About one-third of patients who have suffered a stroke end up with impaired vision, losing up to half of their visual field. This partial blindness was long considered irreversible, but recent studies have shown that vision training after optic nerve and brain damage can restore or improve vision. A new study published in the journal...
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Cancer Vaccines
When I think of vaccines, I think of the MMRV (measles, mumps, rubella and varicella) vaccines which help our bodies establish immunity against diseases that used to kill. Now, there are vaccines being created for cancer. The rise of cancer vaccines According to Dr. Nora Disis, an oncologist and researcher in cancer vaccines at the...
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A ‘homing system’ targets therapeutic T-cells to brain cancer
A multi-institution international team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine has developed a new strategy to overcome one of the main obstacles to the treatment of brain cancer—access to the tumor. Under the influence of cancer, the blood-brain barrier diverts immune T cells that attempt to enter the brain to fight the tumor....
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Stop Ignoring This Filament Crucial to Muscle Function physical medicine
Titin was discovered four decades ago, but some physiology textbooks fail to recognize the important role it plays in muscle contraction. Watching the elaborate motion of a pitcher throwing a baseball at more than 100 miles an hour illustrates the essential role of stretching prior to delivering large amounts of mechanical power. Similarly, practitioners of...
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Muscle Clocks Play a Role in Regulating Metabolism
Researchers untangle the multifarious nature of muscle aging. So far, the only reliable treatment is exercise. In the early 2000s, Stefano Schiaffino, a muscle physiologist at the University of Padova in Italy, was faced with puzzling results: two seemingly identical experiments involving hind leg muscles in rats had yielded different findings. Schiaffino and his team...
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Existing liver drug can help treat Alzheimer’s
Research reveals that an existing drug used to treat liver disease could also be employed in Alzheimer’s disease therapy. The drug “heals” malfunctioning elements at cellular level. Alzheimer’s Disease is the most common type of dementia. It affects around 5.7 million people in the United States and about 46.8 million people worldwide. An existing drug for...
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One in five human genes are not ‘real’
New research could change the face of biomedicine; the human genome is found to contain far fewer “real,” or protein-encoding, genes than it was previously believed. Our DNA may contain far fewer ‘real’ genes than we initially thought. In the early 1990s, scientists set out to map the entire DNA sequence of the human genome. The so-called Human...
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Breakthrough in muscular dystrophy research after scientists edit DNA to rebuild muscles Breakthrough in muscular dystrophy research after scientists edit DNA to
Duchenne muscular dystrophy affects as many as one in every 3,500 boys It kills patients by their mid-30s by weakening the heart and breathing muscles Scientists have managed to edit DNA to strengthen weakened muscles Levels of a vital muscle protein rose to up to 92 percent of normal amounts Scientists have made a breakthrough...
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B cells among factors leading to brain lesions in multiple sclerosis
A team of researchers from the University of Zurich and the University Hospital Zurich has shown that in multiple sclerosis it is not only specific T cells that cause inflammation and lesions in the brain. B cells, a different type of immune cell, also play a role. These cells activate T cells in the blood. This discovery...
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The burden of the ‘suicide’ headache
They’re called suicide headaches because the pain is frequent and unbearable. Commonly known as cluster headaches, they can occur up to eight times a day. They start suddenly, last for up to three hours, and can be very painful. A bout of regular attacks, known as a cluster bout, can last weeks to months. Dr....