Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell University's Ithaca campus have developed a new computational method for studying genetic and environmental interactions and how they influence disease risk. The research, published Jan. 7 in The American Journal of Human Genetics, makes the process of finding these interactions much less difficult and demonstrates their importance in determining body mass index and diabetes risk. "Our study demonstrates that your genes matter and the environment matters and that the interaction of the two can increase risk for disease," said co-senior author, Dr. Olivier ...

Heart disease is a killer threat for southern sea otters feasting on domoic acid in their food web, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis. The study, published in the journal Harmful Algae, examined the relationship between long-term exposure to domoic acid and fatal heart disease in southern sea otters, a threatened marine mammal. "Sea otters are an amazing indicator of what's happening in the coastal environment, not just to other marine animals, but to us, too, especially on the issue of domoic acid," said Christine K. Johnson, director of the EpiCenter ...

To enter the world of the fantastically small, the main currency is either a ray of light or electrons. Strong beams, which yield clearer images, are damaging to specimens. On the other hand, weak beams can give noisy, low-resolution images. In a new study published in END ...

MAPUTO, Mozambique (January 26, 2021) - A team of marine scientists led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has confirmed that southern Africa's most threatened endemic shark - the Critically Endangered shorttail nurse shark (Pseudoginglymostoma brevicaudatum) - has been found to occur in Mozambique; a finding that represents a range extension of more than 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles). Publishing their findings in the journal Marine Biodiversity, the team said that the discovery was based on several records of the shark including underwater video surveys collected in 2019, recent photos of shore-based sport anglers' catches, and the identification of a specimen collected in 1967. The ...

A hormone commonly associated with sleep-wake regulation has been found to reduce cysts in fruit flies, according to Concordia researchers. It's a finding that may affect the way we treat some kidney diseases and reduce the need for kidney transplants. In a new paper published in the journal END ...

STUDY PROFILES IMMUNE CELLS FIGHTING COVID-19, MAY HELP GUIDE NEXT-GEN VACCINE DEVELOPMENT Media Contact: Michael E. Newman, mnewma25@jhmi.edu Even as the first vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are being distributed, scientists and clinicians around the world have remained steadfast in their efforts to better understand how the human immune system responds to the virus and protects people against it. Now, a research team -- led by Johns Hopkins Medicine and in collaboration with ImmunoScape, a U.S.-Singapore biotechnology company -- has published one of the most comprehensive characterizations to date of a critical contributor to that protection: ...

Biologists often study animal sociality by collecting observations about several types of behavioral interactions. These interactions can be things like severe fights, minor fights, cooperative food sharing, or grooming each other. But to analyze animal behavior, researchers need to make decisions about how to categorize these interactions and how to code these behaviors during data collection. Turns out, this question can be complicated. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati dug into this tricky question while studying monk parakeets. In new research, published in the journal Current Zoology, the team asked: How do you properly categorize two seemingly similar behaviors? The study was led by UC ...

University of Alberta researchers have taken another step forward in developing an artificial intelligence tool to predict schizophrenia by analyzing brain scans. In recently published research, the tool was used to analyze functional magnetic resonance images of 57 healthy first-degree relatives (siblings or children) of schizophrenia patients. It accurately identified the 14 individuals who scored highest on a self-reported schizotypal personality trait scale. Schizophrenia, which affects 300,000 Canadians, can cause delusions, hallucinations, disorganized ...

SAN ANTONIO and BOSTON - Study findings released Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) hold both good news and bad news about transient ischemic attacks (TIAs), which are harbingers of subsequent strokes. Sudha Seshadri, MD, professor of neurology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and director of the university's Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer's and Neurodegenerative Diseases, is senior author of the study and senior investigator of the Framingham Heart Study, from which the findings are derived. She said the extensive follow-up of Framingham participants over more than six decades enabled the study to present a more-complete picture of the risk of stroke to patients after a TIA. The study points to the need for ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Research led by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine identified a new compound that might serve as a basis for developing a new class of drugs for diabetes. Study findings are published online in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. The adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (Ampk) is a crucial enzyme involved in sensing the body's energy stores in cells. Impaired energy metabolism is seen in obesity, which is a risk factor for diabetes. Some medications used to treat diabetes, such as metformin, work by increasing the activity of Ampk. "In ...

