Gene expression may reveal who will benefit from vitamin D

Main Category: Nutrition / Diet
Also Included In: Genetics
Article Date: 15 Aug 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Gene expression may reveal who will benefit from vitamin D

Studying the expression of genes that are dependent on vitamin D makes it possible to identify individuals who will benefit from vitamin D supplementation, shows a University of Eastern Finland study published recently in PLoS One.

Population-based studies have shown that vitamin D deficiency may increase the risk for chronic diseases and weaken the body's immune system. In the present study carried out at the University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, the study participants were given a daily dose of either 40 or 80 micrograms of vitamin D, or a placebo, over a course of 5 months during Finnish winter. The results showed that the expression of vitamin D dependent genes in adipose tissue and monocytes, i.e. white blood cells, correlated only in half of the study participants with their vitamin D concentrations in the blood.

The researchers concluded that persons whose expression of the CD14 and thrombomodulin genes was not altered as a result of vitamin D supplementation already had a sufficiently high serum vitamin D concentration or their utilization of vitamin D was disturbed, which calls for further study. The researchers believe that studying the expression of vitamin D dependent genes in tissues is a novel way to identify individuals who might benefit from long-term vitamin D supplementation. This observation is further supported by the fact that studying alterations in the expression of genes also made it possible to identify persons whose levels of interleukin 6, an inflammation marker, were reduced as their serum vitamin D levels increased.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our nutrition / diet section for the latest news on this subject.

Research article: Carlberg C, Seuter S, de Mello VDF, Schwab U, Voutilainen S, et al. (2013) Primary Vitamin D Target Genes Allow a Categorization of Possible Benefits of Vitamin D3 Supplementation . PLoS ONE 8(7): e71042. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0071042

University of Eastern Finland

Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

University of Eastern Finland. "Gene expression may reveal who will benefit from vitamin D." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 15 Aug. 2013. Web.
15 Aug. 2013. APA

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

'Gene expression may reveal who will benefit from vitamin D'

Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.

All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam). We reserve the right to amend opinions where we deem necessary.

Contact Our News Editors

For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.

Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:

Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.

View the original article here

The blood vessels of the retina can reveal stroke risk

Main Category: Hypertension
Also Included In: Eye Health / Blindness;  Stroke
Article Date: 14 Aug 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
The blood vessels of the retina can reveal stroke risk

Your eyes may be a window to your stroke risk.

In a study reported in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension, researchers said retinal imaging may someday help assess if you're more likely to develop a stroke - the nation's No. 4 killer and a leading cause of disability.

"The retina provides information on the status of blood vessels in the brain," said Mohammad Kamran Ikram, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study and assistant professor in the Singapore Eye Research Institute, the Department of Ophthalmology and Memory Aging & Cognition Centre, at the National University of Singapore. "Retinal imaging is a non-invasive and cheap way of examining the blood vessels of the retina."

Worldwide, high blood pressure is the single most important risk factor for stroke. However, it's still not possible to predict which high blood pressure patients are most likely to develop a stroke.

Researchers tracked stroke occurrence for an average 13 years in 2,907 patients with high blood pressure who had not previously experienced a stroke. At baseline, each had photographs taken of the retina, the light-sensitive layer of cells at the back of the eyeball. Damage to the retinal blood vessels attributed to hypertension - called hypertensive retinopathy - evident on the photographs was scored as none, mild or moderate/severe.

During the follow-up, 146 participants experienced a stroke caused by a blood clot and 15 by bleeding in the brain.

Researchers adjusted for several stroke risk factors such as age, sex, race, cholesterol levels, blood sugar, body mass index, smoking and blood pressure readings. They found the risk of stroke was 35 percent higher in those with mild hypertensive retinopathy and 137 percent higher in those with moderate or severe hypertensive retinopathy.

Even in patients on medication and achieving good blood pressure control, the risk of a blood clot was 96 percent higher in those with mild hypertensive retinopathy and 198 percent higher in those with moderate or severe hypertensive retinopathy.

"It is too early to recommend changes in clinical practice," Ikram said. "Other studies need to confirm our findings and examine whether retinal imaging can be useful in providing additional information about stroke risk in people with high blood pressure."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our hypertension section for the latest news on this subject.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute funded the study.

