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Medicine28 May 2024

The importance of integrated therapies on cancer: Silibinin, an old and new molecule

“This consideration could be the starting point to study whether Silibinin could contrast tumor progression, aging and inflammaging through molecular and cellular mechanisms [...].” BUFFALO, NY- May 28, 2024 – A new review paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on May 23, 2024, entitled, “The importance of integrated therapies on cancer: Silibinin, an old and new molecule.” In this new review, researchers Elisa Roca, Giuseppe Colloca, Fiorella Lombardo, Andrea Bellieni, Alessandra Cucinella, Giorgio Madonia, Licia Martinelli, Maria Elisa Damiani, Ilaria Zampieri, and ...

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Environment28 May 2024

Texas A&M-led team creates first global map of seafloor biodiversity activity

A pioneering study has used extensive global datasets and machine learning to map the activities of seafloor invertebrate animals, including worms, clams and shrimps, across the entire ocean, revealing for the first time critical factors that support and maintain the health of marine ecosystems. The international team, led by Texas A&M University and including investigators from Yale University and the University of Southampton, specifically focused on the unsung yet vital role burrowing animals play as "ecosystem engineers" in shaping nutrient ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

Light therapy increases brain connectivity following injury

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Low-level light therapy appears to affect healing in the brains of people who suffered significant brain injuries, according to a study published today in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Lights of different wavelengths have been studied for years for their wound-healing properties. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) conducted low-level light therapy on 38 patients who had suffered moderate traumatic brain injury, an injury to the head serious enough to alter cognition and/or be visible on a brain scan. Patients received ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

Power imbalance in health care reveals impact of race and role on team dynamics and DEI efforts

Background and Goal: Team-based care is considered the gold standard in delivery models. It uses integrated clinical teams with diverse skills and perspectives to provide efficient, high-quality health care services. Within these teams, individuals from minoritized racial-ethnic groups, often referred to as persons of color (POC), typically occupy roles with less authority (e.g., medical assistants), while white individuals more frequently hold positions of greater power (e.g., physicians). Few studies have explored the viewpoints of staff members in lower-power roles, who are disproportionately POC and constitute the majority of a health care team. This study aims to ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

NRG Oncology appoints new vice-chairs for their patient advocate committee

NRG Oncology (NRG), a National Cancer Institute (NCI) National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) group focused on improving outcomes for adults with cancer through multi-center clinical research, recently announced two new Vice-Chairs to co-lead the NRG Patient Advocate Committee (PAC) alongside the current PAC Committee Chair, Dorothy Erlanger. Marlyn Molero, was appointed as Vice-Chair of the NRG PAC. Marlyn is a clinical researcher in the oncology area with Commonspirit Research Institute as well as a Spanish interpreter at Vituity. Marlyn brings a unique perspective to the NRG PAC leadership ...

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Science28 May 2024

Why do Dyeing poison frogs tap dance?

The toe tapping behavior of various amphibians has long attracted attention from researchers and pet owners. Despite being widely documented, the underlying functional role is poorly understood. In a new paper, researchers demonstrate that Dyeing poison frogs modulate their taps based on specific stimuli. Dyeing poison frogs, Dendrobates tinctorius, have been shown to tap their posterior toes in response to a range of prey sizes, from small fruit flies to large crickets. In the present study, ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

UC Irvine study reveals circadian clock can be leveraged to enhance cancer immunotherapy

Irvine, Calif., May 28, 2024 — A multidisciplinary research team at the University of California, Irvine has revealed that the circadian clock – the biological pacemaker that governs daily rhythms in physiological processes, including immune functions – can be leveraged to enhance the efficacy of checkpoint inhibitor cancer therapy. Checkpoint inhibitors block different proteins from binding to tumor cells, allowing the immune system’s T cells to kill the tumor. The study, published online ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

Cell-targeting technology allows researchers to isolate neuronal subpopulations and link them to behavioral states

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – May 27, 2024) As gene sequencing technologies become more powerful, our understanding of cellular diversity has grown in parallel. This led scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to create a tool to improve the ease and accuracy with which investigators can study specific subpopulations of cells. The tool, named Conditional Viral Expression by Ribozyme Guided Degradation (ConVERGD), allows researchers to specifically access these subgroups of cells and precisely manipulate ...

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Science28 May 2024

When should you neuter or spay your dog?

