Archives for January 2010

Health Highlights – January 29th, 2010

Health Highlights is a biweekly summary of particularly interesting articles from credible sources of health and medical information that we follow & read. For a complete list of recommeded sources, see our links page.

Health Highlights

Virus-Like Particle Vaccine Protects Monkeys from Chikungunya Virus

An experimental vaccine developed using non-infectious virus-like particles (VLP) has protected macaques and mice against chikungunya virus, a mosquito-borne pathogen that has infected millions of people in Africa and Asia and causes debilitating pain, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have found. Scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) developed the vaccine because there is no vaccine or treatment for chikungunya virus infection.

NIDA News Scan #65

NewsScan #65 includes summaries of eight NIDA-funded scientific studies on a variety of topics, including school responses to suspicionless random drug testing, effects of targeting the brain’s dopamine D3 receptor, how glutamate transmissions eliminates cocaine-induced place preference in rats, how men with AAS dependence have prevalence of opioid dependence, benzotropine analogs reduces cocaine self-administration in rats, new database for addiction-related genes, injection drug users in Mexico have latent TB infection and how drug combinations contribute to HIV risk in gay/bisexual men.

NIH to Hold Press Telebriefing on February 4 following State-of-the-Science Conference on Colorectal Cancer Screening

Although colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, screening for this disease is currently underutilized among eligible individuals. An NIH State-of-the-Science Conference on Enhancing Use and Quality of Colorectal Cancer Screening will be held February 2-4, 2010.

NIGMS Awards Contract to Expand Human Genetic Cell Repository

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) has awarded a $27 million, five-year contract to the Coriell Institute for Medical Research in Camden, N.J., to continue and expand operation of the NIGMS Human Genetic Cell Repository (HGCR). Under the new contract, the HGCR plans to enhance its collection of carefully maintained human cell lines by adding induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that carry disease gene mutations.