Hypertensive Retinopathy and Risk of Stroke

Yi-Ting Ong, Tien Y. Wong, Ronald Klein, Barbara E.K. Klein, Paul Mitchell, A. Richey Sharrett, David J. Couper, M. Kamran Ikram. Hypertension. 2013; published online before print August 12 2013, doi:10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.113.01414

American Heart Association

Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

American Heart Association. "The blood vessels of the retina can reveal stroke risk." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 14 Aug. 2013. Web.
14 Aug. 2013. APA

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

'The blood vessels of the retina can reveal stroke risk'

Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.

All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam). We reserve the right to amend opinions where we deem necessary.

Contact Our News Editors

For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.

Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:

Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.

View the original article here

Speedier scans reveal new distinctions in resting and active brain

Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience
Article Date: 05 Aug 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Speedier scans reveal new distinctions in resting and active brain

A boost in the speed of brain scans is unveiling new insights into how brain regions work with each other in cooperative groups called networks.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Institute of Technology and Advanced Biomedical Imaging at the University of Chieti, Italy, used the quicker scans to track brain activity in volunteers at rest and while they watched a movie.

"Brain activity occurs in waves that repeat as slowly as once every 10 seconds or as rapidly as once every 50 milliseconds," said senior researcher Maurizio Corbetta, MD, the Norman J. Stupp Professor of Neurology. "This is our first look at these networks where we could sample activity every 50 milliseconds, as well as track slower activity fluctuations that are more similar to those observed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This analysis performed at rest and while watching a movie provides some interesting and novel insights into how these networks are configured in resting and active brains."

Understanding how brain networks function is important for better diagnosis and treatment of brain injuries, according to Corbetta.

The study appears online in Neuron.

Researchers know of several resting-state brain networks, which are groups of different brain regions whose activity levels rise and fall in sync when the brain is at rest. Scientists used fMRI to locate and characterize these networks, but the relative slowness of this approach limited their observations to activity that changes every 10 seconds or so. A surprising result from fMRI was that the spatial pattern of activity (or topography) of these brain networks is similar at rest and during tasks.

In contrast, a faster technology called magnetoencephalography (MEG) can detect activity at the millisecond level, letting scientists examine waves of activity in frequencies from slow (0.1-4 cycles per second) to fast (greater than 50 cycles per second).

"Interestingly, even when we looked at much higher temporal resolution, brain networks appear to fluctuate on a relatively slow time scale," said first author Viviana Betti, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Chieti. "However, when the subjects went from resting to watching a movie, the networks appeared to shift the frequency channels in which they operate, suggesting that the brain uses different frequencies for rest and task, much like a radio."

In the study, the scientists asked one group of volunteers to either rest or watch the movie during brain scans. A second group was asked to watch the movie and look for event boundaries, moments when the plot or characters or other elements of the story changed. They pushed a button when they noticed these changes.

As in previous studies, most subjects recognized similar event boundaries in the movie. The MEG scans showed that the communication between regions in the visual cortex was altered near the movie boundaries, especially in networks in the visual cortex.

"This gives us a hint of how cognitive activity dynamically changes the resting-state networks," Corbetta said. "Activity locks and unlocks in these networks depending on how the task unfolds. Future studies will need to track resting-state networks in different tasks to see how correlated activity is dynamically coordinated across the brain."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our neurology / neuroscience section for the latest news on this subject.

This research was funded by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme Grant Agreement HEALTH-F2-2008-200728 (BrainSynch) and by the Human Connectome Project (1U54MH091657-01). V.B. was additionally supported by a fellowship from the University of Chieti. M.C. was supported by R01 MH096482-01 (NIMH) and 5R01HD061117-08 (NICHD). Betti V, Della Penna S, de Pasquale F, Mantini D, Marzetti L, Romani GL, Corbetta M. Natural Scenes Viewing Alters the Dynamics of Functional Connectivity in the Human Brain. Neuron, published online.

Washington University School of Medicine

Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

Washington University School of Medicine. "Speedier scans reveal new distinctions in resting and active brain." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 5 Aug. 2013. Web.
5 Aug. 2013. APA

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

'Speedier scans reveal new distinctions in resting and active brain'

Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.

All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam). We reserve the right to amend opinions where we deem necessary.

Contact Our News Editors

For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.

Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:

Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.

View the original article here

How Botox works could reveal diabetes secrets

Featured Article
Main Category: Diabetes
Article Date: 28 Jul 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
How Botox works could reveal diabetes secrets

Understanding the proteins that are targeted by the cosmetic drug Botox (onabotulinumtoxinA) could lead to breakthroughs against type 2 diabetes, according to researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland.

