Health Meaning

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the cancellation of the National Children's Study (NCS), a plan controversial and long-delayed follow the health of 100,000 US children from birth to 21 years, director Francis Collins NIH announced this morning.

motion follows the release this morning of a report of a working group set up by the Advisory Committee of the NIH Director, which concluded "the NCS, as currently presented, n is not possible. "

" I accept the ACD conclusions that the NCS is not possible, "Collins said in a statement." I am disappointed that this study failed to achieve its objectives . Yet, I am optimistic that other approaches will answer important research questions. "

" I agree with the report's conclusions that research on the links between environment and the health and development of children is necessary and that the specific research in this field should be launched within the scientific community, use the mechanisms that can evolve with science, employing the use of a growing number of clinical research networks, and capitalize on the advances in research and technology that have developed since the beginning of the study. NIH will consider alternative approaches defined in the report, in consultation with the wider scientific community. "

The NCS has long been a debate about its design, objectives, and cost, which some experts have predicted could reach $ 1.5 billion . Collins had put the study on hold after a series of tests on the outside, and earlier this week the Congress issued a 2015 spending plan called for the redistribution of funds for NCS to other programs if NIH has decided not to go ahead with the project.

later from science Jocelyn Kaiser Insider, who covered the meeting this morning.

The race to develop Ebola vaccines will soon be entering a new phase that can provide answers to the most important question: Is they actually work? In as little as 4 weeks, testing could begin in West Africa in people at risk of contracting Ebola virus with one of two vaccines that moved forward at an unprecedented pace, said, Marie-Paule Kieny, Assistant Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), at a press conference today in Geneva, Switzerland But.

a new question complicates studies. The number of new cases of Ebola fell unexpectedly fast in recent months, particularly in Liberia. That's good news, but it will be difficult to show that a vaccine works, because studies require a minimum number of new infections to prove that offers protection against the disease.

So far, called Phase I trials have given experimental vaccines Ebola in healthy volunteers are not likely to Ebola, the evaluation of the safety and immune responses. Last year, a panel of WHO decided that given the huge threat, it would be ethical to jump directly from these small studies in Phase III trials, which test efficiency. Phase II studies, which evaluate the safety and immune responses in more people-begin simultaneously.

At a WHO meeting held yesterday on the Ebola virus vaccines, an international group of experts discussed the latest developments, which described in the Kieny press conference:

• vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) -which contains a chimpanzee adenovirus laced with a gene that codes for the protein Ebola surface has registered all the volunteers in his essay phase I; the company is currently analyzing data to determine the best dose for the Phase III and whether to give it one or two times. This analysis should not take more than 4 weeks and Phase III trials could begin soon after. The company could have "a few million doses" of vaccine produced in mid-2015, Kieny added, although this number will depend on the required dose.

• An initially made by NewLink vaccine gene but now manufactured by Merck must still register more volunteers in the study phase I. This vaccine uses a virus called livestock VSV, rather than the chimpanzee virus as a vector for transporting the Ebola gene. a study was halted after several participants developed arthritislike symptoms, but he returned later. the company can produce tens of millions of doses in 2015, Kieny said.

Kieny also discussed test plans adopted for each of the three countries most affected by the Ebola virus. the methodology and ethics of vaccine studies have been debated at length, and in the end, the three countries will each use separate models

• Liberia will be a randomized, controlled trials-the gold standard in drug and vaccine test with three arms, each comprising about 9,000 people. We will receive the GSK vaccine, the second Merck vaccine, and the third will form a control group that received neither. Although the original plan was to target the Ebola frontline workers such as doctors, nurses and paramedics, researchers are now looking to recruit among the Liberian population in general. (Very few health care workers have been infected with Ebola recently virus.)

• Sierra Leone will be a so-called stepped-wedge design in which groups receive the vaccine more earlier than others, and efficiency is displayed if the first group had fewer infections than this one. (This design takes longer to produce statistically significant responses, but is considered more ethical by some because all participants may receive the vaccine.) Kieny said the study will enroll about 6,000 frontline workers and Ebola will probably test the vaccine that elicits the strongest immune responses in the study phase I.

