Relatively short-term use of immunosuppressant medications to control an inflammatory disease was not associated with an increased risk of later developing cancer, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and Mass Eye and Ear, a member of the Mass General Brigham health care system, and published today in the journal BMJ Oncology. The findings should provide reassurance to patients and clinicians who may hesitate to prescribe the medications because they are known to increase the risk of cancer in people who ...

**Embargoed until 23.30 [UK time] / 6.30pm [ET] Monday, August 21, 2023** Peer-reviewed / Systematic review and meta-analysis The Lancet: New study reveals the most common form of arthritis, osteoarthritis, affects 15% of the global population over the age of 30 Aging, population growth, and obesity are key drivers ●  By 2050, nearly 1 billion people are projected to have osteoarthritis. ●  Obesity is a major contributor to osteoarthritis. In 2020, obesity was responsible for approximately 20% of the disability of osteoarthritis. ●  Osteoarthritis increases with age. For ages 70+, the condition ranked seventh among causes ...

Researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute identified potential new treatment options for people with endometrial cancer. Endometrial cancer is the most common gynecological cancer and high levels of estrogen promote its development. The study, published in Molecular Cancer Research discovered that estrogen receptor mutations found in endometrial cancers cause large changes in endometrial cancer cells. Estrogen is a reproductive hormone that binds and activates estrogen receptors. Cancer can cause estrogen receptors to remain in a state of constant activity. That increases shedding of the endometrial ...

UC Davis MIND Institute researchers have received a $4.7 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health to study a child-focused autism intervention in community agencies. The Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) is a comprehensive intervention for autistic children ages 1-4. It addresses all areas of development and emphasizes communication and social interaction through everyday activities. ESDM was tested in research studies at the MIND Institute and shown to improve communication skills and daily living skills. The new grant will allow MIND Institute experts to train behavior analysts in community agencies to use the model, to see if it is effective ...

A University of Texas at Arlington researcher is constructing an open-networked airborne computing platform to enable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to help first responders better coordinate their efforts during emergency or disaster responses. UT Arlington also is developing a universal plug-in hardware unit that can fit into any UAV to allow for this computing platform to be used. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is funding the research through a $1.8 million grant to UTA, University of ...

MADISON – The world needs greener ways to make chemicals. In a new study, University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers demonstrate one potential path toward this goal by adapting hydrogen fuel cell technologies. These technologies are already used to power some electric vehicles, laptops and cell phones. "The chemical industry is a massive energy consumer, and there is a big push to decarbonize the industry,” says Shannon Stahl, a professor in the UW–Madison Department of Chemistry who guided much of the research. “Renewable electricity can provide energy to produce chemicals with a much lower carbon footprint than burning fossil fuels.” The ...

Since the 17th century, when Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens first debated the nature of light, scientists have been puzzling over whether light is best viewed as a wave or a particle — or perhaps, at the quantum level, even both at once. Now, researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have revealed a new connection between the two perspectives, using a 350-year-old mechanical theorem — ordinarily used to describe the movement of large, physical objects like pendulums and planets — to explain some ...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA – In the middle of the last century, physicists found that protons can resonate, much like a ringing bell. Advances over the last three decades have led to 3D pictures of the proton and significant insight into its structure in its ground state. But little is known about the 3D structure of the resonating proton. Now, an experiment to explore the 3D structures of resonances of protons and neutrons at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has added one more puzzle piece to the vast ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 21 August 2023 Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet @Annalsofim Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent. ---------------------------- 1. Some experts believe that routine mask-wearing should continue in health ...

DETROIT – Wanqing Liu, Ph.D., professor of pharmaceutical sciences in the Wayne State University Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and of pharmacology in Wayne State’s School of Medicine, received a $3 million, five-year award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. The study, “Interaction between Genome and Heavy Metals in Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease,” aims to discover and validate the gene Х heavy metal (GXM) interactions in human livers ...

New Haven, Conn. — For many, the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic seems over. However, for patients whose immune systems are compromised by cancer or by cancer therapies, fear of COVID-19 infection and severe disease remains very real. Currently, CDC guidance recommends that immunocompromised patients receive COVID-19 booster shots “as needed.” While this flexibility is useful for patients with complex medical conditions, more specific guidance is lacking as to when additional COVID-19 boosting would be most effective.  New ...

“Our findings may provide a useful therapeutic approach for treating breast cancer patients who may suffer from early relapse and intrinsic resistance.”  BUFFALO, NY- August 16, 2023 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on June 12, 2023, entitled, “Are cis-spliced fusion proteins pathological in more aggressive luminal breast cancer?” A vast majority of breast cancers (~70%) are estrogen receptor-alpha positive (ER+), for which endocrine therapy is the common ...

Markers that indicate the presence of Parkinson’s disease in patients on average seven years before clinical presentation have been identified by a UCL and Moorfields Eye Hospital research team. This is the first time anyone has shown these findings several years before diagnosis, and these results were made possible by the largest study to date on retinal imaging in Parkinson’s disease. The study, published today in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, identified markers of Parkinson’s in eye scans with the help of artificial ...

