New stem cell research published by scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School, and fueled by the Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Fund, open doors to potential new treatments for bipolar disorder.

The team used skin from people with bipolar disorder to derive the first-ever stem cell lines specific to the condition.

They reported how they transformed the stem cells into neurons, similar to those found in the brain - and compared them to cells derived from people without bipolar disorder.

The comparison revealed very specific differences in how these neurons behave and communicate with each other, and identified striking differences in how the neurons respond to lithium, the most common treatment for bipolar disorder.

It's the first time scientists have directly measured differences in brain cell formation and function between people with bipolar disorder and those without.

The research team, are from the Medical School's Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and Department of Psychiatry, and U-M's Depression Center, used a type of stem cell called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs.

By taking small samples of skin cells and exposing them to carefully controlled conditions, the team coaxed them to turn into stem cells that held the potential to become any type of cell. With further coaxing, the cells became neurons.

Not only could stem cell research help find new treatments, it may also lead to a way to target treatment to each patient based on their specific profile - and avoid the trial-and-error approach to treatment that leaves many patients with uncontrolled symptoms.

The research is published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

Scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College and Houston Methodist have found that a gene previously unassociated with breast cancer plays a pivotal role in the growth and progression of the triple negative form of the disease.

Their research suggests that targeting the gene may be a new approach to treating the disease.

About 42,000 new cases of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) are diagnosed in the United States each year, about 20 percent of all breast cancer diagnoses. Patients typically relapse within one to three years of being treated.

Senior author Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher, the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College, wanted to know whether the gene - already understood from her prior work to be a critical regulator of immune and metabolic functions - was important to cancer's ability to adapt and thrive in the oxygen- and nutrient-deprived environments inside of tumors.

Using cells taken from patients' tumors and transplanted into mice, Dr. Glimcher's team found that the gene, XBP1, is especially active in triple negative breast cancer , particularly in the progression of malignant cells and their resurgence after treatment.

"Patients with the triple negative form of breast cancer are those who most desperately need new approaches to treat their disease," Dr. Glimcher, who is also a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell said.

"This pathway was activated in about two-thirds of patients with this type of breast cancer. Now that we better understand how this gene helps tumors proliferate and then return after a patient's initial treatment, we believe we can develop more effective therapies to shrink their growth and delay relapse," the researcher added.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

Researchers at the University of Montreal, has suggested that mindfulness-based meditation could lessen some symptoms associated with cancer in teens.

Catherine Malboeuf-Hurtubise of the university's Department of Psychology and her team asked 13 adolescents with cancer to complete questionnaires covering mood (positive and negative emotions, anxiety and depression), sleep and quality of life.

The group was divided in two: a first group of eight adolescents were offered eight mindfulness-based meditation sessions and the remaining five adolescents in the control group were put on a wait-list. The eight sessions were 90 minutes long and took place weekly.

After the last meditation session, patients from both groups filled out the same questionnaires a second time.

Differences between both groups were not large enough for the researchers to impute observed benefits solely to the mindfulness component of the sessions.

"The social support provided to the adolescents in the mindfulness group could possibly explain observed benefits on mood and sleep," Malboeuf-Hurtubise said.

"Nonetheless, mindfulness-based interventions for teenagers with cancer appear as a promising option to lighten psychological inconveniences of living with cancer." The researchers intend to offer members of the control group an opportunity to undertake the meditation sessions.

Despite having a strong public sector programme to contain the disease, tuberculosis still remains a cause of concern for India, which has nearly a quarter of the global burden of TB, health experts said.

Experts said measures which can help strengthen the fight against the disease include involvement of the private sector, more political commitment to create awareness and containing risk factors like malnutrition.

"TB is still a cause for concern. It is the sheer numbers in India and the associated problems like poverty which are responsible for this," Soumya Swaminathan, director, National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis, an organization under the health ministry, told IANS.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are 2.2 million tuberculosis patients in India, which makes it the world's highest TB-burden country. TB killed 1.3 million people worldwide in 2012 and India alone accounted for 26 percent of the total cases.

She said that China and Brazil have done better in controlling TB in their respective countries and India needs to do more.

"In eight years, India has made tremendous progress as far as containing TB. But it needs to do much more," she added.

But R. S. Gupta, deputy director general (TB) in the health and family welfare ministry, said: "Treatment success rates have been above 85 percent for several years in the country."

Gupta told IANS that the overall quality of TB services, including human resources and systems for financial management are being strengthened.

To achieve the National Tuberculosis Programme's (NTP) ambitious goal of universal health care access for all people with TB by 2017, financial commitments must be maintained by all partners, including international agencies, he said.

The state-run tuberculosis control initiative of the government, NTP provides free of cost, quality anti-tubercular drugs across the country. More than 1.5 million people avail the facility at 13,000 centres.

Gupta said that the private sector should be involved more as most patients are being treated in private clinics.

Agreed Swaminathan, who said that the government needs to work in tandem with the private sector.

"Standard procedures need to be followed for notification of the disease and diagnosis, especially by private practioners," Swaminathan told IANS.

In 2012, India declared TB to be a notifiable disease. It means that with immediate effect all private doctors, caregivers and clinics treating a TB patient had to report every case to the government.

According to a recent WHO report, India has achieved the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) target for TB which says that the incidence of the disease should be falling. It is on track to reach the 2015 targets for reductions in TB prevalence and mortality.

But it added that India accounts for 31 percent of the estimated 2.9 million missed TB cases -- people who were either not diagnosed or diagnosed but not reported to NTP.

It is estimated that about 40 percent of the Indian population is infected with TB bacteria, the vast majority of whom have latent rather than active TB.

Listing the other steps needed, Swaminathan said: "Getting more political commitment and activism from civil society to create awareness about TB like it was done in the case of HIV/AIDS would be a great help."

India also needs to contain the risk factors associated with the disease. The biggest among them is malnutrition, which makes people more susceptible to the development of active TB. Tuberculosis patients have lower Body Mass Index (BMI), muscle mass and subcutaneous stores of fat.

"Malnutrition is the biggest risk factor and it has been overlooked," she said, adding that the "disease needs to be fought on a common platform by all stakeholders."

Modern fast paced lifestyle is leading to rising incidence of kidney stones in the world. Giving new hope to kidney stone patients engineers from Duke University in Durham have devised a way to improve the efficiency of lithotripsy .Lithotripsy is the medical procedure of demolishing kidney stones using focused shock waves.

The engineers after intensive research devised that all it took was cutting a groove near the perimeter of the shock wave-focusing lens and changing its curvature,

"We've developed a simple, cost-effective and reliable solution that can be quickly implemented on their machines," said Pei Zhong, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke University.

In laboratory tests, the researchers sent shock waves through a tank of water and used a fiber optic pressure sensor to ensure the shock wave was focusing on target.

They broke apart synthetic stones in a model human kidney and in anesthesised pigs and used a high-speed camera to watch the distribution of cavitation bubbles forming and collapsing - a process that happens too fast for the human eye to see.

During the past two decades, lithotripter manufacturers introduced multiple changes to their machines, but they couldn't improve effectiveness of kidney stone treatment.

While the current commercial version reduced 54 percent of the stones into fragments less than two millimeters in diameter, the new version pulverised 89 percent of the stones while also reducing the amount of damage to surrounding tissue.