Mad-cow culprit maintains stem cells
...ven beneficial. But in mammals, it can lead to the fatal brain lesions that characterize diseases such as Creutzfeld-Jakob. Curiously, however, PrP can be found throughout healthy human bodies, particularly in the brain where it's highly abundant. In fact, it's found in many mammalian species, and only on...Common food preservative might provide treatment for cystic fibrosis
... lives in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients--a fatal flaw that leaves the organism vulnerable to destru...--known as mucA--in the organism also represents a fatal flaw that could help physicians clear the characteristic "goop" from the lungs of advanced cystic fi...NHLBI media availability: Treatment shows long-term benefits for cystic fibrosis patients
...ents. CF is a chronic, progressive, and frequently fatal genetic disease that affects about 30,000 children and young adults in the United States. The UNC researchers believe that the concentrated saline increases mucus volume, which helps the airways to clear bacteria and inhaled debris and could limit th...Environmental exposure to cadmium associated with increased cancer risk
... area. During a median follow up of 17.2 years, 50 fatal cancers (including 18 lung cancers) and 20 non-fatal cancers (including 1 lung cancer) were identified. Overall cancer risk was significantly associated with a doubling of the excretion concentration of cadmium. This association remained after accoun...Climate change drives widespread amphibian extinctions
...ng may alter the dynamics of a skin fungus that is fatal to amphibians. The climate-driven fungal disease, the author's say, has hundreds of species around the world teetering on the brink of extinction or has already pushed them into the abyss. "Disease is the bullet that's killing the frogs," said J. Ala...Plant-derived vaccines safeguard against deadly plague
... infecting the lungs. It is considered universally fatal if not detected and treated after symptoms arise one to six days after the initial exposure. Current vaccines against plague are severely limited from widespread adoption by having problems with high adverse reaction rates and side effects. The rese...Other highlights in the January 4 JNCI
... 2005 for the treatment of glioblastoma, a rapidly fatal type of brain cancer. However, some glioblastomas do not completely respond to this drug because the cancer cells repair DNA damage induced by the drug before the damage forces the cell to die. Manish Aghi, M.D., Ph.D., of the Massachusetts General ...History of human cannibalism eats away at researchers
...bnormally fold and amass in brain tissues to cause fatal neurodegenerative diseases such as mad cow disease. These diseases are cumulatively known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) and in humans, include CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) and kuru. Kuru is confined to a human population ...First analysis of FDA's mifepristone adverse event reports
...detail ruptured ectopic pregnancies, a potentially fatal condition requiring emergency surgical interventio... call for increased research into the allergic and fatal septic reactions associated with mifepristone. They also urge that ultrasound imaging be performed b...JCI table of contents: December 22, 2005
..., which is expressed by white blood cells, deals a fatal blow to foreign cells by inserting itself into the cell membrane to form a pore through which water enters and causes the cell to swell, burst, and die. In a study appearing online on December 22 in advance of print publication in the January 2006 is...International team of scientists complete fungal genomic sequences
... for food production, while its relative can cause fatal disease." Although all three aspergilli species are considered close relatives, their respective genome sequences demonstrate remarkable diversity. Indeed, proteins compared across the aspergilli species show only about 65 to 70% amino acid identitie...Infectious agent thwarts typical defense mechanisms; Sheds light on immune system function
...ularemia. Also known as rabbit fever, tularemia is fatal in less than 1 percent of treated cases and in about 5 percent of untreated cases. It is a rare disease with only about 300 cases per year occurring in the United States . But the disease can make many people very ill very fast, said Mark Wewers, the...How Rickettsial pathogens break into cells
...mals, where they can cause dangerous and sometimes fatal infections. There are two types of Rickettsial pathogens--the spotted fever group, which includes the Rickettsia conorii bacteria studied by Cossart and her colleagues, and the typhus group. Both must live inside cells to survive. Rickettsia have be...Increasing norepinephrine stabilizes breathing patterns in a mouse model of Rett Syndrome
...splayed breathing disturbances that worsened until fatal respiratory arrest at about two months of age. The breathing disturbances were highly variable from mouse to mouse, as is also the case in individuals with RTT. This study sheds new light into the mysterious mechanisms that underlie the worsening of...New UW study offers strategy for treatment of fatal nervous system disorder
...pe for children afflicted with Krabbe's disease, a fatal nervous system disorder. Writing this week (Dec. 12, 2005) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a team of researchers at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine describes experiments that effectively promoted the abili...Texas scientists discover how a hepatitis C protein promotes liver cancer
... effects. Those who fail treatment are at risk for fatal cirrhosis or developing liver cancer. Researchers have known for a long time that hepatitis C virus infection can lead to liver cancer. But how the virus goes about this has been unclear. The UTMB group discovered that the tumor-suppressing retinobl...Edinburgh vet's bid to cut deaths from rabies in Africa
The fatal disease of rabies, which kills thousands of people in Africa and Asia each year, could be dealt a body blow if a new dog vaccination programme in Tanzania proves successful. Dr Sarah Cleaveland, an animal disease expert at the University of Edinburgh......ay towards the development of new therapiesfor the fatal lung form of anthrax. Bacillus anthracis is the causative agent of anthrax. What makes Bacillus anthracis especially dangerous is that these bacteria can form spores. The spores are extremely resistant against environmental stress and can survive for...New protein discovery may have implications for treating deadly E. coli infection
...ys Dr. Jia. E. coli 0157:H7 is responsible for the fatal illnesses in the Walkerton tragedy, the illness known as "Hamburger Disease" and the recent evacuation of over a thousand residents from the Kasechewan First Nation reserve. It is most commonly transmitted through undercooked meat, unpasturized milk ......treme form of accelerated aging that is inevitably fatal early in life. Cooper and her colleagues illuminated, for the first time, the roles played by two important proteins in recognizing blockages in transcription and in initiating an efficient method of repair; their results suggested a previously unsus...