SAN ANTONIO, Sept. 17, 2024 – In landmark research, scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) have reported the largest-ever genome-wide association study of dementia from all causes, revealing an overlap of genetic risks including neurodegeneration, vascular factors and cerebral small-vessel disease. Genome-wide association studies help scientists identify genes associated with a particular disease or trait by exploring the entire set of DNA, or genome, of a ...

University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) Dean Mark T. Gladwin, MD, has announced the formation of a new Department of Pharmacology, Physiology and Drug Development, which merges the Department of Physiology and Department of Pharmacology. This new Department aligns the basic science research efforts of both entities with a strong emphasis on the development of new drug therapies. The Department will host three divisions spanning Cancer Therapeutics, Molecular Physiology, and Neuropharmacology, creating additional opportunities for research partnerships across current UMSOM Centers, ...

Big data and artificial intelligence are transforming how we think about health, from detecting diseases and spotting patterns to predicting outcomes and speeding up response times. In a new study analyzing two million Google Street View images from New York City streets, a team of New York University researchers evaluated the utility of this digital data in informing public health decision-making. Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), show how relying on street view images alone may lead ...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA – Deep inside what we perceive as solid matter, the landscape is anything but stationary. The interior of the building blocks of the atom’s nucleus — particles called hadrons that a high school student would recognize as protons and neutrons — are made up of a seething mixture of interacting quarks and gluons, known collectively as partons. A group of physicists has now come together to map out these partons and disentangle how they interact to form hadrons. Based at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and known as the HadStruc Collaboration, these ...

Patients want providers to reach out early and often to ask about financial needs First study seeking cancer patient input on how they want to be screened Findings show how to best deploy policies to screen cancer patients for financial concerns CHICAGO --- Patients with cancer want their care team to assess them early in treatment about their concerns related to costs of care, reports a Northwestern Medicine study. It is the first time a study has sought cancer patients’ input on how they want to be screened for financial needs. The financial impact of treatment, referred to as financial toxicity, includes direct costs, such as how much ...

Breast cancer is the most diagnosed cancer among U.S. women and the second leading cause of cancer death. Black women who develop breast cancer are around 40% more likely to die of the disease than white women, but it was unclear until now whether this disparity exists across all types of breast cancer. Now, a meta-analysis led by Mass General Brigham researchers shows that Black women have a higher risk of dying from breast cancer for all tumor subtypes, and the size of this disparity varies from 17-50% depending on the type of breast cancer. These findings, ...

In May, a major cyberattack disabled clinical operations for nearly a month at Ascension, a health care provider that includes 140 hospitals across the U.S. Investigators tracked the problem to malicious ransomware that had infected an employee’s computer. Health care systems offer juicy targets for cybercrime because of the valuable personal, financial, and health data they hold. A 2023 survey of health information technology and IT security professionals reported that 88% of ...

Integral Molecular, a leader in antibody discovery and characterization, has published new research in the journal mAbs, revealing that as many as one-third of antibody-based drugs exhibit nonspecific binding to unintended targets. A serious concern, off-target drug binding is a significant cause of adverse events in patients, with the potential to even cause death. Analysis of antibody off-target binding across different phases of clinical development suggests this to be a major cause of drug attrition. Early specificity testing could improve drug approvals and patient safety. Learn how antibody developers can use the Membrane Proteome Array™ to assess specificity ...

Reducing the serving size for beer, lager and cider reduces the volume of those drinks consumed in pubs, bars and restaurants, and could be a useful alcohol control measure, according to research published September 17th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine. Theresa Marteau and colleagues at the University of Cambridge, UK, found that over a short intervention period, venues that removed the pint and offered two third pints instead, sold 10% less beer by volume compared with when pints were available. When wine by the glass is offered in smaller servings, the amount sold ...

Lower socioeconomic status is associated with higher rates of death from coronary artery disease compared to higher socioeconomic status, and more than half of the disparities can be explained by four unhealthy behaviors. Dr. Yachen Zhu of the Alcohol Research Group, U.S., and Dr. Charlotte Probst of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada, report these findings in a new study published September 17th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine. Coronary artery disease, also known as coronary heart disease or ischemic heart disease, occurs when the arteries supplying the heart cannot deliver enough oxygen-rich blood due to plaque buildup, and is a major cause of death in the ...

Trachomatous trichiasis, a potentially blinding condition where inward-turned eyelashes scratch the front of the eye, can successfully be treated by either of the two most common types of eyelid surgery, according to findings from a large comparison trial funded by the National Institutes of Health. In light of previous, smaller studies, which suggested that one of the commonly used surgery types had poorer outcomes, this study provides reassurance that either technique can treat the condition. The study, published in PLOS Neglected ...

DETROIT — A grant from the National Institutes of Health will support ongoing research at Wayne State University investigating the consequences environmental factors may have on fertility in males. The five-year, $3,082,404 grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health is led by Richard Pilsner, Ph.D., professor and the Robert J. Sokol, M.D., Endowed Chair of Molecular Obstetrics and Gynecology in the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development in the department of Obstetrics/Gynecology at Wayne State, and faculty member in the Institute of Environmental ...

WASHINGTON (September 17, 2024) – Children’s National Hospital, widely recognized for its expertise and innovation in pediatric care, has been chosen by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to lead the Special Populations Hub in the next generation of the BARDA Accelerator Network. BARDA, is part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).   The next generation of the BARDA Accelerator Network builds on lessons learned from the first iteration of the network ...

