All Stories by Nathan Seppa
- Health & Medicine
Interferon delays multiple sclerosis
In some people who show early-warning signs of multiple sclerosis, the drug interferon-beta-1a seems to delay or even prevent the disease from becoming full-blown.
- Health & Medicine
Pill boosts cancer risk in some women
Women who took oral contraceptives before 1975, and whose mother or sister had breast cancer between 1944 and 1952, have triple the likelihood of getting breast cancer as compared with similar women who didn't take the pill.
- Health & Medicine
AIDS Vaccine Tests Well in Monkeys
An experimental AIDS vaccine bolstered with two immune proteins protects rhesus monkeys from the disease even when they are exposed to a combination of simian and human immunodeficiency virus.
- Health & Medicine
Bacteria Provide a Frontline Defense
Bacteria genetically engineered to secrete microbe-killing compounds can fight disease in mice and rats.
- Health & Medicine
Some psychoactive drugs ease harsh PMS
Drugs such as widely prescribed Prozac can relieve a severe form of premenstrual syndrome.
- Health & Medicine
Gene Tied to Heightened Diabetes Risk
People with three particular variations within the gene that encodes the protein calpain-10 face triple the risk of getting type II diabetes.
- Health & Medicine
Nerves in heart show damage in Parkinson’s
Some patients with Parkinson's disease also have destruction of nerve terminals in the heart that affects blood pressure.
- Health & Medicine
Stem-cell transplant works on lupus
Severe lupus can be reversed with a transplant of the patient's own bone marrow stem cells, after they're allowed to mature outside the body, and medication that neutralizes self-attacking immune cells.
- Health & Medicine
Old polio vaccine free of HIV, SIV
Three laboratories analyzing remaining samples of polio vaccine used in the late 1950s find that none contains any human or simian immunodeficiency virus, or chimpanzee DNA—making polio vaccine unlikely to be the cause of the initial HIV outbreak in central Africa.
- Health & Medicine
Blood-cell transplants slow kidney cancer
A new transplant technique that uses blood transfusions from a sibling combined with decreasing doses of immune-suppressing drugs enables some patients to fight off advanced kidney cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Can poliovirus fix spinal cord damage?
Scientists have devised a version of the poliovirus that can deliver genes to motor neurons without harming them, a step toward a gene therapy that reawakens idle neurons in people with spinal cord damage.
- Health & Medicine
Carotid surgery stands test of time
Surgery to remove blockages from the carotid artery in the neck has lasting effects against stroke over several years and even provides some benefit when it's delayed.
