An international placebo-controlled study led by Cedars-Sinai suggests that a targeted drug therapy that was developed by researchers at Cedars-Sinai is safe and effective at helping people with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis reach clinical remission. Results from the multicenter Phase II study, ARTEMIS-UC, were published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Ulcerative colitis is a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that damages the digestive tract, causing stomach cramping, diarrhea, weight loss and rectal bleeding. ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – In people with primary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), a new study has found no difference in the amount of time before disability worsened between people taking certain medications and those not receiving treatment. The study is published in the September 25, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. With MS, the body’s immune system attacks myelin, the fatty, white substance that insulates and protects the nerves. People with ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – LGBTQ+ people may be more likely to have negative brain health outcomes, including a higher risk of dementia and late-life depression, than people who are cisgender and straight, according to a study published in the September 25, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. These results do not prove that sexual or gender diversity causes neurological diseases, they only show an association. LGBTQ+ refers to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, ...

ST. LOUIS, MO, September 25, 2024 – After an extensive search, The Academy of Science of St. Louis has named Katherine Polokonis as the next Executive Director. “After a rigorous search, we are looking forward to Kate’s transformational leadership of The Academy of Science,” said Toni Kutchan, PhD, president of the Board of Trustees of the Academy and member emerita, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. “Kate's comprehensive experience in STEM education and passion for social equity make her ...

Turn-taking dynamics of social interactions are important for speech and gesture synchronization, enabling conversations to proceed efficiently, according to a study published September 25, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Tifenn Fauviaux from the University of Montpellier, France, and colleagues. Conversations encompass continuous exchanges of verbal and nonverbal information. Previous research has demonstrated that gestures and speech synchronize at the individual level. But few studies have investigated how this phenomenon ...

Dogs trained to detect explosives may perform worse in extreme temperature and humidity, taking longer to identify substances and with lower sensitivity ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0306817 Article Title: Environmental effects on explosive detection threshold of domestic dogs Author Countries: USA Funding: This research was made possible through funding provided by the DoD Army Research Office under Contract No. W911NF2120124. https://www.arl.army.mil/who-we-are/aro/. SAK’s work was supported by the National Science Foundation ...

Wrist-based activity sensors worn by individuals with depression and those without over the course of two weeks provided evidence for the relationship between daily sunlight exposure and physical activity, according to a study published September 25, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS Mental Health by Oleg Kovtun and Sandra Rosenthal from Vanderbilt University, U.S. Mood disorders are the leading cause of ‘disability’ worldwide. Up to 30 percent of individuals with major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder display a seasonal pattern of symptoms. This phenomenon is now recognized in official diagnostic manuals. Yet very little ...

The US House of Representatives is more likely to vote on climate action when it is linked with certain other environmental issues, according to a study published September 25, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Kayla Morton of the University of Washington, Seattle and colleagues. Climate change is a very polarizing issue in US politics. While Congress has not passed many climate-related bills over the past two decades, the House of Representatives has voted on many bills and resolutions related to climate issues, thus providing an opportunity to examine the factors that motivate ...

Mars wasn’t always the cold desert we see today. There’s increasing evidence that water once flowed on the Red Planet’s surface, billions of years ago. And if there was water, there must also have been a thick atmosphere to keep that water from freezing. But sometime around 3.5 billion years ago, the water dried up, and the air, once heavy with carbon dioxide, dramatically thinned, leaving only the wisp of an atmosphere that clings to the planet today.  Where exactly did Mars’ ...

New research from the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy sheds light on the processes that lead to liver fibrosis and suggests a novel treatment approach for this common and serious condition. Led by senior author Wen Xie, M.D., Ph.D., professor and Joseph Koslow endowed chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and co-first authors Hung-Chun Tung, graduate student, and Jong-Won Kim, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow, the study published today in Science Translational Medicine. In this Q&A, Xie elaborates ...

Each passing year, climate change drives summer temperatures to new extremes, with heat records being shattered one after another. In a new study, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) have examined how extreme temperatures in the US affect the mortality of people from different racial groups. Risto Conte Keivabu, Ugofilippo Basellini, and Emilio Zagheni (director of MPIDR) analyzed data from 1993 to 2005 and examined racial differences in temperature-related deaths. The study found that both extreme cold (temperatures in the coldest 5%) and extreme heat (temperatures in the hottest 5%) increase mortality rates, with heat disproportionate impacting ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research suggests that pigs may function as a transmission vehicle for a strain of the hepatitis E virus (HEV) common in rats that has recently been found to infect humans. The Rocahepevirus ratti strain is called “rat HEV” because rats are the primary reservoir of the virus. Since the first human case was reported in a person with a suppressed immune system in Hong Kong in 2018, at least 20 total human cases have been reported – including in people with normal immune function. People infected with rat HEV did not report exposure to rats, leaving the cause of infection undefined. ...

(Hackensack, NJ, September 2024) The Foundation of the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers (FCMSC) recently received a generous donation of $100,000 from EMD Serono Inc., in honor of June Halper, MSN, APN-C, FAAN, MSCN. Ms. Halper a longtime pioneer in the comprehensive care movement for multiple sclerosis (MS), and leading nurse practitioner and MS advocate, passed away on July 24, 2024, at the age of 86, working until her final days as CEO of the CMSC, FCMSC and IOMSN (International Organization of MS Nurses).  Since 1978, Ms. ...

