Cells

On Monday, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health released study results showing that red meat consumption was associated with a higher risk of early death. The more red meat -- beef, pork or lamb, for the purposes of the research -- study participants reported they ate, the more likely they were to die during the period of time that data collection took place (more than 20 years). So what is it in red meat that might make it unhealthy?   No one is sure, exactly, but the authors of the Harvard study mention a few possible culprits in their paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine .   First, eating red meat has been linked to the incidence of heart disease.  The saturated fat and cholesterol in beef, pork and lamb are believed to play a role in the risk of coronary heart disease .  The type of iron found in red meat, known as heme iron, has also been linked to heart attacks and fatal heart disease.  Sodium in processed meats may increase blood pressure, which is a risk factor for heart disease. Other chemicals that are used in processed meats may play a role in heart disease as well, by damaging blood vessels.

Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, reported Tuesday that they had removed skin cells from two patents with heart failure, returned those cells to an embryonic state, and then transformed them into beating heart cells that could communicate with the patients' existing heart tissue. “We have shown that it is possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young - the equivalent to this stage of his heart cells when he was just born,” study leader Dr. Lior Gepstein said in a statement.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday cautioned consumers against using quinine for leg cramps, warning that the drug could cause severe side effects, including death. Quinine, sold in this country under the brand name Qualaquin, is approved for treatment of uncomplicated malaria, but has a long history of use as a remedy for leg cramps, especially at night. In many countries, it is sold over the counter. Studies have shown that it can reduce the incidence of cramps by one-third to one-half but that as many as one in every 25 users can suffer serious side effects.

A Newport Beach woman who arranged for a former NFL player to kill her wealthy boyfriend in a 1994 plot to collect $1 million in insurance money was sentenced Friday to life in prison. But sentencing for onetime New England Patriot linebacker Eric Naposki was continued to Aug. 10 after he refused to leave his courthouse holding cell. The prosecutor called Naposki's actions "a final blaze of no class and cowardice" by the man who fired six gunshots into the chest of Bill McLaughlin, who died in his Balboa Coves home.

Until recently, very few people had ever heard of raspberry ketones, the aromatic compounds that give the berries their distinctive smell. Today, health food stores have trouble keeping the capsules or drops of the stuff on their shelves. Almost overnight, an obscure plant compound became the next big thing in weight loss - and all it took was a few words from Dr. Oz. In a February episode of "The Dr. Oz Show," Mehmet Oz told viewers that raspberry ketones were "the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. " Once Oz calls something a "miracle," it doesn't remain obscure for long.

Manny Hamelburg, 68, a retired businessman, had fought prostate cancer for years. First, he tried radiation, then a drug with side effects that nearly killed him, and finally Lupron, a drug that blocks production of testosterone, the hormone that can fuel prostate cancer. The cancer disappeared. But life was miserable. Without normal levels of testosterone, Hamelburg says, he had no energy, and "zero libido for seven years. I was like a eunuch. I was chemically castrated. Sex was just hugs."

Teas from across the globe are becoming more and more popular in the U.S. One relative newcomer, yerba mate, is attracting fans for its allegedly jitter-free caffeine boost and high antioxidant content. Lab research suggests some potential health benefits from drinking yerba mate, but studies of lifelong yerba mate drinkers in the tea's native South America suggest the brew increases the risk of some cancers -- a fact most marketing campaigns omit.

A new study showing an estimated 7% of American teens and adults carry the human papillomavirus in their mouths may help health experts finally understand why rates of mouth and throat cancer have been climbing for nearly 25 years. The evidence makes it clear that oral sex practices play a key role in transmission. The new data, published online Thursday by the Journal of the American Medical Assn., are the first to assess the prevalence of oral HPV infection in the U.S. population.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using the supplement nitric oxide? Richard Sunland Nitric oxide is a gas naturally found in the body; its function is conveying information between cells. One of its main jobs is increasing blood flow by dilating blood vessels, and that's why it's sometimes given in supplement form to heart patients, orally and intravenously. In at least one study it's been shown to be effective for lowering blood pressure.

OVER the years, our ears take a beating. They're assaulted with thunderous music, shrill sirens, blaring TV shows and the incessant background thrum of modern life. Little wonder that by middle age, millions of Americans suffer some degree of hearing loss, mostly due to the cumulative destruction of the delicate sound-sensing cells inside our ear from all this noise. Once these cells die, they're gone forever and a hearing aid often lies somewhere down the road.

