Category Health/Medical

Image of a ON Delayed retinal ganglion cell colored by its depth in the retina. Arrowheads point out the unique “recursive” morphology of the dendrites that snake up and down.

Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered a cell in the retina that may cause myopia when it dysfunctions. The dysfunction may be linked to the amount of time a child spends indoors and away from natural light. “This discovery could lead to a new therapeutic target to control myopia,” said Greg Schwartz, lead investigator and assistant professor of ophthalmology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine...

Rahim Esfandyarpour helped to develop a way to create a diagnostic “lab on a chip” for just a penny. Inset: The lab on a chip comprises a clear silicone microfluidic chamber for housing cells and a reusable electronic strip — a flexible sheet of polyester with commercially available conductive nanoparticle ink.
Zahra Koochak

Stanford University School of Medicine has developed a way to produce a cheap and reusable diagnostic “lab on a chip” with the help of an inkjet printer. At a cost of as little as 1 cent per chip, the new technology could usher in a medical diagnostics revolution like the kind brought on by low-cost genome sequencing. The inexpensive lab-on-a-chip technology has the potential to enhance diagnostic capabilities around the world, especially in developing countries...

An engineering team at Washington University in St. Louis says a compound found in green tea may be of particular benefit to patients struggling with multiple myeloma and amyloidosis. Aggregation of Full Length Immunoglobulin Light Chains from AL Amyloidosis Patients Is Remodeled by Epigallocatechin-3-gallate. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2016; jbc.M116.750323 DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M116.750323

Epigallocatechine-3-gallate (EGCG), a polyphenol found in green tea leaves, may be of particular benefit to patients struggling with multiple myeloma and amyloidosis. These patients are susceptible to a frequently fatal condition called light chain amyloidosis, in which parts of the body’s own antibodies become misshapen and can accumulate in various organs, including the heart and kidneys...

Loss of IL-27 signaling results in increased disease severity and lung immunopathology after SeV.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes ~60,000 hospitalizations of children aged 0 to four, and nearly 200,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths among adults 65 and older. However, there are virtually no vaccines or treatments for these infections. Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine found evidence that cytokine Interleukin 27 (IL-27), may be the key to fighting and treating these infections.

Working with a mouse-model of parainfluenza virus infection, Sendai virus, which causes similar symptoms and patterns of tissue damage to RSV, researchers found that mice fared much worse in fighting the infectio...