Fibre diffraction of hair can provide a screening test for Alzheimer's disease: a human and animal model study.

Background: Studies of molecular changes in hair as possible biomarkers for specific cancers revealed an additional molecular change in the diffraction patterns of some persons aged over 75. This change was found to correlate with the presence of Alzheimer's disease (AD). To confirm this correlation and its relation to the presence of a human APP mutation, known to definitely cause AD, hairs were examined from AD patients, pregnant women known to have an increase in plasma beta amyloid and transgenic mice carrying a mutated human APP gene.

Early diagnosis of breast cancer by hair diffraction.

A correlation between the incidence of breast cancer and an observed change in the X-ray diffraction pattern of hair from the afflicted individuals was first reported in 1999. Since that time, over 500 hair samples have been analyzed in double-blinded breast cancer studies with no false negatives being detected. To correlate this observed change with the presence of breast cancer, we examined whiskers removed from nude mice prior to and 8 weeks after subcutaneous implantation of a human breast cancer cell line.

Flagellum-mediated adhesion by Burkholderia pseudomallei precedes invasion of Acanthamoeba astronyxis.

In this study we investigated the role of the bacterial flagellum in Burkholderia pseudomallei entry to Acanthamoeba astronyxis trophozoites. B. pseudomallei cells were tethered to the external amoebic surface via their flagella.

Isolation and growth of a cytopathic agent from multiple sclerosis brain tissue.

Although many studies support a role for viruses in multiple sclerosis (MS) etiopathology, no specific agent has been consistently associated with significant numbers of MS patients without concomitant detection in non-MS controls. Previous studies have shown the presence of viral-like structures in MS plaques, although the specificity of these structures for MS has been questioned. The present study describes the use of polyclonal antisera against feline and human brain-derived cytopathic agents and immunoaffinity chromatography to purify and partially characterize possible virus-like structures from MS brain tissue.