The researchers are using new microscopic techniques on Soluble NSF Attachment Protein Receptor (SNARE) proteins with an aim of discovering how insulin is regulated and how this can change in the development of type 2 diabetes.

Botox targets SNARE proteins, preventing them from helping the muscles contract. But the proteins also exist in the beta-cells of the pancreas.

The research team plan to observe the SNARE proteins within the beta-cells of the pancreas, which help the beta-cells release the insulin by attempting to stabilize blood glucose levels.

The researchers say type 2 diabetes can develop in people who have long-term obesity, when the beta-cells are unable to cope with long-term high glucose levels and secrete less insulin. They add that this process means the beta-cells lose both mass and function, but the reasons for this are unknown. This is what the researchers will attempt to find out.

The organisation of SNARE proteins in a cell. The position of SNARE proteins is shown in purple with vesicles ready for release shown in green. Photo credit: Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh

Dr. Colin Rickman of the Heriot-Watt University told Medical News Today:

"The idea is that we want to look at these proteins and look at how they are arranged on the membrane, what they are doing, how they are interacting, and how they change the diabetic's history."

"Nobody has ever done this before," Dr. Colin Rickman added. He told MNT:

"The interesting angle is that we are going to use microscopy, which allows us to see the individual molecules in the cell.

Normally you just see a cell, but you can't see the individual proteins in the cell.

These techniques allow us to see tens of thousands of these molecules in the cell and look at how they are interacting and what they are up to."

Depending on the final results of the research, he says that the work could lead to new methods of diagnosing diabetes, and even lead to ways of preventing it through early risk identification.

Dr. Colin Rickman said:

A small cluster of SNARE proteins pinpointed using super-resolution microscopy. Each spot marks the position of an individual molecule. Photo credit: Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh

"Type 2 diabetes is usually caused by overconsumption of food and lack of exercise. People can live with obesity absolutely fine, until they reach that tipping point. But nobody really knows why the cells go through this tipping point.

"This research could enable us to understand how these processes are arranged and how it changes them to diabetic conditions.

"We could then use that as an assay to find out whether people are in danger of developing type 2 diabetes."

The team has already started preliminary investigations, analyzing the proteins and how they are arranged, but the biggest part of the study is yet to come in terms of analyzing different proteins and cells types and discovering the general principles of how they change.

Dr. Colin Rickman adds that further results will be ready by the end of this year and the full study should reach completion by the early part of 2015.

Written by Honor Whiteman

Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today Visit our diabetes section for the latest news on this subject. There are no references listed for this article. Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

Whiteman, Honor. "How Botox works could reveal diabetes secrets." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 28 Jul. 2013. Web.
29 Jul. 2013. APA

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

posted by ralphla54 on 28 Jul 2013 at 9:41 am

A new FDA approved diet pill called Belviq just went on the market. Belviq make people more likely to succeed with weight loss since they feel full more quickly and it reduces food cravings. People who take Belviq with diet and exercise were 2 times more likely to lose 5% body weight and 3 times more likely to lose 10% body weight than the people who just did diet and exercise alone. The label states that if you do not lose 5% of your body weight in 12 weeks then consider stopping. Those that do respond in 12 (about 45% of patients) weeks go on to lose over 10% of their body weight in one year. Losing 22 pounds for a 220 pound person is life changing. So 45% of those taking Belviq lose significant amount of weight.
Belviq has a second mode of action to reduce blood sugar which may end up preventing diabetes in many cases. Diabetics and pre-diabetics who took Belviq, REGARDLESS of weight loss, saw their blood sugar numbers drop by double digit percentages. IE HbA1c -0.9 to -1.2 and fasting glucose feel -27. The cost of medications to reduce HbA1c levels exceeds the cost of Belviq. (seeArena's BloomDM phase III trial) These reductions in diabetic symptoms plus the weight loss at the same time makes Belviq a medical bargain.

| post followup | alert a moderator |

'How Botox works could reveal diabetes secrets'

Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.

All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam). We reserve the right to amend opinions where we deem necessary.

Contact Our News Editors

For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.

Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:

Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.

View the original article here

How Botox works could reveal diabetes secrets

Featured Article
Main Category: Diabetes
Article Date: 28 Jul 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
How Botox works could reveal diabetes secrets

Understanding the proteins that are targeted by the cosmetic drug Botox (onabotulinumtoxinA) could lead to breakthroughs against type 2 diabetes, according to researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland.

