New Treatments For Asthma

New Treatments For Asthma.
Researchers claim they've discovered why infants who complete in homes with a dog are less likely to develop asthma and allergies later in childhood. The yoke conducted experiments with mice and found that exposing them to dust from homes where dogs live triggered changes in the community of microbes that actual in the infant's gut and reduced immune system feedback to common allergens. The scientists also identified a specific species of gut bacteria that's critical in protecting the airways against allergens and viruses that cause respiratory infections, according to the study published online Dec 16, 2013 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

While these findings were made in mice, they're also favoured to untangle why children who are exposed to dogs from the time they're born are less able to have allergies and asthma, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and University of Michigan researchers said. These results also suggest that changes in the deep-seated bacteria community (gut microbiome) can influence immune function elsewhere in the body, said study co-leader Susan Lynch, an fellow professor in the gastroenterology division at UCSF.

Another Type Of Congenital Heart Disease May Be Cured By The Device And The Surgery

Another Type Of Congenital Heart Disease May Be Cured By The Device And The Surgery.
A congenital verve shortfall that was typically catastrophic three decades ago is no longer so deadly, thanks to new technologies and surgical techniques that admit babies to survive well into adulthood, researchers report. A study in the May 27 dissemination of the New England Journal of Medicine compares the effectiveness of older and newer versions of devices aimed at fixing incompletely formed hearts. The writing-room finds both performing equally well over three years.

It's a "landmark" study, "one that we've never had before in congenital hub disease," said Dr Gail D Pearson, kingpin of the Adult and Pediatric Cardiac Research Program at the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which financed the effort. The study, which compared two devices for keeping oxygen-carrying blood flowing in 549 children born with hearts incapable of doing it alone, has not yet produced exhaustive results favoring one stratagem over the other.

But the probing is indeed just beginning. "Continuing follow-up will help us sort out the near- and long-term results". Study architect Dr Richard G Ohye, head of the University of Michigan pediatric cardiovascular surgery division, agreed. "Well be able to follow them to adulthood, and they will teach us about the best way to rule them". The children in the study were born with hearts that had a nonfunctioning - or nonexistent - hand ventricle, the chamber that pumps blood to the body. About 1000 such children are born in the United States each year, one in 5000.

The Same Gene Is Associated With Obesity And Dementia

The Same Gene Is Associated With Obesity And Dementia.
A deviating of the obesity-related gene FTO may distend the risk of Alzheimer's disease and dementia, finds a immature Swedish study. Previous research has shown that the FTO gene affects body legion index (BMI), levels of leptin (a hormone involved in appetite and metabolism), and the chance for diabetes. All vascular risk factors that have also been linked with the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

This late study, conducted by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, included more than 1000 Swedish people, age-old 75 and older, who were followed for nine years. They all underwent genetic testing at the start of the study.

Marijuana Affects The Index IQ

Marijuana Affects The Index IQ.
A unfamiliar analysis challenges former research that suggested teens put their long-term brainpower in danger when they smoke marijuana heavily. Instead, the study indicated that the earlier findings could have been thrown off by another factor - the effect of inadequacy on IQ. The author of the new analysis, Ole Rogeberg, cautioned that his theory may not hold much water. "Or, it may say out that it explains a lot," said Rogeberg, a research economist at the Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research in Oslo, Norway.

The authors of the inaugural study responded to a solicit for comment with a joint statement saying they stand by their findings. "While Dr Rogeberg's ideas are interesting, they are not supported by our data," wrote researchers Terrie Moffitt, Avshalom Caspi and Madeline Meier. Moffitt and Caspi are nature professors at Duke University, while Meier is a postdoctoral allied there.

Their study, published in August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, attracted media acclaim because it suggested that smoking spare tyre has more than short-term effects on how people think. Based on an examination of mental tests given to more than 1000 New Zealanders when they were 13 and 38, the Duke researchers found that those who heavily second-hand marijuana as teens lost an average of eight IQ points over that time period.

It didn't seem to puzzle if the teens later cut back on smoking pot or stopped using it entirely. In the pithy term, people who use marijuana have memory problems and trouble focusing, research has shown. So, why wouldn't users have problems for years?

For The Early Diagnosis Of HIV Can Use Genetic Techniques

For The Early Diagnosis Of HIV Can Use Genetic Techniques.
In a deed to overhaul the methods for early detection of HIV, researchers sought to adjudge if a program using "nucleic acid testing" (NAT) would increase the number of cases that could be detected early, and found that it did so by 23 percent. Nucleic acid tests aspect for traces of genetic secular from an infecting organism. This differs from standard detection methods that rely on spotting inoculated system antibodies to the pathogen.

Despite decades of prevention programs in the United States, the HIV degree rate has remained stable, the study authors noted in a University of California, San Diego report release. The earliest stages of HIV infection are when people are most likely to infect others, so premature and accurate detection is crucial in efforts to control the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, they explained.