Health and Medicine

Changes in the brain’s white matter may play a major role in the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, whose baffling origin has traditionally been blamed on the gray matter. The new findings could provide a fresh direction for Alzheimer’s research in this neglected part of the brain, offering the potential for early diagnosis and enhanced therapies.

The results are reported in the Sept. 17 print edition of Biochemistry, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the w

A team of Dartmouth engineers and doctors are trying to find more comfortable and comprehensive ways to examine breast tissue to better detect and diagnose breast cancer. The Dartmouth group is simultaneously developing and testing four different breast imaging techniques.

The multidisciplinary Dartmouth team includes researchers from the Thayer School of Engineering and Dartmouth Medical School, and they are working under the auspices of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center and the department o

“We need to get (chronic kidney disease) on the radar screen, especially when there’s a medical history of high blood pressure or diabetes, so both patients and physicians are more aware of the consequences and opportunities to intervene.” – Neil R. Powe, M.D., M.P.H.

Kidney disease patients are at a much increased risk of death when they have delays getting to a specialist, a Johns Hopkins-led study shows. Delays occur more often among black males, the uninsured and those who have mul

An experimental gene transfer technique shut down cell re-growth in the arteries’ interior lining and reduced the inflammatory response – two main causes of re-narrowing of newly opened blood vessels, researchers report in today’s rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

The process that opens blocked blood vessels – either inflating a tiny balloon to force open the narrowed vessel (angioplasty) or inserting a tiny mesh tube called a stent to se

Researchers have proven that gene therapy can reverse the pathological features of muscular dystrophy in an animal model. Before, gene therapy had only been able to prevent further muscle-wasting in mice. “We expect to build on these results in the continuing search for a way to treat a horrible disease. Our results indicate that gene therapy could be used not only to halt or prevent this disease, but also to restore normal muscle function in older patients,” says Dr. Jeffrey S. Chamberlain, professo

Researchers at Stanford University Medical Center have devised a way to sneak DNA into skin cells taken from people with a potentially deadly genetic skin disorder. These modified cells later formed normal, healthy skin when transplanted onto the skin of mice. The technique, published in the advance online publication of the October issue of the journal Nature Medicine, marks the first time researchers have stably replaced the mutated gene in this disease and introduces a new gene therapy technique t