• Guinea will test the vaccine-ring a strategy used to help eradicate smallpox- in which a group of people around a patient, Ebola is vaccinated. This variation on the stepped design area will have two arms, each with a 0 "rings", with an average of 50 vaccinated by cycle, which means a total of 9,000 participants in the trial. In one arm, the vaccine is given at the beginning, so that the rings in the other arm receive the vaccine later. Furthermore, the front-line workers will receive the vaccine in a so-called observational study that has no control group.

Tuesday, a third company, Johnson & Johnson, announced the launch of its own vaccine trial against Ebola. the phase I trial, conducted by the University of Oxford in the UK, is testing two shots in what is called a prime-boost strategy. the first shot, developed by Crucell in the Netherlands, using a human adenovirus vector. the boost that participants will receive 1 or 2 months later, is produced by Bavarian Nordic in Denmark and uses a modified version of the vaccine against the old smallpox, MVA as a vector. The company began scouting for the Phase III trial sites in the affected countries, Kieny said.

A third candidate is welcome, she added. Based on results to date, the vaccine twofold Johnson & Johnson would take longer to trigger robust immunity, but the protection may last longer; which could make it appropriate to vaccinate people potentially exposed to Ebola in the future, such as health care workers. Interim fastest vaccines could be useful in quenching homes, where the long-term protection is not as important.

While two other vaccines should be frozen, Johnson & Johnson products keep at temperatures between 2 ° C and 8 ° C, she said, a major advantage in remote areas. Tens of millions of doses of the two components of the vaccine can be produced in 2015, Kieny said.

First results for Phase III studies can be expected after 6 months or more. independent data and safety monitoring boards keep an eye on the tests and consider blind data as they come in; apart from side effects, a board can stop a study early if large areas of success or it becomes clear that the trial did not provide the statistical power of a clear answer.

But the dramatic drop in Liberia, of reason to celebrate, could throw a spanner in the works because it is more difficult to demonstrate that a vaccine to protect people when fewer people are at risk. If other virus control efforts are making significant progress, it could further undermine the power of the study. Kieny acknowledged that the risk and said that Liberia, where new cases have slowed to a trickle-decided to recruit more participants to increase the chances that the trial ends with a firm conclusion.

* The Ebola virus files: Given the current Ebola outbreak unprecedented in terms of the number of people killed and the rapid geographic spread, science and science Translational Medicine made a collection of research articles and news on the virus disease available for researchers and the general public.

Only a handful of UK universities are deeply involved in the fight to improve global health, according to a new array of ranking published yesterday in the UK Houses of Parliament. The idea behind the list, which follows a similar ranking for the US and Canadian universities and another for pharmaceutical companies-is to encourage spending global health research and increase the pressure on latecomers to intensify their efforts.

Oxford University came out on top of the table, followed by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Imperial College London, University College London, and the University of Liverpool. These five account for 74% of global health research spending in the UK and 78% of spending on neglected tropical diseases, as classified. Of the 20 others listed in the table, eight are classified with a grade of D; only six received a B or above. The University of Cambridge, who shared the No. 2 spot in a ranking of the best universities in the world last year, is 15th on the list with a C-minus rating.

The list received applause from Harvard University Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, a research group and aid from the United States. The table helps "illuminate the effects of academic biomedical research on the health of the world's poor, and maintain institutions responsible for the impact or lack of impact that their global health policy," Farmer said in a statement yesterday

Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) and Medsin UK, which produced all the table used two key criteria. "innovation" for example, what proportion of research funding is used for neglected diseases and how many papers focus on low- and middle-income and "Access" which gauges how universities do much to make the fruits of their widely available research. "despite most research funds from government subsidies, drugs developed in universities may be priced out of reach of patients in the developing world," Dzintars said Gotham UAEM a statement yesterday.

Deputy Director LSHTM and Provost Anne Mills says she is "satisfied" about the second of his institute. "I think we are a school of global and public health," she said. But Mills said that the methodology of the classification system has limitations. It is partly based on the information and publicly accessible websites, for example, which, according to Mills helps explain why LSHTM only scored a B minus on "access." "not that we do not make our findings available, it is that we do not have statements about our website, "she said.

