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SEPTEMBER 10, 2007
Edited by Neil Gross HIV TREATMENT Detecting Resistant Strains Cocktails of antiviral drugs can suppress the virus that causes AIDS. But if some of the HIV viruses in a patient's blood are drug-resistant strains, they may survive and flourish. Doctors can prescribe newer, more powerful medicines to counter drug resistance. But today's standard DNA sequencing techniques used in HIV resistance tests can detect such strains only if they make up 20% or more of the viruses in the blood. The prospects for early detection of these resistant strains might improve if clinics had access to new gene-sequencing technology developed by 454 Life Sciences, part of Roche Diagnostics (RHHBY ). Using this equipment, Dr. Michael Kozal, an associate professor at Yale School of Medicine, and his colleagues recently studied blood samples collected from patients between 1999 and 2002. They were able to spot drug-resistant HIV mutations at levels as low as 1% of the total virus population in the blood. These infected patients went on to fail therapy when treated with standard drug cocktails to which the strains were resistant. MEDICAL MATH Matching More Organs To More Patients Let's say you're willing to sacrifice one of your two kidneys to save a loved one, but your blood or tissues don't match. All too often, the person you're trying to help must then take a place in line with 72,000 others waiting for organs from recently deceased people. Now computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have devised an algorithm to link donors in a network, thus expanding the supply of live donor kidneys by as many as 3,000 per year. The idea is simple enough: Donor A can't give a kidney to Patient A, whose blood and tissues don't match, so instead, the organ goes to well-matched Patient B. Donor B's kidney goes to Patient C, while Donor C's goes to Patient A. The algorithm, developed by CMU professor Tuomas Sandholm and his team, is able to sift through millions of potential combinations. The Alliance for Paired Donation, a kidney exchange program for 50 transplant centers in 15 states, began using the method in December. By Stephen Baker   AVIATION Look Ma, No Pilot! You know those movies where the pilot becomes incapacitated and a passenger has to land the plane? If Troy (Mich.) entrepreneur Sandy Munro is successful, that will never need to happen. His consulting firm, Munro & Associates, is developing a five-passenger airplane that can take off, chart a course, fly, and land without a pilot. He hopes to get the cost of his plane, the Paradigm, down to about $150,000, or one-third the cost of the popular single-engine Cirrus SR22, by using a Corvette engine and other parts from the auto industry. These are relatively cheap because they're produced in much greater numbers than airplane parts. Munro has already tested the computer system that controls takeoff, flight, and landing, over thousands of flight hours in an existing airplane. $by By David Welch INNOVATIONS Of Suspect "Good" Cholesterol And Bad Sugar — Managing cholesterol used to seem straightforward: You raised the good kind (HDL) and lowered the bad (LDL). Now, some of the good stuff turns out to be suspect. Scientists at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle analyzed the proteins that make up HDL and found that some may interfere with heart health—so doctors might have to start slicing these categories even more finely. The study was reported at the August meeting of the American Chemical Society. — At the same ACS meeting, scientists from Rutgers University laid some of the blame for America's diabetes epidemic on high fructose corn syrup. They reported that beverages sweetened with the syrup had very high levels of carbonyl compounds such as methylglyoxal, believed to cause tissue damage linked with diabetes. The components of table sugar are more stable and don't cause the damage.
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