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Primary care providers key to addressing emotional eating

Primary care providers are well positioned to address emotional eating because of their long-term relationships with patients, noted Jana DeSimone Wozniak, PhD and Hsiang Huang, MD, MPH, of Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

28 Aug 2024

Research highlights potential of blood epigenetics for dementia risk assessment

New research suggests that epigenetic markers in the blood could be useful for understanding dementia risk.

28 Aug 2024

Unraveling the mystery of viral evolution

All organisms - from fungi to mammals - have the capacity to evolve and adapt to their environments. But viruses are master shapeshifters with the ability to mutate greater than any other organism. As a result, they can evade treatments or acquire resistance to once-effective antiviral medications.

28 Aug 2024

FDA-approved Alzheimer's drug induces torpor-like state in tadpoles

27 Aug 2024

The significance of CHEK2 variants in cancer risk assessment

A new editorial was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on July 10, 2024, entitled, "Genotype matters: Personalized screening recommendations for germline CHEK2 variants."

27 Aug 2024

Study identifies Gα13 as a key tumor suppressor in ER+ breast cancer

In looking for new ways to fight breast cancer, scientists from Duke-NUS Medical School have unmasked a surprising role of a protein generally associated with cancer growth. They have discovered that in estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer, this protein acts as a tumor suppressor instead. ER+ breast cancer constitutes about 80 percent of all breast cancer diagnoses, yet nearly 50 percent of women diagnosed with it experience a relapse after initial treatment.

27 Aug 2024

Exclusive breastfeeding aids postpartum weight loss

A KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH) study[1] on breastfeeding practices revealed that among the women who exclusively breastfed, those with high body mass index[2] (BMI) before pregnancy lost more weight than women with a healthy BMI pre-pregnancy.

27 Aug 2024

Hybrid cognitive behavioral therapy shows lasting benefits for pediatric anxiety and OCD

Jacqueline Sperling, PhD, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, and co-program director of the McLean Anxiety Mastery Program, led a study investigating the sustainability of outcomes from an intensive group and family-based outpatient cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) program, that included a hybrid of in-person and virtual treatment sessions for children and adolescents with anxiety disorders and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

23 Aug 2024

IU researchers secure $4 million for veterans' health research

Indiana University School of Medicine researchers have cumulatively been awarded nearly $4 million in grant funding through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' Merit Review Award and Career Development programs to support research on diabetes, skin inflammation, cancer and aging.

23 Aug 2024

Study reveals bidirectional relationship between diabetes complications and mental health disorders

Heart attack, stroke, nerve damage. These are just some of the complications for which millions of Americans with diabetes are at greater risk.

23 Aug 2024

Exploring the impact of thyroid hormone on brain function

Thyroid hormone plays a key role in regulating a range of physiologic functions, including metabolism, temperature, heart rate, and growth. It accomplishes this impressive array of activities by interacting with almost every organ system in the body. Yet despite a long history of research on how thyroid hormone influences different organs, its effects on arguably the most crucial organ - the brain - have remained shrouded in mystery.

23 Aug 2024

The impact of stem cells on the epigenetic clock

How old are you, really? Your chronological age is the number of years you have been alive. Your biological age is how old your cells are which scientists believe may better assess one's age-related health and disease risk. People biologically age at different rates, depending on genetic and environmental factors, so that a person's chronological age does not necessarily match their biological age. In recent years, direct-to-consumer biological age tests have become increasingly accessible and popular as interest has increased in this nascent science.

23 Aug 2024

FDA-approved drug could revolutionize organ transplantation

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University report that they were able to successfully put tadpoles of Xenopus laevis frogs into a hibernation-like torpor state using donepezil (DNP), a drug approved by the FDA to treat Alzheimer's. The team had previously used another drug, SNC80, to achieve similar results in tadpoles and enhance the survival of whole mammalian hearts for transplants, but SNC80 is not approved for clinical use in humans because it can cause seizures. By contrast, DNP is already being used in the clinic, meaning it potentially could be rapidly repurposed for use in emergency situations to prevent irreversible organ injury while a person is being transported to a hospital.

23 Aug 2024

Virginia Tech leads national initiative to predict and prevent future pandemics

Viruses like SARS-CoV-2 don't respect boundaries, moving between species and continents and leaving destruction as they go. Beating the next pathogen with pandemic potential means getting good at crossing borders ourselves - between fields of study, between research universities, and between scientists and the wider community.

23 Aug 2024

New $400 million donation reinforces Columbia's leadership in biomedical science

Columbia University announced today a new $400 million gift from Roy and Diana Vagelos, which will secure Columbia's leadership in biomedical science research and education and produce a vast array of compelling opportunities for improving society's health and wellbeing.

22 Aug 2024

Study reveals long COVID's wide impact on children's health

The kids were correct all along. In the most comprehensive national study since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a team of researchers that includes a Rutgers-organized consortium of pediatric sites has concluded that long COVID symptoms in children are tangible, pervasive, wide ranging and clinically distinct within specific age groups.

22 Aug 2024

The lingering mental health effects of severe COVID-19

A new study that examined health data on 18 million people reveals a higher incidence of mental illnesses for up to a year following severe COVID-19 in unvaccinated people. Vaccination appeared to mitigate the adverse effects of COVID-19 on mental illnesses. The University of Bristol-led study, published in JAMA Psychiatry on August 21st, 2024, investigated associations of COVID-19 with mental illnesses according to time since diagnosis and vaccination status.

22 Aug 2024

mRNA therapy shows promise for maple syrup urine disease

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, Gene Therapy Program, and Moderna, have shown that repeated administration of lipid nanoparticle-encapsulated mRNA therapy significantly extended survival and reduced serum leucine levels in a mouse model of maple syrup urine disease (MSUD).

22 Aug 2024

New index identifies school-age children likely to have long COVID

A research team led by the National Institutes of Health's RECOVER Initiative and supported by its Clinical Science Core (CSC) at NYU Langone Health, has designed a new way to identify which school-age children and adolescents most likely have Long COVID.

21 Aug 2024