Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Family Health International, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that self-reported consistent condom use is associated with a lowered risk of three common sexually-transmitted infections (STIs).
More than 400 men from Jamaica were asked how often they used condoms in the six months before the study began. Then, during the six-month study period they were asked more frequently how often they had unprotected sex. They were also evaluated for chlamydial infection, gonorrhoea, and trichomoniasis. The scientists found that self-reported condom use is better at predicting whether a participant would develop an STI during the investigation than it is at predicting the participant's STI status at the start of the study. Thus, future studies of condom effectiveness that rely on self-reported condom use should document incident STIs (new cases) rather than prevalent cases (those that exist at any one point in time) throughout the study period.
Source: Family Health International/ Sexually Transmitted Diseases 2007;34(10):829-833.
Scientists restore damaged heart
One of the most dangerous and fatal consequences of heart attacks can be prevented with cell-transplant therapies, according to scientists at Cornell University, the University of Bonn and the University of Pittsburgh. The discovery, published in the December 6 issue of Nature, indicated that cell-transplant therapies have shown profound implications for restoring damaged heart tissue when living embryonic heart cells are transplanted into cardiac tissue of mice that had suffered heart attacks.
The paper's senior authors Michael Kotlikoff, the Austin O. Hooey Dean of Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine, and Bernd Fleischmann at the University of Bonn, found that a protein called connexin43, expressed by the transplanted embryonic heart cells, improved electrical connections to other heart cells. The researchers also proved that the improved connections helped activate the transplanted cells deep within the damaged section of the heart tissue, reversing the risk of developing ventricular arrhythmias after a heart attack, the number one cause of sudden death in the Western world.
"These results have important implications for therapy they must be verified in the context of naturally occurring heart damage. One can envision using a patient's own cells by deriving heart cells from stem cells to improve heart function and decrease arrhythmia risk," said Kotlikoff. "For the first time, we were able to see how cells used in therapy are working with other cells in a complex organ within a living animal, establishing the mechanism of the therapeutic effect."
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany, and the European Commission, Bonn Forschung.
Source: Cornell University, ssl37@cornell.edu
