All Stories by Damaris Christensen
- Health & Medicine
Autopsies suggest insulin is underused
Autopsy studies indicate that the insulin-producing cells of people with type II diabetes are damaged.
- Health & Medicine
Chemical stops allergic reaction in tests
Researchers have developed a protein that short-circuits allergic reactions in mice and in tissue cultures of human cells.
- Health & Medicine
Shuttling medicines via blood cells
Researchers have developed a way of encapsulating drugs in red blood cells, which can be used to deliver low doses of anti-inflammatory drugs to cystic fibrosis patients.
- Health & Medicine
Standing Up to Gravity
Studies in space can help physicians better understand a disorder in which patients get faint or dizzy while standing.
- Health & Medicine
Learning from leprosy’s nerve damage
The bacterium that causes leprosy directly damages a protective sheathing around many nerve cells.
- Health & Medicine
What Activates AIDS?
New studies suggest that a natural process called immune activation—the signaling that alerts immune cells of foreign invaders—plays a key role in explaining why infection with the human immunodeficiency virus progresses to AIDS more quickly in some people than in others.
- Health & Medicine
No benefit from screening
Two large studies confirm that a urine test for a common childhood cancer—neuroblastoma—offers no benefit.
- Health & Medicine
Virus gives cancer the cold treatment
A genetically engineered version of a common cold virus appears to kill cancer cells without harming healthy tissue.
- Health & Medicine
Shocking findings
Implanted defibrillators reduce the occurrence of sudden death by about a third among people who had previous heart attacks and continue to suffer impaired heart function.
- Health & Medicine
Mammograms on Trial
New controversy about old data has physicians, women, and policy analysts struggling to decide whether all women should be screened with mammography in order to reduce deaths due to breast cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Two steps forward, one step back
Just a few days after the National Institutes of Health announced it was canceling a large AIDS-vaccine trial, researchers reported preliminary results from a new vaccine that appears safe.
- Health & Medicine
New drugs help battle HIV
Three potential drugs in development rely on novel tactics for attacking the virus that causes AIDS.
