Animal models, a vital part of pre-clinical research, can be used for studying the immune system’s reaction to a variety of allergies. The type of allergies studied include agents found in food, seasonal allergens and pollen that cause conjunctivitis, and viral infections that lead to allergic sensitization as well as asthma. One study stemming from […]
Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) cause unexpected adverse drug reactions and contribute to drug withdrawal from the market. Through inducing or inhibiting drug-processing proteins, a new drug could induce toxicity or diminish efficacy of other concomitant drugs, thus causing DDIs. The major drug-processing proteins involved in DDIs include phase I drug-metabolizing enzymes: CYP1A2, CYP2B6, CYP2C8, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, […]
The obesity epidemic seen in the United States has been studied extensively over the years. One truly intriguing finding some scientists have discovered is the link between obesity and cognitive decline. A paper published in The Lancet by Dr. Amanda Kiliaan and colleagues discussed the association between being obese over a lifetime and the risk […]
Pre-clinical cancer research – specifically drug development – often uses a standard procedure called tumor xenografting. This method essentially injects human cancer cell lines into mice to learn more about the mechanisms behind tumor growth and for developing effective cancer drugs, a paper published in Nature magazine explained. Subcutaneous xenografts, however, may have some limitations, as they are unable […]
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and, as such, it is time to shed some light on important breast cancer research. In 2010, Dr. Vincent Tuohy and colleagues from the Cleveland Clinic published a paper in Nature Medicine that shows a vaccine using the target protein alpha-lactalbumin was able to prevent breast cancer in […]
Crohn’s disease is a painful condition that causes inflammation or swelling of the bowels and impacts the gastrointestinal tract. It affects as many as 700,000 Americans at any given point. In fact, more than half of a million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with this condition. Some common symptoms include abdominal cramps, fever, […]
Ovarian cancer affects approximately 239,000 women annually, worldwide, and results in 152,000 deaths, predominantly in North America and Europe. It is the seventh most common cancer and eighth most common cause of death from cancer in women. A significant reason that ovarian cancer is so deadly is that it reaches an advanced stage before it […]
Headlines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have emphasized the rise of obesity around the nation, with more than one-third of all U.S. adults classified as obese. The World Health Organization states that obesity has almost doubled worldwide since 1980. The Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation also released a […]
Approximately 2% of the US population suffers from psoriasis. Psoriasis is a chronic skin disorder that occurs when the immune system overreacts to certain conditions which speeds up the skin’s cellular turnover rate. As a result, the skin thickens and becomes inflamed. Psoriasis Types Psoriasis is usually clinically identified, though lab testing is sometimes necessary. […]
While leukemia affects adults as well as children, leukemia is the most common cancer among children and teenagers, accounting for 34% of all childhood cancer. The majority of childhood leukemia is acute, the American Cancer Society expressed. This includes acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), and a hybrid of the two. ALL originates […]