“...Curing food allergies has been challenging, in part, because there are many ways to go wrong. No body process is simple, but the immune system is so terrifically complex that Nobel laureate Niels Jerne once likened it to a foreign language operating independently of the brain.”

“...To people with normal, healthy immune systems, a fungus will rarely show itself — even though you carry around a microscopic film of fungus on your hair and skin, and take in invisible clouds of fungal spores with each breath. While many other microbes prefer to make a living through disease and death, a fungus is often content to wait for its host to die of something else.”

“Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt secured his claim as the world’s fastest human in August when he ran 100 meters in 9.58 seconds, reaching a top speed of nearly 28 miles per hour. One day, no doubt, someone will sprint faster still. Perhaps by then, scientists may better understand why all speed records made have eventually been broken.”

“While there’s still no getting around the laws of thermodynamics, scientists are getting closer to finding ways to trick fat cells into releasing their stockpiled fuel.

One day — maybe not soon, but eventually — medical science might even offer pills that activate the body’s fat-burning machinery without a trip to the gym (in ways that today’s promoters of “fat-burning” products can only dream about).”

“...While it’s now widely accepted that new cells are appearing in a part of the brain that codes and packages memories, the precise function of these newborn brain cells remains unclear. Many researchers are now convinced that new cells are indeed vital for recording memories, but not all forms of memory — just those that tend to get jumbled with other similar ones (such as what you had for lunch yesterday or where you parked your car).”

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“...Even if it’s possible to diet your way to a 120-year life span, a society accustomed to supersizing probably isn’t going to replace an order of fries with a stick of celery. So scientists are looking for shortcuts that people could use to achieve the antiaging windfall of calorie restriction without actually having to do it — a way to eat your cake and survive it, too.”

“Already, hundreds of clinical trials are attempting to cultivate new muscle inside the walls of damaged hearts, even while laboratory researchers work to understand where new heart cells come from in the first place. The combination of eagerness, uncertainty and staggering clinical potential has turned heart regeneration into one of the most competitive and controversial fields of modern cardiac research.”

“A major barrier to relief, it turns out, has been that migraines, which affect 36 million people in the United States, have no known cause. But researchers now think that they are, at least, looking for the culprits in the right places.”

“No animal has shaped the course of civilization more than the horse. Horses have pulled plows, herded cattle, and brought riders into battlefields and to the edges of continents. Today, horses are carrying their human companions to another frontier – the unchartered territory of stem cell medicine…”

 

“Obesity's link to cancer should come as no surprise. Signs of that relationship began to emerge 2 decades ago. In the late 1980s, laboratory researchers found connections between cancer and insulin—one of the major hormones that responds to obesity. While the findings got little attention then, today at least a half-dozen companies are developing cancer drugs that interfere with the hormone's cousin—insulinlike growth factor 1 ...”

“Because of these talents—along with nicotine’s intense grip on the brain—scientists have sought compounds that can deliver the good without the harm. Now, almost 20 years after the quest began, the research has come a long way, baby. A number of experimental drugs—molecules reduced to mere shadows of nicotine—show signs of being able to exploit nicotine’s power to compensate for the defects in an ailing brain.”

“The patient, known as only “MBM,” was just 7 years old the first time doctors saw her. She had always been prone to night sweats, but now excessive perspiration was forcing her to change clothes several times a day. She was endlessly thirsty, fatigued and losing weight despite a voracious appetite. A dozen years later, at age 19, doctors checked her into a hospital, thinking she had some kind of unusual metabolic condition. After aggressive treatment with drugs, her symptoms improved, but only for a short time, and the next year surgeons removed most of her thyroid. When she was 35 — gaunt, weak and losing hair — doctors began searching every tissue of her body for a diagnosis.”

“By eavesdropping on the crosstalk between the intestine and skeleton, researchers hope to find much-needed ways to help protect bones into old age. More than 300,000 elderly Americans suffer hip fractures each year; one in five die within a year from complications of the injury. Bone-strengthening medications have been hard to come by, largely because bone is simultaneously one of the most simple and most convoluted structures in the body.”