Attention, chocolate lovers: You may not be able to help yourselves. Swiss and British scientists have linked the widespread love of chocolate to a chemical "signature" that may be programmed into our metabolic systems.
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Blood transplant method proves beneficial
STANFORD, Calif., Sep 29, 2005 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Stanford University School of Medicine researchers say they've developed a blood transplant procedure that can prevent fatal side effects.
The researchers said the procedure can boost the relative levels of regulatory T cells -- an effect that's beneficial before hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, a common treatment for blood cancers.
Blood stem cell transplantation replaces cancerous blood cells of a leukemia or lymphoma patient with those from a healthy donor. The transplantation cures the cancer, but in up to 80 percent of the cases there's a potentially deadly side effect: The donor's incoming immune cells attack the patient's body as "foreign" in what is known as graft-vs.-host disease.
The new therapy appears to block development of graft-vs.-host disease.
"It allows you to throw out the one effect, but not the other," wrote Dr. Samuel Strober, a professor of medicine at Stanford and senior author of the study.
The research is detailed in the Sept. 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine
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