Analysis of the medical records of nearly 50,000 people who experienced dengue fever in Taiwan suggests that this disease is associated with elevated short- and long-term risk of depression. Hsin-I Shih and colleagues of National Cheng Kung University and National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. People may develop dengue fever after being bitten by a mosquito carrying the dengue virus. Dengue fever can be mild, but it can also progress ...

Twelve years ago, cancer researchers at University of California San Diego identified a molecule that helps cancer cells survive by shuttling damaging inflammatory cells into tumor tissue. In new research, they show that the same molecule does the same thing in lung tissue infected with COVID-19 — and that the molecule can be suppressed with a repurposed cancer drug. The work, published in Science Translational Medicine, represents a new approach to preventing irreversible organ damage in infectious diseases like COVID-19 and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).  The two key players in this scenario are inflammatory cells called myeloid ...

Many vaccines are only partially effective, have waning efficacy, or do not work well in the very young or the very old. For more than a decade, Ofer Levy, MD, PhD, and David Dowling, PhD, in the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, have tried improving vaccines by adding compounds known as adjuvants to boost vaccine recipients’ immune responses.   Now, under a large Adjuvant Discovery Program contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ...

Childhood home temperature and community connectedness can help predict how U.S. residents set their thermostats, offering new ways to encourage energy conservation and combat climate change, according to a study published July 3 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Dritjon Gruda from the National University of Ireland Maynooth and Paul Hanges from the University of Maryland. Half of U.S. households’ annual electricity use goes to heating and cooling, but less than half of homeowners tweak their thermostats to save energy ...

The Texas A&M Center for Environmental Health (TiCER), a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Environmental Health Sciences Core Center, will be returning to the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) with a $7.6 million grant for the center’s new funding cycle. Under the new leadership of Dr. Weston Porter, a VMBS professor in the Department of Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology, the center will promote research in four areas of environmental health — climate ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Drosophila — commonly known as fruit flies — are a valuable model for human heart pathophysiology, including cardiac aging and cardiomyopathy. However, a choke point in evaluating fruit fly hearts is the need for human intervention to measure the heart at moments of its largest expansion or its greatest contraction, measurements that allow calculations of cardiac dynamics. Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham now show a way to significantly cut the time needed ...

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the issuance of a Request for Proposals (RFPs) for the competitive selection of a management and operating contractor for  the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF). TJNAF is a DOE national laboratory and DOE-sponsored Federally Funded Research and Development Center that has a mission focused on delivering breakthrough science and technology in nuclear physics.   DOE expects to award the contract before the current agreement with Jefferson Science Associates, LLC expires on May 31, 2025, allowing for an anticipated three-month transition. DOE expects the selected ...

Key Takeaways More people are surviving cancer than ever before and living longer. This growing population of adult cancer survivors requires distinct survivorship services focused on long-term well-being. Survey study demonstrates the value of American College of Surgeons’ survivorship accreditation standards, though specialized services in fertility and sexual health are less accessible. CHICAGO — With the number of adult cancer survivors in the United States expected to reach 23 million by 2032,* the long-term needs of this ...

Summary Global warming as well as recent droughts and floods threaten large populations along the Nile Valley. Understanding how such a large river will respond to an invigorated hydrological cycle is therefore a pressing issue. Insights can be gained by studying past periods with wetter and warmer conditions, such as the North African Humid Period eleven to six thousand years ago. A research team of the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ, led by Cécile Blanchet, together with colleagues ...

A new study led by investigators from Mass Eye and Ear found that patients prescribed semaglutide (as Ozempic or Wegovy) for diabetes or weight loss had a higher risk of having a potentially blinding eye condition called NAION than similar patients who had not been prescribed these drugs. Notably, the study found people with diabetes who had been prescribed semaglutide by their physician and then filled the prescription were more than four times more likely to be diagnosed with NAION. Those who were overweight or had obesity and prescribed this drug were more than seven times more likely to get the diagnosis. The study, which ...

About The Study: Researchers found that higher COVID-19 vaccination rates may confer protection against symptomatic asthma in children. COVID-19 vaccination yields prophylactic benefits against SARS-CoV-2 infection for individual children and may also protect against other human coronaviruses through cross-reactive antibody responses. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Matthew M. Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., email matthew.davis@nemours.org. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.19979) Editor’s ...

The ongoing opioid epidemic in the U.S. kills tens of thousands of people every year. Naloxone, sold under the brand name Narcan, has saved countless lives by reversing opioid overdoses. But new and more powerful opioids keep appearing, and first responders are finding it increasingly difficult to revive people who overdose. Now, researchers have found an approach that could extend naloxone’s lifesaving power, even in the face of ever-more-dangerous opioids. A team of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Stanford University and the University of Florida have identified potential ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest an association between semaglutide, a glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonist, and nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy. As this was an observational study, future study is required to assess causality.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Joseph F. Rizzo III, M.D., email joseph_rizzo@meei.harvard.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2024.2296) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, ...

