Monthly Archives: December 1969

On March 24, 1882, Dr. Robert Koch announced the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB). Dr. Koch’s remarkable scientific achievement was the first step toward developing tools to control the disease.
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The NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) today is launching a large-scale clinical trial to learn if the nutritional supplement creatine can slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease (PD). While creatine is not an approved therapy for PD or any other condition, it is widely thought to improve exercise performance. The potential benefit of creatine for PD was identified by Parkinson’s researchers through a new rapid method for screening potential compounds.
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Researchers studying influenza transmission patterns in the Southern Hemisphere and in tropical areas, specifically Brazil, uncovered the unexpected finding that each season influenza travels from low populated regions near the equator to the more populated centers. Their work, funded by the Fogarty International Center (NIH), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), can improve planning for influenza control in tropical areas.
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TResearchers have created a new imaging compound in mice that selectively binds to certain cancer cells and glows, or fluoresces, only when processed by these cells. This cancer-specific fluorescence allowed the investigators to successfully visualize very small tumors in the peritoneum ? the tissue that lines the wall of the abdomen ? in mice with ovarian cancer. The sensitivity ? or ability to accurately detect small clusters of tumor cells ? of this approach was 92 percent. The study, conducted by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and colleagues, appears in the March 15, 2007 issue of Cancer Research.
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Tiny gene mutations, each individually rare, pose more risk for autism than had been previously thought, suggests a study funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health, a component of the National Institutes of Health.
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The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) today announced the appointment of five new members to the National Advisory Allergy and Infectious Diseases Council, its principal advisory body. NIAID is part of National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.
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New evidence suggests that if you could choose your parents, you could reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease. Researchers from the long-standing Framingham Heart Study (FHS), a program of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health, report that people whose parents live longer were more likely to avoid developing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease in middle age than their peers whose parents died younger. They also found that the risk factor advantages persisted over time.
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