Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/Crohn\'s disease

  • Leaky gut and wonky immune response might be double whammy leading to inflammatory bowel disease (in mice)

    A case of ulcerative colitis, a form of inflammatory bowel disease.Photo via Wikimedia Commons. Credit: Samir. A two-hit punch in the gut might explain why some people find themselves alone among their closest relatives in having inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The double gut punches come in the form of a compromised intestinal wall coupled with a poorly behaved immune system, say Emory researchers, whose work using mice was publishe…

    Authored by on September 13, 2012

  • Depressing genes

    me overzealous and attack their own body’s tissue, often leading to serious health problems and death. Only rarely do gene variants cause primarily negative consequences, such as BRCA1, the breast cancer gene, or APOE epsilon 4, the early-onset Alzheimer’s disease gene. If insurance companies did, in fact, try to weed out clients based on their genetic make-up, they would soon find that most gene variants that put carriers at risk for some diseas…

    Authored by on May 17, 2013

  • Gluten sensitivity

    …ic American, 301(2), 54-61. 3. Junker, Y., Zeissig, S., Kim, S., Barisani, D, Wieser, H., Leffler, D., … Schuppan, D. (2012). Wheat amylase trypsin inhibitors drive intestinal inflammation via activation of toll-like receptor 4. Journal of Experimental Medicine, 209 (13). 4. Sapone A., Lammers, K.M., Casolaro, V., Cammarota M, Giuliano, M.T. … Fasano, A. (2011). Divergence of gut permeability and mucosal immune gene expression in two gluten-assoc…

    Authored by on March 15, 2013

  • Are your children always on your mind? They may be IN your mind

    …women don’t carry a Y chromosome in their own cells (but some do; another post for another time). In this study, researchers examined postmortem brain tissue from 26 women who had no detectable neurological disease and 33 women who’d had Alzheimer’s disease; the women’s ages at death ranged from 32 to 101. They found that almost two thirds (37) of all of the women tested had evidence of the Y chromosome gene in their brai…

    Authored by on September 26, 2012

  • What blinded Mary Ingalls?

    …isease from that era. Scarlet fever was considered one of the top four causes of blindness until at least 1910 even though doctors don’t understand how the fever might cause blindness. It also killed anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of those who fell ill with it. But there were three other top causes of blindness then: measles, meningitis and “other diseases of the head.” And the evidence from primary sources points to one of thes…

    Authored by on February 19, 2013

  • The real scandal: science denialism at Susan G. Komen for the Cure®

    …viving breast cancer” is “you” and the difference between a 98% survival rate and a 23% one is vigilance on the part of the victim. This message flies in the face of basic cancer biology. Between 2004 to 2009, Komen allocated 47% of it $1.54 billion toward education and screening.  Much of its education messaging promotes the same false narrative as its ads, which means they are not only not furthering the search for a cure, they are harming the…

    Authored by on February 11, 2012

  • Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

    …ll selection of different materials: bricks, mortar, iron, glass, and wood. Arranged in different ways, these few materials can yield a huge variety of structures. We encountered functional groups and the SPHONC in Chapter 3. These components form the four categories of molecules of life. These Big Four biological molecules are carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. They can have many roles, from giving an organism structure to be…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

  • The Amazing Antibody and its Therapeutic Potential

    …ll recognize and attach itself to the invader, which is scientifically referred to as an antigen.  When an antibody attaches to an antigen, it signals to our body to get rid of it.  Amazingly, each antibody can only recognize 1 antigen, which is why we need so many different types of antibodies!      To get a better idea of how antibodies work, it is important to learn their basic structure.  Antibodies are ‘Y’ shaped proteins, and have both co…

    Authored by on October 12, 2012

  • Pertussis: Get the vax or at least listen to why you should

    …e biggest pertussis outbreak since 1959. Not surprisingly, the majority of the states leading in pertussis cases are also among those that offer personal belief exemptions. Washington, despite their new law, is sitting at 4,190 cases, quadrupling their 2011 count of 965. This is the state where 7.6 percent of parents opted for exemptions (among all grade levels, not just kindergarten) in 2008-09, more than four times the national rate of abou…

    Authored by on October 10, 2012

  • Bipolar brings anxieties beyond mood shifts

    …egnant, it’s pretty much Tylenol or narcotics or nothing at all for pain.  I turned her down, even though my headaches are too stubborn for Tylenol.  I don’t like to keep narcotics in the house, I said. It’s a long story. I’m 27, happily married, with our first kid on the way. I have a close-knit group of friends, a healthy social life, a successful career doing something I love. And I have bipolar II disorder. I lied to my midwife. My dislike of…

    Authored by on March 1, 2013

Page 1 of 812345...Last »