Health and Medicine

A team of researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has discovered a new mechanism that accelerates the shortening of telomeres (structures that protect the ends of chromosomes) involved in genetic instability and a predisposition to cancer. The research has been published in the journal Human Molecular Genetics.

DNA in higher organisms is organised into individual chromosomes, the ends of which are protected by structures called telomeres. Telomeres are very important in ma

Testicular cancer – cure rates now so high patients may be more at risk from the treatment than the cancer returning say researchers

The treatment of testicular cancer has become so successful and relapse rates are now so low that doctors face a problem unheard of 20 years ago – patients are living long enough to suffer long term side effects that are potentially life-threatening and decrease the survivors’ quality of life.

With cure rates over 90% in many cases and nearly 50

More effective vaccines will be developed as a result of research at the University of Dundee which is harnessing the skills of special cells in the body`s immune response process.

The Medical Research Council has awarded Professor Colin Watts and his colleagues £1.2 million to fund work on key cells in our immune system called dendritic cells. Colin is Professor of Immunology in the School of Life Sciences.

Although immunologists have known about dendritic cells for many years thei

It is possible to measure levels of the stress hormone cortisol not only in blood but also in saliva. Linköping physician Elisabeth Aardal-Eriksson has further developed a saliva test to make it reliable and easy to use, not only in hospitals but also in the field. The findings are presented in a dissertation at Linköping University, Sweden. The researcher has also found that the corisol content of saliva is related to the occurrence of so-called posttraumatic symptoms of stress.

In the fir

The widely held parental belief that asthma inhalers cause hyperactivity in children is not confirmed by research published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The researchers studied 19 asthmatic children between the ages of 2 and 5, all of whom were treated with fast acting reliever inhalers/nebulisers containing salbutamol. The children were being seen at the children’s respiratory clinic at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, London.

Before being tested, the children’s hyperacti

In the edition of Nature dated Thursday 21 February 2002, an international team of scientists report their analysis of the genome of fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe). The project, largely funded through a €6.9 million from the European Commission, is likely to have major implications for the future of cancer and other bio-medical research. Fifty of the yeast genes were found to have significant similarity with genes involved in human diseases, including cystic fibrosis, hereditary deafness a