All Stories by Nathan Seppa
- Health & Medicine
Genetic flaw found in painful gut disease
Scientists have discovered a genetic mutation that occurs in people with Crohn's disease, a digestive disorder that attacks the intestines.
- Health & Medicine
Virus in transplanted hearts bodes ill
Pediatric heart-transplant recipients who acquire a viral infection in the heart fare poorly over the long term.
- Health & Medicine
Gene stifled in some lung, breast cancers
The silencing of a gene called RASSF1A appears to increase the risk of cancer, studies of lung and breast tumors show.
- Health & Medicine
Death of a theory
Three separate analyses of oral polio vaccine used in the 1950s in Africa deflate the theory that such a vaccine could have ignited the AIDS epidemic by containing virus-infected chimpanzee cells.
- Health & Medicine
Gene therapy cures blindness in dogs
Gene therapy to replace a defective RPE65 gene succeeds in bringing sight to three blind dogs, suggesting such therapy might reverse Leber congenital amauosis, a rare condition in which children are blind from birth.
- Health & Medicine
New anthrax treatment works in rats
By distorting a protein in the toxin that makes the anthrax bacterium deadly, scientists have discovered a promising way to treat the disease and possibly even to prevent it with a vaccine.
- Health & Medicine
Tamoxifen dilates arteries in men
The breast cancer drug tamoxifen can widen a narrowed coronary artery in men with heart problems.
- Health & Medicine
Long-term ecstasy use impairs memory
Extended use of the illicit drug called MDMA or ecstasy exacerbated memory problems in users aged 17 to 31, none of whom reported alcohol dependence.
- Health & Medicine
Peptide puts mouse arthritis out of joint
A compound called vasointestinal peptide, which binds to immune system T cells and macrophages, thwarts arthritis in mice.
- Health & Medicine
Novel typhoid vaccine surpasses old ones
A new vaccine links a sugar molecule found on the surface of the bacterium that causes typhoid fever with a genetically engineered version of the exotoxin protein, which arouses the immune system to churn out antibodies against the bacterium.
- Health & Medicine
Vitaminlike compound eases rare disorder
A vitaminlike substance called coenzyme Q10 helps people with familial cerebellar ataxia, a hereditary disorder that damages the spine and the part of the brain responsible for coordination.
- Health & Medicine
Immune cells rush to gut in food allergy
In mice, allergic reactions to food coincide with an accumulation of white blood cells called eosinophils in the small intestine.
