Washington, Mar 5 : Scientists at Emory University School of Medicine have discovered that T cells, or white blood cells, from patients with the autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis have prematurely aged chromosomes due to lack of structures called telomeres.

Telomeres are structures that cap the ends of cells'' chromosomes, grow shorter with each round of cell division unless a specialized enzyme replenishes them.

It is important to maintain telomeres as they are thought to be important for healthy aging and cancer prevention.

T cells from patients with rheumatoid arthritis were found to have trouble turning on the enzyme that replenishes telomeres, when compared with cells from healthy people.

London, March 5: University of Minnesota researchers in Minneapolis say that a microbicide gel made from glycerol monolaurate, an ingredient in some foods and cosmetics, has shown some promise in protecting female monkeys from contracting an HIV-like virus.

Ashley Haase, an immunologist at the university, has revealed that the compound may act by suppressing an unfortunate immune response that helps the virus rather than fights it.

He points out that other candidate microbicides cripple the virus itself, or its interactions with its favoured target - immune cells called CD4+ cells.

Washington, Mar 5: An Indian-origin scientist at McMaster University says that jabs of an antibody, mepolizumab, may benefit patients with a very severe asthma.

Dr. Param Nair and colleagues at The Firestone Institute for Respiratory Disease, St. Joseph''s Healthcare found that patients, who required a lot of medication like prednisone to control their disease, could benefit from the injections.

For the study, the researchers investigated asthmatics with a persisting type of airway inflammation with inflammatory cells called eosinophils.

Washington, Mar 5 : Being fat can increase the risk of primary joint replacement in patients with osteoarthritis, a new study suggests.

The research team led by Flavia Cicuttini of the Monash University, Melbourne, Australia has found that increased waist circumference and body mass index (BMI) were associated with the risk of both knee and hip joint replacement.

During the study, the team examined 32,023 healthy volunteers and looked at the relationship between different adiposity measures and the risk of subsequent primary knee and hip joint replacement.

They found a 3 to 4-fold increased risk of primary joint replacement associated with body weight, BMI, fat mass and percentage fat.

Washington, Mar 5: A new technique to treat lung cancer at Temple University might double a person’s chances of surviving the deadly disease, and that too without the need of conventional radiation regimen or surgery.

Called stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT), the technique not only improves a person’s odds of surviving early stage lung cancer, but may also reduce the need for future surgeries, according to doctors in the Radiation Oncology Department.

Washington, Mar 5 : Women who use depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA), commonly known as the birth control shot, are at an increased risk of becoming obese, says a new study.

In the study, researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) found that women using DMPA gained an average of 11 pounds and increased their body fat by 3.4 percent over three years.

However, women who switched to nonhormonal contraception began to slowly lose the weight and fat mass they gained - nearly four pounds over two years, while those who used oral contraception after the shots gained an average of four additional pounds in the same time span.