A direct comparison between the experimental psychedelic drug psilocybin and a standard SSRI antidepressant shows similar improvement of depressive symptoms, but that psilocybin offers additional longer-term benefits. The comparison, between psilocybin (the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”) and the SSRI escitalopram gave similar long-term improvements in depressive symptoms over a 6-month period, however patients taking psilocybin also reported better psychosocial functioning including experiencing a greater sense of meaning ...

Milan, Italy:    Around 80% of women suffer from “baby blues” after the birth of their child. Normally this is a brief period of feeling down which disappears in a few days. But around 1 woman in 7 develops postpartum depression; this is a more serious depression which can affect how mothers bond with their baby and can have long-term consequences.  These women seem unable to regulate the negative emotions which can follow giving birth. Now a group of European Reesearchers have found that in healthy pregnant women activity in a specific area deep in the brain is linked to regulation of negative ...

LOS ANGELES – Among patients with early-stage breast cancer treated with adjuvant endocrine therapy (AET), symptoms related to sexual health were associated with decreased adherence to treatment in Black women, according to results presented at the 17th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held September 21-24, 2024. Patients with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer are commonly given endocrine therapy—treatments that block estrogen signaling in the breast—after receiving surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy. The recommended regimen for AET ...

LOS ANGELES – In recent years, Black patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) received immunotherapy at significantly lower rates than white patients, according to results presented at the 17th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held September 21-24, 2024. Black women are disproportionately affected by TNBC, an aggressive subtype of breast cancer defined by the lack of three cell surface receptors. The absence of these receptors means that patients with TNBC are ineligible for many of the molecularly targeted therapies used to treat other breast cancer subtypes, explained ...

LOS ANGELES – The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has led to increased guideline-concordant care for colon cancer among non-white patients, patients from rural areas, and patients from the most deprived neighborhoods in Pennsylvania, according to results presented at the 17th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held September 21-24, 2024. “The ACA was the largest change to the health insurance system in the United States since the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid ...

A study of stigma against LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) people in British Society has shown that there is less stigma against these groups that might be expected from social and media perceptions. The same study looked at stigma against people with mental health problems and discovered that they continue to experience higher levels of stigma. This work will be presented at the ECNP conference in Milan. This is an advance press release see note below. Researcher Professor Karen Ersche (University of Cambridge) said, “Our aim was to look at the level of stigma against LGBTQ people in British society, and also to look at stigma ...

Cells are highly controlled spaces that rely on every protein being in the right place. Many diseases, including cancers and neurodegenerative disorders, are associated with misplaced proteins. In some cancers, for instance, a protein that normally stands watch over DNA replicating in the nucleus is sent far from the DNA it is meant to monitor, allowing cancers to grow. Steven Banik, assistant professor of chemistry in the School of Humanities and Sciences and institute scholar at Sarafan ChEM-H at Stanford University, and his lab have developed a new method to help force misplaced proteins back to their proper homes within cells. The method ...

In a study published July 29 in Advanced Materials, University of Texas at Dallas researchers found that X-rays of the kidneys using gold nanoparticles as a contrast agent might be more accurate in detecting kidney disease than standard laboratory blood tests. Based on their study in mice, they also found that caution may be warranted in employing renal-clearable nanomedicines to patients with compromised kidneys. Before administering renal-clearable drugs, doctors routinely check a patient’s kidney function by testing their ...

The Texas A&M University School of Public Health and USAging have been awarded the 2024 Immunization Neighborhood Champion Award by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s National Adult and Influenza Immunization Summit. Matthew Lee Smith, PhD, professor at the School of Public Health, leads the school’s involvement as a founding member of USAging’s Aging and Disability Vaccination Collaborative (ADVC). Announced as respiratory illness season is ramping up in the United States, this honor recognizes Smith’s work in support of ADVC’s efforts ...

EL PASO, Texas (Sept. 20, 2024) – The University of Texas at El Paso today announced new collaborations with the Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Security Agency (NSA) that support research and training to strengthen the nation’s leadership in semiconductor, or microchips, technology. NSA, the signals intelligence and cybersecurity agency for the United States, also recently named UTEP as an NSA Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity Research, making UTEP one of only 11 universities nationwide to hold all three ...

Homicide is a leading cause of death among people 19 and younger in the United States, and firearms are used in a large proportion of these crimes. Although the homicide rate for this population declined in the 1990s and 2000s, it has increased every year since 2013, with a large spike during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, new research by Hannah Rochford, PhD, an assistant professor with the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, and two colleagues from the University of Iowa, provides insight into the characteristics of ...

Cory Cobb, PhD, an assistant professor of health behavior at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, is leading a research team that has been awarded a three-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to create an online platform for the intervention program they developed for United States-based Spanish-speaking Latino parents and their children. The Latino Youth and Family Empowerment (LYFE) program focused on Nuestras Familias: Andando Entre Culturas (Our Families: Walking between Cultures), an intervention designed to enhance the parenting ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The University of Alabama at Birmingham startup company Endomimetics, LLC, has received a $2.8 million Small Business Innovation Research Phase II grant from National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Under the grant, Endomimetics co-founders Ho-Wook Jun, Ph.D., a professor in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Brigitta Brott, M.D., a professor in the UAB Department of Medicine Division of Cardiovascular Disease, will collaborate with Ramanathan Kadirvel, Ph.D., a professor of neurosurgery and radiology at Mayo Clinic, and David Kallmes, M.D., a professor of radiology at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, to develop a BionanomatrixTM ...

