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.
Xin Jin, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health, received the Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award from the Society for Neuroscience today during the society's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The $25,000 prize is awarded annually to two young scientists whose research includes significant international collaboration and shows exceptional potential for advancing the field.
People addicted to prescription painkillers reduce their opioid abuse when given sustained treatment with the medication buprenorphine plus naloxone (Suboxone), according to research published in yesterday’s Archives of General Psychiatry and conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The study, which was the first randomized large scale clinical trial using a medication for the treatment of prescription opioid abuse, also showed that the addition of intensive opioid dependence counseling provided no added benefit.
Researchers have designed a light-based therapy that allows the selective destruction of tumor cells in mice without harming surrounding normal tissue. This method of cancer therapy could theoretically work against tumors in humans, such as those of the breast, lung, prostate, as well as cancer cells in the blood such as leukemias, say scientists from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of NIH. The study appeared online Nov. 06, 2011, in Nature Medicine.
An international collaboration of scientists, including researchers at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), a part of the National Institutes of Health, has identified a genetic mutation that causes a rare childhood disease characterized predominantly by inflammation and fat loss. The research suggests that the disorder, named chronic atypical neutrophilic dermatosis with lipodystrophy and elevated temperature (CANDLE), actually represents a spectrum of diseases that have been described in the literature under a variety of names. More importantly, since no effective treatment for this disease currently exists, the findings may have uncovered a possible target for future treatments.
Despite vast differences in the genetic code across individuals and ethnicities, the human brain shows a "consistent molecular architecture," say researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health. The finding is from a pair of studies that have created databases revealing when and where genes turn on and off in multiple brain regions through development.
A study shows that the medication etanercept reduces the frequency and severity of symptoms of TNF receptor-associated periodic syndrome (TRAPS), a rare inherited condition characterized by recurrent fevers, abdominal pain and skin rashes. The study, published in Arthritis & Rheumatism, also points out the need for the development of additional therapies to more thoroughly ease symptoms and prevent long-term complications of the disease. The study was released by researchers at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), a part of the National Institutes of Health.
African-Americans with two copies of the APOL1 gene have about a 4 percent lifetime risk of developing a form of kidney disease, according to scientists at the National Institutes of Health. The finding brings scientists closer to understanding why African-Americans are four times more likely to develop kidney failure than whites, as they reported in the Oct. 13 online edition of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
An anti-HIV drug also discovered to stop the spread of the genital herpes virus does so by disabling a key DNA enzyme of the herpes virus, according to findings by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions.
A human antibody given to monkeys infected with the deadly Hendra virus completely protected them from disease, according to a study published by National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists and their collaborators. Hendra and the closely related Nipah virus, both rare viruses that are part of the NIH biodefense research program, target the lungs and brain and have human case fatality rates of 60 percent and more than 75 percent, respectively. These diseases in monkeys mirror what happens in humans, and the study results are cause for hope that the antibody, named m102.4, ultimately may be developed into a possible treatment for people who become infected with these viruses.
An immune cell involved in initiating the symptoms of an allergic skin reaction may play an equally, or perhaps more important, role in suppressing the reaction once it becomes chronic. This finding in mice could have future implications for the treatment of atopic dermatitis, a chronic inflammatory skin disease that affects an estimated 10 to 20 percent of infants and young children. The research is by investigators at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), part of the National Institutes of Health.
