Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is the most common form of adult-onset muscular dystrophy, affecting about 1 in 8,000 people. While it is well known for causing muscle weakness and stiffness, DM1 also affects other organs, including the brain, heart and gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Although around 80% of people with DM1 experience GI problems that greatly reduce their quality of life, including difficulty swallowing, delayed stomach emptying, constipation and severe conditions like intestinal obstruction, the underlying causes remain understudied. To shed light onto the causes and potential solutions to ...

Reston, VA (December 12, 2025)—New research has been published ahead-of-print by The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM). JNM is published by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, an international scientific and medical organization dedicated to advancing nuclear medicine, molecular imaging, and theranostics—precision medicine that allows diagnosis and treatment to be tailored to individual patients in order to achieve the best possible outcomes. Summaries of the newly published research articles are provided below. Tracking Kidney Cancer Spread with a New Targeted Imaging Tool This study explored whether two biomarkers—CD70 ...

The microscopic organisms that fill our bodies, soils, oceans and atmosphere play essential roles in human health and the planet’s ecosystems. Yet even with modern DNA sequencing, figuring out what these microbes are and how they are related to one another remains extremely difficult. In a pair of new studies, researchers at Arizona State University introduce powerful tools that make this work easier, more accurate and far more scalable. One tool improves how scientists build microbial family trees. The other provides a software foundation used worldwide to analyze ...

The Kinsey Institute invites applications for two competitive research awards that provide in-person access to the Institute’s internationally renowned Library & Special Collections at Indiana University Bloomington. These awards support original scholarship drawing on one of the world’s most significant archives on sexuality, relationships, gender, and human behavior—spanning manuscripts, publications, fine art, photography, ephemera, and scientific data across disciplines including biology, medicine, psychology, anthropology, ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Before you can address a problem, you need to understand its scope. That’s why the United Nations developed the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification System. Aid organizations rely on analyses from this global partnership, which monitors and classifies the severity of food insecurity to help target assistance where and when it is most needed. These analyses are multifaceted and complex — often taking place in regions where data is scarce and conditions are deteriorating — and stakeholders tend to assume ...

When the unthinkable happens and a child is left critically ill or injured, the miracle workers in pediatric intensive care units around the country work tirelessly to save their lives. Yet, after discharge from the hospital, many of these children could be missing out on vital follow up care, finds a study from Michigan Medicine. “There aren't specific guidelines in terms of whether or when a child should follow up with their primary care physician or pediatrician after a stay in the PICU,” ...

About The Study: In a randomized clinical trial, researchers found risk-based breast cancer screening was as safe as annual screening for detecting advanced cancers but did not reduce breast biopsy rates. Corresponding author Laura J. Esserman, MD, MBA, of the University of California, San Francisco, will present the study at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. Corresponding Author: To interview Dr. Esserman, contact UCSF Senior Public Information Representative Elizabeth Fernandez by ...

Toronto, Ontario - The University of Toronto today announced the launch of Electric Vehicle Innovation Ontario (EVIO), a new industry–academic partnership that will accelerate the development and commercialization of next-generation electric vehicle (EV) and mobility technologies. Led by the University of Toronto, in collaboration with seven other southern Ontario universities, EVIO will embed 37 highly skilled graduate researchers directly inside 20 Ontario EV and mobility companies. The researchers will work on real-world challenges in battery chemistry, charging reliability, power electronics, mobility software, cold-weather ...

Mature nodal T-cell lymphoma is a type of rare and aggressive blood cancer. Limited data make it difficult to identify high-risk patients or tailor treatment strategies, so most patients receive similar care despite differences in disease characteristics and outcomes. A new study led by investigators from PETAL Consortium at the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute found that among patients who achieved a complete remission after initial chemotherapy treatment, survival was worse for those whose disease relapsed within 12 months of initial treatment, suggesting that alternative strategies are needed to benefit these patients. The results are published in Blood. “The study suggests ...

The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) applauds two new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) models that could significantly reshape the landscape for lifestyle medicine practice and reimbursement. The first model, The Make America Healthy Again: Enhancing Lifestyle and Evaluating Value-based Approaches Through Evidence (MAHA ELEVATE) for Original Medicare, was announced Thursday, December 11, 2025. The model will provide approximately $100 million to fund three-year cooperative agreements for up to 30 proposals that promote ...

Adolescent and young adult nicotine vaping has become an urgent public health concern, as 2024 marked the first year that nicotine vaping was the most initiated drug. Though vaping is the most common way young people use nicotine, few treatments exist to help those trying to quit. What’s more, a 2022 Drug Alcohol Dependence study reported around half of young people who vape nicotine also use cannabis, though the impact of this dual substance use on treatment outcomes remains unclear. A new clinical trial by investigators from Mass General Brigham found varenicline—a ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study, adoption of state-level policies associated with higher Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation was also associated with lower county-level food insecurity rates. Policies that lower barriers to SNAP participation may help address rising food insecurity rates observed in 2022 and 2023. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Sameed Ahmed M. Khatana, MD, MPH, email sameed.khatana@pennmedicine.upenn.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2025.5597) Editor’s ...

Researchers at Yale University School of Medicine have identified a way to suppress the daily fluctuations in the activity of key immune cells known as neutrophils. The study, to be published December 12 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), suggests that inhibiting these fluctuations could prevent neutrophils from causing excessive tissue damage during daylight hours, a phenomenon that may underlie the fact that heart attacks in the early morning are more damaging than heart attacks suffered at night. Neutrophils provide the first line of defense against ...

