Category Health/Medical

Clumps of the protein a-synuclein in a Parkinsonian brain. Credit: Donghoon Kim/Johns Hopkins Medicine

Researchers at Johns Hopkins say they have gleaned 2 important new clues in the fight against Parkinson’s disease: that blocking an enzyme called c-Abl prevents the disease in specially bred mice, and that a chemical tag on a second protein may signal the disorder’s presence and progression. Their work, suggests a promising target for drug research and a tool that could speed Parkinson’s disease research more broadly.

“There were indications that c-Abl activity leads to Parkinson’s disease, and our experiments show there is indeed a connection,” says Prof. Ted Dawson, M.D., Ph.D...

Gut microbiota of MS patients differs from healthy controls.

MS patients show lower levels of good bacteria. “Every human carries trillions of bacteria in their gut (gut microbiome) and recent advances in research indicate that these tiny passengers play an important role in our overall health maintenance,” says Ashutosh Mangalam, PhD, assistant professor of pathology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.

Since the bacteria are associated with contributing to good health, Mangalam and his colleagues wondered whether those with a chronic autoimmune disorder, such as multiple sclerosis, would then have a gut microbiome that is different than the microbiome found in healthy individuals...

Schematic representation of the structural organization of active human retroelements and their transcripts. Alu, SVA and LINE-1 belong to the non-LTR group of currently active human retroelements. Each panel shows the schematic of the element with the expected transcript (represented as a line and labeled RNA) shown below it.

Researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) have uncovered a potential genetic trigger of systemic autoimmune disease. The study, the culmination of more than 10 years of research discovered virus-like elements within the human genome linked to the development of 2 autoimmune diseases: lupus and Sjogren’s syndrome.

More than 80 types of autoimmune disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and Sjogren’s syndrome, affect up to 22 million people in the US...

Solitaire is one of two approved stent retrievers used to treat some strokes.

“Stent retrievers are a major advance in acute ischemic stroke care and will have significant impact on the evolution of stroke systems of care,” according to Loyola Medicine neurologists Rick Gill, MD and Prof. Michael J. Schneck, MD.

87% of strokes are ischemic, ie caused by clots that block blood flow to a portion of the brain. In selected patients, stent retrievers can be used to remove such clots. Loyola used stent retrievers on 34 patients in 2015, and 21 patients during the first six months of 2016.

A stent retriever is a self-expanding mesh tube attached to a wire, which is guided through a catheter...