Damaris Christensen

All Stories by Damaris Christensen

  1. Knotty DNA offers cancer-drug target

    Agents that bind to knots in the normally linear DNA sequence seem to prevent the expression of cancer-causing genes.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Fatty Findings

    A recently discovered protein may explain at least part of the molecular mechanisms behind links among obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and even some cancers.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Gene linked to aggressive prostate cancer

    A gene that is more active in prostate cancer tumors from African-American men than in tumors from white men may help explain why prostate cancer is both more common and more aggressive in African Americans.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Synthetic enzyme wards off side effects

    A synthetic enzyme that lowers blood pressure and causes blood vessels to constrict shows promise for treating skin and kidney cancers that have spread throughout the body.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Gene variant linked to early puberty

    A highly active version of a gene for faster testosterone metabolism is also associated with early breast development—by the age of 9.5 years—in girls.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Making Sense of Centenarians

    The number of centenarians is expected to double every ten years, making this formerly rare group one of the fastest-growing in the developed world. Researchers are turning to studies of the oldest old to determine how genes, lifestyle, and social factors contribute to longevity.

  7. Health & Medicine

    New drug to treat blood poisoning

    For the first time, a drug has reduced deaths from severe sepsis, a life-threatening immune reaction occurring in 750,000 people in the United States each year.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Less morphine may be more

    In mice, very low doses of morphine combined with even lower doses of a drug that usually blocks morphine's effect can give greater pain relief than higher doses of morphine alone.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Medicinal Mimicry

    While researchers tease out the mechanisms behind the ability of inert pills and sham procedures to trigger health benefits, the ethics of using such placebos in medical research trials is coming under increasing scrutiny.

  10. Health & Medicine

    Success clearing clogged arteries

    In the past 10 years, angioplasty and other procedures to unblock clogged arteries have steadily improved, probably due to increasing use of wire-mesh tubes called stents to help patients’ arteries stay open.

  11. Health & Medicine

    A sticky problem solved

    Researchers have identified a protein integral to making blood clot, a finding they hope will lead to better drugs for preventing clots in people at risk of heart attack or stroke.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Mending a Broken Heart

    Transplants of skeletal-muscle cells may help heal hearts damaged by illness or previous heart attacks.