Swallowing News and Research

RSS

Oil-based gels could make it easier for children to swallow medicines

For most children and even some adults, swallowing pills or tablets is difficult. To make it easier to give those medicines, researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women's Hospital have created a drug-delivering gel that is much easier to swallow and could be used to administer a variety of different kinds of drugs.

27 May 2022

Researchers develop oil-based gels as drug delivery systems for children in resource-limited countries

Administering medications to children poses unique challenges, especially in resource-limited countries with high infant and child mortality rates.

27 May 2022

New evidence confirms that enterovirus D68 causes acute flaccid myelitis

A case report published in the New England Journal of Medicine provides evidence that enterovirus D68 directly infects spinal cord neurons and that a corresponding robust immune response is present – a direct causation to the polio-like paralyzing illness, acute flaccid myelitis (AFM).

26 May 2022

The new MADD movement: Parents rise up against drug deaths

Life as he knew it ended for Matt Capelouto two days before Christmas in 2019, when he found his 20-year-old daughter, Alexandra, dead in her childhood bedroom in Temecula, California. Rage overtook grief when authorities ruled her death an accident.

23 May 2022

New, minimally invasive biomarker-based strategy 90% successful in detecting esophageal cancer

In a small but rigorous pilot study, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have shown that a novel, minimally invasive biomarker-based strategy they developed was 90% successful in detecting esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), the predominant subtype of esophageal cancer worldwide.

18 May 2022

Case report: human breast milk from vaccinated woman clears persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection

A new study published in the journal Viruses aimed to report the effects of plasma infusion and then breastmilk ingestion as a therapy for persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection in a patient with a common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) phenotype.

18 May 2022

Understanding dysphagia symptoms after spine surgery can help improve patients' quality of life

Difficulty swallowing is one of the most common complications of anterior cervical spine surgery (ACSS).

3 May 2022

Women with Long COVID-19 syndrome are more symptomatic than men

A new study found that females with Long COVID-19 syndrome were more symptomatic than males. Females were statistically significantly more likely to experience difficulty swallowing, fatigue, chest pain, and palpitations at long-term follow-up, according to a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Women's Health.

21 Apr 2022

$4 million program launched to find transformative therapies for ADNP syndrome

Researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute are launching a $4 million program to find transformative therapies for ADNP syndrome. The rare genetic condition causes developmental delays and can affect the brain, heart, gastrointestinal system and more.

29 Mar 2022

How malaria drugs could play a part in treating chemotherapy-resistant head and neck cancers

In this interview, we speak to Kirill Kiselyov, Ph.D, and Umamaheswar Duvvuri, M.D, Ph.D, from the University of Pittsburgh, about their latest research into hydroxychloroquine, a drug widely used to prevent and treat malaria, as a potential treatment for head and neck cancers.

28 Mar 2022

Immune cells could help predict the prognosis of patients with ALS

Immune cells could help predict the prognosis of patients with the rare neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), says a study published today in eLife.

15 Mar 2022

Using mRNA to introduce gene editor into human muscle stem cells

Mutations that lead to muscle atrophy can be repaired with the gene editor CRISPR-Cas9. A team led by ECRC researcher Helena Escobar has now introduced the tool into human muscle stem cells for the first time using mRNA, thus discovering a method suitable for therapeutic applications.

14 Mar 2022

Alzheimer’s disease protein helps skin cancer cells thrive when they metastasize to the brain

Amyloid beta, a protein known to build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease, also helps skin cancer cells thrive when they spread to the brain, a new study finds.

10 Mar 2022

Clinical trial shows encouraging results with fecal microbiota transplants for peanut-allergic patients

Peanut allergies are hard to treat and can cause fatal or near-fatal anaphylactic reactions. People usually don't outgrow peanut allergy, requiring lifelong scrutiny of food labels to avoid even small traces of peanut.

27 Feb 2022

Antibody levels against SARS-CoV-2 spike protein up to 12 months after COVID-19 infection in non-vaccinated individuals

A recent study assessed the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 antibody five and 12 months post-infection in non-vaccinated patients.

24 Feb 2022

Scientists discover how a rare genetic disorder disrupts key neural interactions in the developing brain

Every time you chew, talk, yawn, or sense the zap of a toothache, cranial nerve cells are shuttling electrochemical signals to your brain.

23 Feb 2022

New research aims to reduce dysphagia after stroke

New research, aimed at reducing the debilitating impact of the condition dysphagia after stroke, is among the recipients of the Stroke Foundation 2022 Research Grants program.

15 Feb 2022

Study points to vagus nerve dysfunction as a central pathophysiological feature of long COVID

New research to be presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2022, Lisbon, 23-26 April) suggests that many of the symptoms connected to post-COVID syndrome (PCC, also known as long COVID) could be linked to the effect of the virus on the vagus nerve – one of the most important multi-functional nerves in the body.

12 Feb 2022

Understanding how COVID-19 infection spreads from the upper airways to the lungs

Whether COVID-19 becomes a life-threatening disease depends, in part, on the virus reaching one's lungs. Scientists suspect the initial infected tissues in the upper airway can act as the source for virus-laden droplets or boluses, that are aspirated into the lungs.

4 Feb 2022

UCLA researchers develop first human genomic transgenic mouse model of Huntington's disease

Researchers at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA have developed a new mouse model of Huntington's disease that recapitulates more Huntington's disease-like characteristics than earlier models.

2 Feb 2022