University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers have identified the specific biological mechanisms believed to lead to a rare and incurable blood disease known as Diamond Blackfan anemia (DBA). Scientists say with further investigation, their discoveries could result in drastic changes to current thinking about treatment for this disease and may lead to promising new drug therapies.

Erythropoietin has so far been known to doctors as a hormone that boosts red-blood-cell production. Now, a mouse study led by Lois Smith, MD, PhD, an ophthalmologist at Children's Hospital Boston, shows it also keeps blood vessels alive and growing in the eye.

A stunning discovery by German scientists may make blood doping and the treatment of severe anemia as easy as washing your hair. In the October print issue of The FASEB Journal, researchers show that the estimated 100,000 hair follicles on each person’s head have the potential to become erythropoietin (EPO) factories.

The June issue of Elsevier’s Community Oncology takes an in-depth look at the charge that ESAs, generally considered vital to cancer patients’ quality of life, are overprescribed for profit. Scientists, oncologists, and critics of oncologists are in a heated debate now over the use of ESAs, or erythropoiesis-stimulating agents—drugs that fight anemia by boosting levels of oxygen-carrying red blood cells and the protein hemoglobin.

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have determined a key mechanism by which the body regulates iron metabolism, a discovery that may provide new approaches for the treatment of anemia.