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have updated their guidelines on when to neuter 40 popular dog varieties by breed and sex. Their recent paper in Frontiers in Veterinary Science adds five breeds to a line of research that began in 2013 with a study that suggested that early neutering of golden retrievers puts them at increased risk of joint diseases and certain cancers. That initial study set off a flurry of debate about the best age to neuter other popular breeds. Professors Lynette and Benjamin Hart of the School of Veterinary Medicine, the study’s lead authors, set out to add more breed studies by examining more than a decade ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

Is it a sound of music…or of speech? Scientists uncover how our brains try to tell the difference

Music and speech are among the most frequent types of sounds we hear. But how do we identify what we think are differences between the two? An international team of researchers mapped out this process through a series of experiments—yielding insights that offer a potential means to optimize therapeutic programs that use music to regain the ability to speak in addressing aphasia. This language disorder afflicts more than 1 in 300 Americans each year, including Wendy Williams and Bruce Willis. “Although music and speech are different in many ways, ranging from pitch to timbre to sound texture, ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

New test rapidly diagnoses Toxoplasma infections and reduces false positives

An inexpensive, accurate test that detects infections with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii can provide results within 30 minutes from a finger-prick in a doctor’s office or within an hour from a small blood sample tested in a local medical laboratory. The new test can also identify false positives in other types of commercial diagnostic tests for toxoplasmosis, providing swift reassurance to uninfected pregnant women and their doctors and facilitating timely interventions to protect a fetus against toxoplasmosis in acutely infected pregnant mothers. These findings appear in a study, led by toxoplasmosis specialist Rima McLeod, MD, ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

Overlooked lipid connected to ancient cellular pathway with links to cancer

Within the family of cell membrane lipids known as phosphoinositides and the kinase enzymes that regulate them, phosphoinositide 3-kinases (PI3Ks) have been cast in a starring role as scientists study their involvement in cancer, diabetes and many cellular activities. The presence of PI3Ks in the scientific limelight has overshadowed other members of this lipid enzyme family, including phosphatidylinositol-5-phosphate 4-kinases (PI5P4Ks). Brooke Emerling, Ph.D., co-director of, and associate professor in, the Cancer Metabolism and Microenvironment Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys, is contributing to a revival of interest in this underappreciated set of enzymes. Emerling and team have ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

Text reminders help connect health care workers to care and improve their mental health

Health care workers have reported spikes in feeling burnt out in the time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, with nearly half saying it took a toll in 2022 compared to 32 percent in 2018. But a new study shows that easy-to-use and accessible platforms may help reverse this trend. Regular, automated text message reminders connecting staff to a mental health platform called “Cobalt,” drove significant improvements in both depression and anxiety scores among employees, according to a new JAMA Network Open study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “What we found shows ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

Optimal cancer-killing t cells discovered

A team of cancer researchers, led by the University of Houston, has discovered a new subset of T cells that may improve the outcome for patients treated with T-cell therapies. T cell-based immunotherapy has tremendous value to fight, and often eliminate, cancer. The strategy activates a patient’s immune system and engineers a patient’s own T cells to recognize, attack and kill cancer cells. In this way, the body’s own T cells become living drugs. While T-cell immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment, there is still much to learn. Unfortunately, not all patients ...

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Science28 May 2024

Wind farms are cheaper than you think – and could have prevented Fukushima, says global review

Offshore wind could have prevented the Fukushima disaster, according to a review of wind energy led by the University of Surrey. The researchers found that offshore turbines could have averted the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan by keeping the cooling systems running and avoiding meltdown. The team also found that wind farms are not as vulnerable to earthquakes. Suby Bhattacharya, Professor of Geomechanics at the University of Surrey’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said: “Wind power gives us plentiful clean energy – now we know that it could also make other facilities safer and more reliable. The global review finds ...

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Environment28 May 2024

Improved refrigeration could save nearly half of the 1.3 billion tons of food wasted each year globally

May 28, 2024 Contact: Jim Erickson, 734-647-1842, ericksn@umich.edu Graphic Improved refrigeration could save nearly half of the 1.3 billion tons of food wasted each year globally ANN ARBOR—About a third of the food produced globally each year goes to waste, while approximately 800 million people suffer from hunger, according to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization. A new University of Michigan study concludes that nearly half of the food waste, about 620 million metric tons, could be eliminated by fully refrigerated food supply chains worldwide. At the same time, ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

From fibrosis and cancer to obesity, Alzheimer’s and aging: New paper reveals broad potential of TNIK as a therapeutic target

A new paper in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences from researchers at generative artificial intelligence (AI)- and robotics-powered clinical stage drug discovery company Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”) and ETH Zurich reveals the broad potential of TNIK as a therapeutic target for some of the most pervasive aging-related diseases, including fibrosis, cancer, obesity, and Alzheimer’s. The findings could guide the development of new therapeutics. The lead drug in Insilico’s pipeline, INS018_055, is an AI-designed TNIK inhibitor being advanced as a treatment ...

