Superbug vaccine 'shows promise'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6098210.stm
The group weblog for students in Physiology for Bioengineers (VTPP 434 and 435) at Texas A&M University
Scientists at King's College in
While researching ways to get things into the brain for my group’s device design project, we came across the idea of using ultrasound to open the blood brain barrier. In recent experiments scientists have seen that focused ultrasound exposures caused reversible openings in the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in target locations. The ultrasound is applied in the presence of preformed gas bubbles. The actual cellular mechanisms of this transient BBB disruption are largely unknown. Experiments have been done on rabbits that resulted in BBB openings. These findings could be considered in further development of the strategy for drug (or nano-robot) delivery in the brain.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15313330&dopt=Citation A UK team discovered that people with two copies of the mutant TCF7L2 gene were twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes compared with those with no copies. These findings led the researchers to believe that a particular genetic make-up can put people as much at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, as being clinically obese. The researchers looked at 2,676 European middle-aged men whose health had been tracked over a period of 15 years, to investigate the association between genes and diabetes. Of the 2,676 European middle-aged men, 158 developed type 2 diabetes. “The researchers discovered those carrying one copy of a variant of a gene called TCF7L2 were 50% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, while those men who carried two copies of the variant were about 100% more likely to get the disease compared with those who had no copies.” The TCF7L2 gene's role in the body is not yet fully known, but it is thought to be important in the pancreas, where insulin is made. This is interesting because being obese has always been the main risk factor for developing diabetes, but now researchers are starting to see that healthy men can be in danger of developing diabetes if they have the variant of a gene called TCF7L2.
From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6076750.stm
Quoted in an article from the College of Humanities & Social Science,
"These reductions in white matter integrity may underlie the behavioral pattern observed in autism of narrowly-focused thought and weak coherence of different streams of thought," said Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging and a co-author of the latest study. "The new findings also provide supporting evidence for a new theory of autism that attributes the disorder to underconnectivity among brain regions," Just said.
A recent research done by the University Carnegie Mellon using a new technology called Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) - capable of tracking water movement in the brain - found differences in connection in brains of people with autism. It was discovered that the structure of the "white matter" of an autistic brain has a lower structural integrity than in those of normal brains. The research basically revolved around the monitoring of water movement through the brain. In the brain, water molecules move or diffuse with the aid of the coherent structures of nerve fibers of the white matter. As for those with autism, lower structural integrity such less dense or myelinated fibers can cause the movement of water to be more dispersed. Researchers found this dispersed pattern particularly in areas in and around the corpus callosum, the large band of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.
Link to Carnegie U's Article