the brain can improve memory. The authors of the current report pointed out that "Unilateral hand clenching increases neuronal activity in the frontal lobe of the contralateral hemisphere...

A study testing the latest experimental HIV vaccine has been stopped after an independent review board found that it did not prevent HIV infection and did not decrease the amount of HIV in the blood. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, announced that they will stop giving doses of this experimental vaccine. The trial, which began in 2009 is the most recent in a line of unsuccessful HIV vaccine studies...

Researchers have found that viewing sexually explicit content on the internet or in magazines as a teenager does not influence sexual behavior as much as people think, according to a new study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine. It was believed by many that viewing sexually explicit content could have a negative impact on the sexual behaviors of teenagers. However, not enough research was carried out to come to any concrete conclusions...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has just announced the development of a new hand-held device, called CD-3, capable of detecting substandard or counterfeit anti-malarial medicines. Malaria is a life threatening mosquito-borne infectious disease that kills more than 660,000 people around the world each year. According to the World Health Organization, there were close to 219 million cases of malaria in 2010...