How Chlamydia Guards Itself Against the Immune System
The bacterium produces a particular protein that allows it to sneak past the human immune system even while triggering inflammation. ABOVE:© ISTOCK.COM, LUISMMOLINA EDITOR’S CHOICE IN IMMUNOLOGY Jörn Coers, an immunologist at Duke University, says the world is facing a silent pandemic: chlamydia. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 4 million people contracted […]
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CRISPR-Based Treatment Successfully Lowers Toxic Protein Levels
A first-of-its-kind gene therapy dramatically reduced misfolded protein levels in some clinical trial participants for up to six months and reduced levels in all participants for up to a year. Researchers successfully disabled a gene in human patients by treating them with CRISPR gene editing technology, clearing patients’ blood of a toxic protein for some […]
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First Person Dosed in Novel Gene Editing Clinical Trial
The biotech company Verve Therapeutics launched the study with the aim of using base editing to treat a genetic condition that causes high cholesterol and increases a person’s risk of developing cardiovascular disease. ABOVE:© ISTOCK.COM, VCHAL Update (November 7): The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced a hold on Verve Therapeutics’s Investigational New Drug […]
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Doctors Treat a Rare Genetic Condition Before Patient Is Born
Thanks to continued weekly medications, a 16-month-old girl shows no symptoms of a severe genetic disease that typically kills children before they turn two. In a medical first, an infant was successfully treated for a rare, fatal genetic disease before she was born, via therapeutic enzymes injected into her umbilical cord. The girl, now 16 […]
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Retching Mice Reveal the Brain Circuit Behind Vomiting
The discovery could one day lead to the development of better antinausea medications. ABOVE:Staphylococcus aureus© ISTOCK.COM, ARTUR PLAWGO Nausea is a universally unwelcome feeling, but despite such widespread aversion, very little has been learned about the mechanism that causes an organism to vomit. That’s now changed with a report published yesterday in Cell that describes a neural pathway […]
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Ketamine Flips a “Switch” in Mice’s Brain Circuitry: Study
After injecting moderate doses of the dissociative anesthetic into the animals, previously “awake” brain cells go dark, and those that had been dormant suddenly light up. ABOVE:© ISTOCK.COM, ANDREUS In the 1950s, scientists on a mission to create better anesthesia drugs synthesized phencyclidine, commonly known as PCP. Though PCP worked well to keep most people unconscious during […]
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Smelly Skin Compounds Draw Mosquitoes to Some People More than Others
People with more carboxylic acids in their body odor are more attractive to mosquitoes, a study finds. Scientists and laypeople alike have long wondered why mosquitoes are more attracted to some people than others. Growing evidence suggests that a person’s unique odor plays a large role in determining how alluring they are to the insects, with several odorants identified that act […]
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