UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

Post-transplant steroid therapy: Unneeded?

CINCINNATI, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say the use of modern immunosuppressive drugs eliminates the need for steroid therapy as early as seven days following a kidney transplant.

Dr. Steve Woodle of the University of Cincinnati, who led the study, said elimination of a daily dose of steroids following transplantation minimizes chronic health conditions common to kidney transplant recipients.

"Steroids have long been the primary source of morbidity and complications following successful kidney transplantation," Woodle said. "This study demonstrates that elimination of even small, daily prednisone doses does not compromise results, while minimizing weight gain, diabetes and bone complications."

Woodle said traditionally organ transplant recipients have required life-long steroid treatments to suppress the body's immune system and allow the transplanted organ to function properly. But the steroid treatments themselves can produce serious side effects, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cataracts.

The new study, however, showed early steroid elimination caused a reduction in many steroid-related complications.

The study -- believed the longest-running, double-blinded study of its kind in the transplant field -- also involved researchers from the University of Wisconsin; the University of Utah, the Methodist Hospital of Houston and Weill Cornell Medical College.

The findings appear in the journal Annals of Surgery.

Physicists discover new state of matter

MONTREAL, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- Canadian physicists say they have discovered a previously unknown state of matter that could have a "momentous" impact on creation of new electronic devices.

McGill University researchers say the new state of matter, a quasi-three- dimensional electron crystal, is a material very much like those used in the fabrication of modern transistors.

Working with one of the purest semiconductor materials ever made, they discovered the crystal in a device cooled at ultra-low temperatures roughly 100 times colder than intergalactic space. The material was then exposed to the most powerful continuous magnetic fields generated onEarth.

The resulting startling transformation of the two-dimensional electron system inside the semiconducting material into a quasi-three-dimensional system was something existing theory did not predict, the scientists said.

"It's actually not quite 3-D, it's an in-between state, a totally new phenomenon," said Guillaume Gervais, director of McGill's Ultra-Low Temperature Condensed Matter Experiment Lab. "This is the kind of thing the theoreticians love. Now they're scratching their heads and trying to fine-tune their models."

The researchers' findings appear in the journal Nature Physics.

Study seeks new cancer immunotherapy

LA JOLLA, Calif., Oct. 22 (UPI) -- U.S. medical scientists say they are working to develop new human immunotherapy in an effort to increase both innate and adaptive cancer immunity.

"The problem with cancer is that it becomes part of what the immune system identifies as 'self' and there are ways the body learns to tolerate 'self' to prevent immune attack," said the study's senior investigator, Professor Linda Sherman of the Scripps Research Institute's department of immunology. "What is needed is effective and non-toxic immunotherapy for cancer patients, and we believe this work provides a foundation for that. The concepts we have shown are directly translatable to human therapy."

The study that also included Scripps researchers Gregory Verdeil and Kristi Marquardt is reported in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Study: Ripe bananas look blue in UV light

INNSBRUUCK, Austria, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- An Austrian-led team of scientists has discovered ripe yellow bananas glow an intense blue when viewed under ultraviolet light.

Researchers from Austria's University of Innsbruck and scientists from Columbia University in New York said the blue glow results from the degradation of chlorophyll that occurs during ripening.

The team, led by University of Innsbruck Professor Bernhard Krautler, said the usual yellow appearance of bananas is mainly the result of carotenoids. Under normal light, the natural pigments appear yellow. Under UV light, also known as black light, ripening bananas appear blue instead of yellow.

"Surprisingly, this blue luminescence apparently has been entirely overlooked," said Krautler.

He suggested two explanations as to why the breakdown of chlorophyll occurs differently in bananas than in other higher plants, including even banana leaves. "In contrast to humans, many of the animals that eat bananas can see light in the UV range. The blue luminescence of the banana fruit could give them a distinct signal that the fruit is ripe."

Or, he added, perhaps the chlorophyll degradation products also serve a biological function for the banana, helping prolong the viability of the ripening fruit.

The research appears in the journal Angewandte Chemie.