Washington, February 20 : Scientists at the University of Illinois say that they have found how a cellular protein recognizes an invading virus and alerts the body to the infection.

Taekjip Ha, a physics professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, says that the study settles a debate over how the protein, RIG-I (pronounced rig-EYE), is able to distinguish between viral RNA and self (or cellular) RNA.

"RIG-I is the first molecule in the immune response to detect viral RNA," said Sua Myong, lead author on the study and a professor at the U. of I.''s Institute for Genomic Biology.

Washington, February 20 : An American study has shed some light on how microscopic changes to brain cause schizophrenia.

"We found several microscopic pathologies and behavioral traits that are hallmarks of schizophrenia. These findings in mice may help shed light on how schizophrenia, an often severe and debilitating disease, emerges in humans," says Dr. Ulrich Mueller, a professor at Scripps Research, who was senior author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Washington, February 20 : Scientists presenting a study at the American Stroke Association''s International Stroke Conference in San Diego revealed that an experimental therapy using tiny bubbles activated by transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasound, combined with the clot busting drug tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), might prove more effective than tPA alone in treating patients suffering from ischemic stroke.

Dr. Andrei Alexandrov, director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Comprehensive Stroke Center, and Dr. Carlos Molina, of the Vall d''Hebron Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, have discovered that patients can be treated safely with TCD in combination with a specific dose of the bubbles, called microspheres, and tPA.

Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia has seen 18 deaths so far this year from dengue fever, more than double the number from same period of 2008, the Health Ministry said Friday.

A total of 7,900 people have been infected with the mosquito-borne virus from January 1 to Friday, Health Ministry Director General Ismail Merican was quoted as saying by the Star newspaper.

In 2008, a total of 4,758 cases and seven deaths were recorded in the same period, Merican said.

He added that as of February 14, there had been 37 dengue hotspots that had yet to be brought under control, compared with 39 the previous week.

London, Feb 20 : Minimally invasive breast surgery may be more concerned with better cosmetic outcomes than cure rates, an expert has warned.

Monica Morrow, chief of the breast service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, has warned that effectiveness and safety, as well as aesthetic outcomes, need to be considered when planning surgery for breast cancer.

She claims that over the past 30 years surgery has increasingly become devoted to improving cosmetic outcomes.

Today techniques such as oncoplastic and endoscopic surgery, which involved minimal skin incision, are possible.

Washington, Feb 20 : Breastfeeding may help reduce relapse risk in women with multiple sclerosis, according to a new study.

The research team from Stanford University examined 32 pregnant women with MS and 29 pregnant women without MS during each trimester and up to a year after they gave birth.

Almost 52 percent of the women with MS did not breastfeed or began supplemental formula feedings within two months of giving birth.