Category Health/Medical

Credit: National Cancer Institute

1st-ever evidence-based description of neuronal protein clumps thought to be important in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) announced today. These clumps are toxic to the type of neurons that die in patients with ALS. This research could be a crucial step toward developing drugs to stop the creation of the clumps and stem the progression of the disease.

“This study is a big breakthrough because it sheds light on the origin of motor neuron death and could be very important for drug discovery,” Nikolay Dokholyan, PhD. Patients with ALS suffer gradual paralysis and early death as a result of the loss of motor neurons, which are crucial to moving, speaking, swallowing, and breathing.

The study focuses on a subset of ALS cases – 1 to 2% associated with variat...

Dr. Ganesan Ramesh, Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. Credit: Augusta University Senior Photographer Phil Jones

Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, and scientists have found that infusing just a small dose of a cytokine, thought to help cause that failure, can instead prevent or reverse it. The cytokine IL-17A has long been considered a classic promoter of inflammation, which plays a major role in progression of diabetes-related kidney disease, or diabetic nephropathy, said Dr. Ganesan Ramesh. His lab was pursuing its role in kidney damage but found that when they deleted the IL-17 gene in mice, then induced diabetes, it resulted in increased kidney injury...

A University of Iowa-led study has identified a hormone that appears to be involved in sugar cravings and consumption. The research could improve diet and help patients who are diabetic or obese. Credit: University of Iowa

While sugar cravings are common, the physiological mechanisms that trigger our “sweet tooth” are not well defined. A University of Iowa-led study in mice shows that a hormone produced by the liver, fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21), suppresses the consumption of simple sugars. The researchers report that FGF21 is produced in the liver in response to high carbohydrate levels. FGF21 then enters the bloodstream, where it sends a signal to the brain to suppress the preference for sweets...