Cirrhosis is one of the leading causes of mortality from non-communicable diseases, with complications arising as liver function deteriorates. HRS and HPS represent the most severe outcomes of cirrhosis, associated with systemic vasodilation driven by elevated levels of vasodilators like nitric oxide (NO). These complications significantly impair renal and pulmonary functions, leading to high mortality rates. TIPS, by shunting blood from the portal to systemic circulation, can potentially improve renal function by increasing systemic blood volume. However, the diversion of NO through TIPS could exacerbate systemic hypotension, posing a risk to renal ...

A landmark study led by UCLA Health has begun to unravel one of the fundamental mysteries in neuroscience – how the human brain encodes and makes sense of the flow of time and experiences. The study, published in the journal Nature, directly recorded the activity of individual neurons in humans and found specific types of brain cells fired in a way that mostly mirrored the order and structure of a person’s experience. They found the brain retains these unique firing patterns after the experience is concluded and can rapidly replay them while at rest. Furthermore, the brain is also able to utilize these learned patterns to ready itself for future stimuli following that experience. ...

TAMPA, Fla. (Sept. 23, 2024) – The ocean’s twilight zone is deep, dark, and — according to new research — iron deficient. No sunlight reaches this region 200 to 1,000 meters below the sea surface, where levels of iron, a key micronutrient, are so low that the growth of bacteria is restricted. To compensate, these bacteria produce molecules called siderophores, which help the bacteria scavenge trace amounts of iron from the surrounding seawater. The paper detailing these unexpected findings from the Pacific Ocean will publish on Wednesday, Sept. 25, at 11 a.m. ET (4 p.m. London Time) in Nature, and will be viewable at that time at this link. The ...

These fossils, belonging to the mammal-precursor species Brasilodon quadrangularis and Riograndia guaibensis, offer critical insights into the development of the mammalian jaw and middle ear, revealing evolutionary experiments that occurred millions of years earlier than previously thought. Mammals stand out among vertebrates for their distinct jaw structure and the presence of three middle ear bones. This transition from earlier vertebrates, which had a single middle ear bone, has long fascinated scientists. The new study explores how mammal ancestors, known as cynodonts, evolved these features ...

People with Down’s syndrome face a higher risk of developing Leukemia. Now researchers from the University of Copenhagen and Stanford University explain why, by identifying specific changes in blood cells of people with Down’s syndrome. In the world, one out of 700 children are born with Down’s syndrome. A syndrome, where the child has an extra copy of chromosome 21, resulting in 47 chromosomes instead of 46. This typically results in characteristic physical features and some level of learning disability. But newborns with Downs syndrome also tend to have an elevated number of red blood ...

About The Study: Treatment-emergent nirmatrelvir resistance mutations were commonly detected, especially in individuals who were immunosuppressed in this cohort study of 156 participants. However, these mutations were generally present at low frequencies and were transient in nature, suggesting a low risk for the spread of nirmatrelvir resistance in the community with the current variants and drug usage patterns. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Jonathan Z. Li, MD, MMsc, email jli@bwh.harvard.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit ...

About The Study: In this study, semaglutide was associated with reduced opioid overdose risk in patients with comorbid type 2 diabetes and opioid use disorder, suggesting its potential therapeutic value for preventing overdoses. The results need validation from other data resources and study populations. Further research is warranted to investigate the underlying mechanisms and randomized clinical trials are necessary to corroborate the clinical effects on opioid use disorder.  Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding authors, email Rong Xu, PhD, (rxx@case.edu) ...

Food fermentation is the oldest production practice using microorganisms in human history. Milk fermentation, for example, can be traced back to 6000–4000 BC in India, and Mediterranean populations produced and consumed cheese as early as 7000 before present (BP). Despite the long history of human consumption of fermented products, though, little has been known about the history of the use of fermentative microorganisms and the history of related cultural transmission. In particular, the evolutionary trajectories, especially functional adaptation, of these ...

Adults with opioid use disorder who receive a higher daily dose of the opioid addiction treatment medication buprenorphine may have a lower risk of subsequent emergency department visits or use of inpatient services related to behavioral health (such as for mental health and substance use disorders) than adults receiving the recommended dose, according to an analysis funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). These findings suggest that higher buprenorphine doses could be more effective in managing opioid use disorder, which may be particularly relevant for improving treatment for those who use fentanyl, a major ...

With the climate pattern known as El Niño in full force from mid-2023 to mid-2024, global temperatures broke records for 12 months in a row. As one of the strongest El Niño events on record, it was likely the main culprit of unprecedented heat, floods and droughts worldwide. In a new study published Sep. 25 in the journal Nature, a University of Colorado Boulder climate scientist and collaborators reveal that the planet could see more frequent extreme El Niño events by 2050 if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase.  “It’s ...

Imagine being one cartwheel away from changing your appearance. One flip, and your brunette locks are platinum blond. That’s not too far from what happens in some prokaryotes, or single-cell organisms, such as bacteria, that undergo something called inversions. A study led by scientists at Stanford Medicine has shown that inversions, which cause a physical flip of a segment of DNA and change an organism’s genetic identity, can occur within a single gene, challenging a central dogma of biology — that one gene can code ...

Gladstone Institutes has established a new scientific award, the Sobrato Prize in Neuroscience, to advance breakthroughs in brain research with high potential for patient impact—and announced it will present the inaugural prize to Yadong Huang, MD, PhD, a trailblazer in Alzheimer’s research. In his nearly three decades at Gladstone, Huang has led a series of pioneering studies on the genetic underpinnings of Alzheimer’s disease, with discoveries that have opened multiple new avenues for drug development. He ...