A new study on thyroid functionality may prove helpful for doctors to decide when to treat people with an underactive thyroid gland that doesn’t have any worrying symptoms.

Almost 27 million people in the US have some sort of thyroid problem and more than half of these people have not been diagnosed with the disease, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists says.

According to Dr. Anne R. Cappola, who is an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, “At this point, it is not clear how to manage older people with subclinical thyroid dysfunction.” The findings of the study will be published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in its Sept.30 issue.
continue reading Low Thyroid function may increase heart failure risk, a new study suggests.

A new research team announced today that they may have discovered a new way to fight HIV. They worked to isolate 270 human proteins that are essential for the AIDS virus to attack the immune system. This new discovery will give scientists a lot more ammunition to discover methods of effectively stopping HIV in its tracks.

This discovery is very important for several reasons. First, at least 200 of these proteins were not believed to be part of the process, but now researchers have identified them and found out how they work to give AIDS inroads into a patient’s body. These new proteins were discovered by using a “genome wide scan,” a new technology that was recently developed.

Previously, it was thought that AIDS could only be targeted with drugs that interrupt one of the main steps found in the virus life cycle. This new find opens up several doors that suggest there could be several other ways to treat the virus. “This is likely destined to be on the best papers on HIV for this coming decade,” commented Robert C. Gallo. He is the co-discoverer of the AIDS virus. He added, “I think it is terrific.” Gallo was not involved in this study, but appears to be cheered by its results.

continue reading A New Way to Fight HIV Discovered