The researchers are using new microscopic techniques on Soluble NSF Attachment Protein Receptor (SNARE) proteins with an aim of discovering how insulin is regulated and how this can change in the development of type 2 diabetes.

Botox targets SNARE proteins, preventing them from helping the muscles contract. But the proteins also exist in the beta-cells of the pancreas.

The research team plan to observe the SNARE proteins within the beta-cells of the pancreas, which help the beta-cells release the insulin by attempting to stabilize blood glucose levels.

The researchers say type 2 diabetes can develop in people who have long-term obesity, when the beta-cells are unable to cope with long-term high glucose levels and secrete less insulin. They add that this process means the beta-cells lose both mass and function, but the reasons for this are unknown. This is what the researchers will attempt to find out.

The organisation of SNARE proteins in a cell. The position of SNARE proteins is shown in purple with vesicles ready for release shown in green. Photo credit: Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh

Dr. Colin Rickman of the Heriot-Watt University told Medical News Today:

"The idea is that we want to look at these proteins and look at how they are arranged on the membrane, what they are doing, how they are interacting, and how they change the diabetic's history."

"Nobody has ever done this before," Dr. Colin Rickman added. He told MNT:

"The interesting angle is that we are going to use microscopy, which allows us to see the individual molecules in the cell.

Normally you just see a cell, but you can't see the individual proteins in the cell.

These techniques allow us to see tens of thousands of these molecules in the cell and look at how they are interacting and what they are up to."

Depending on the final results of the research, he says that the work could lead to new methods of diagnosing diabetes, and even lead to ways of preventing it through early risk identification.

Dr. Colin Rickman said:

A small cluster of SNARE proteins pinpointed using super-resolution microscopy. Each spot marks the position of an individual molecule. Photo credit: Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh

"Type 2 diabetes is usually caused by overconsumption of food and lack of exercise. People can live with obesity absolutely fine, until they reach that tipping point. But nobody really knows why the cells go through this tipping point.

"This research could enable us to understand how these processes are arranged and how it changes them to diabetic conditions.

"We could then use that as an assay to find out whether people are in danger of developing type 2 diabetes."

The team has already started preliminary investigations, analyzing the proteins and how they are arranged, but the biggest part of the study is yet to come in terms of analyzing different proteins and cells types and discovering the general principles of how they change.

Dr. Colin Rickman adds that further results will be ready by the end of this year and the full study should reach completion by the early part of 2015.

Written by Honor Whiteman

Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today Visit our diabetes section for the latest news on this subject. There are no references listed for this article. Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

Whiteman, Honor. "How Botox works could reveal diabetes secrets." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 28 Jul. 2013. Web.
29 Jul. 2013. APA

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

posted by ralphla54 on 28 Jul 2013 at 9:41 am

A new FDA approved diet pill called Belviq just went on the market. Belviq make people more likely to succeed with weight loss since they feel full more quickly and it reduces food cravings. People who take Belviq with diet and exercise were 2 times more likely to lose 5% body weight and 3 times more likely to lose 10% body weight than the people who just did diet and exercise alone. The label states that if you do not lose 5% of your body weight in 12 weeks then consider stopping. Those that do respond in 12 (about 45% of patients) weeks go on to lose over 10% of their body weight in one year. Losing 22 pounds for a 220 pound person is life changing. So 45% of those taking Belviq lose significant amount of weight.
Belviq has a second mode of action to reduce blood sugar which may end up preventing diabetes in many cases. Diabetics and pre-diabetics who took Belviq, REGARDLESS of weight loss, saw their blood sugar numbers drop by double digit percentages. IE HbA1c -0.9 to -1.2 and fasting glucose feel -27. The cost of medications to reduce HbA1c levels exceeds the cost of Belviq. (seeArena's BloomDM phase III trial) These reductions in diabetic symptoms plus the weight loss at the same time makes Belviq a medical bargain.

| post followup | alert a moderator |

'How Botox works could reveal diabetes secrets'

Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.

All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam). We reserve the right to amend opinions where we deem necessary.

Contact Our News Editors

For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.

Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:

Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.

