Innate immune system activation appears to be linked to late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD), which has led to speculation that infections might play a role in AD risk. Now, a team from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine has shown that individuals with AD had high levels of two separate herpes viruses in their brain. 

Researchers from the RV411 study group have reported that even when HIV-infected individuals started antiretroviral treatment (ART) within two weeks of infection, it could not prevent the establishment of a viral reservoir nor the occurrence of viral rebound if treatment was interrupted. 

Researchers at the University of Washington have used information from acquired mutations in mismatch repair genes to assess whether the same mutations, when they occurred in the germline, put those that harbored them at risk of Lynch syndrome.

Birds do it. Bees do it. "Even jellyfish have this need," Qinghua Liu told BioWorld. Liu was referring, of course, to sleep, which he called "essentially... a black box, and one of the biggest mysteries of brain science."

ATLANTA – In the search for good antibacterial targets, new sites on validated structures are one sweet spot. Because they are on previously targeted structures, they are in principle validated targets. At the same time, targeting novel sites can turn back the clock in the antibiotic resistance race, particularly if there is no cross-resistance with existing antibiotics that target the same structure.

A team from the Canadian institution The Hospital for Sick Children and the German Cancer Research Center have discovered that antibodies binding to the malaria parasite can interact with each other as well as with their parasite target, and that this interaction improved their affinity for the pathogen. 

Two gene expression signatures in blood samples of pregnant women could accurately assess the gestational age of the fetus, and predict which pregnancies would end in preterm birth, respectively.