January 23, 2014

Endocrine Disruptors Start a Medical Revolution: From Alligators to Humans and other wildlife health news stories

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Public urged to look out for diseased garden wildlife

The national Garden Wildlife Health project seeks to analyse where and when wildlife diseases are occurring

Members of the public are being asked to report signs of disease in garden species such as birds and frogs as part of a project to assess the health of UK wildlife. The national Garden Wildlife Health project will use the information to analyse where and when wildlife diseases are occurring and whether they are hitting animal populations, to help protect species against future declines in numbers.

Nature lovers are being used to report any signs of disease they spot in common species including amphibians, reptiles, garden birds and hedgehogs online at gardenwildlifehealth.org.

The Telegraph
17 Jan 2014



Endocrine Disruptors Start a Medical Revolution: From Alligators to Humans

Dr. Lou Guillette Jr. began studying the evolution of lizard reproduction more than 40 years ago. He never expected that reptiles would point him in the direction of a worldwide environmental challenge: endocrine disruption. Speaking at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology's annual meeting in Austin, Dr. Guillette explained how his basic research on animals has brought him and others to recognize the environmental challenges to human health.

Early studies of alligators led Dr. Guillette to realize that something in the environment was affecting their reproduction. Juvenile female alligators had malformed ovaries, while males had lower than average testosterone levels and a small penis. He and his colleagues discovered that the changes were caused by environmental contaminants, which were acting as endocrine disruptors.

Science Daily
05 Jan 2014



Breakthrough in Understanding Secret Life of Prion Molecules

New research from David Westaway, PhD, of the University of Alberta and Jiri Safar, MD, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has uncovered a quality control mechanism in brain cells that may help keep deadly neurological diseases in check for months or years.

The findings, published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, "present a breakthrough in understanding the secret life of prion molecules in the brain and may offer a new way to treat prion diseases," said Westaway, Director of the Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases and Professor of Neurology in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta.

Science Daily
16 Jan 2014



OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH NEWS

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