About The Study: The results of this study suggest that many common environmental toxicants are associated with depressive symptoms. This research provides insight into selecting environmental targets for mechanistic research into the causes of depression and facilitating efforts to reduce environmental exposures. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Jing Li, Ph.D., email jing.li@hsc.pku.edu.cn. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.20259) Editor’s ...

About The Study: In this randomized clinical trial, a web-based cognitive behavioral self-help intervention effectively decreased eating disorder symptoms and illness-related burden in individuals with bulimia nervosa, underlining the potential of digital interventions to complement established treatments. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Steffen Hartmann, M.S., email steffen.hartmann@psychologie.uni-heidelberg.de. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.19019) Editor’s ...

States with Highest COVID-19 Vaccination Rates Showed Steepest Decline in Pediatric Asthma Prevalence Study suggests COVID-19 vaccination might have broader benefits for children living with asthma WILMINGTON, Del. (July 3, 2024) — States with high rates of COVID-19 vaccination saw more pediatric asthma patients get a break from their symptoms, according to new research published today in JAMA Network Open by leaders from Nemours Children’s Health and Endeavor Health. “Asthma is one of the most common chronic illnesses among children in the United States, with about 4.7 million ...

Dexamethasone is one of the most important drugs in the treatment of severe COVID-19, but patients respond very differently to the therapy. Researchers at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now discovered how the cortisone compound influences the impaired inflammatory response and which patients benefit from it. Their method uses so-called single-cell analyses and raises hopes for a precise prediction tool for other therapies and diseases as well. The findings have been published in the scientific journal Cell. It has long been puzzling why certain drugs work so well for some people and fail ...

In the decade since their discovery at Drexel University, the family of two-dimensional materials called MXenes has shown a great deal of promise for applications ranging from water desalination and energy storage to electromagnetic shielding and telecommunications, among others. While researchers have long speculated about the genesis of their versatility, a recent study led by Drexel and the University of California, Los Angeles, has provided the first clear look at the surface chemical structure foundational to MXenes’ capabilities. Using advanced imaging techniques, known as ...

A new way to map the spread and evolution of pathogens, and their responses to vaccines and antibiotics, will provide key insights to help predict and prevent future outbreaks. The approach combines a pathogen’s genomic data with human travel patterns, taken from anonymised mobile phone data. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, University of the Witwatersrand and National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa, the University of Cambridge, and partners across the Global Pneumococcal Sequencing project1, integrated genomic data from nearly 7,000 Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) samples collected in South Africa with detailed ...

A key mechanism which detects when the brain needs an additional energy boost to support its activity has been identified in a study in mice and cells led by UCL scientists. The scientists say their findings, published in Nature, could inform new therapies to maintain brain health and longevity, as other studies have found that brain energy metabolism can become impaired late in life and contribute to cognitive decline and the development of neurodegenerative disease. Lead author Professor Alexander Gourine (UCL Neuroscience, ...

Bone remains found in a Tibetan cave 3,280 m above sea level indicate an ancient group of humans survived here for many millennia, according to a new study published in Nature.   The Denisovans are an extinct species of ancient human that lived at the same time and in the same places as Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Only a handful Denisovan remains have ever been discovered by archaeologists. Little is known about the group, including when they became extinct, but evidence exists to ...

The more we discover about the natural world, the more we find that nature is the greatest engineer. Past research believed that liquids can only be transported in fixed direction on species with specific liquid communication properties and cannot switch the transport direction. Recently, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) researchers have shown that an African plant controls water movement in a previously unknown way – and this could inspire breakthroughs in a range of technologies in fluid dynamics and nature-inspired materials, including applications that require multistep and repeated reactions, such as microassays, medical ...

Fukuoka, Japan—The phenomenon known as El Niño can cause abnormal and extreme climate around the world due to it dramatically altering the normal flow of the atmosphere. In Japan, historical data has shown that El Niño years tend to lead to warmer winters. This case was exemplified recently with Japan’s warm 2023-2024 winter season. However, there have also been cases of cold winters in Japan during El Niño years, such as the one recorded in 2014-2015. Yet, it was unclear as to why this was occurring. Publishing in the Journal of Climate, ...

Norway wastes huge amounts of energy. Surplus heat produced by industry is hardly exploited at all. Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have been looking at the possibilities for doing something about this. “Surplus heat from industrial processes is a huge resource,” says Kim Kristiansen. He has just completed his PhD on a technology that can harness some of the surplus heat that currently goes to waste. Almost all the heat generated by industrial processes is currently released directly into the air or the ocean, and we are not talking about small amounts. In Norway alone, industry produces ...

Bowel cancer cells have the ability to regulate their growth using a genetic on-off switch to maximise their chances of survival, a phenomenon that’s been observed for the first time by researchers at UCL and University Medical Center Utrecht. The number of genetic mutations in a cancer cell was previously thought to be purely down to chance. But a new study, published in Nature Genetics, has provided insights into how cancers navigate an “evolutionary balancing act”. The researchers found that mutations in DNA repair genes can be repeatedly created and repaired, acting as ‘genetic switches’ that take the brakes off a tumour’s growth ...