a healthy diet

The researchers developed specialized software and combined it with a tablet computer that can measure writing speed, and a pen that can measure pressure on a page. They used the system to measure pen speed and pressure during a simple spiral sketching task in a sample of healthy volunteers and Parkinson's patients with different levels of disease severity. Credit: Courtesy of Dinesh Kumar and Ms. Poonam Zham of the 'Affordable diagnostics' group in RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Researchers in Australia asked volunteers to draw a spiral on a sheet of paper. By analyzing how long it took them to draw the spiral and how hard they pressed on the paper with the pen, the team could not only tell which volunteers had Parkinson's disease, they could also tell how severe it was. Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that causes shaking, muscle rigidity and difficulty with walking. Many treatment options for Parkinson's are only ef...

Legionella pneumophila (green), the bacterium responsible for severe acute lung disease inside eukaryotic cells. Mitochondrial network in red, nucleus in blue. Credit: © Institut Pasteur Intracellular pathogens adopt various strategies to circumvent the defences of the host cell and to proliferate intracellularly. One specific strategy is to target host organelles like the mitochondria. Mitochondria are well-defined cytoplasmic organelles, which take part in a variety of cellular metabolic functions. Mitochondria are important as they supply the energy to the cell, thus they are also referred to as the 'power house' of the cell. Some bacteria, including  Legionella pneumophila , are able to alter mitochondrial functions to the pathogens advantage. L. pneumophila  is a bacterial pathogen that causes Legionellosis -- a disease characterized by an acute pulmonary infection, which is often fatal when not treated promptly. In France, between 1200 and 1500 cases ar...

Salmonella bacterium interacting with microvilli in human colon. Credit: Maria Vicario, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona The intestinal barrier of patients with the gastrointestinal disease IBS allows bacteria to pass more freely than in healthy people, according to a study led by researchers at Linköping University in Sweden. The study, published in the scientific journal  Gastroenterology , is the first to investigate IBS using living bacteria. IBS, or irritable bowel syndrome, disturbs bowel function. The condition leads to repeated episodes of abdominal pain, and usually gives rise to constipation or diarrhea. Around 10% of people in Sweden suffer from IBS, and it is twice as common among women as among men. "People affected by IBS have been regarded as a rather diffuse group. Our study has shown that people with IBS are clearly different from healthy people in the way in which the part of the intestine known as the colon (or large intestine) reacts to bac...