National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists studying an emerging coronavirus have found that a combination of two licensed antiviral drugs, ribavirin and interferon-alpha 2b, can stop the virus from replicating in laboratory-grown cells. These results suggest that the drug combination could be used to treat patients infected with the new coronavirus, but more research is needed to confirm this preliminary finding.

A study published in the European Heart Journal found no evidence that digoxin increases mortality in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), the opposite of results just published by another group in the same journal analyzing the same data. Older patients with AF also often have heart failure, and digoxin is approved to treat both conditions.

A new study on how the progression of acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) is influenced by the bone marrow environment has demonstrated for the first time that targeting a specialized protein known as osteopontin (OPN) may be an effective strategy to increase the efficacy of chemotherapy in patients with this type of blood cancer. Study data were published online in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH).

One of the most widely used medications to treat arrhythmias may increase the risk of developing cancer, especially in men and people exposed to high amounts of the drug. That is the conclusion of a new retrospective study published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The study's results indicate that a potential link between amiodarone and cancer warrants further investigation.

A significant breakthrough has been made by scientists at The University of Manchester towards developing an effective treatment for neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Researchers at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology have detailed how an enzyme in the brain interacts with an exciting drug-like lead compound for Huntington's Disease to inhibit its activity.

Research for diabetes is far more focused on drug therapies than preventive measures, and tends to exclude children and older people who have much to gain from better disease management, according to a Duke Medicine study. By analyzing nearly 2,500 diabetes-related trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov from 2007-10, the authors provide a broad overview of the research landscape for diabetes.

In a report that appears online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the researchers have shown that a subset of breast cancer patients who have tumors overexpressing a protein called the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2 positive) may benefit from a combination of targeted treatments that zero in on the breast cancer cells themselves.