Wednesday, April 11, 2007

broadcast of the day

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Children's Hospital have recently made a startling discovery. Female stem cells are more able to regenerate muscle, that is, make muscle cells than male cells.
Advantages of this finding:
- influence treatment approaches for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (genetic condition found in boys causing progressive weakening of muscles)
- maybe provide an explanation for why some therapies work better on women than men
- make scientists more aware and consider whether stem cells are collected from or injected into males/females

GLOSSARY: from Wikipedia
1. Stem cells: primal cells common to all multi-cellular organisms that retain the ability to renew themselves through cell division and can differentiate into a wide range of specialized cell types. (more on stem cells to follow in future posts)