Press releases
Please quote Nature Medicine as the source of these items.
The October 2007 issue of Nature Medicine is available online.
October 2007
Catching bird flu in a droplet
Nature Medicine pp 1259 - 1263
Detecting bird flu may soon get a whole lot easier, according to a report online in Nature Medicine this week. Juergen Pipper and colleagues describe a cheap, fast and effective droplet-based system for detecting the H5N1 virus directly from a throat swab sample in less than 30 minutes. The method could also be adapted to other viruses such as SARS, AIDS and hepatitis B.
In the event of a flu epidemic, its rapid containment would depend on the prompt identification of the first cases. But as routine surveillance may be problematic in countries with limited public health resources, low-cost, easy-to-use detection assays would be are advantageous.
The new system uses droplets that contain particles to automatically isolate, purify and concentrate viral RNA.
The method is as sensitive as other available tests, but over one hundred times faster and even cheaper. In addition, it may be applicable not only to the flu virus, but could be adapted to other infectious agents, and to other bodily fluids like blood, urine or saliva.
Catching bird flu in a droplet pp 1259 - 1263
Juergen Pipper, Masafumi Inoue, Lisa F-P Ng, Pavel Neuzil, Yi Zhang & Lukas Novak
Published online: 23 September 2007 | doi 10.1038/nm1634
Micro-managing HIV replication
Nature Medicine pp 1241 - 1247
Cellular microRNAs could help HIV persist by shutting off viral replication and contributing to latency, suggests a paper online in Nature Medicine this week.
HIV can hide out in cells in a dormant state called latency. Antiviral drugs target replicating virus, so latency is a large barrier to virus eradication.
Hui Zhang and colleagues identified a cluster of microRNAs that interact with a region of the HIV genome, shutting off viral gene expression. These microRNAs are enriched in so-called resting CD4 T cells— the main cell type that harbors latent HIV. The authors treated resting CD4 T cells from HIV infected patients with a combination of specific inhibitors of the microRNAs and showed that after such treatment the cells were able to generate 10 times more HIV. Interfering with the function of these suppressive microRNAs might therefore provide a new way to flush HIV out of hiding.
Author contact:
Hui Zhang (Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA)
Tel: +1 215 503 0163; E-mail: hui.zhang@jefferson.edu
Cellular microRNAs contribute to HIV-1 latency in resting primary CD4+ T lymphocytes pp 1241 - 1247
Jialing Huang, Fengxiang Wang, Elias Argyris, Keyang Chen, Zhihui Liang, Heng Tian, Wenlin Huang, Kathleen Squires, Gwen Verlinghieri & Hui Zhang
Published online: 30 September 2007 | doi 10.1038/nm1639
The long and the short of fatty liver
Nature Medicine pp 1193 - 1202
Excessive fat intake leads to obesity and overwhelms the storage capacity of fat cells, with surplus fat being stored in the liver. Development of fatty liver can result in insulin resistance and increased glucose levels — two hallmarks of diabetes.
Hitoshi Shimano and his colleagues created a strain of mice lacking Elovl6, an enzyme that increases the length of the carbon chains of fatty acids, thereby changing the fat composition in the liver of these mutant mice, with shorter fatty acids predominating over those with longer chains. On a high-fat diet, these mice became obese and developed fatty liver, just like wild-type mice, but their insulin sensitivity and their sugar levels were not affected.
The absolute levels of fat in the liver do not therefore seem to be detrimental to maintaining normal glucose levels. Instead, the types of fat that are present seem to be a more important factor, with shorter fat molecules being healthier than longer ones. If this is also true in humans, it may be possible to help obese patients who are insulin resistant and cannot lose weight by targeting Elovl6.
Crucial role of a long-chain fatty acid elongase, Elovl6, in obesity-induced insulin resistance pp 1193 - 1202
Takashi Matsuzaka, Hitoshi Shimano, Naoya Yahagi, Toyonori Kato, Ayaka Atsumi, Takashi Yamamoto, Noriyuki Inoue, Mayumi Ishikawa, Sumiyo Okada, Naomi Ishigaki, Hitoshi Iwasaki, Yuko Iwasaki, Tadayoshi Karasawa, Shin Kumadaki, Toshiyuki Matsui, Motohiro Sekiya, Ken Ohashi, Alyssa H Hasty, Yoshimi Nakagawa, Akimitsu Takahashi, Hiroaki Suzuki, Sigeru Yatoh, Hirohito Sone, Hideo Toyoshima, Jun-ichi Osuga & Nobuhiro Yamada
Published online: 30 September 2007 | doi 10.1038/nm1662
