General

DNA testing has become one of the most valuable tools that humans can rely on to discover possible traits and limitations. Simply put, DNA is the code in our cells, the most complex and richest piece of information we have about our existence. Genetic testing helped us identify changes in […]

Cancer patients may one day be able to get their entire course of radiation therapy in less than a second rather than coming in for treatment over the course of several weeks, and researchers in the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania have taken the first steps toward making […]

During the years 1976 through 1980, 15% of U.S. adults were obese. Today, about 40% of adults are obese. Another 33% are overweight. Coinciding with this increase in weight are ever-rising rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and health complications caused by obesity, such as hypertension. Even Alzheimer’s disease may […]

Could bile acids—the fat-dissolving juices churned out by the liver and gallbladder—also play a role in immunity and inflammation? The answer appears to be yes, according to two separate Harvard Medical School studies published in Nature. The findings of the two studies, both conducted in mice, show that bile acids promote […]

Discussions about sexual health can be awkward, but for Daniela Wittmann, Ph.D., MSW, they go with the territory. As a social certified sex therapist, she sees patients with sexual health issues at the Michigan Medicine Center for Sexual Health and in the Department of Urology. She also discusses these types of issues with Parkinson’s disease patients during […]

Acute myeloid leukaemia is the most common type of leukaemia in adults. It is characterized by the pathological expansion of immature cells (myeloblasts) that invade the bone marrow and expand into the blood, affecting the production of the rest of the healthy cells. Although patients usually respond well to chemotherapy-based […]

You want your children to be successful. You want them to be smart and get good grades in school. But did you know that a big portion of academic success can actually be predicted at birth? Scientists from the University of York found that genetic factors are unbelievably important in […]

Heart disease remains the largest killer in Australia and around the world. A new study has shown that a protein therapy– recombinant human platelet-derived growth factor-AB (rhPDGF-AB) – could improve outcomes following heart attack. After a heart attack, scar tissue forms and this negatively affects heart function. Now, researchers from […]

Scientists have discovered that people who regularly sleep for more than 11 hours or less than 4 hours are 2-3 times more likely to have the incurable disease, pulmonary fibrosis, compared to those that sleep for 7 hours in a day. They attribute this association to the body clock. The […]

Brain imaging of pathological tau-protein “tangles” reliably predict the location of future brain atrophy in Alzheimer’s patients a year or more in advance, according to a new study by scientists at the UC San Francisco Memory and Aging Center. In contrast, the location of amyloid “plaques,” which have been the […]

A new study led by researchers at King’s College London has found that adolescents with particular patterns of brain development report an increased frequency in drunkenness. The research was published in JAMA Psychiatry. Using brain imaging data collected from 726 healthy adolescents, the researchers analysed changes in the volume of […]

A new study from the University of Iowa suggests that people who have higher levels of a chemical in their body that indicates exposure to commonly used insecticides die of cardiovascular disease at a significantly higher rate. Findings from the study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, suggest those who have […]

Oregon State University researchers have led the development of a new model for studying vitamin D’s role in infection prevention, and tests using the model suggest that vitamin D treatment can dramatically reduce the number of disease-causing bacteria in skin wounds. In addition to shedding light on infection-prevention potential, the […]

Latest findings suggest that the chemicals, which are no longer produced in the United States but persist in the environment, may have lasting health effects even at low levels. Pregnant women exposed to persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, had slightly smaller fetuses than women who haven’t been exposed to these […]

Proof-of-concept research points to wearable monitors’ potential to offer low-cost, non-invasive way to detect this dangerous bone-marrow transplant complication. By continuously monitoring the body temperature of mice that had undergone bone-marrow transplants, researchers were able to detect early warning signs of graft-versus-host disease — a dangerous, sometimes deadly response of […]

A new study in rats suggests that caffeine may offset some of the negative effects of an obesogenic diet by reducing the storage of lipids in fat cells and limiting weight gain and the production of triglycerides. Rats that consumed the caffeine extracted from mate tea gained 16% less weight […]

An algorithm akin to the annoyingly helpful one that attempts to auto-complete text messages and emails is now being harnessed for a better cause. NSF-funded researchers at Drexel University are using its pattern-recognition ability to identify microbial communities in the human body by sifting through volumes of genetic code. Their method could speed the […]

It is a frightening thing to hear that you are at a high risk for diabetes. However, doctors around the world have to say that every day to thousands of people. This diagnosis comes with a whole lot of other issues, such as a high risk for heart disease. But […]

In this age of “big data,” artificial intelligence (AI) has become a valuable ally for scientists. Machine learning algorithms, for instance, are helping biologists make sense of the dizzying number of molecular signals that control how genes function. But as new algorithms are developed to analyze even more data, they […]

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have deciphered the diabetogenic role of a certain type of calcium channel in insulin-secreting beta cells. The researchers believe that blockade of these channels could be a potential new treatment strategy for diabetes. The study is published in the scientific journal PNAS. CaV3.1 channels […]

A GPS map to guide neural navigation devices developed by a Case Western Reserve University cancer researcher has shown 90% accuracy in pinpointing brain tumors and will soon be tested in real-time with patients at Cleveland Clinic under a three-year, $600,000 V Foundation grant. The grant was awarded to Pallavi Tiwari, […]

Staph bacteria, the leading cause of potentially dangerous skin infections, are most feared for the drug-resistant strains that have become a serious threat to public health. Attempts to develop a vaccine against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have failed to outsmart the superbug’s ubiquity and adaptability to antibiotics. Now, a study from Washington […]

As her health began to worsen in late 2017, Annette Quinn started measuring her declining lung function by making note of the number of days between episodes of hemoptysis or coughing up blood. At first, the episodes occurred once every few months. But by the summer of 2018, Quinn experienced […]

Diverse diseases like breast cancer can present challenges for clinicians, specifically on a cellular level. While one patient’s tumor may differ from another’s, the cells within the tumor of a single patient can also vary greatly. This can be problematic, considering that an examination of a tumor usually relies on a biopsy, which […]

With an estimated 97 percent of adolescents playing video games in their free time, there is growing potential to design games as tools for attention-building instead of attention-busting. A research team at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of California, Irvine, designed a video game […]

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have reported the first structural model for a key enzyme, and its activating protein, that can play a role in some genetically inherited eye diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and night blindness. “There has been substantial research on the biochemical pathway involving this enzyme, […]

Scientists are now able to label proteins in the brains of living mice who have a disease similar to Alzheimer’s disease, and have the labels remain in place. The tracer molecules have been developed at Linköping University. The new method allows the researchers to observe how harmful protein aggregates form […]

Sysmex Corporation and Eisai Co., Ltd. are pursuing a joint project to develop a method of diagnosing Alzheimer's disease (AD) using blood, presented two posters showing the most recent data from the project. The presentations took place at the 12th Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease (CTAD) conference, from December 4 […]

Scientists have developed a new theory on the underlying cause of motor neurone disease, which could lead to more accurate diagnosis for patients and new treatments. A team at the University of Exeter has found evidence that the condition is caused by an imbalance in cholesterol and other fat levels […]

University of Illinois researchers achieved the highest reported rates of inserting genes into human cells with the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system, a necessary step for harnessing CRISPR for clinical gene-therapy applications. By chemically tweaking the ends of the DNA to be inserted, the new technique is up to five times more […]