All Stories by Nathan Seppa
- Health & Medicine
Nerve cells of ALS patients harbor virus
Fragments of viral genetic material show up with unusually high frequency in nerve tissue of patients with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, suggesting a link between the virus and this lethal illness.
- 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
Operation overload: Kids’ backpacks
Sixth-graders in Italy routinely carry school backpacks that equal, on average, 22 percent of their body weight, a finding researchers link to an earlier report that more than 60 percent of children in this age group had experienced low-back pain more than once.
- Health & Medicine
Hysterectomy often improves sex life
A study of more than 1,000 women who had hysterectomies finds that after the operation, women generally wanted and had sex more often, were more likely to reach orgasm, experienced less vaginal dryness, and were less likely to have pain during sex than was the case before surgery.
- Health & Medicine
Glutamate glut linked to multiple sclerosis
The chemical glutamate can overwhelm nervous-system cells called oligodendrocytes, adding to the nerve damage caused by wayward immune cells in multiple sclerosis.
- Health & Medicine
Stem cells repair rat spinal cord damage
Using embryonic stem cells from mice, researchers restored some movement in paralyzed rats that had undergone a crippling spinal injury.
- 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.
