The first `next generation' MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) body scanner in the world will be officially launched at Hope Hospital later this week (Friday 18 th February).

The Achieva 3T MR Scanner has been purchased by The University of Manchester and will be used by researchers to further their studies in a wide range of medical areas.

The state-of-the-art technology involved will revolutionise the way scanning takes place and means that higher quality scans can be carried out at a much faster speed than ever before. The scanner will enable researchers to create images of structures in the body such as individual vessels in the brain, nerves and cartilage.

Any older person can attest that aging muscles don't heal like young ones. But it turns out that's not the muscle's fault. A study in the Feb. 17 issue of Nature shows that it's old blood that keeps the muscles down.

The study, led by Thomas Rando, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurology and neurological sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine, built on previous work showing that old muscles have the capacity to repair themselves but fail to do so. Rando and his group studied specialized cells called satellite cells, the muscle stem cells, that dot muscle tissue. These normally lie dormant but come to the rescue in response to damaged muscle-at least they do in young mice and humans.

A preliminary report suggests that cell-free fetal messenger RNA (ribonucleic acid) can be extracted from amniotic fluid (fluid around the fetus), and then be analyzed to study gene expression changes that may reflect the well-being of the fetus, according to a paper in the February 16 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical applications of biotechnology.

In background information in the article, the authors write that fetal monitoring in the womb is now "limited to noninvasive methods such as measurement of uterine size or anatomic evaluation by fetal sonography. In addition, genetic analysis can be performed on amniotic fluid components …" They add that the "cell-free component of the amniotic fluid is discarded after these analyses and is therefore available for research and future clinical applications."

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers have made a discovery that may have implications for the treatment of liver-based genetic defects such as hemophilia A and B in humans.

Mouse embryonic stem cells treated in culture with a growth factor and then injected into the liver reverse a form of hemophilia in mice analogous to hemophilia B in humans, the new study shows. A report of the study appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today (Feb. 15).

This press release isn't very clear, especially when it comes to the vaccine description; be sure to read the 'note' part at the end if you want to understand what the vaccine is about.

Lausanne, Switzerland and London, United Kingdom, February 16, 2005 -- The European Vaccine Effort against HIV/AIDS today announced that a phase I clinical trial of novel investigational vaccines comprising DNA-HIV-C and NYVAC-HIV-C for the prevention of HIV infection has started in Lausanne and London in February 2005. These vaccines are based on HIV subtype C, which is prevalent in China, India and sub-Saharan Africa, and constitutes more than 50 percent of the new HIV infections worldwide.

Though most rabies fatalities in the United States stem from bat bites, far more people are treated for raccoon rabies. In 1990, raccoons topped the list of most often reported rabid mammal. Controlling the spread of rabies depends on predicting the spatial dynamics of the disease - where new outbreaks might occur and how the virus might spread. In a new study reported in the freely-available online journal PLoS Biology, Real and colleagues apply a mathematical model to predict the likely spread of rabies across Ohio - a potential gateway for spread throughout the Midwest - and find that raccoon rabies could spread throughout the state in just three years, far faster than previously thought.