As anyone who’s spent time in the saddle knows, riding a horse can be hard on your body. But can it change the way your skeleton looks? The answer, according to archaeologists from the University of Colorado Boulder: It’s complicated. In a new study, the team drew on a wide range of evidence—from medical studies of modern equestrians to records of human remains across thousands of years. The researchers concluded that horseback riding can, in fact, leave a mark on human skeletons, such as by subtly altering the shape of the hip joint. But those sorts of changes on their own can’t definitively reveal whether people have ridden ...

UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA UCF Receives Prestigious Keck Foundation Award to Advance Spintronics Technology The work could change the future of electronics, making them faster and more energy efficient. ORLANDO, Sept. 20, 2024 – A team of researchers led by University of Central Florida Pegasus Professor of Physics Enrique Del Barco is working on a new project that could change the future of electronics, making them faster and more energy efficient. The work is funded by a new $1.3 million award from the W.M. Keck Foundation, one of the nation’s ...

Cleveland Clinic Study Shows Bariatric Surgery Outperforms GLP-1 Diabetes Drugs for Kidney Protection   Bariatric surgery was shown to protect kidney function and reduce the risk of kidney failure in study participants when compared to GLP-1 medications  Friday, September 20, 2024, CLEVELAND: A Cleveland Clinic study showed that in patients with type 2 diabetes, obesity, and chronic kidney disease, bariatric surgery was associated with a significant decrease in the progression of chronic kidney disease compared to those who received GLP-1 diabetes medications. The paper was published in Annals ...

As one of the largest heat reservoirs in the climate system, the global ocean absorbs more than 90% of the excess energy from ongoing anthropogenic warming. In the last century, the greatest warming in the ocean has occurred in the upper 500 m, with relatively weak warming in the deep ocean, corresponding to a small ocean heat storage efficiency of ~0.1.   Paleoceanographic observations, however, suggest that on long time scales, the deep ocean warming can be comparable to or larger than the surface ocean warming, with ocean heat storage efficiency during the last ...

Fever temperatures rev up immune cell metabolism, proliferation and activity, but they also — in a particular subset of T cells — cause mitochondrial stress, DNA damage and cell death, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers have discovered.  The findings, published Sept. 20 in the journal Science Immunology, offer a mechanistic understanding for how cells respond to heat and could explain how chronic inflammation contributes to the development of cancer.  The impact of ...

One major reason why it has been difficult to develop an effective HIV vaccine is that the virus mutates very rapidly, allowing it to evade the antibody response generated by vaccines.  Several years ago, MIT researchers showed that administering a series of escalating doses of an HIV vaccine over a two-week period could help overcome a part of that challenge by generating larger quantities of neutralizing antibodies. However, a multidose vaccine regimen administered over a short time is not practical for mass vaccination campaigns.  In a new study, the researchers have now found that they ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — First used in the 1940s to monitor for polio, wastewater surveillance proved such a powerful disease monitoring tool that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established the National Wastewater Surveillance System to support SARS-CoV-2 monitoring in September of 2020. Now, a team of scientists from Penn State and the Pennsylvania Department of Health have shown that domestic sewage monitoring is useful for a foodborne pathogen as well.  In findings published today (Sept. 19) in the Journal of Clinical ...

Building equipment and envelope scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory were recognized for research excellence during the ASHRAE 2024 summer conference held in Indianapolis. Stephen Kowalski and Mikael Salonvaara received the Distinguished Service Award, which salutes members who have served the society with distinction in chapter, regional and society activities. Kowalski and Salonvaara have each been active members of ASHRAE for more than 25 years and have supported the organization’s Technical and Standards Project Committees. ASHRAE is the largest international professional organization ...

Funded by a five-year, $20 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Simons Foundation, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications is partnering with other academic institutions and federal laboratories in the Midwest to develop new artificial intelligence (AI) tools to advance astrophysics research and exploration of the universe. Led by Northwestern University, the collaboration will establish the NSF-Simons AI Institute for the Sky or SkAI (pronounced “sky”), one of two AI research centers that will help astronomers better understand the cosmos. Located close to NCSA’s home in Illinois, SkAI will ...

ST. LOUIS — Researchers at Saint Louis University School of Medicine investigated differences in T-cell responses between male and female patients with lung cancer that may help direct future treatments. T-cell responses are part of the adaptive immune system, part of the body’s “smart system” that monitors for threats and fights them with customized defenses.  "Therapies that use the patient's immune system to fight their disease have a lot of potential to ...

By Andy Flick, Evolutionary Studies scientific coordinator In a groundbreaking study led by Sarah Worthan, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the Behringer Lab at Vanderbilt University, scientists have successfully evolved microbial cultures that possess the ability to sense pH changes, enabling rapid responses to environmental fluctuations. Along with highlighting the power of lab-driven evolution, this discovery also led to finding similar mutations in nature in emerging pathogens and coral symbionts—organisms that navigate challenging pH shifts in their environments and are ...

Investigators at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed the largest collection of sarcoma patient-derived organoids to date that can help improve the understanding of the disease and better identify therapies that are most likely to work for each individual patient. The approach, detailed in the journal Cell Stem Cell, uses patients’ own tumor cells that replicate the unique characteristics of a patient's tumor allowing scientists to quickly screen a large number of drugs in order to identify personalized treatments that can target this rare and diverse group of cancers. “Sarcoma is a rare and complex disease, which makes conducting clinical trials ...