Allergies? Your sneeze is a biological response to the nose’s ‘blue screen of death’

 

Who would have thought that our noses and Microsoft Windows’ infamous blue screen of death could have something in common? But that’s the case being made by a new research report appearing online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org). Specifically, scientists now know exactly why we sneeze, what sneezing should accomplish, and what happens when sneezing does not work properly. Much like a temperamental computer, our noses require a “reboot” when overwhelmed, and this biological reboot is triggered by the pressure force of a sneeze. When a sneeze works properly, it resets the environment within nasal passages so “bad” particles breathed in through the nose can be trapped. The sneeze is accomplished by biochemical signals that regulate the beating of cilia (microscopic hairs) on the cells that line our nasal cavities.

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Most with celiac disease unaware of it, others go gluten-free without diagnosis

 

Roughly 1.8 million Americans have celiac disease, but around 1.4 million of them are unaware that they have it, a Mayo Clinic-led analysis of the condition’s prevalence has found. Meanwhile, 1.6 million people in the United States are on a gluten-free diet even though they haven’t been diagnosed with celiac disease, according to the study published Tuesday in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.

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Bone marrow transplant eliminates signs of HIV infection

 

Two men with longstanding HIV infections no longer have detectable HIV in their blood cells following bone marrow transplants. The virus was easily detected in blood lymphocytes of both men prior to their transplants but became undetectable by eight months post-transplant. The men, who were treated at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), have remained on anti-retroviral therapy. Their cases will be presented on July 26, 2012 at the International AIDS Conference by Timothy Henrich, MD and Daniel Kuritzkes, MD, physician-researchers in the Division of Infectious Diseases at BWH.

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New research confirms efficacy of transcranial magnetic stimulation for depression

 

In one of the first studies to look at transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in real-world clinical practice settings, researchers at Butler Hospital, along with colleagues across the U.S., confirmed that TMS is an effective treatment for patients with depression who are unable to find symptom relief through antidepressant medications. The study findings are published online in the June 11, 2012 edition of Depression and Anxiety in the Wiley Online Library.

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New stroke treatments becoming a reality

Scientists led by the President of The University of Manchester have demonstrated a drug which can dramatically limit the amount of brain damage in stroke patients.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, Professor Stuart Allan and their team have spent the last 20 years investigating how to reduce damage to the brain following a stroke.

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Scientists explore new class of synthetic vaccines

In a quest to make safer and more effective vaccines, scientists at the Biodesign InstituteÒ at Arizona State University have turned to a promising field called DNA nanotechnology to make an entirely new class of synthetic vaccines.

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John Theurer Cancer Center researchers shed light on new multiple myeloma therapy

Researchers from John Theurer Cancer Center at HackensackUMC, one of the nation’s 50 best hospitals for cancer, played leading roles in three separate multi-center studies with the new proteasome inhibitor carfilzomib published in Blood, a major peer-reviewed scientific journal.

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Can a virus fight cancer?

Two Ottawa researchers are taking innovative approaches to improving virus-based cancer therapy with new funding from the Canadian Cancer Society.

Viruses that selectively target and kill cancer cells ? called oncolytic viruses ? are an exciting new avenue for treating cancer because healthy cells are spared and side effects are reduced. The problem is that many tumors are able to protect themselves by unleashing defense mechanisms that disarm these viruses.

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Chemical makes blind mice see; compound holds promise for treating humans

 

A team of University of California, Berkeley, scientists in collaboration with researchers at the University of Munich and University of Washington in Seattle has discovered a chemical that temporarily restores some vision to blind mice, and is working on an improved compound that may someday allow people with degenerative blindness to see again.

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Basal cell carcinoma risk can be chronic

In the powerful sunlight of July, newly published results from a large study of people at high risk for basal cell carcinoma support the emerging view of the nation’s most common cancer as a chronic ailment that often repeatedly afflicts older people but for which the seeds may be planted in youth. The research also found a new association with eczema.
“Basal cell carcinoma is a chronic disease once people have had multiple instances of it, because they are always at risk of getting more,” said Dr. Martin Weinstock, professor of dermatology in the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, who practices at the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center. “It’s not something at the moment we can cure. It’s something that we need to monitor continually so that when these cancers crop up we can minimize the damage.”

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