African trypanosomiasis (also known as sleeping sickness) is a disease transmitted by tsetse flies and is fatal to humans and other animals; however, there is currently no vaccine, this disease is mainly controlled by reducing insect populations and patient treatment. A study published in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Alvaro Acosta-Serrano at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and an international team of researchers suggests that the approved drug nitisinone could be repurposed to kill tsetse flies without harming important pollinator insects. Currently, the most effective method of controlling the transmission of African trypanosomiasis is by employing insecticide-based vector control campaigns (traps, targets, ...

The COHERENT particle physics experiment at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has firmly established the existence of a new kind of neutrino interaction. Because neutrinos are electrically neutral and interact only weakly with matter, the quest to observe this interaction drove advances in detector technology and has added new information to theories aiming to explain mysteries of the cosmos. "The neutrino is thought to be at the heart of many open questions about the nature of the universe," said Indiana University physics professor Rex Tayloe. He led the installation, operation and data analysis of a cryogenic liquid argon ...

A Brazilian study published in the journal Molecular Human Reproduction helps understand why obese mothers tend to have children with a propensity to develop metabolic disease during their lifetime, as suggested by previous research. According to the authors, "transgenerational transmission of metabolic diseases" may be associated with Mfn2 deficiency in the mother's oocytes (immature eggs). Mfn2 refers to mitofusin-2, a protein involved in the regulation of vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation. It is normally found in the outer membrane of mitochondria, ...

Incidence rates of skin cancer (cutaneous malignant melanoma) have increased more than 550% in males and 250% in females since the early 1980s in England - according to a new study by Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS). Published in the new Lancet journal, The Lancet Regional Health - Europe, the study analysed data on more than 265,000 individuals diagnosed with skin cancer in England over the 38-year period, 1981-2018. Skin cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the UK, with about 16,200 new cases each year. Excessive exposure to UV radiation from the sun (or sunlight) is the main environmental risk factor for developing skin cancer. It is estimated that about 86% of all skin cancers in the UK are ...

Since the founding of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, member states have regularly agreed on global strategies to bring the increasingly rapid loss of biodiversity to a halt. In 2002, the heads of state adopted the so-called 2010 biodiversity targets. Eight years later, little progress had been made and 20 new, even more ambitious goals were set for the next ten years. Last year, it became clear that this target had been missed, too. The loss of biodiversity continues unabated. This year, new targets are being negotiated again - this time for 2030. The decisions are to be made at the Conference of the Parties (COP15) in Kunming, China. To ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The actions that older adults take on Facebook may be more important to their user experience and well-being than their overall use of the site, according to researchers. In a study conducted by a team that included researchers from Penn State, older adults experienced different levels of competence, relatedness and autonomy on Facebook based on the types of their activities on the site. Specifically, older adults who posted more pictures to Facebook felt more competent, which led to significantly higher levels of well-being in general, ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have created a trifunctional contraceptive gel that contains spermicidal, anti-viral and libido-enhancing agents in one formulation. When tested in a rat model, the gel both enhanced male libido and prevented pregnancy in 100% of cases, as compared to an average 87% effective rate with a commercially available contraceptive gel. "We are using three pharmacological agents in a new formulation," says Ke Cheng, Randall B. Terry, Jr. Distinguished Professor in Regenerative Medicine at NC State's College of Veterinary Medicine, professor in the NC State/UNC Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering and corresponding author of a paper describing the work. "Our hope ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- Jan. 26, 2021 -- Breast cancer, even at its initial stages, could be detected earlier and more accurately than current techniques using blood samples and a unique proteomics-based technology, according to findings of a study led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope. Patrick Pirrotte, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor and Director of TGen's Collaborative Center for Translational Mass Spectrometry, and an international team of researchers developed a test that can detect infinitesimally small breast cancer biomarkers that are shed into the bloodstream from cells surrounding cancer known as extracellular matrix (ECM), according to the findings of their study recently published in the scientific journal Breast Cancer Research. For ...