Precision Medicine Initiative proposed by President Barack Obama last week would focus on a huge new biobank medical records and genetic information to perhaps one million Americans. It would not be created from scratch by signing up new volunteers, however, but would rather bring together existing studies into a gigantic database.

who according to several scientists familiar with the broad outlines of the project who spoke on background with science Insider. The biobank would be used for studies ranging from research of new combinations of genetic diseases to work out how to use genomic molecular and other information in routine medical care. On Friday, the White House should reveal the details of the initiative, which would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Such a national biobank would put the US in line with other countries such as the United Kingdom, Iceland and Japan, which built large population databases for research and care medical. A biobank similar US has long been on the list of National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome sequencing effort as director of the National Institute for Research on the human genome (NHGRI).

The term "precision medicine", however, is relatively new. It comes from a 2011 report of the National Research Council National Academies of Canada (NRC) that called for combining medical records and molecular genetic data and other for large groups of people in a single "network knowledge "that would be used for understanding the disease and adapt treatment.

Keith Yamamoto, a member of the NRC panel and vice chancellor of research at the University of California, San Francisco, insists that the accuracy of medicine is not just a new buzzword to "personalized medicine". instead, it is a much larger company, as it would integrate a wide range of biological data, such model organisms. Researchers and clinicians base could draw on the network, he said. "It is a giant integration mill from which things would fall to the bottom than new knowledge," says Yamamoto, who conferred witht the White House Office of Science Policy and Technology on the subject.

As a pilot project, NRC has suggested building a large research database with medical and genetic data of 1 million adults. This seems to be reflected in precision medicine initiative. The plan is to link the cohort studies NIH-sponsored and existing large biobanks created by health care providers. They can range from the Heart celebrates Study 67 years Framingham, Massachusetts, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) construction ongoing research databases by the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin and Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco that are linking genetic data with health records.

Some wondered if it is possible to combine medical records from different sources for research data are often missing or collected in different ways. "There is a lot of blurring," said the researcher of heart disease Dan Roden, who heads BioVu biobanking of Vanderbilt University in Nashville. But a project funded by the NIH called Emerge combining the medical records of Vanderbilt and eight medical centers showed that "this can be done," said Roden.

questions machine for megabiobank is that cohorts included, says human geneticist David Goldstein of Columbia University, a member NRC panel 2011. for example, "you absolutely must have recontactability" or permission of patients to be called and asked to come to a clinic for further examinations and tests. Some biobanks, such as Vanderbilt, not the consent of the participants, Roden note.

Assemble a representative cohort of the diversity of the population of the United States will also be important. For this reason, one of the largest US-planned biobanks Veterans Affairs Million Veteran Program not-would not be enough, because it is mostly men.

Another question is whether the whole genome sequence of participants, or only 1% that encode proteins, which would be less costly. Researchers also need to find ways to share genomic data securely, maybe shoot the efforts to develop standards.

In addition to the creation of the biobank will be questions about how useful it will be. Many feel the promise of genomic medicine has not yet been realized. A search for underlying major diseases common mutations found that most of these variants raise the risk only slightly and are of little use to predict whether an individual will develop a disease. Pharmacogenomics, or using genetic variants to determine how a patient will respond to a particular drug, has been so successful joint test has not improved assay for the anticoagulant warfarin, for example.

So far, the clearest success in genomic medicine is to find genes underlying rare diseases and for the treatment of cancer patients whose tumors can sometimes be genetically tested to find defects that suggest a specific drug. For this reason, the United Kingdom has chosen to focus on cancer and rare diseases with a project that sequenced the genomes of 100,000 patients for medical care.

But Goldstein thinks for some diseases, such as disease and epilepsy, genetics of Lou Gehrig will ultimately pay. Roden and points to a new wave of studies that find rare mutations that increase more dramatically or lower risk. For example, the discovery of rare variants in a gene called PCSK9 that regulates cholesterol led to a new class of potential drugs for lowering cholesterol.

To study these extremely rare mutations requires "a very large denominator", or a large number of subjects, said Roden.

Congress, which seems to date in favor of the initiative of precision medicine, will have to approve the proposed financing in the president's budget proposal next week for 2016 fiscal year, which begins in October. it is not known how much will be "new" money and how much is reprogrammed or offset programs existing. it is unclear how the funding will go to specific institutes such as the National cancer Institute

Yet NIH seems ready to move forward :. NHGRI and NHLBI hold a meeting 2 weeks from now about how to build a large US cohort study.

