Health and Medicine

The use of combinations of antiretroviral drugs including nucleoside analogs, protease inhibitors (PIs) and reverse transcriptase inhibitors – collectively termed highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) – has resulted in a dramatic improvement in health status for a large number of HIV-infected individuals.

Side effects in many users, however, cause non-adherence to treatment regimes and concern over their long-term use in the management of chronic HIV infection. The adverse effects o

In a new study in mice, a modified form of an innocuous chimpanzee virus has shown marked potency as a protective vaccine against HIV, itself believed to have crossed into the human population from chimpanzees sometime in the 1930s. The study, led by researchers at The Wistar Institute, appears in the February issue of the Journal of Immunology.

“Our results show this new vaccine is capable of inducing the kind of powerful immune response that we and others believe will be critical for cont

Scientists from The University of Manchester are playing a key role in a major Europe-wide study – believed to be the largest of its kind – of cancers of the mouth, pharynx and larynx (throat) and oesophagus (gullet). Incidences of these cancers are increasing faster in the UK than almost anywhere else in western Europe.

Every year, cancers of the upper aero-digestive tract kill approximately 10,000 in the UK alone. Alarmingly, these cancers are affecting younger people and are on the increa

A new drug that is biologically linked to Thalidomide destroys cancerous cells by forcing them to commit suicide according to research by a team at St George’s Hospital Medical School, Tooting, London. This work, published today in the journal Cancer Research, adds to the recent study by the same team showing how similar drugs can reduce new blood vessel development, starving growing tumours of nutrients. Both results suggest these new compounds could be powerful anti-cancer agents.

By attem

New research examines why African-American infants are at greater risk

Why is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome more common among African-American infants than in babies of other races?

Research in this month’s issue of Pediatrics suggests the answer might lie in the high prevalence of African-American infants who have died suddenly after being put to sleep in adult beds or on surfaces other than cribs, such as sofas. It urges public health officials to make African American

Cancer researchers have known that the tumor-suppressor gene p53 is critical in preventing cells from dividing inappropriately and becoming tumors. But now, researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center have established that the ability of the p53 gene to perform its job depends on the type of p53 within each cell. This and another new finding about p53, published in Nature Genetics (Feb. 3, 2003 online version, March 2003 print version), have implications for tailoring chemotherapy, designing new cancer tr