KINGSTON, R.I. – Dec. 5, 2025 – Global human rights are in decline according to the findings of a recent study from researchers at the University of Rhode Island’s Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies. As governments around the world are increasingly using surveillance or legal pressure to discourage journalists and citizens from criticizing top officials, data shows that the number of state-committed atrocities reached an all-time high in 2022—the most recent data available.   In the United States, ...

Heart attacks that occur at night are less severe than those that strike during the day. A new study from the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) explains why. Published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, the study led by Dr. Andrés Hidalgo’s group at the CNIC shows that neutrophils—a type of white blood cell—have an internal clock that regulates their aggressiveness throughout the day and determines the extent of damage they cause to the heart after a heart attack. The researchers also developed a pharmacological strategy in experimental models to block the molecular clock in neutrophils, keeping them in a “nighttime” ...

SAN ANTONIO – Using menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) was not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer in women with inherited mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, according to the results of a matched prospective analysis presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), held December 9-12, 2025. Women who inherit a pathogenic mutation in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are advised to follow the recommended guidance to have their ovaries and fallopian tubes removed (a procedure known as bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy) ...

SAN ANTONIO – A mobile health (mHealth) intervention for adolescent and young adult breast cancer survivors that offered tailored support by monitoring electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) significantly improved quality of life and symptoms related to vaginal and arm problems, according to results from a randomized clinical trial presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), held December 9-12, 2025. Incidence of breast cancer in women between the ages of 15 and 39 has risen on average 0.6% each year between 1975 and 2022. “Young adults with breast cancer are more likely to suffer both emotionally and medically ...

SAN ANTONIO – Real and sham acupuncture were more effective at improving breast cancer survivors’ perceived cognitive impairment compared with usual care, while real acupuncture was superior to sham acupuncture in improving objective cognitive function, according to results from the randomized ENHANCE phase II clinical trial presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), held December 9-12, 2025. More than 40% of breast cancer survivors experience cancer-related cognitive difficulties, which ...

December 12, 2025 — For infants undergoing cleft palate surgery, local anesthetic injection targeting the maxillary nerve of the face may reduce or eliminate the need for opioid medications to control postoperative pain, reports a study in The Journal of Craniofacial Surgery. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. "Our study presents preliminary but promising results suggesting that suprazygomatic maxillary nerve block [SMNB] may reduce perioperative opioid consumption in pediatric primary clefts particularly cleft palate closure," ...

Since the dawn of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, our ancestors have saved seeds from the tastiest, largest, and most resilient crops to plant in the following season. Today, most fruits and vegetables we buy are the result of hundreds to thousands of years of selective breeding. Now, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) plant biologists may have found a “shortcut” to this tedious breeding process using the gene-editing tool CRISPR on a tiny tomato relative called goldenberry. This method could make the fruit easier to grow, opening it up for large-scale farming in the U.S. ...

Mass General Brigham is announcing the spinout of AIwithCare, a company founded by researchers from the health system who developed an artificial intelligence (AI) screening tool that significantly outperformed manual screening for determining a patient’s eligibility and enrolling them in a clinical trial. The tool, RECTIFIER (RAG-Enabled Clinical Trial Infrastructure for Inclusion Exclusion Review), was first developed and studied by researchers at Mass General Brigham’s Accelerator for Clinical Transformation. Since the publications of a proof-of-concept study in June 2024 and ...

Vienna, Austria – 12 December 2025: Increased volume of epicardial adipose tissue, detected by cardiovascular imaging, was found to be associated with greater myocardial injury after a myocardial infarction.1 These findings were presented today at EACVI 2025, the flagship congress of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI), a branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death globally, accounting for around one-third of all deaths, of which 85% are due to myocardial infarction (MI) and ...

The evolving global order, intense geopolitical competition, and anxiety over supply chain vulnerabilities in this century have led to urgent concerns over supply chain resilience as well as national security. Amidst these upheavals, governments across the globe are making substantial efforts to reaffirm control over strategic sectors, especially in the field of critical minerals. Notably, lithium has become strategically highly important owing to its use in lithium–ion batteries for technologies aimed at decarbonization, including electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy storage systems. The demand for lithium in EV production ...

Over the past few decades, advances in hematology have illuminated how a delicate balance between stem cell self-renewal and differentiation sustains healthy blood formation. In myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), however, this balance collapses, leading to abnormal blood cell development and a heightened risk of progression to acute myeloid leukemia. Despite major progress in genetics, the molecular events that trigger this transformation within stem cells have remained unclear. To address this, a research team led by Professor Atsushi Iwama and Senior Assistant Professor Motohiko Oshima from the Division of Stem Cell and Molecular Medicine, Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, ...

Normal, regulated growth of skeletal bones is a crucial part of the growth of mammals. This is a complex process involving the growth of cartilaginous cells or chondrocytes, their transformation into bone-building cells or osteoblasts, and the formation of new blood vessels to supply the newly formed bone tissue. While osteoblasts evolve from a variety of progenitor cells, over 60% of osteoblasts in mammals originate from one class called hypertrophic chondrocytes (HCs). HCs are versatile cells involved in a variety of bone growth and maintenance tasks, ...