How to manage Chinese obese children with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease?
Short-term lifestyle intervention is more effective than short-term vitamin E capsule therapy on NAFLD and so it should be the first step in the management of children with NAFLD.
This study, performed by a team led by Professor Li Liang, is described in a research article to be published on March 14, 2008, in the World Journal of Gastroenterology.
NAFLD is likely to reach epidemic proportions in children worldwide in this decade. NAFLD is recognized as a cause of potentially progressive liver damage and may be the hepatic aspect of the metabolic syndrome.
Drinking dulls the brain’s response to threats
Drinking alcohol dulls the brain’s ability to detect threats, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday in a study that helps explain why people who are drunk cannot tell when the guy at the end of the bar is angling for a fight.
They said the study is the first to show how alcohol affects the human brain as it responds to threats.
“You see this all of the time. People get into confrontations when they are intoxicated that they probably wouldn’t get into when they are sober,” said Jodi Gilman of the National Institutes on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, whose study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Search for an HIV Vaccine Must Go On Says Expert in Light of Recent High-profile Merck Failure
According to a recent article published in The Independent (UK), most scientists involved in AIDS research believe that a vaccine against HIV is further away than ever with some admitting that effective immunization against the virus may never occur, according to an unprecedented poll conducted by the paper.
The article describes a mood of deep pessimism that has spread among the international community of AIDS scientists after the trial failure of a promising Merck vaccine last year. This was only the latest in a series of setbacks in the twenty-five-year struggle to develop an HIV vaccine. The article authors, Steve Connor and Chris Green, cite one of the major conclusions to emerge from the failed clinical trial of Merck’s promising prototype vaccine, is that an important animal model used for more than a decade in preclinical HIV testing on monkeys does not in fact work.
“The passion for an HIV vaccine resonates strongly among small pharma, whose often-overlooked approaches may now take center stage as the search for a viable HIV vaccine continues,” says Sylvain Fleury, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and Director at Mymetics, a vaccine company focused on malaria and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV/AIDS).
Mothers and Offspring Can Share Cells Throughout Life
Cutting the umbilical cord doesn’t necessarily sever the physical link between mother and child. Many cells pass back and forth between the mother and fetus during pregnancy and can be detected in the tissues and organs of both even decades later. This mixing of cells from two genetically distinct individuals is called microchimerism. The phenomenon is the focus of an increasing number of scientists who wonder what role these cells play in the body.
A potentially significant one, it turns out. Research implicates that maternal and fetal microchimerism plays both adverse and beneficial roles in some autoimmune diseases as well as the prevention of at least one cancer. This double-edged sword in turn has opened new avenues of study of the body’s immune system and the possibility of developing new tests and therapies.
Two of the world’s leading researchers in microchimerism are J. Lee Nelson, M.D., of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s Clinical Research Division; and V.K. Gadi, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Nelson also is a professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Gadi is also a research associate in the Hutchinson Center’s Clinical Research Division.
