New Breast Cancer Screening Tool Shows Promise
from Reuters
A new screening tool works three times better than mammography at finding tumors in women who have dense breast tissue, which can confound mammograms, U.S. researchers said recently. Mammography, an X-ray of the breasts, detected fewer than a third of the tumors found using a new technique called molecular breast imaging, or MBI, the researchers said ahead of a breast cancer meeting sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and other groups. More

Molecular Biologists Devise Strategy to Starve Brain Tumors
from Science Daily
Brain tumor researchers have found that brain tumors arise from cancer stem cells living within tiny protective areas formed by blood vessels in the brain. Killing those cells is a promising strategy to eliminate tumors and prevents them from re-growing. The researchers have found that drugs that block new blood vessel formation can destroy the protected areas and stop cancer from developing. More

Seeing Eye-to-Eye with...the Fly?
from Canada NewsWire
Scientists have established that despite our many differences, the genes that control the development of eyes in humans and flies are remarkably similar. This research, published in the Sept. 9, 2008 issue of the journal Current Biology, suggests that the eyes of invertebrates (such as fruit flies) and vertebrates (such as humans) have a common ancestry. More

Baby, My Genes Made Me Do It
from The Washington Post
Men are more likely to be devoted and loyal husbands when they lack a particular variant of a gene that influences brain activity, researchers announced -- the first time that science has shown a direct link between a man's genes and his aptitude for monogamy. More

Liver Disease Plagues Obese Kids
from Time
In a new and disturbing twist on the obesity epidemic, some overweight teenagers have severe liver damage caused by too much body fat, and a handful has needed liver transplants. The American Liver Foundation and other experts estimate 2 percent to 5 percent of American children over age 5, nearly all of them obese or overweight, have the condition, called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. More

Scientists are Cracking the Genetic Code of Weeds
from PR Web
Just as research into the genes that make up human DNA has unleased a new wave of innovation in healthcare, research into the genetic code of weeds holds the potential to boost crop yields and impact our ability to feed a growing world population. More

Chickenpox Vaccine Slashes Virus by 90 Percent
from ABC News
In a recent study released in the journal Pediatrics, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that the plummeting reports of chickenpox (also known as varicella) between 1995 and 2005 has dragged down chickenpox-related hospitalizations by 75 percent and reduced deaths by 74 percent - with the greatest improvements in young children. More

Jumping the 'Species Barrier' - Infectious, Test Tube-Produced Prions
from Medical News Today
Researchers have shown that they can create entirely new strains of infectious proteins known as prions in the laboratory by simply mixing infectious prions from one species with the normal prion proteins of another species. Prion diseases, also known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, are infectious neurodegenerative diseases affecting the brain of several species of mammals including humans. More

What a Sleep Study Can Reveal About Fibromyalgia
from Medical News Today
Research engineers and sleep medicine specialists from two Michigan universities have joined technical and clinical hands to put innovative quantitative analysis, signal-processing technology and computer algorithms to work in the sleep lab. One of their recent findings is that a new approach to analyzing sleep fragmentation appears to distinguish fibromyalgia patients from healthy controls. More