Treatment with intravenous bisphosphonates — drugs used to reduce harm done to bones by cancer or cancer therapy — increases the risk of jaw or facial bone disease or infection, a large-scale comparative study by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) has found.

Drawing on the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database linked to Medicare insurance claims, investigators from the UTMB Center for Population Health and Health Disparities compared more than 14,000 cancer patients treated with two types of intravenous bisphosphonates (pamidronate and zoledronic acid) with nearly 27,000 cancer patients who did not receive the drugs.

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have determined how a substance derived from the bark of the South American lapacho tree kills certain kinds of cancer cells, findings that also suggest a novel treatment for the most common type of lung cancer.

The compound, called beta-lapachone, has shown promising anti-cancer properties and is currently being used in a clinical trial to examine its effectiveness against pancreatic cancer in humans. Until now, however, researchers didn’t know the mechanism of how the compound killed cancer cells.

Constipated? In the early 19th century, the apothecary would most likely have prescribed you calomel, or mercurous chloride, as a purgative, regardless of its toxicity. Because it worked. It was also useful as an insecticide.

This was the sort of thing being concocted at the Apothecaries’ Hall in Blackfriars, then a major center for drug manufacturing in London, says Anna Simmons, a historian of science at the Open University in Milton Keynes.

In the first scientific publication from The Genographic Project, a five-year effort to understand the human journey, researchers report their experience of genotyping human mitochondrial DNA during the first 18 months of the project.

Writing in PLoS Genetics, Doron Behar and colleagues describe the procedures used to generate, manage and analyze the genetic data from 78,590 public participants. They also provide the first anthropological insights in this unprecedented effort to map humanity’s genetic journey through the ages.

The first U.S. study to transplant a potent form of purified adult stem cells into the heart muscle of patients with severe angina provided evidence that the procedure is safe and produced a reduction in angina pain as well as improved functioning in patients' daily lives, reports the lead researcher at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

Within three to six weeks after the severe angina patients were injected with their own stem cells, many who used to experience pain just from walking to the refrigerator, now only had pain when they climbed two flights of stairs.

A unique study by researchers at the University of York and Hull York Medical School has confirmed a link between depression and low levels of folate, a vitamin which comes from vegetables.

In research published in the July edition of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the York team led by Dr Simon Gilbody, concluded that there was a link between depression and low folate levels, following a review of 11 previous studies involving 15,315 participants.

During flowering four different types of floral organs need to be formed:

• Sepals, which protect the inner organs;
• The frequently ornamental petals;
• Stamens, which produce pollen and;
• The carpels, the female reproductive unit.

This process is orchestrated by a large number of genes.

A synthetic version of a molecule found in the egg cells of the Northern Leopard frog (Rana pipiens) could provide the world with the first drug treatment for brain tumours.

Known as Amphinase, the molecule recognises the sugary coating found on a tumour cell and binds to its surface before invading the cell and inactivating the RNA it contains, causing the tumour to die.

Although it could potentially be used as a treatment for many forms of cancer, Amphinase offers greatest hope in the treatment of brain tumours, for which complex surgery and chemotherapy are the only current treatments.

A search for the molecular clues of longevity has taken Mayo Clinic researchers down another path that could explain why some people who consume excessive calories don’t gain weight. The study, which was done in laboratory mouse models, points to the absence of a gene called CD38. When absent, the gene prevented mice on high-fat diets from gaining weight, but when present, the mice became obese.

The findings were published this month in the online issue of The FASEB Journal, the journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

Children suffering from pneumonia could be spared the pain of the doctor’s needle, thanks to new research funded by the British Lung Foundation.

The study, a world-first carried out by researchers at The University of Nottingham, discovered that children given oral treatment recovered as quickly, suffered less pain, required less oxygen therapy in hospital and were able to go home sooner than those given injections.

Two-and-a-half million children are affected by pneumonia each year in Europe. Until now, most children have been admitted to hospital and treated with injected antibiotics.