When a sabertooth tiger called out, what noise did it make – a mighty roar or a throaty purr? A new study from North Carolina State University examined the data behind the arguments for each vocalization and found that the answer was more nuanced than they thought – and that it could depend on the shape of a few small bones. Modern cats belong to one of two groups: either the pantherine “big cats,” including the roaring lions, tigers and jaguars; or Felinae “little cats,” which include purring ...

Two Georgia Tech researchers, Alex Robel and Shi Joyce Sim, have collaborated on a new model for how water moves under glaciers. The new theory shows that up to twice the amount of subglacial water that was originally predicted might be draining into the ocean – potentially increasing glacial melt, sea level rise, and biological disturbances. The paper, published in Science Advances, “Contemporary Ice Sheet Thinning Drives Subglacial Groundwater Exfiltration with Potential Feedbacks on Glacier Flow”, is co-authored by Colin Meyer (Dartmouth), Matthew Siegfried (Colorado School of Mines), and Chloe Gustafson (USGS). While there are pre-existing methods to understand ...

Children’s views of inequality may be influenced by how its causes are explained to them, finds a new study by a team of psychology researchers. The work offers insights into the factors that affect how larger social issues are perceived at a young age and points to new ways to reduce bias toward lower-status economic groups. “When making sense of social inequalities, adults may consider the structural forces at play—for example, people may cite policies related to legacy admissions when thinking about how disparities first arise,” says Rachel Leshin, a New York University doctoral student and the lead ...

Plants are not exposed to herbivores without defenses. When an insect feeds on a leaf, thereby wounding it and releasing oral secretions, a signaling cascade is elicited in the plant, usually starting with a rapid increase in the amount of the plant hormone jasmonic acid and its active isoleucine conjugate. Jasmonic acid regulates various reactions in plants, including defenses against herbivores and responses to environmental stress. Mutants with disadvantageous properties do not necessarily disappear An important thesis of evolutionary theory is natural selection and the conclusion that mutants with disadvantageous properties disappear ...

The Arizona Bioindustry Association announced that renowned Valley fever researcher John Galgiani, MD, professor and director of the Valley Fever Center for Excellence at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson, is the 2023 recipient of the AZBio Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement. The Pioneer Award is the highest honor awarded by Arizona’s bioscience community and is extended to an Arizonan whose body of work has made life better for people at home and around the world. Galgiani’s four decades of Valley fever research, ...

The University of Arkansas celebrated an important milestone with the groundbreaking on a building that Chancellor Charles Robinson suggested might someday rival the U of A’s most iconic structure, Old Main, in significance to the university and the state of Arkansas. Robinson and other university leaders, including University of Arkansas System President Don Bobbitt and members of the U of A System Board of Trustees, as well as researchers and industry leaders, gathered at the Arkansas Research and Technology Park in South Fayetteville to celebrate construction of the national Multi-User Silicon Carbide ...

With opioid overdose deaths surging in the United States, many communities are in desperate need of solutions to bring down the body count. Among the most promising is strengthening prison reentry programs for highest-risk users, a Rutgers-led study has found.   “For people who use drugs and have been in prison for several years, the reentry period can be chaotic and disorienting,” said Grant Victor, an assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Social Work and lead author of the study published in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation.   “Closing ...

The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a huge blow to healthcare systems and highlighted their major shortcomings. As of June 2023, there have been over 760 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, with almost 7 million deaths worldwide. During the major COVID-19 outbreaks, hospitals often had their intensive care units (ICU) running at full capacity for providing invasive mechanical ventilation to patients who were diagnosed as positive for COVID-19. These ICUs often operated with insufficient staff and intubation equipment. One way to mitigate such problems is to accurately predict the prognosis ...

Research Highlights: An analysis of a clinical trial of more than 2,500 people with Type 2 diabetes and kidney disease found that high levels of four biomarkers are strongly predictive for the development of heart and kidney issues. People who took canagliflozin, a sodium glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitor (SGLT2 inhibitor), had lower levels of the four biomarkers compared to those who took a placebo over the three-year study period. Treatment with canagliflozin helped to substantially reduce the risk of hospitalization for heart failure and other heart complications among patients considered to have the highest risk. Embargoed until 1 p.m. CT/2 p.m. ET Monday, ...

Scientists spectacularly confirmed the existence of gravitational waves several years ago, but now they are searching the cosmos for new and different types of these waves that result from different objects in deep space. Benjamin Owen, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas Tech University, was recently awarded a three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that aims to uncover and confirm additional types of gravitational waves. “So far with gravitational waves we’ve seen what happens when you have ...

ST. LOUIS, MO, August 21, 2023 – Agrela Ecosystems, a startup launched by Nadia Shakoor, PhD, principal investigator, at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center announced the pilot launch of its flagship product, PheNodeTM. This milestone marks the first step towards a full-scale commercial release set for 2025. PheNode is an advanced, scalable environmental sensor platform designed to empower users with customizable data collection and the rapid integration of new technologies. Already creating a buzz, the platform is now collecting data and generating customer feedback, ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (08/21/2023) — A new study from the University of Minnesota is the first to demonstrate the ability for gene therapy to repair neural connections for those with the rare genetic brain disorder known as Hurler syndrome. The findings suggest the use of gene therapies — an entirely new standard for treatment — for those with brain disorders like Hurler syndrome, which have a devastating impact on those affected. The study was published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. Hurler syndrome, also known as mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS I), is a genetic disorder affecting newborns ...