View the original article here

Researchers reveal monoclonal antibody effective against norovirus

Main Category: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses
Also Included In: GastroIntestinal / Gastroenterology
Article Date: 27 Jul 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Researchers reveal monoclonal antibody effective against norovirus

Researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) provide the first proof of concept data showing that a monoclonal antibody can neutralize human norovirus. This research, which could one day lead to effective therapies against the virus, was published online ahead of print in the Journal of Virology.

"We initiated this work because there is presently no virus-specific treatment or vaccine to control the norovirus illness," says Kim Y. Green, a researcher on the study. "Our working hypothesis was that a highly specific norovirus antibody that binds to the outer surface of the virus particle might prevent the ability of the virus to infect susceptible host cells."

The team first isolated genes from chimpanzee immune cells encoding norovirus-specific antibodies. They then converted these into human-compatible full-length immunoglobulin molecules. They successfully tested two of the antibodies against norovirus infection in chimpanzees.

"An effective therapeutic antibody might be explored as both a treatment for norovirus gastroenteritis, and as a disease prevention strategy," says Green. "Consider a developing outbreak scenario in which food-handlers, healthcare workers, deployed military, or travelers could reduce risk of infection, incapacitation, and spread if a safe and inexpensive treatment is immediately available."

Norovirus causes roughly 20 million cases of acute diarrhea and vomiting annually in the US, alone, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While in most people, symptoms last a day or two, for those with impaired immune systems, and the young and the aged, norovirus can be life-threatening. It is responsible for an estimated 70,000 hospitalizations and 800 deaths annually, and roughly one in 15 Americans get the disease every year. It is unusually contagious, via the fecal-oral route. People who have had norovirus remain highly contagious for at least three days after symptoms abate.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our infectious diseases / bacteria / viruses section for the latest news on this subject.

A copy of the manuscript can be found online at http://bit.ly/asmtip0713b. The paper is scheduled to be formally published in the September 2013 Journal of Virology.

American Society for Microbiology

Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

American Society for Microbiology. "Researchers reveal monoclonal antibody effective against norovirus." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 27 Jul. 2013. Web.
29 Jul. 2013. APA

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

'Researchers reveal monoclonal antibody effective against norovirus'

Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.

All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam). We reserve the right to amend opinions where we deem necessary.

Contact Our News Editors

For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.

Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:

Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.

View the original article here

Researchers reveal the clearest new pictures of immune cells

Main Category: Immune System / Vaccines
Article Date: 24 Jul 2013 - 14:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Researchers reveal the clearest new pictures of immune cells

Scientists from The University of Manchester have revealed new images which provide the clearest picture yet of how white blood immune cells attack viral infections and tumours.

They show how the cells, which are responsible for fighting infections and cancer in the human body, change the organisation of their surface molecules, when activated by a type of protein found on viral-infected or tumour cells.

Professor Daniel Davis, who has been leading the investigation into the immune cells, known as natural killers, said the work could provide important clues for tackling disease.

The research reveals the proteins at the surface of immune cells are not evenly spaced but grouped in clusters - a bit like stars bunched together in galaxies.

Professor Davis, Director of Research at the Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research (MCCIR), a partnership between the University and two pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and Astra Zeneca, said: "This is the first time scientists have looked at how these immune cells work at such a high resolution. The surprising thing was that these new pictures revealed that immune cell surfaces alter at this scale - the nano scale - which could perhaps change their ability to be activated in a subsequent encounter with a diseased cell.

"We have shown that immune cells are not evenly distributed as once thought, but instead they are grouped in very small clumps - a bit like if you were an astronomer looking at clusters of stars in the Universe and you would notice that they were grouped in clusters.

"We studied how these clusters or proteins change when the immune cells are switched on - to kill diseased cells. Looking at our cells in this much detail gives us a greater understanding about how the immune system works and could provide useful clues for developing drugs to target disease in the future."

Until now the limitations of light microscopy have prevented a clear understanding of how immune cells detect other cells as being diseased or healthy.

The team used high quality, super-resolution fluorescence microscopy to view the cells in blood samples in their laboratory to create the still images published in the journal Science Signalling this week.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our immune system / vaccines section for the latest news on this subject.

The research is published in the journal Science Signalling this week.

Manchester University

Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

University, Manchester. "Researchers reveal the clearest new pictures of immune cells." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 24 Jul. 2013. Web.
26 Jul. 2013. APA

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

'Researchers reveal the clearest new pictures of immune cells'

Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.

All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam). We reserve the right to amend opinions where we deem necessary.

Contact Our News Editors

For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.

Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:

Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.

View the original article here