In just 7 years, a fungal disease Known as white-nose syndrome HAS killed more than 5 million North American bats , wiping out Nearly Entire colonies, selon a new study. The disease, named for ict initial discovery as a white fungus growing on bat noses, hibernating bats drains of Their energy reserves. It was first Discovered in North America in 06 and spread Rapidly, Causing massive Declines in bat populations across the Northeast. To QUANTIFY the localized impact of the disease Known at hibernation sites, scientists used 4 decades of population counts file Managed entre 1976 and 2013 from more than 1000 inclusive winter colonies of six North American bat species and 10 European bat species for comparison. Prior to the emergence of white-nose syndrome, bat colonies in eastern North America Were 10 times larger than Those in Europe, the team Reported online ahead of print in Global Ecology and Biogeography . Following the disease outbreak, HOWEVER, people fell to the low levels seen overseas, Where the white-nose syndrome has-been present for decades. Moreover, the Researchers APPROBATION massive population Declines, ranging from 60% to 98% for all six North American bats Studied, and local extensive extinctions, The Most severe Being for the northern long-eared bat (pictured above), qui HAS Disappeared from 69 % of form icts hibernation sites. As large predators of nocturnal insects, bats are regarded to be Among The Most Overlooked, yet economically important nondomesticated animals in North America. Resulting Increases in mosquitoes and agricultural pests Could Have ecological and economic consequences for the continent, Including financial Losses from damaged crops and Increased spread of human diseases

Fixed, 6 February, 3.: 36 pm: The last sentence of this item was INITIALLY Attributed to the Researchers behind the new study. The award has-been removed.

It may seem radical, but it works: eat peanuts slash the chance of a peanut allergy, at least in children high risk of developing a much- anticipated study finds. The results are likely to catapult a theory that ingestion of potential food allergens is a way to prevent allergies-in traditional medicine.

"This is on study," says Rebecca Gruchalla long, a specialist in immunology allergy to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who has not was involved. The data, she said, are "just amazing."

The trial, whose results are published today in The New England Journal of Medicine to coincide with their presentation to a large gathering of allergy in Houston, Texas, is by far the largest and oldest of its kind, with 640 children followed for 4 years. It was launched in 06 when the United States and the United Kingdom recommended that parents keep away from peanut products for high-risk youth until they reach 3, counseling families of others often follow Western countries, too. But as these children have avoided peanut butter, doctors increasingly certain that their recommendations were sound. Peanut allergies, which can be fatal, were rising in the very countries that grew avoidance: In the US, the prevalence of peanut allergy has more than tripled between 1997 and 08, 1 , 4%. In Israel, meanwhile, where the environment is not significantly different from other industrialized countries, only 0.17% of schoolchildren were allergic. What was different there? For one, many Israeli infants consume a very popular snack of peanut puffs called Bamba at the time they are 6 months old

The rationale was simple avoidance :. It is impossible to become allergic to a food less exposed to it, and the doctors thought the guts and the immune systems of older children may be better able to tolerate potential allergens, which makes the body less likely react badly to new foods. But completely avoiding peanuts or, more specifically, the peanut protein can trigger an allergic reaction in some people is extraordinarily difficult. In the UK, a study there more than a decade has suggested that many children allergic to peanuts had been slathered with cream layers containing peanut oil in infancy. Gideon Lack, a professor of pediatric allergy at King's College London, reported in 2013 that the peanut protein persisted on the hands and in the saliva up to 3 hours after peanuts were eaten, suggesting that infants could be exposed through their skin in tiny amounts with their parents or older brothers and sisters. We "really did not appreciate until recently ... the amount of peanut protein is in the environment," says Hugh Sampson, a pediatric allergist at the Medical School Icahn Mount Sinai in New York.

Although evidence has continued to mount, even there 10 years 8 or avoidance was already questioned. so Lack and colleagues undertook to check whether the feeding of infants and young children peanut products could help them learn to tolerate peanut protein, inhibition of allergy. All babies were between 4 and 11 months when they were enrolled, and all had an allergy egg, severe eczema, or both-putting at high risk for a peanut allergy on the road because 98 of them have already been moving in this direction. They have been tested positive for mild peanut sensitivity in a prick test. This means that these babies have already churning out antibodies against peanut protein. Eating peanuts in the future could trigger an allergic response.

The team divided the babies into two groups. Half was to avoid eating peanut products until they are 5 years old. The other half received at least 6 grams of peanut proteins per week, spread over at least three meals until they are 5 years old. Bamba was the preferred offering, although picky eaters who rejected it got the creamy peanut butter.