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Science28 May 2024

Finnish Vole fever spreading further south

Researchers have discovered that bank voles in southern Sweden (Skåne) carry a virus that can cause hemorrhagic fever in humans. This finding was made more than 500 km south of the previously known range. The virus strain discovered in Skåne appears to be more closely related to strains from Finland and Karelia than to the variants found in northern Sweden and Denmark. This is revealed in a new study from Uppsala University, conducted in collaboration with infectious diseases doctors in Kristianstad and published ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

Prenatal exposure to air pollution associated with increased mental health risks

A baby’s exposure to air pollution while in the womb is associated with the development of certain mental health problems once the infant reaches adolescence, new research has found. The University of Bristol-led study, published in JAMA Network Open today [28 May], examined the long-term mental health impact of early-life exposure to air and noise pollution. Growing evidence suggests air pollution, which comprises toxic gases and particulate matter, might contribute to the onset of mental health problems. It is thought that pollution could negatively affect mental health via numerous ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

New research supports expansion of kidney donation to include organs from deceased patients who once had dialysis

Researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine propose a novel approach to addressing the pressing issue of a kidney donor shortage through findings that suggest a promising method to expand the pool of available kidney donors by utilizing deceased donors on dialysis for kidney transplants. The findings, published in the May 23rd issue of JAMA, identifies that while those who received such kidneys experienced a “significant delay” in the function of the transplanted organ compared to those ...

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Science28 May 2024

A cleaner way to produce ammonia

– By Rachel Berkowitz Ammonia is the starting point for the fertilizers that have secured the world’s food supply for the last century. It’s also a main component of cleaning products, and is even considered as a future carbon-free replacement for fossil fuels in vehicles. But synthesizing ammonia from molecular nitrogen is an energy-intensive industrial process, due to the high temperatures and pressures at which the standard reaction proceeds. Scientists from the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley ...

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Environment28 May 2024

How killifish embryos use suspended animation to survive over 8 months of drought

The African turquoise killifish lives in ephemeral ponds in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. To survive the annual dry season, the fish’s embryos enter a state of extreme suspended animation or “diapause” for approximately 8 months. Now, researchers have uncovered the mechanisms that enabled the killifish to evolve this extreme survival state. They report May 30 in the journal Cell that although killifish evolved diapause less than 18 million years ago, they did so by co-opting ancient genes ...

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Environment28 May 2024

Harnessing green energy from plants depends on their circadian rhythms

WASHINGTON, May 28, 2024 —When plants draw water from their roots to nourish their stems and leaves, they produce an electric potential that could be harnessed as a renewable energy source. However, like all living things, plants are subject to a circadian rhythm — the biological clock that runs through day and night cycles and influences biological processes. In plants, this daily cycle includes capturing light energy for photosynthesis and absorbing water and nutrients from the soil during the day and slowing its growth processes at night. In a study published this week in ...

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Medicine28 May 2024

Financial burden of health care in the privately insured US population

About The Study: In this national cross-sectional study of privately insured U.S. families, inflation-adjusted health care spending increased from 2007 to 2019, largely owing to increasing contributions to premiums. Annual financial medical burden increased significantly, both overall and among low-income and higher-income families. Mean financial medical burden was more than 26% of postsubsistence income for low-income families, compared with approximately 6% for higher-income families. Corresponding ...

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Science28 May 2024

Mortality risk among women with premenstrual disorders in Sweden

About The Study: The findings of this matched cohort study suggest that women with premenstrual disorders are not at increased risk of early death overall. However, the risk was elevated among young women and for death by suicide. This supports the importance of careful follow-up for young patients and highlights the need to develop suicide prevention strategies for all women with premenstrual disorders. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Marion Opatowski, Ph.D., email marion.opatowski@ki.se. To access the embargoed ...

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