Mice have been criticized before as being inadequate models of inflammation. (See BioWorld Today, Feb. 12, 2013.) Now, researchers from the British London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and University of Bristol have extended that criticism to the adaptive immune systems of laboratory mice. The researchers compared the immune systems of pathogen-free laboratory mice of the C57BL/6 strain with mice trapped in the wild.
Growth control is critical for individual organs as well as whole organisms. That is certainly true for the brain, where pruning of neurons and of connections between them is critical to its function.
There are plenty of diets that promise the ability to "eat all you want and still lose weight," to the gullible. But the sad reality is that it's the opposite.
Patients with early stage Alzheimer's disease (AD) had epilepsy-like activity in the brain that was too subtle to be picked up with standard EEG recording methods, but could be detected with intracranial electrodes. The findings, which were published in the May 1, 2017, online issue of Nature Medicine, suggest that epilepsy can occur early in AD, and may contribute to both memory problems and neuronal damage without being clinically apparent.
To hear biomedical researchers tell it, chronic inflammation is practically the root of all evil. Now, a team at Washington University School of Medicine has reported using CRISPR/Cas9 to engineer stem cells modified for autonomous regenerative therapy, or SMART cells, that could produce an anti-inflammatory cytokine in response to excess inflammation.
BOSTON – Typically, watching videos of other people's children doing unremarkable things such as sitting unassisted, toddling aimlessly and sticking things into their mouths is an exercise in smiling politely and hoping there is not too, too much footage.
BOSTON – "STRIVE establishes calcitonin gene receptor peptide (CGRP) receptor blockade as the first ever mechanism-specific, migraine targeted preventive treatment approach," Peter Goadsby told his audience at the 2017 annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology.
The approval of Roche Holding AG's Ocrevus (ocrelizumab) last month made it the first FDA-approved multiple sclerosis (MS) drug that provided benefit to patients with primary progressive MS. (See BioWorld Today, March 30, 2017.)