WASHINGTON — The CIA takedown of an Al Qaeda plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner involved an international sting operation with a double agent tricking terrorists into handing over a prized possession: a new bomb purportedly designed to slip through airport security. U.S. officials Tuesday described an operation in which Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency, working closely with the CIA, used an informant to pose as a would-be suicide bomber. His job was to persuade Al Qaeda bomb makers in Yemen to give him the bomb.

Talk about a bad trip. It started when Daniel Chong, a 23-year-old UC San Diego student, spent a night with friends to mark April 20, which some pot afficionados consider something of a holiday. It ended with an ordeal behind bars. The Drug Enforcement Administration apologized Wednesday to Chong, who was "accidentally" left in a holding cell for five days and reportedly drank his own urine to survive. San Diego attorney Gene Iredale said his client was "still recovering" from the ordeal.

George B. Rathmann, a far-sighted entrepreneur whose small team of talented scientists created two blockbuster drugs that helped turn his upstart Thousand Oaks firm, Amgen Inc., into the world's most successful biotech company, died Sundayat his Palo Alto home. He was 84. The cause was complications from pneumonia, according to his son, Richard. Biotechnology was still an embryonic business when Amgen opened in 1980. More than a quarter of a century after James Watson and Francis Crick had discovered DNA, the twisting molecular structure that carries life's genetic blueprint, the elaborate science of isolating key genes in the laboratory continued to elude researchers.

A simmering trade dispute is highlighting a debate about the kinds of jobs America can sustain in a greening economy. The Obama administration's recent decision to slap import tariffs on Chinese solar cells was hailed by some domestic solar manufacturers as a victory for job creation, leveling the field while also sending a powerful message to Beijing about monopolistic behavior in crucial industries. But a close look at the U.S. solar industry suggests that the tariffs may actually be a job killer because the vast majority of positions in the sector aren't on the assembly line.

A yearlong study of boxers' and mixed martial-arts fighters' brain activity has found those who fight for more than six years begin to experience damage and those who fight longer than 12 years expose themselves to an even greater decline each time they return to the ring. "What we've found suggests changes and damage in the brain happens years before symptoms emerge," said Dr. Charles Bernick, author of the study. "It's what we see in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients. " Bernick has supervised MRIs and computerized and cognitive tests of an estimated 170 fighters at the Cleveland Clinic's Las Vegas center in the past year.

Scientists have all kinds of stem cell cures in mind: replacing dopamine-producing nerves in the brains of Parkinson's patients, fixing damaged spinal cords, curing Type 1 diabetes, etc.  The therapies are slow-coming, though researchers are learning lots about how cells and body parts form. Here's a study just published in the journal Nature that shows injecting rod precursor cells (cells destined to become rod photoreceptors) into the eye gives mice born without rods the ability to detect  dim light.

When doctors, researchers and celebrity lobbyists talk about the amazing potential of stem cell therapy, their discussions usually center on big-ticket items such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cancer and spinal cord injuries. They don't, as a rule, talk about wrinkles and crow's feet. But could stem cells be the next frontier in anti-aging medicine? Though most stem cell therapies are still in their infancy, a small number of plastic surgeons across the country are already offering so-called stem cell face-lifts, cosmetic procedures that use a person's own stem cells to supposedly bring new life to aging, sagging skin.

Breathe in, breathe out — it may seem simple, but lungs are devilishly complicated structures, boasting more than 40 different cell types and an intricate network of tiny blood vessels and air sacs. It's no wonder, then, that engineering lungs in the lab, either for transplantation or study, has been extremely challenging. Now two research groups have made major strides in attacking the problem. One has successfully engineered a lung that can sustain a living rat and the other has created a lung-mimicking device for toxicology studies that acts more like a real lung than any earlier efforts, the groups reported Thursday in the journal Science.

The proposal is pretty simple: Levy a $1-a-pack tax on cigarettes in California and spend most of the proceeds on medical research. Voters might base their decisions on the matter on questions as simple as whether they oppose any new taxes, or whether they're glad to see a revenue producer that, by raising the price of cigarettes, is sure to lower smoking rates. But it's also possible that Californians will ponder some deeper questions -- chief among those is whether they want to spend the money to fund research on cancer and cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases.