Health & Medicine : Science World Report

Mar 12, 2012 07:08 AM EDT

Progress, No Big Breakthrough, in Hunt for HIV Cure

Scientists, stymied for decades by the complexity of the human immunodeficiency virus, are making progress on several fronts in the search for a cure for HIV infections, a leading medical research conference was told this week in Seattle.

Mar 12, 2012 06:52 AM EDT

Fake Avastin Shows Very Little Protects Drug Supply

As drug counterfeiters step up their sales of bogus medicines, global health regulators have few protections in place to prevent them from reaching patients, and new laws aimed at addressing the problem could be years away.

Mar 11, 2012 04:37 PM EDT

Health Monitoring? There's an App for That

Researchers in New Zealand have developed a prototype Bluetooth-enabled medical monitoring device that can be connected wirelessly to your smart phone and keep track of various physiological parameters, such as body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure and movements. The prototype could be extend...

Mar 09, 2012 04:22 PM EST

New Study Shows Higher Rates of HIV Infection

ICAP at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health is part of a network of research organizations that jointly released results, finding that HIV infection rates of black women living in certain parts of the U.S. are higher than previously estimated for black adolescent and women living i...

Mar 09, 2012 01:29 PM EST

Osteoarthritis Summit Delineates Shortcomings of Research and Path Forward

"The summit included leading scientists and researchers across all of the broad disciplines related to osteoarthritis, ranging from very basic cell and molecular biology, to biomechanics, to epidemiology and clinical trials," said Steven Goldring, M.D., chief scientific officer at Hospital for Speci...

Mar 09, 2012 10:59 AM EST

Meteorites Reveal Another Way to Make Life's Components

Creating some of life's building blocks in space may be a bit like making a sandwich â€“ you can make them cold or hot, according to new NASA research. This evidence that there is more than one way to make crucial components of life increases the likelihood that life emerged elsewhere in the Un...

Mar 09, 2012 10:26 AM EST

Nanotube Technology Leading to New Era of Fast, Lower-cost Medical Diagnostics

Researchers at Oregon State University have tapped into the extraordinary power of carbon "nanotubes" to increase the speed of biological sensors, a technology that might one day allow a doctor to routinely perform lab tests in minutes, speeding diagnosis and treatment while reducing costs.

Mar 09, 2012 09:55 AM EST

7-country Study Examining the Causes of Childhood Pneumonia Outlined

The scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases has released its March Special Supplement focusing entirely on the research design of and pilot data from the Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health (PERCH) Project, which seeks to identify the causes of pneumonia among the world's most vulne...

Mar 09, 2012 08:34 AM EST

First Findings Released from Swaziland HIV Incidence Measurement Survey Announced

The first findings from a nationally representative HIV survey were presented today at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2012) in Seattle, WA. The Swaziland HIV Incidence Measurement Survey (SHIMS) found that overall HIV prevalence, or percentage of the populatio...

Mar 09, 2012 08:27 AM EST

Discovery of Hair-cell Roots Suggests the Brain Modulates Sound Sensitivity

The hair cells of the inner ear have a previously unknown "root" extension that may allow them to communicate with nerve cells and the brain to regulate sensitivity to sound vibrations and head position, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have discovered. Their ...

Mar 09, 2012 07:16 AM EST

Scientists Discover Effects of PD-1 blockade on ART Therapy in SIV-infected Monkeys

Scientists have discovered that blocking PD-1 (programmed death-1), an immune molecule that inhibits the immune response to viral infections, can have a significant effect on HIV-like illness in nonhuman primates. In earlier research, the scientists showed that PD-1 blockade could restore T and B...

Mar 08, 2012 01:12 PM EST

McGill Researchers Crack Degeneration Process that Leads to Alzheimer's

A research group led by Dr. A. Claudio Cuello of McGill University's Faculty of Medicine, Dept. of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, has uncovered a critical process in understanding the degeneration of brain cells sensitive to Alzheimer's disease (AD). The study, published in the February issue of the...