1 year ago
New animal model to help diagnose and treat sciatica
Washington, April 30 - A new animal model developed by researchers for the painful nerve condition sciatica should help doctors diagnose and treat it, according to a new study. Its symptoms are numbness or pain from the lower back to the feet, radiating leg pain or difficulty in controlling the leg. It is often caused by compression, or pinching, of any of the five nerve roots that combine to ma ... read more

2 years ago
Progression of SIV infection in monkeys raises
A sudden loss of T cells -- white blood cells crucial to the immune system -- is not the trigger for the onset of AIDS, according to a study published in the September 2007 issue of the Journal of Immunology by a team of researchers at Tulane National Primate Research Center. The study, “Acute Loss of Intestinal CD4+ T Cells is Not Predictive of Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Virulence,” challenges ... read more

2 years ago
Loneliness is a molecule
It’s already known that a person’s social environment can affect their health, with those who are socially isolated—that is, lonely suffering from higher mortality than people who are not. Now, in the first study of its kind, published in the current issue of the journal Genome Biology, UCLA researchers have identified a distinct pattern of gene expression in immune cells from people who experien ... read more

2 years ago
The molecular signature of loneliness
People who experience chronically high levels of loneliness show gene-expression patterns that differ markedly from those of people who don't feel lonely, according to a new molecular analysis in the online open access journal Genome Biology. The findings suggest that feelings of social isolation are linked to alterations in immune system activity, which result in increased inflammatory signalling ... read more

4 years ago
Immune systems in breast cancer survivors who suffer from fatigue fail to shut off after therapy
This constant immune system activation, which researchers discovered by measuring specific proteins in blood samples from survivors, may be causing the fatigue, UCLA researchers theorize. Their discovery may lead to behavioral interventions such as tai chi and yoga that will help alleviate persistent fatigue, which affects about a third of breast cancer survivors for years after they complete trea ... read more

4 years ago
New insight into machinery of immune cells' 'tentacles'
The researchers said their findings of the machinery of formation of such actin filaments could offer targets for drugs to induce the immune system to work more effectively to fight infection; or to damp its stimulation in autoimmune disease.Led by Duke University Medical Center pharmacologist Ann Marie Pendergast, the researchers published their findings in the Jan. 10, 2006, issue of Current Bio ... read more