A new study in the Oxford Economic Papers finds that migration flows the last 500 years from high sunlight regions to low sunlight regions influence contemporary health outcomes in destination countries. The researchers here noted that people's ability to synthesize vitamin D from sunlight declines with skin pigmentation, and that vitamin D deficiency is directly associated with higher risk of mortality, from illnesses including cardiovascular disease, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and certain cancers. Recent research even .finds that vitamin D affects the severity of COVID-19. Researchers here focused on ...

Sophia Antipolis, 7 January 2021: Patients with acute heart failure nearly double their risk of dying if they get COVID-19, according to research published today in ESC Heart Failure, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 The small, single centre study highlights the need for patients with heart failure to take extra precautions to avoid catching COVID-19. "Our results support prioritising heart failure patients for COVID-19 vaccination once it is available," said study lead investigator Dr. Amardeep Dastidar, a consultant interventional cardiologist at North Bristol NHS Trust and Bristol Heart Institute, UK. "In the meantime, heart failure patients of all ages should ...

Modelling study suggests that pregnant women in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, who are exposed to poor air quality, may be at higher risk of stillbirths and miscarriages. An estimated 349,681 pregnancy losses per year in south Asia were associated with exposure to PM2.5 concentrations that exceeded India's air quality standard (more than 40 μg/m³), accounting for 7% of annual pregnancy loss in the region from 2000-2016. First study to estimate the effect of air pollution on pregnancy loss across the region indicates that air pollution could be a major contributor to pregnancy loss in south Asia, so controlling air pollution is vital for improving maternal ...

WHO H. Gilbert Welch MD, MPH, Senior Investigator, Center for Surgery and Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital; co-author of a new Sounding Board article published in The New England Journal of Medicine. WHAT Melanoma of the skin is now the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in the U.S. Diagnoses of melanoma are six times as high today as they were 40 years ago. While incidence of melanoma has been rising steeply, melanoma mortality has been generally stable. In a Sounding Board article, Welch and colleagues present evidence for why they believe that increased diagnostic scrutiny is the primary driver of the rapid rise in melanoma diagnoses. "Melanoma is now the posterchild for overdiagnosis," said Welch. "Although the conventional response has been ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Before the pandemic, one-third of U.S. households with children were already "net worth poor," lacking enough financial resources to sustain their families for three months at a poverty level, finds new research from Duke University. In 2019, 57 percent of Black families and 50 percent of Latino families with children were poor in terms of net worth. By comparison, the rate for white families was 24 percent. "These 'net worth poor' households have no assets to withstand a sudden economic loss, like we have seen with COVID-19," said Christina Gibson-Davis, co-author of the study and professor of public policy and sociology at Duke University's Center for Child and Family Policy. "Their savings are virtually nil, ...

The exponential growth of data traffic in our digital age poses some real challenges on processing power. And with the advent of machine learning and AI in, for example, self-driving vehicles and speech recognition, the upward trend is set to continue. All this places a heavy burden on the ability of current computer processors to keep up with demand. Now, an international team of scientists has turned to light to tackle the problem. The researchers developed a new approach and architecture that combines processing and data storage onto a single chip by using light-based, or "photonic" processors, which ...

A study led by University of Ottawa researchers provides empirical evidence that mindfulness has a significant impact on the brain of women suffering from neuropathic pain related to breast cancer treatment. The researchers showed that mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) helps modulate neuropathic pain. Their findings could make a difference in the lives of many women. In Canada, over a quarter of a million women are expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer - the most diagnosed cancer among women worldwide - in 2020. In addition to the psychological impacts of breast cancer, approximately 20 to 50 percent of survivors report experiencing chronic neuropathic pain following treatment. We talked to senior author Dr. Andra Smith, Full Professor at the uOttawa School of Psychology, ...

Physicians have long known that necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a potentially lethal inflammatory condition that destroys a premature infant's intestinal lining, is often connected to the development of severe brain injury in those infants who survive. However, the means by which the diseased intestine "communicates" its devastation to the newborn brain has remained largely unknown. Now, working with mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland have identified that missing link -- an immune system cell that they say travels from the gut to the ...

