Category: Research
Dividing cells ‘feel’ their way out of warp, back to symmetry
September 21, 2009
Every moment, millions of a body’s cells flawlessly divvy up their genes and pinch perfectly in half to form two identical progeny for the replenishment of tissues and organs—even as they collide, get stuck, and squeeze through infinitesimally small spaces that distort their shapes.
Study: Wrong dose of heart meds too frequent in children
September 21, 2009
Infants experience errors most often, but all kids are vulnerable
Animal TB ‘tracker’ expected to speed drug, vaccine studies
September 14, 2009
Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a novel way to monitor in real time the behavior of the TB bacterium in mouse lungs, noninvasively pinpointing the exact location of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The new monitoring system is expected to speed up what is currently a slow and cumbersome process to test the safety and efficacy of various TB drug regimens and vaccines in animals. Plans are already under way for developing a similar system to monitor TB disease in humans.
JHU researchers make stem cells from developing sperm
September 14, 2009
The promise of stem cell therapy may lie in uncovering how adult cells revert to a primordial, stem cell state, whose fate is yet to be determined. Now, cell scientists at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have identified key molecular players responsible for this reversion in fruit fly sperm cells. Reporting online Aug. 6 in Cell Stem Cell, researchers show that two proteins are responsible for redirecting cells on the way to becoming sperm back to stem cells.
Crunching the numbers on hormone-related disorders in U.S.
September 14, 2009
A dogged review of the medical literature has produced what is believed to be the nation’s first comprehensive estimate of the extent of dozens of endocrine disorders in the United States.
Finding: Hepatitis C treatment options equally effective
September 14, 2009
Study redefines treatment for the potentially deadly liver-damaging disease
Kidney stones can be prevented in seizure patients on high-fat diet
September 14, 2009
Children on the high-fat ketogenic diet to control epileptic seizures can prevent the excruciatingly painful kidney stones that the diet can sometimes cause if they take a daily supplement of potassium citrate the day they start the diet, according to research from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.
New tool may help docs predict COPD death risk
September 7, 2009
Researchers have developed an index scale to help physicians predict a patient’s risk of dying from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.
Deaths from unintentional injuries increase for many groups
September 7, 2009
Rate of poisoning mortality triples in white women between ages of 45 and 64 While the total mortality rate from unintentional injury increased in the United States by 11 percent between 1999 and 2005, far larger increases were seen in some subgroups analyzed by age, race, ethnicity and type of injury by researchers at the […]
Drug yields positive response in people with skin, brain cancer
September 7, 2009
The Hedgehog signaling pathway is involved in a preliminary study and case report describing positive responses to an experimental anticancer drug in a majority of people with advanced or metastatic basal cell skin cancers. One patient with the most common type of pediatric brain cancer, medulloblastoma, also showed tumor shrinkage. Initial results of the drug […]