General

Many adults seek genetic counseling or opt to send samples of their saliva to different companies, to find out if the specific patterns in their DNA may put them at higher risk for developing the disease. But many doctors and scientists — including National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins […]

Penn Study Reveals A Molecular Mechanism That Helps The Body Mount Perfectly Balanced Responses to Deadly Infections. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have now identified a protein called histone deacetylase 3 (HDAC3) as the orchestrator of the immune system’s inflammation response to infection. […]

A research group from Tel Aviv University (TAU) successfully reduced metastatic spread following tumor removal surgery in colorectal cancer patients. Using a short medication treatment around the time of the surgery, the researchers were able to reduce body stress responses and physiological inflammation during this critical period, preventing the development of metastases […]

Immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment by stimulating the patient’s own immune system to attack cancer cells, yielding remarkably quick and complete remission in some cases. But such drugs work for less than a quarter of patients because tumors are notoriously adept at evading an immune assault. A new study in […]

From birth, the normal human brain rewires itself in response to sensory stimulation from the outside world. To put it simply, it does this by strengthening the connections between certain brain cells through a junction called a synapse. The brain’s ability to change in this way is known as synaptic […]

A diet that includes an average of two servings of plant-based meat alternatives lowers some cardiovascular risk factors compared with a diet that instead includes the same amount of animal meat, Stanford Medicine scientists found. Swapping out red meat for plant-based meat alternatives can lower some cardiovascular risk factors, according […]

Gum disease, especially the kind that is irreversible and causes tooth loss, may be associated with mild cognitive impairment and dementia 20 years later, according to a study published in the July 29, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “We looked at […]

Bifocal contact lenses aren’t just for aging eyes anymore. In nearsighted kids as young as 7 years old, multifocal contact lenses with a heavy dose of added reading power can dramatically slow further progression of myopia, new research has found. In the three-year clinical trial of almost 300 children, a […]

Researchers in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering have discovered a dose threshold that greatly increases the delivery of cancer-fighting drugs into a tumour. The findings, published recently in the journal Nature Materials, provide a potentially universal method for gauging nanoparticle dosage and could help advance a new generation […]

A genetic diagnosis led to the successful treatment of a 52-year old man, guiding immune therapy for his rare cancer and providing relief after a lifetime of unexplained immune symptoms. Researchers led by A/Prof Tri Phan at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, analyzed the genome of Sydney man Michael, […]

A research team of Prof. Bae Jee-hyeon of College of Pharmacy and Prof. Lee Kang-seok, Kim Keun-pil and Kim Han-yong of Department of Life Science has identified a molecular signaling mechanism that determines the repair pathways of DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) causing serious damage to genomes. The research results were […]

A team led by scientists from The University of Manchester has discovered how our genome controls the development of many of the organs critical to human life. The study, published in Nature Communications, casts crucial light on the little-understood stretches of DNA that sit between genes. The work will help scientists […]

Even after all of their symptoms are gone, people who have had a concussion take longer to regain complex reaction times, the kind you need in most real-life driving situations on the road, according to a preliminary study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's […]

“Memory is the first thing to go.” Everyone has heard it, and decades of research studies seem to confirm it: While it may not always be the first sign of aging, some faculties, including memory, do get worse as people age. It may not be that straightforward. Zachariah Reagh, assistant […]

Discovering antiviral and anticancer drugs will soon be faster and cheaper thanks to new research from SFU chemist Robert Britton and his international team. For the past 50 years, scientists have used manmade, synthetic, nucleoside analogues to create drug therapies for diseases that involve the cellular division and/or the viral […]

Researchers at McMaster University and the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) have reported  the discovery and diagnosis of an aggressive malignant bone cancer — an osteosarcoma — for the first time ever in a dinosaur. No malignant cancers—tumours that can spread throughout the body and have severe health implications—have ever been […]

Why do some people stay sharp into their 90s, even if they have the amyloid plaques in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease? And why do others reach their 90s without ever developing any plaques? These questions are explored in a new study published in the July 22, […]

A test that detects changing levels of tumour fragments in the blood may be an easy, non-invasive and quick way to predict who will benefit from immunotherapy, University of Toronto researchers say. Immunotherapy can shrink tumours and prolong survival for patients for whom other treatments have failed. But it only helps […]

A new type of immunotherapy for the skin cancer malignant melanoma shows promising results. Three severely ill patients are now long-term survivors. The study, published in OncoImmunology, is the result of a collaboration between researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital. “Immunotherapy is based on activation of the body's […]

Aging is just not fun. At the later stages of your life you are more likely to encounter some serious health problems, such as Alzheimer’s disease. Once you hear this diagnosis, you know you’re in for a bad ending, because it is incurable. However, now scientists at the University of […]

Head and neck cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide, and squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC) account for the majority of these cases. In a new study, based on preclinical research and published in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, researchers […]

Cancer immunotherapy — a treatment that better enables a patient’s own immune system to attack tumors — has shown great potential against some cancers. Yet immunotherapy doesn’t work against all tumor types, and many patients who initially respond later develop resistance and relapse. Researchers at University of California San Diego […]

From lowering your risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease to improving your concentration and overall daily performance, sleep has been proven to play a critical role in our health. In a new study, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine report that sleep may also help people […]

Using stem cells to restore lost functions due to spinal cord injury (SCI) has long been an ambition of scientists and doctors. Nearly 18,000 people in the United States suffer SCIs each year, with another 294,000 persons living with an SCI, usually involving some degree of permanent paralysis or diminished […]

This open access paper expands on earlier work on cellular senescence in long-lived naked mole-rats. Individuals of this species can live as much as nine times longer than equivalently sized rodents, and are near immune to cancer. In other mammals, senescent cells accumulate with age and disrupt tissue function via […]

As of the past few years, the long-standing debate over whether moderate alcohol intake has a protective effect on health had appeared to resolve to the conclusion that the observed epidemiology is explained by socioeconomic factors, not by the metabolic effects of molecules such as polyphenols present in wine or […]

Infertility is a worldwide clinical problem for human health that affects 8 to 12 percent of couples. A new study from Washington University in St. Louis has implications for understanding some age-related aspects of male reproductive health in primates, including humans. Older male rhesus monkeys sire fewer offspring, even though […]

An analysis of a large study population here shows that glucosamine supplementation results in about a 15% reduction in mortality, a sizable effect size in the context of what is known of the effects of lifestyle choices and supplementation on aging. Glucosamine is used as an anti-inflammatory intervention, but there […]

A significant number of patients reported a deterioration in their hearing when questioned eight weeks after discharge from hospital admission for COVID-19, according to the University of Manchester audiologists, in a study supported by the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). One hundred and twenty-one of the adults admitted to […]

More than three hundred years after Antonie van Leeuwenhoek used one of the earliest microscopes to describe human sperm as having a “tail, which, when swimming, lashes with a snakelike movement, like eels in water”, scientists have revealed this is an optical illusion. Using state-of-the-art 3D microscopy and mathematics, Dr Hermes […]