Since stem cells can continually self-regenerate, making more stem cells, and differentiate into many different specialized cell types, they play an important role in our development and health. But there can also be a dark side -- stem cells can sometimes become cancer stem cells, proliferating out of control and leading to blood cancers, such as leukemia and multiple myeloma. The self-renewing nature of cancer stem cells makes them particularly hard to eradicate, and they're often the reason a blood cancer reoccurs. Researchers at UC San Diego Health and University of California San Diego School of Medicine are ...

Amsterdam, NL, January 26, 2021 - With medicinal cannabis now legalized in many parts of the world, there is growing interest in its use to alleviate symptoms of many illnesses including Parkinson's disease (PD). According to results of a survey of PD patients in Germany in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease, over 8% of patients with PD reported using cannabis products and more than half of those users (54%) reported a beneficial clinical effect. Cannabis products containing THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the main psychoactive compound of cannabis) can be prescribed in Germany when previous therapies are unsuccessful or not tolerated, and where cannabis can be expected with not a very unlikely ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Research led by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine found that the widely prescribed pain-relief drug gabapentin can prevent harmful structural changes in the injured spinal cords of mice, and also block cardiovascular changes and immune suppression caused by spinal cord injury. "Gabapentin is often prescribed as a treatment for pain, but if it is given early after injury - before symptoms develop - it can also limit structural changes in nerve cells. We show that these benefits remain even one month after stopping gabapentin treatment in spinal injured mice. We believe that gabapentin could be repurposed as a prophylactic therapy that can prevent autonomic dysfunction in ...

Nanoparticle is first therapy to trigger this novel way to kill lymphoma cells Drug is being developed for clinical trials Drug selectively attacks cancer cells, leaves normal cells unharmed CHICAGO --- Scientists at Northwestern Medicine have developed a novel therapy to trick cancer cells into gobbling up what they think is their favorite food - cholesterol - which actually triggers their destruction. What appears to them as a cholesterol-loaded particle is actually a synthetic nanoparticle that binds to the cancer cells and starves them to death. ...

A study performed by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) provided eight recommendations for improving the online technology to help with the treatment and diagnosis of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The analysis, presented in a recent open-access publication, was performed by UOC researchers Carme Carrion and Marta Aymerich from the eHealth Lab and Noemí Robles from the eHealth Center, together with José Antonio Ruiz Postigo from the World Health Organization and Oriol Solà de Morales from the Health Innovation Technology Transfer Foundation. In the study, the authors looked at the context of the existing apps and identified their weaknesses. The ...

Announcing a new publication for BIO Integration journal. In this opinion article the authors Tianhong Yao, Huirong Lin, Jingsong Mao, Shuaidong Huo and Gang Liu from Xiamen University, Xiamen, China discuss CT imaging features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus. Novel coronavirus pneumonia is an acute, infectious pneumonia caused by a novel coronavirus infection. Computed tomographic (CT) imaging is one of the main methods to screen and diagnose patients with this disease. In this article the authors discuss the importance and clinical value of chest ...

Damage to the brain gray matter plays an important role in the progression of multiple sclerosis. This study now shows that such damage can be caused by inflammatory reactions that lead to loss of synapses, which impairs neural activity. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the central nervous system, in which nerve cells are attacked by the patient's own immune system. In many cases, the disease develops into a progressive form, which is characterized by a shift of pathology from the white matter to the gray matter, ...