A pioneering clinical trial to inject stem cells into the brains of disabled stroke patients has been cleared to progress to the next stage after no safety concerns were raised in the first three patients....
A virus that damages tumours while sparing normal healthy tissue has passed a preliminary test. JX-594, an engineered version of smallpox virus, prevented or reduced further tumour growth in 13 of 23 patients four to ten weeks after they were treated...
An Australian fertility clinic has screened what is believed to be the first TV advertisement featuring a real birth...
Scientists may have identified the first genetic link to being underweight. A paper published in the journal Nature this week found that people with extra copies of a region of chromosome 16, locus 16p11.2, have a significantly increased risk of being underweight...
Exposure to a youthful environment may help old cells feel alive again — as the work of Professor Xiaodong Chen and co-workers from the University of Texas Health Science Center, USA, suggests...
Researchers have discovered a molecule present on the outer surface of a human egg that binds sperm and eggs together before fertilisation. Understanding this mechanism may help people with previously unexplained fertility problems...
In an international research effort led by Imperial College London, scientists have identified six new genetic variants linked to type 2 diabetes (T2D) in South Asians....
UK women at high risk of breast cancer could halve their chances of developing the disease with genetic risk testing during routine NHS screening. This news came from PROCAS - the world's first study into giving genetic risk and prevention advice in a national breast screening programme, and was reported in this Sunday's Express....
Anyone who has worked in any capacity in a fertility clinic will, I hope, have wondered what the meeting of an anonymous donor and the donor-conceived person would be like. Would it be like a birth parent meeting an adopted child; would it be like TV documentaries, with all the build up and the huge emotion?...
The immediate impact of environmental factors like diet, smoking and stress on health are well understood. But less is known about how your lifestyle can directly effect the health of your unborn children and grandchildren...
Comment
The great delay: 33 years after the first 'test-tube' baby
by Holly Finn
July marked the 33rd birthday of the world's first 'test-tube' baby. Since then, four million babies have been born thanks to IVF. Many more have not. The treatment does not guarantee pregnancy and the side effects remain severe. Yet there is a brutal dishonesty. IVF is considered almost routine. Because women - and men — don't talk frankly about their fertility struggles, we continue to get a skewed message...
Let's retrospectively release information to Australia's donor-conceived
by Dr Sonia Allan
An Australian commercial television station recently ran a news story about a donor-conceived woman who has heritable bowel cancer (1). She did not inherit it from her mother. She is denied access to information about her sperm donor because he donated before laws in Victoria enabled information to be released to the donor-conceived. She cannot contact her eight half-siblings, who share that donor, to warn them they may be at risk...