September 15, 2025 (Washington, DC)—The Kissick Family Foundation, in partnership with the Milken Institute Science Philanthropy Accelerator for Research and Collaboration (SPARC), today announced that the Kissick Family Foundation Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) Grant Program has awarded four two-year grants to basic and early-stage translational research teams to advance scientific understanding of the neurodegenerative disorder. These philanthropic grants total $2 million in new funding toward FTD research. The two partners have also announced the grant program’s third round of funding—now accepting ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — A new Mayo Clinic study finds that many heart attacks in people under 65 — especially women — are caused by factors other than clogged arteries, challenging long-standing assumptions about how heart attacks occur in younger populations. Study findings published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology examined over 15 years of data from the Rochester Epidemiology Project, providing the most comprehensive population evaluation of heart attack causes in people aged 65 and younger. More than half of heart attacks in women under age 65 were caused by nontraditional factors, such as spontaneous coronary ...

DALLAS, September 15, 2025 — Nearly half of U.S. adults — 122.4 million people — are living with high blood pressure (BP), a leading preventable risk factor for heart disease, stroke and premature death, according to the 2025 American Heart Association Statistical Update. Yet just a quarter of them have their BP under control, making both diagnosis and effective management critical. The American Heart Association, a relentless force changing the future of health for everyone everywhere, and American Medical Association (AMA) are recognizing 2,307 health care organizations — ...

DALLAS, September 15, 2025 — The American Heart Association, a relentless force changing the future of health for everyone everywhere, is launching a new initiative to improve in-hospital care for people with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) and heart failure with mildly reduced ejection fraction (HFmrEF). HFpEF and HFmrEF collectively account for up to 75% of all heart failure cases, yet clinical research and treatment evidence in HFpEF and HFmrEF is substantially limited compared with other types of heart failure.[1],[2] The IMPLEMENT-EF quality improvement initiative will aim to address those challenges by mapping gaps in the patient ...

Plant stem cells are crucial for the world’s food supply, animal feed, and fuel production. They lay the foundation for how plants grow. Yet, much about these mysterious building blocks remains unknown. Previous analyses have failed to locate many of the important genes that regulate how these cells function. Now, for the first time, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) plant biologists have mapped two known stem cell regulators across thousands of maize and Arabidopsis shoot cells. Their research also uncovered new stem cell regulators in both species and linked some to size variations in maize. This method for recovering rare stem cells could be used across the plant kingdom. ...

People living in the UK and following a diet close to the Mediterranean diet are more likely to have better gum health, with potentially lower amounts of gum disease and inflammation.  Findings from a King’s College London study indicate that people not following a Mediterranean – style diet tended to have more severe gum disease, especially if they consumed red meat frequently.   In these patients, the researchers observed higher levels of circulating inflammatory markers, such as Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP).   However, patients whose diets were rich in plant-based food which ...

Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital has announced the launch of The Samuel Fineman Cardiac Catheterization Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Lab. This new lab will leverage the hospital’s world-renowned Cardiac Catheterization Lab and its unrivaled expertise to advance the field of interventional cardiology and enhance patient care, patient outcomes, as well as to optimize complex treatment decisions.   Annapoorna Kini, MD, will serve as Director of The Samuel Fineman Cardiac Catheterization Artificial Intelligence Research Lab. As Director of The Mount Sinai Hospital’s Cardiac Catheterization ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The secret to human intelligence can’t be replicated or improved on by artificial intelligence, according to researcher Angus Fletcher.   Fletcher, a professor of English at The Ohio State University’s Project Narrative, explains in a new book that AI is very good at one thing: logic. But many of life’s most fundamental problems require a different type of intelligence.   “AI takes one feature of intelligence – logic – and accelerates it. As long as life calls for math, AI crushes humans,” Fletcher writes in the book “Primal ...

Long-term stress levels, measured through hair samples, may provide important clues about mental health risks in children with chronic physical illnesses (CPI), according to new research from the University of Waterloo.   The study highlights how high hair cortisol, a type of steroid hormone, acts as a powerful early warning sign that could help identify children who live with CPI and who could be most at risk of mental health challenges, helping guide prevention and treatment strategies to better support their health and well-being.  An estimated 40 per cent of children in Canada live with a CPI — a number ...

DALLAS, Sept. 15, 2025 — Peter Tontonoz, M.D., Ph.D., the Frances and Albert Piansky Endowed Chair and distinguished professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and of biological chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), David Geffen School of Medicine and UCLA Health, will receive the Basic Research Prize from the American Heart Association during its Scientific Sessions 2025. The meeting, to be held Nov. 7-10, 2025, in New Orleans, is a premier global exchange of the ...

Most of us are used to seeking out healthcare professionals when we are sick, injured or just need routine care. And yet, what many don’t realize is that working parallel to the medical field, public health professionals are working at the population level to improve the quality of lives through health and wellness promotion and illness prevention. Whether it’s providing access to summer food programs to address children’s food security or creating policy for safe water, public health researchers and practitioners are working with the community to make lives better. In 2024, ...

Life-saving opportunities to prevent suicide among autistic people are being missed because systemic barriers make it difficult for them to access NHS support during times of mental health crisis, according to new research. Autistic people experience poorer mental and physical health and live shorter lives than the general population. They are significantly more likely than non-autistic people to die by suicide. Recent estimates suggest that one in three autistic people has experienced suicidal ideation and nearly one in four has attempted suicide. In a study ...

