Research advances from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Intramural Research Program (IRP) often make headlines. Read the news releases that describe our most recent findings:
Saxophonist Joey Berkley was living his dream: he was playing jazz in New York City. But about 20 years ago, he noticed his left hand wasn’t cooperating. It got worse and worse.
“As soon as I picked my horn up and touched — literally just touched my horn — my hands would twist into pretzel shapes,” Berkley recalled in a conversation with Morning Edition host A Martinez.
Berkley was experiencing focal dystonia, a movement disorder marked by involuntary muscle contractions.
He said he “muscled through it” as best he could. But that meant he wasn’t just pressing down on the keys of his sax — he was crushing them. “My fingers would literally be bleeding afterwards,” he said. “I had to quit playing.”
Joey Berkley learned of an experimental procedure at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, that involved placing an electrode directly into his brain.
Children exposed to HIV before birth are at risk for language impairments, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions. Moreover, children exposed to HIV before birth may benefit from routine screening for language impairment, even if they don’t have any obvious signs of a language problem, the researchers said.
An experimental vaccine to prevent chikungunya fever, a viral disease spread by certain species of mosquitoes, is being tested in a clinical trial conducted by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) scientists at the National Institutes of Health. The vaccine was developed by researchers at the NIAID Vaccine Research Center (VRC) using non-infectious virus-like particles to prompt an immune response. The trial is testing the vaccine's safety and ability to elicit antibodies against chikungunya virus. It will enroll 25 healthy adults aged 18 to 50 years.
Recent findings in mice suggest that blocking the production of small molecules produced in the body, known as epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs), may represent a novel strategy for treating cancer by eliminating the blood vessels that feed cancer tumors. This research is the first to show that EETs work in concert with vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a protein known to induce blood vessel growth. Together, EETs and VEGF promote metastasis, or the spread of cancer, by encouraging the growth of blood vessels that supply nutrients to cancer cells.
The National Institutes of Health has launched the Transfer Agreement Dashboard, or TAD, to streamline the transfer of NIH-developed research materials to the biomedical research community.
An analysis of five previous studies has uncovered additional evidence of the effectiveness of progesterone, a naturally occurring hormone, in reducing the rate of preterm birth among a high-risk category of women.
The scientists suggest that some of the genetic changes that lead to MMD may also be responsible for the observed increase in cancer risk, but more research is needed to confirm this hypothesis. The study appeared Dec. 14, 2011, in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Prenatal steroids — given to pregnant women at risk for giving birth prematurely — appear to improve survival and limit brain injury among infants born as early as the 23rd week of pregnancy, according to a study by a National Institutes of Health research network.
The National Institutes of Health is launching the electronic Research Materials catalogue (eRMa) to streamline the federal government's technology transfer process. This project addresses one of the important directives in a Presidential memorandum related to the commercialization of federal research and support for high-growth business potential. eRMa was designed and developed by the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) at NIH with support from the NIH’s National Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Research.
Toddlers receiving anti-HIV drugs have higher cholesterol levels, on average, than do their peers who do not have HIV, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions.
National Institutes of Health-funded researchers have identified two proteins that may be the key components of the long-sought after mechanotransduction channel in the inner ear—the place where the mechanical stimulation of sound waves is transformed into electrical signals that the brain recognizes as sound. The findings are published in the Nov. 21 online issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
