Nathan Seppa

Biomedical Writer (retired September 2015)

All Stories by Nathan Seppa

  1. Health & Medicine

    Urine tests can foretell bladder cancers

    U.S. and Chinese researchers find that two unconventional urine tests can often predict when a person is developing bladder cancer even before tumors appear.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Study reveals male link to preeclampsia

    Men who were born of mothers who had the pregnancy complication preeclampsia are roughly twice as likely to father a child through preeclamptic pregnancy than are men who were born of mothers who had a normal pregnancy.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Fatty plaques are unstable in vessels

    Fatty plaques that form on the inside of blood vessels are less stable and hence more prone to rupture than are hard, calcified plaques.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Parkinson’s implants survive in brain

    Human embryonic stem cells transplanted into the brains of people with Parkinson's disease survive and grow better in patients under 60 years of age than in older patients.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Drug helps against certain breast cancers

    In some patients, the drug trastuzumab, also called Herceptin, slows breast cancer that has spread to other organs.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Sedentary Off-hours Link to Alzheimer’s

    People who have Alzheimer's disease in old age were generally less active physically and intellectually between the ages of 20 and 60 than were people who don't have the disease.

  7. Health & Medicine

    Vaccine may prevent some cervical cancers

    A new vaccine spurs people to produce a strong immune response against human papillomavirus, a virus that can infect both men and women and causes cervical cancer in women.

  8. Health & Medicine

    AIDS-treatment guidelines revised

    A panel of scientists has changed the guidelines for prescribing medication for HIV-infected patients, considerably lowering the suggested T-cell-count and HIV-copy thresholds.

  9. Health & Medicine

    AIDS drug performs well in early test

    A new drug called T-1249, which keeps the AIDS virus from fusing with immune cells, proves largely safe in people.

  10. Health & Medicine

    Some HIV patients getting transplants

    Organ transplants succeed in some HIV-infected people, spurring further research into this practice.

  11. Health & Medicine

    Anti-HIV mutation poses hepatitis risk

    A genetic mutation that protects people from AIDS may also make them susceptible to hepatitis C.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Active lung gene signals cancer spread

    The newly discovered LUNX gene, active only in lungs and in lung tumors that have spread outside that organ, may help in determining which lung cancer patients are likely to suffer a recurrence.