All Stories by Nathan Seppa
- Health & Medicine
Ginseng extract halts diabetes in mice
Extracts from the berry of the American ginseng plant counter obesity and insulin resistance in mice.
- Health & Medicine
Rewiring Job: Drug spurs nerve growth in stroke-damaged brains
The natural compound inosine spurs nerve reconnection in rats that have suffered the loss of blood to parts of the brain, suggesting inosine might help people recover from a stroke.
- Health & Medicine
Stem Cell Gain: Bone marrow cells seem to have what it takes
Tests show that a rodent bone marrow cell similar to one found in people acts as a multipurpose stem cell, much as embryonic stem cells do.
- Health & Medicine
Smart Drugs: Leukemia treatments nearing prime time
Three new drugs stop acute myeloid leukemia in mice, suggesting the treatments will work in people with this deadly blood cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Efficient Germ: Human body boosts power of cholera microbe
Some genes in the cholera-causing bacterium Vibrio cholerae are activated and others are silenced when the microbe passes through the human gut, changes that make the bacterium more virulent.
- Health & Medicine
Arthritis drug fights Crohn’s disease
The inflammation-fighting drug infliximab can hold off the painful symptoms of Crohn's disease for as long as a year in many patients.
- Health & Medicine
Revised Immunity: Drug slows diabetes in young patients
A drug fashioned from a mouse antibody has halted the progression of diabetes in children and young adults who are newly diagnosed with the disease.
- Health & Medicine
Surgical Option: Removal of ovaries can prevent cancers in women at risk
In women who harbor mutations in one of the BRCA genes, ovary removal reduces the risk of developing ovarian, peritoneal, and breast cancers.
- Health & Medicine
High elevation linked to hormone dearth
Elderly Peruvian women living at very high altitudes have lower blood concentrations of some key hormones than do their lowland counterparts.
- Health & Medicine
Amyloid Buster? New drug hinders Alzheimer’s protein
By disabling a dementia-linked protein, a synthetic drug is showing a tantalizing capacity to interfere with the formation of waxy amyloid deposits like those that accumulate in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.
- Health & Medicine
Spice component versus cancer cells
Curcumin, a compound in the spice turmeric, teams up with an immune-system protein to kill prostate cancer cells in a new laboratory study.
- Health & Medicine
Hidden Damage: Parkinson’s harm to nerves in heart may explain dizziness and fainting
Parkinson's disease patients have damaged nerve endings in the heart, kidneys, and thyroid gland, suggesting the disease harms the autonomic nervous system that regulates involuntary functions of these and other organs and glands.