Around the 5th anniversary of the test subjects came the big test. Children consumed a peanut portion larger than what they were used to in one sitting, and the results were clear. Among 530 children who had had a negative prick test when they were babies, 14% who avoided peanuts were allergic to them, against 2% of those who had been eating. In the even higher risk group, children who were educated, 35% of peanut-avoiders were allergic against just over 10% of eating peanuts.

"This study really prove cause and effect," Sampson said, adding that he "certainly hopes" it will change clinical practice. "When someone asks me in my practice, I will encourage them to get peanuts in the diet in the first year of life."

As with any study, there are still a number of unanswered questions. The first is whether preventing allergies will persist in children if they abandon their regular meals hazelnut. Lack and colleagues plan to follow to answer this question. Another is whether the results are applicable to other food allergens, too. Gruchalla sees no reason why they would not, and the first results are encouraging: An Australian study of the egg exhibition in 86 high-risk babies reported in 2013 that he saw notes that eating eggs were babies less likely to become allergic. The same group, led by allergy researcher Debra Palmer at the University of Western Australia, is currently testing it in 820 infants and hope to have results in about a year

Then there is the difficult question of treatment :. Can people who already have peanut allergies to be exposed carefully to the peanut protein as a way to minimize their reaction? Given the risks, the researchers tread carefully, but Sampson conducted a study presented yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, the presentation of results of a study to do so. The 221 participating adults and children were offered either a patch delivering peanut protein in healthy skin or a placebo patch. After 1 year, those who got the highest dose patch can tolerate 10 times more protein-four total peanut peanuts, as they had been able to start the study. With such tolerance, people with allergies may be less fear of accidental exposure to small amounts of the nut.

Treatment of exposure as it still needs further testing. But for the prevention of life-threatening allergies, the landscape has changed. "Now," Gruchalla said, "we have something to do."

WASHINGTON, DC As head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID ), Anthony Fauci brandished a research budget of $ 4.4 billion and has a punishing schedule. But the last two weeks, Fauci, 74, was booked 2 hours most days to put on a protective plastic suit and help treat a US health care worker who was infected with Ebola virus in Sierra Leone.

"I now have a much deeper respect a lot because the severity of the disease in some patients," said Fauci, who spoke about his experiences during a meeting yesterday Filovirus. "Even if you have optimum facilities for replenishment of fluids and things like that, the disease itself is really devastating."

A doctor who led the NIAID for 30 years, Fauci has treated many patients at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) -whose NIAID is a party in Bethesda, Maryland. "I think we get a unique glimpse of the disease when you actually physically interact with patients," he said. In the case of Ebola, Fauci said he also wanted to show his staff that he would not ask them to do anything he did not want to be; Moreover, "it is very exciting and rewarding to participate in saving someone's life," he said. Fauci also helped treat Dallas nurse Nina Pham, who was hospitalized at the Clinical Center for 8 days in October and visited President Barack Obama after recovering.

the current patient, which happened on March 13 and has not been identified, is much sicker than ever Pham was then at NIH, Fauci said. "I think this has been a patient as sick as you can get," says Fauci. (. NIH list of the patient's condition as "critical" on March 16, but updated yesterday "serious")

One thing Fauci says he has already learned: Ebola disease much more complex than previously thought. "This is an incredible disease. He probably has several phenotypes," he said. Patient data to be published in the coming months will show that "there is a spectrum of this disease," said Fauci, who declined to elaborate.

Fauci says he tries to fit in a 2-hour shift in the segregation unit every day, usually mid afternoon or late, when it is less busy . It is part of a team that includes a main infectious disease specialist, a senior specialist intensive care, respiratory therapist, four nurses and two "WATSAN," people who help others Don and Doff their costumes safely. (WatSan is short for water and sanitation.) "The first day we did not leave, the team was essentially there all night."

* Ebola files: science and Science Translational Medicine made a collection of research articles and news about the Ebola virus and the current epidemic available for researchers and the general public

* Clarification, 27 March , 4:24 p.m. :. WATSAN spelling has been corrected and a note on the origins of the term was added.