Indianapolis, Ind. - A team of researchers led by the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute Diabetes Center's Scientific Director Decio L. Eizirik, MD, PhD, has found that identifying new treatments for autoimmune diseases requires studying together the immune system AND target tissues. This study, "Gene expression signatures of target tissues in type 1 diabetes, lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis," is featured in the Jan. 6, 2021, edition of Science Advances. "We must move away from the present "immune-centric-only" view of autoimmune diseases," explains Eizirik. "Indeed, trying to understand these diseases focusing on the immune system only, ...

Researchers at Rush University Medical Center have found that opioid use might increase a person's risk of developing pancreatic cancer. Published Jan. 6, the study, titled "Opioid Use as a Potential Risk Factor for Pancreatic Cancer in the United States," is the first in the country to show evidence that opioid use may be an unidentified risk factor contributing to the increasing incidence of pancreatic cancer. In fact, opioid misuse and overdose have evolved into a public health crisis. Approximately 70,000 drug overdose deaths were reported in 2017, 68% of which involved an opioid.¹ The use of prescription opioids for the management of chronic pain ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Before the pandemic, one-third of U.S. households with children were already "net worth poor," lacking enough financial resources to sustain their families for three months at a poverty level, finds new research from Duke University. In 2019, 57 percent of Black families and 50 percent of Latino families with children were poor in terms of net worth. By comparison, the rate for white families was 24 percent. "These 'net worth poor' households have no assets to withstand a sudden economic loss, like we have seen with COVID-19," said Christina Gibson-Davis, co-author of the study and professor of public policy and sociology at Duke University's Center for Child and Family Policy. "Their ...

Related to new research published in the January issue of Science Translational Medicine, Patrick McNutt, PhD, of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, was part of the research team that demonstrated a new "Trojan horse" approach that produces strong antidotal efficacy in treating lethal botulism in mice, guinea pigs and rhesus macaque monkeys. Furthermore, in a companion article, an independent team demonstrated that a related drug has robust efficacy in mice. "This is one of those serendipitous moments in science where two groups, working independently, demonstrate similar results for a long-standing ...

Investing in biotech companies may not entail higher risk than investing in other sectors, according to a new report from Bentley University's Center for Integration of Science and Industry. A large scale study of biotechnology companies that completed Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) from 1997-2016 demonstrates that these companies produced more than $100 billion in shareholder value and almost $100 billion in new value creation despite a failure rate greater than 50%. The study compared the financial performance and economic value created by these biotech companies to non-biotechnology controls that had similarly timed IPOs. The findings are published in PLOS ONE in the article "Comparing long-term value creation after biotech and non-biotech ...

Our reluctance to think, talk or communicate about death is even more pronounced when we deal with others' loss compared to our own, new research finds, but either way we tend to frame attitudes and emotions in a sad and negative way. Teaching new more positive ways to address these difficult conversations is the focus of a new paper in PLOS ONE journal by palliative care specialists across Australia. Led by Flinders University's Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death and Dying (RePaDD) and Palliative and Supportive Services, researchers from Flinders, CQUniversity Australia, NT Palliative Care Central Australia and University of Technology Sydney, surveyed 1,491 people about ...

Photosynthetic organisms tap light for fuel, but sometimes there's too much of a good thing. New research from Washington University in St. Louis reveals the core structure of the light-harvesting antenna of cyanobacteria or blue-green algae -- including key features that both collect energy and block excess light absorption. The study, published Jan. 6 in Science Advances, yields insights relevant to future energy applications. Scientists built a model of the large protein complex called phycobilisome that collects and transmits light energy. Phycobilisomes allow cyanobacteria to take advantage of different wavelengths of light than other photosynthetic ...

An analysis of 145 scholarly journals found that, among various factors that could contribute to gender bias and lesser representation of women in science, the peer review process itself is unlikely to be the primary cause of publishing inequalities. However, Flaminio Squazzoni and colleagues emphasize that the study does not account for many other factors that may affect women's representation in academia, including educational stereotypes and academic choices of priorities and specialties. Even as female representation has improved in fields such as the humanities, psychology, and the social sciences, a publication gap persists, with male authors continuing to publish more manuscripts in more prestigious journals. To better understand whether ...

Step into your new, microscopic time machine. Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered that a type of single-celled organism living in modern-day oceans may have a lot in common with life forms that existed billions of years ago--and that fundamentally transformed the planet. The new research, which will appear Jan. 6 in the journal Science Advances, is the latest to probe the lives of what may be nature's hardest working microbes: cyanobacteria. These single-celled, photosynthetic organisms, also known as "blue-green algae," can be found in almost any large body of water today. But more than 2 billion years ago, they took on an extra important role in the history of life on ...

