science newsletter: Science News SciGuru.com

Σάββατο 11 Αυγούστου 2012

Science News SciGuru.com

Height, Weight and BMI Changes Seen in Children Treated with Peginterferon Alpha for Hepatitis C
Populations survive despite many deleterious mutations
New approach of resistant tuberculosis
Scientists Show Copper Facilitates Prion Disease
Team creates new view of body’s infection response

Height, Weight and BMI Changes Seen in Children Treated with Peginterferon Alpha for Hepatitis C

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 11:48 AM PDT

Follow-up research from the Pediatric Study of Hepatitis C (PEDS-C) trial reveals that children treated with peginterferon alpha (pegIFNα) for hepatitis C (HCV) display significant changes in height, weight, body mass index (BMI), and body composition. Results appearing in the August issue of Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, indicate that most growth-related side effects are reversible with cessation of therapy. However, in many children the height-for-age score had not returned to baseline two years after stopping treatment.

Populations survive despite many deleterious mutations

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 11:42 AM PDT

From protozoans to mammals, evolution has created more and more complex structures and better-adapted organisms. This is all the more astonishing as most genetic mutations are deleterious. Especially in small asexual populations that do not recombine their genes, unfavourable mutations can accumulate. This process is known as Muller’s ratchet in evolutionary biology. The ratchet, proposed by the American geneticist Hermann Joseph Muller, predicts that the genome deteriorates irreversibly, leaving populations on a one-way street to extinction.

New approach of resistant tuberculosis

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 11:21 AM PDT

Scientists of the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine have breathed new life into a forgotten technique and so succeeded in detecting resistant tuberculosis in circumstances where so far this was hardly feasible. Tuberculosis bacilli that have become resistant against our major antibiotics are a serious threat to world health.

If we do not take efficient and fast action, ‘multiresistant tuberculosis’ may become a worldwide epidemic, wiping out all medical achievements of the last decades.

Scientists Show Copper Facilitates Prion Disease

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 10:26 AM PDT

Many of us are familiar with prion disease from its most startling and unusual incarnations—the outbreaks of “mad cow” disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) that created a crisis in the global beef industry. Or the strange story of Kuru, a fatal illness affecting a tribe in Papua New Guinea known for its cannibalism. Both are forms of prion disease, caused by the abnormal folding of a protein and resulting in progressive neurodegeneration and death.

Team creates new view of body’s infection response

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 09:27 AM PDT

A new 3-D view of the body’s response to infection — and the ability to identify proteins involved in the response — could point to novel biomarkers and therapeutic agents for infectious diseases.