Your mother may have given you his eyes, but it could also give you the mitochondrial DNA that carries disease-causing mutations. A study in mice shows that two techniques can significantly reduce the amount of this potentially dangerous DNA in eggs and embryos, thus potentially sparing children from disease. The methods could provide alternatives to a controversial mitochondrial replacement procedure that would result in so-called embryos of three parents.

Although researchers have not yet tested the method in human embryos, work "is unprecedented," says molecular biologist Mikhail Alexeyev of South Alabama in Mobile University, which has not was connected to the study. "It is the first time that this was done in an embryo."

Mitochondria produce energy that powers cells. Organelles carry their own DNA, separate from nuclear DNA which contains the bulk of the cell genes. This is not their only quirk. You inherit your mitochondrial DNA from your mother, because the embryo retains only the mitochondria came from the egg, not sperm. However, about a 0 women carry the defective mitochondrial DNA, and their children may develop serious or fatal diseases such as cyclic vomiting syndrome, which results in nausea and fatigue, and Leigh's syndrome, in which babies gradually lose strength and muscle control.

Mitochondrial diseases are rare, but they are incurable today. Researchers are therefore developing several ways to drop the defective mitochondrial DNA or prevent its transmission to offspring if doctors know that the mother carries defects in these organelles. Technical, replacing mitochondrial DNA therapy, involves transferring nuclear DNA from the mother of one of his eggs in the egg of a woman with normal mitochondrial DNA. The egg tray is then fertilized and implanted in the mother. However, stirred controversy technique. Some scientists question its safety, and ethicists are opposites because all baby products contain three persons DNA. Earlier this year, the UK approved the procedure for patients, and the Food and Drug Administration is planning to leave the United States.

Instead of exchanging bad mitochondria to the right, a team led by biologist Juan Carlos Izpisúa development Belmonte of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California, decided to change the transmission of organelle DNA. Researchers first tested an RNA strand that carries the instructions for making an enzyme-DNA snipping and an address segment which directs it to the mitochondria. Inserting the strand in their mitochondria spurs cells to produce the enzyme, known as a restriction endonuclease that cuts the defective mitochondrial DNA and leads to its destruction.

Izpisúa Belmonte and his colleagues injected RNA in eggs and early embryos of mice that harbor two varieties of mitochondrial DNA, which makes them a suitable model to test the reduction of a mutation disease. The enzyme slices of a variety, but leave the other intact. The technique has reduced the abundance of variety of targeted mitochondrial DNA in eggs and embryos, the researchers report today in Cell . To determine whether the injured embryos method, researchers have implanted some of them into female mice. The animals have given birth to healthy pups, who also produced normal young.

In this experiment, both types of mitochondrial DNA were normal. But the results show that it is possible to reduce the transmission of a variety of mitochondrial DNA to the next generation.

The restriction endonuclease technology have limited use, the researchers note, because it would work against only a mutation that occurs in two mitochondrial diseases. So they turned to a second targeting technique of DNA, known as TALENs, which involves inducing cells to produce enzymes that work together like a pair of scissors to cut DNA. Researchers can customize these molecular scissors to determine all mitochondrial DNA sequences they want.

When the team injected RNA for TALENs enzymes in mouse eggs that contained two varieties of mitochondrial DNA, it similarly reduces the levels of a type. To measure whether the technique could reduce pathogenic mitochondrial mutations, the researchers created hybrid cells by fusion of mouse eggs to human cells that harbor one of two flaws that cause disease. The team showed that the technical TALENs significantly reduces the amounts of DNA in defective hybrid cells.

fertility clinics have the expertise to perform both RNA-injection procedures, Izpisúa said Belmonte. Though neither technical eliminated the targeted DNA eggs or embryos, which is probably not necessary, he said. Most people usually have a mixture of varieties of mitochondrial DNA, and disease results when the proportion of "bad" Mitochondrial DNA is between 60% and 95%. "We want to decrease below the level for diseases to appear," says Alejandro Ocampo, a postdoc in the lab and co-author of Izpisúa Belmonte on paper.

cell and molecular biologist Giovanni Manfredi of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York gives high marks to study. "They can drop the amount of mutant DNA significantly to levels that ... the probability of having a disease is virtually zero." He predicted that technical will not draw the ethical objections of replacement therapy for mitochondrial DNA because "mitochondrial DNA remains that of the mother."

Izpisúa Belmonte and his colleagues are already testing whether techniques do work and are safe in eggs and human embryos discarded by fertility clinics.