Norway introduced its Regular GP Scheme was introduced in 2001. This gave all citizens the right to choose a GP in their home municipality and facilitates personal continuity between the doctor and the patient. These types of long-term doctor-patient relationships are associated with reduced use of emergency health services and lower mortality, both internationally and in Norway. A widely discussed Norwegian study from 2022 showed that patients who had the same GP for more than fifteen years had a 25 per cent lower risk of dying compared to patients who had the same GP for one year or less. However, there has been an increasing shortage of GPs in recent years. As of July 2024, just over ...

Cancer cells seldom start off stealthy. Quite to the contrary, they announce their presence to the immune system by planting chemical red flags right on their membranes. Once alerted, the body’s defenses can swoop in, destroying rogue cells before they can do much damage. Lying at the heart of this early warning system are lipids, fatty compounds previously seen by cancer biologists primarily as a fuel source for burgeoning tumors. But now, a new study in Nature demonstrates that one particular lipid type is actually ...

The spacecraft bus that will deliver NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to its orbit and enable it to function once there is now complete after years of construction, installation, and testing. Now that the spacecraft is assembled, engineers will begin working to integrate the observatory’s other major components, including the science instruments and the telescope itself. “They call it a spacecraft bus for a reason — it gets the telescope to where it needs to be ...

A $5.3 million National Institutes of Health grant awarded to the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences will support advanced cancer research in Oklahoma. The Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant is designed to build research capacity and help early-career researchers establish independently funded laboratories. This is the third and final phase of the COBRE grant, which was first awarded in 2012, followed by phase two in 2017. The grant has supported and paralleled the growth of OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center, Oklahoma’s ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – For many decades, the coca plant – the main ingredient in cocaine – has been grown almost exclusively in South America. But a new study shows that nearly half of northern Central America appears to be highly suitable for cultivating this lucrative cash crop.   Findings showed that 47% of Honduras, Guatemala and Belize have the right climate and soil for commercial coca growing. Most of southern Central America was not suitable.   It’s not a hypothetical concern. Researchers began ...

SAN ANTONIO — September 17, 2024 —Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is collaborating with The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) to explore and develop a novel platform or chemical process for synthesizing antibiotic compounds with a $125,000 grant. The project, one of two winning proposals this cycle, is supported by the Connecting through Research Partnerships (Connect) program designed to foster collaboration between SwRI and UTSA. “SwRI and UTSA will work together to combat the growing threat antimicrobial resistance poses to global health by developing a proof-of-concept platform to potentially create a whole ...

From 2001 to 2021, roughly 9200 Norwegian soldiers served in Afghanistan. The vast majority of them have managed well in the years that have followed. According to a new survey conducted by the Norwegian Armed Forces Joint Medical Services, however, a significant number of the veterans struggle with mental health issues. “All Norwegian veterans who served in Afghanistan were invited to participate in a large health survey in 2020,” says Associate Professor Andreas Espetvedt Nordstrand at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology ...

In a paper published in Physical Review Letters this week, physicists from Amsterdam and Copenhagen argue that close observations of merging black hole pairs may unveil information about potential new particles. The research combines several new discoveries made by UvA scientists over the past six years. Gravitational waves that are emitted by the merger of two black holes carry detailed information about the shape and evolution of the orbits of the components. A new study by physicists Giovanni Maria Tomaselli and Gianfranco Bertone from ...

Staphylococcus aureus, mostly known from its antibiotic-resistant variant Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), is among the leading causes of both community- and hospital-acquired infections. According to the most recent data, MRSA killed around 120,000 people in 2022 globally and far more are killed by antibiotic-susceptible strains of S. aureus. So far however, all attempts at developing a protective vaccine for S. aureus have been unsuccessful. Research from Amsterdam UMC, in collaboration with UMC Utrecht, Leiden University, and the University of California, San Diego, have discovered an important immune component that offers protection against infection, ...

A new study led by UCLA Health found that a person’s sex and their unique experiences of childhood trauma can have specific consequences for their biological health and risk of developing 20 major diseases later in life. Although a large body of research has shown that childhood adversity can have long-lasting impacts on a person’s biology and health, there has been little research looking into how different types of stressors affect specific biological functions and health risks. The new findings, published in the journal ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17, 2024 – Vincent van Gogh’s painting “The Starry Night” depicts a swirling blue sky with yellow moon and stars. The sky is an explosion of colors and shapes, each star encapsulated in ripples of yellow, gleaming with light like reflections on water.  Van Gogh’s brushstrokes create an illusion of sky movement so convincing it led atmospheric scientists to wonder how closely it aligns with the physics of real skies. While the atmospheric motion in the painting cannot be measured, the brushstrokes can. In an article published this week in Physics ...

About The Study: In this cohort study of older survivors of nonmetastatic cancer, those who had overweight or obesity at the time of their first cancer diagnosis were at higher risk of developing a second cancer, especially an obesity-related second cancer. Given the high prevalence of overweight and obesity among cancer survivors, it is important to promote survivorship care guidelines recommending weight management and increase awareness of second cancers among physicians and cancer survivors. Corresponding author: To contact the corresponding author, Clara Bodelon, Ph.D., M.S., email clara.bodelon@cancer.org To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The ...