In the UK, men from ethnic minorities and women may have experienced worse mental health declines than White British men, according to a study published January 6, 2021 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Eugenio Proto and Climent Quintana-Domeque of institutions including the University of Glasgow and the University of Exeter, UK. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the measures enacted to restrict the spread of the virus, have had a major impact on the lives of citizens globally. The authors of the present study examined changes in mental health associated with the pandemic across ethnic groups in the UK. The researchers used data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, comparing responses from participants between 2017 and 2019 (i.e.: prior to the pandemic) to responses from ...

CAR T cells are a breakthrough class of effective but often toxic cancer therapies To prevent overactivation, switchable CAR T cells were engineered that can be turned on and off with an approved, widely used cancer drug BOSTON - Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Mass General Cancer Center have created molecular ON-OFF switches to regulate the activity of CAR T cells, a potent form of cell-based immunotherapy that has had dramatic success in treating some advanced cancers, but which pose a significant risk of toxic side effects. CAR T cells are immune cells genetically modified to recognize and attack tumors ...

The distribution and concentration of dissolved oxygen and water temperature in the oceans and freshwaters are usually far more influential in shaping the growth and reproduction of fish than the distribution of their prey. In a new paper in Science Advances, Daniel Pauly, principal investigator of the Sea Around Us initiative at UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, argues that scientists need to avoid attaching human attributes to fish and start looking at their unique biology and constraints through a different lens. This lens is Pauly's own Gill Oxygen Limitation Theory (GOLT), ...

New York City, January 6, 2021 - CytoDel, Inc. ("CytoDel" or "the Company"), a privately-held corporation, today announces the publication of preclinical data on the Company's lead product, Cyto-111, in the peer-reviewed journal, Science Translational Medicine. The complete text of the article titled, "Neuronal Delivery of Antibodies has Therapeutic Effects in Animal Models of Botulism," can be found here. Cyto-111 was conceived, expressed and purified in the laboratory of Konstantin Ichtchenko, Ph.D., NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, who was a principal investigator in the study, which ...

A large scale study from Bentley University of the biotechnology companies that completed Initial Public Offerings from 1997-2016 estimates that 78% of these companies are associated with products that reach phase 3 trials and 52% are associated with new product approvals. The article, titled "Late-stage product development and approvals by biotechnology companies after IPO, 1997-2016," shows that these emerging, public biotechnology companies continue to have a role in initiating new product development, but are no longer distinctively focused on novel, biological products. The new report from the Center for Integration of Science and Industry at Bentley University, published in Clinical Therapeutics, studied the 319 biotechnology ...

E. coli food poisoning is one of the worst food poisonings, causing bloody diarrhea and kidney damage. But all the carnage might be just an unintended side effect, researchers from UConn Health report in the 27 November issue of Science Immunology. Their findings might lead to more effective treatments for this potentially deadly disease. Escherichia coli are a diverse group of bacteria that often live in animal guts. Many types of E. coli never make us sick; other varieties can cause traveler's diarrhea. But swallowing even a few cells of the type of E. coli that makes Shiga toxin can make us very, very ill. Shiga toxin damages blood vessels in the intestines, causing bloody diarrhea. If ...

Taking advantage of the chemical properties of botulism toxins, two teams of researchers have fashioned non-toxic versions of these compounds that can deliver therapeutic antibodies to treat botulism, a potentially fatal disease with few approved treatments. The research, which was conducted in mice, guinea pigs, and nonhuman primates, suggests that the toxin derivatives could one day offer a platform to quickly treat established cases of botulism and target hard-to-reach molecules within neurons. Botulism manifests due to bacterial toxins called botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs), which are the most potent toxins known ...

The pandemic has exacerbated isolation and fears for one very vulnerable group of Americans: the 4.3 million older adults with cognitive impairment who live alone. As the coronavirus continues to claim more lives and upend others, researchers led by UC San Francisco are calling for tailored services and support for older adults living alone with memory issues, who are experiencing extreme isolation, and are exposed to misinformation about the virus and barriers to accessing medical care. In their qualitative study, researchers interviewed 24 San Francisco Bay Area residents whose average age was 82. Of these, 17 were women, and 13 were either monolingual Spanish-speakers ...