Medications

Mimicking exercise with a pill

Doctors have long prescribed exercise to improve and protect health. In the future, a pill may offer some of the same benefits as exercise. Now, researchers report on new compounds that appear capable of mimicking the physical ...

Medications

Why some RNA drugs work better than others

Spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA, is the leading genetic cause of infant death. Less than a decade ago, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Adrian Krainer showed this brutal disease can be treated by tweaking a ...

Neuroscience

New therapeutic strategies for spinal muscular atrophy

Modulating the activity of a kinase in motor neurons may help mitigate mitochondrial defects and other symptoms of spinal muscular atrophy, offering a new therapeutic avenue for the devastating disease, according to a Northwestern ...

Oncology & Cancer

Scientists find gene therapy reduces liver cancer in animal model

Researchers at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center have shown that inhibiting a specific protein using gene therapy can shrink hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in mice. Silencing the galectin 1 (Gal1) protein, which is often ...

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Atrophy

Atrophy is the partial or complete wasting away of a part of the body. Causes of atrophy include poor nourishment, poor circulation, loss of hormonal support, loss of nerve supply to the target organ, disuse or lack of exercise or disease intrinsic to the tissue itself. Hormonal and nerve inputs that maintain an organ or body part are referred to as trophic.

Atrophy is a general physiological process of reabsorption and breakdown of tissues, involving apoptosis on a cellular level. When it occurs as a result of disease or loss of trophic support due to other disease, it is termed pathological atrophy, although it can be a part of normal body development and homeostasis as well.

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