Scientists have used dogs with a particular form of genetic blindness to discover a clue as to how the disease works. The Norwegian and US researchers reported their findings in the journal Genome Research last week. Cone-rod dystrophies (CRDs) are relatively rare forms of blindness in humans...
Two common infertility treatments are no more effective than trying to conceive naturally, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal. The study looked at the effectiveness of taking the drug clomifene citrate (CC) or having intra-uterine insemination (IUI) versus no intervention, and found that...
A recent review that revisits the ethical issues surrounding the use of embryonic stem (ES) cell lines in the US has thrown the use of almost a quarter of the lines currently available into question. US President George W Bush in 2001 restricted the federal funding of...
Scientists at Harvard Stem Cell Institute and the University of Washington in the US have generated 10 stem cell lines from the skin of patients with specific genetic disorders, including muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, juvenile diabetes and 'bubble boy disease', a rare immunodeficiency disease. The...
Government officials in Australia have held a joint public meeting to discuss the dangers of the burgeoning but largely unregulated direct-to-consumer genetic testing market. Chair Professor Ron Trent from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Human Genetics Advisory Committee (HGAC) and Professor David Weisbrot, the president...
A research group at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada (SickKids), has this week announced that through adding a single gene into stem cells they have managed to control the differentiation of the pluripotent cells, which can form more than 200 different tissues, into early...
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A growing demand for PGD for cancer predisposition
by Dr Joy Delhanty and 4 others
Inherited cancer predisposition is rare, however preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for this group of disorders is steadily increasing. Unlike other common indications for PGD such as cystic fibrosis, PGD for cancer predisposition avoids the inheritance of a very high susceptibility to developing cancer rather than inheritance of the disease itself...
The future of IVF remains problematic
by Dr Antony Starza-Allen
Thirty years after the world's first IVF-baby was born commentators and reporters are assessing the gains made by the fertility treatment and the future that lies ahead. Although it seems IVF today has become the established and routine medical procedure its pioneers in 1978 probably hoped it would become, issues...