The road to a protective HIV vaccine has not been easy thus far. The failed STEP trial, halted in 2007, was just one major trip-up among several, and two years later the massive RV144 trial from Thailand spurred controversy about efficacy rates. Part of the problem is that researchers have long struggled over the best target for the HIV vaccine. Read more
A drug previously tested against muscular dystrophy might offer protection against memory problems induced by stressful conditions, according to a preliminary mouse study. Researchers behind the study say the findings could one day contribute to treatments such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However other scientists in the field say the mechanism of action is in need of further evidence, and as such the jury remains out on the clinical utility of the agent. Read more
The path to a drug that can reverse the heart failure is littered with disappointment. As it stands, a physician can choose to give diuretics, blood pressure drugs or diabetes medication to people who suffer from chronic heart failure but these agents treat only the symptoms, not heart failure itself. Hopes soared in the 1980s when inotropic drugs, which help the heart muscles contract, improved patients’ ability to exercise but were later linked to increased risk of cardiac arrest. Large trials testing two blood pressure medications, candesartan and irbesartan, had less-than-encouraging outcomes. So researchers are interested in seemingly positive results announced yesterday at the European Society of Cardiology Congress meeting and concurrently published in The Lancet. Read more
Families with autistic children must navigate a condition where questions outnumber the answers, and therapies remain sparse and largely ineffective. A clinical trial being conducted by the Sutter Neuroscience Institute in Sacramento, California to address this situation began recruiting participants today for a highly experimental stem cell therapy for autism. The institute plans to find 30 autistic children between ages 2 and 7 with cord blood banked at the privately-run Cord Blood Registry, located about 100 miles west of the institute. Read more
A compound already sitting on the shelves of biomedical laboratories and emergency room supply closets seems to interrupt the formation of neurodegenerative protein clumps found in Huntington’s disease, according to a preliminary animal study published today in the Journal of Neuroscience. Read more
While attempting to better understand the exposure of rural Latin American communities to diseases harbored by bats, epidemiologists at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have stumbled upon an intriguing finding: eight people living in two tiny Peruvian villages appear to have developed antibodies against the rabies virus found in local vampire bats without any prior vaccination or treatment for the infection. This population study, the first of its kind, may provide clues to better understand how incremental exposure to rabies could lead to better vaccines or monoclonal antibody drugs. Read more
When a patient sits clutching his chest in pain in the emergency room, the doctor on call must think with razor-sharp focus to create a treatment plan immediately. The usual clinical suspects, such as heart attack or lung collapse, bear consideration. But anyone in emergency medicine research knows possible culprits vary widely and span the body’s organs. Unfortunately, research in this area has traditionally been spotty and uncoordinated — but perhaps not for much longer, thanks to the formation of a new Office of Emergency Care Research (OECR) unveiled earlier today by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Read more
An independent advisory committee for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today unanimously recommended the injectable drug ocriplasmin from the Belgium-based company ThromboGenics as an effective treatment for the age-related eye disorder known as symptomatic vitreomacular adhesion (VMA). Read more
Using gene therapy, a team of researchers for the first time successfully restored normal hearing to mice born deaf due to a missing protein, according to a study published today in the journal Neuron. This finding could be music to the ears of people whose congenital hearing loss is caused by genetic mutations that may prevent tiny inner ear hairs from interacting with neurotransmitters that are necessary for hearing. In the current experiment, mice recovered full hearing for an average of seven weeks, with two of 19 mice maintaining it for as long as one and a half years. “I was completely shocked,” says lead author Lawrence Lustig, director of the Douglas Grant Cochlear Implant Center at the University of California, San Francisco. “The hearing looked almost completely normal and you couldn’t tell these were rescued mice.” … Read more
In a study released today from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, engineers show through computer modeling how major international US airports might contribute to the spread of contagious disease during the early days of an epidemic. The culprits that could contribute the most damage turn out to be airports in New York, Los Angeles and Honolulu, Hawaii. “Our work is the first to look at the spatial spreading of contagion processes at early times, and to propose a predictor for which ‘nodes’ — in this case, airports — will lead to more aggressive spatial spreading,” said MIT computer engineer Ruben Juanes in a statement. The new model, unlike previous ones, considers the routines that passengers usually follow when traveling, an airport’s geographic location, how flights connect–or don’t–between airports, and, finally, how a long wait at an airport could influence how diseases spread. Read more
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