Health & Medicine
- Health & Medicine
New drug takes on intestinal cancer
Imatinib mesylate, already approved by the FDA for treating people with a form of leukemia, blocks the activity of certain enzymes that cause gastrointestinal stromal cells to replicate uncontrollably.
- Health & Medicine
Virus in transplanted hearts bodes ill
Pediatric heart-transplant recipients who acquire a viral infection in the heart fare poorly over the long term.
- Health & Medicine
Gene stifled in some lung, breast cancers
The silencing of a gene called RASSF1A appears to increase the risk of cancer, studies of lung and breast tumors show.
- Health & Medicine
Memory may draw addicts back to cocaine
The hippocampus may be the seat of powerful cravings for cocaine in rats and play a key role in drug-addiction relapse.
- Health & Medicine
Fat may spur heart cells on to suicide
Fat in the heart may kill cells and eventually lead to heart failure.
- Health & Medicine
Virulent bacterium’s DNA is sequenced
The completed genome sequence of Staphylococcus aureus reveals transfers from other organisms of many of the antibiotic-resistance and virulence genes.
- Health & Medicine
Death of a theory
Three separate analyses of oral polio vaccine used in the 1950s in Africa deflate the theory that such a vaccine could have ignited the AIDS epidemic by containing virus-infected chimpanzee cells.
- Health & Medicine
Gene therapy cures blindness in dogs
Gene therapy to replace a defective RPE65 gene succeeds in bringing sight to three blind dogs, suggesting such therapy might reverse Leber congenital amauosis, a rare condition in which children are blind from birth.
- Health & Medicine
New anthrax treatment works in rats
By distorting a protein in the toxin that makes the anthrax bacterium deadly, scientists have discovered a promising way to treat the disease and possibly even to prevent it with a vaccine.
- Health & Medicine
Tamoxifen dilates arteries in men
The breast cancer drug tamoxifen can widen a narrowed coronary artery in men with heart problems.
- Health & Medicine
Long-term ecstasy use impairs memory
Extended use of the illicit drug called MDMA or ecstasy exacerbated memory problems in users aged 17 to 31, none of whom reported alcohol dependence.
- Health & Medicine
Peptide puts mouse arthritis out of joint
A compound called vasointestinal peptide, which binds to immune system T cells and macrophages, thwarts arthritis in mice.