SEATTLE, WASH.—September 15, 2025—An illusion is when we see and perceive an object that doesn’t match the sensory input that reaches our eyes. In the case of the image below, the sensory input is four Pac Man–like black figures. But what we see or perceive is a white square—i.e., the illusion. In a new study published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, working with teams at the Allen Institute, identified the key neural ...

ANN ARBOR—Dinosaurs had such an immense impact on Earth that their sudden extinction led to wide scale changes in landscapes—including the shape of rivers—and these changes are reflected in the geologic record, according to a University of Michigan study. Scientists have long recognized the stark difference in rock formations from just before dinosaurs went extinct to just after, but chalked it up to sea level rise, coincidence, or other abiotic reasons. But U-M paleontologist Luke Weaver shows that once dinosaurs were extinguished, ...

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have developed a digital cognitive test for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease that is intended for use in primary care. “This digital test, which patients perform on their own with minimal involvement from healthcare personnel, improves the primary care physician's ability to determine who should be further examined by blood tests for Alzheimer's pathology early in the investigation phase,” says Professor Oskar Hansson, who led the study alongside Pontus Tideman. The study in brief: Clinical memory research // quantitative study, applied research // cross-sectional ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. –  As the new school year begins, some parents may be feeling more nervous than excited — especially those whose children have different health needs. One in four parents in a new national poll say their school-aged child has a medical or behavioral condition that might require assistance at school. And these parents are more likely to be concerned about their child adjusting to a new school or teacher, dealing with conflict, staying healthy, keeping up with homework and fitting in or making friends, according ...

A new guideline on consent for clinical research that puts participant needs first and will help streamline approvals is published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.250500. “The purpose of this guidance for policy is to present a core set of elements for participant consent documents to be used in clinical research across Canada and to facilitate harmonization of multi-site projects by simplifying the approval process for all those involved,” writes Dr. Holly Longstaff, British Columbia’s Provincial Health Services Authority and the Children’s and Women’s Health ...

Canada’s government and health science sectors should commit to researching the health effects of oil sands tailings, as previous research suggests that air, water, and land contaminations negatively affect local people’s health, authors urge in a CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) commentaryhttps://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.240643. The Alberta oil sands occupy a large area of land, and Indigenous Peoples as well as others have expressed concern about the health impacts of oil sands and tailings ponds. A community-led study showed elevated levels of contaminants in some animal food sources, such as duck and moose, as well as a higher rate of rare cancers in ...

Human historians are ever more vital in the age of AI – especially with the crucial need to capture the emotional and moral complexity behind world events. That’s according to a leading academic Dr Jan Burzlaff, an expert on Nazi Germany from Cornell University, who when tasking ChatGPT to summarize the experiences of Holocaust survivors found the AI tool failed to capture intimate, vital details.  “With the testimony of Luisa D., a seven-year-old Holocaust survivor, AI overlooked heartbreaking details about her mother cutting her own finger to give her dying child drops of blood – ‘the faintest trace of moisture’ – to stay ...

A higher weekly dose of semaglutide (7.2 mg) can significantly improve weight loss and related health outcomes in adults living with obesity, including those with type 2 diabetes (T2D), according to the results of two large-scale, international phase 3 clinical trials. The findings, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal, suggest that a higher dose of semaglutide offers a promising new option for people with obesity, including those with T2D, who have not achieved sufficient weight loss with existing treatments.   The STEP UP and STEP UP T2D clinical trials are the first to investigate whether increasing ...

A specialist form of therapy could offer hope for some of the most vulnerable young PTSD sufferers – according to a University of East Anglia study. Researchers investigated the effectiveness of trauma-focused cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for treating children who had been through multiple traumas such as abuse, violence or serious accidents. While this type of therapy is already known to help with PTSD, the new study focused on children who had experienced multiple traumas - a group often considered harder ...

School meals, provided for free by governments around the world, could be used to curb global hunger and promote a sustainable global food system, finds a new study by UCL (University College London) researchers. In a new report, “A Mission-Oriented Approach to School Meals: An opportunity for cross-departmental and multi-sector industrial strategy”, published by UCL Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose in collaboration with the UN World Food Programme, researchers looked at ways governments can use school meals procurement to encourage ...

About The Study: In this randomized clinical trial, home high-intensity aerobic training improved ataxia symptoms, fatigue, and aerobic fitness more than dose-matched home balance training among individuals with cerebellar ataxias, a heterogenous group of disorders characterized by progressive disability due to loss of coordination. Individuals in the aerobic group who continued to train regularly maintained benefits at 1 year. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Scott Barbuto, MD, PhD, email sb3779@cumc.columbia.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2025.3421) Editor’s ...

Copenhagen, Denmark: Dry eyes can cause significant discomfort, and the symptoms become more common as we age. However, until now, it was unclear what proportion of the population suffered from the condition, with estimates ranging from 5-50%.  In fact, research presented today (Monday) at the 43rd Congress of the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ESCRS) [1], found that more than half of the general population in the USA and Europe experience dry eyes, yet only 20% of European patients and 17% of US patients were diagnosed, and they can wait years for professional help. Dr Piotr ...

In women with type 2 diabetes (T2D), use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) skin patches is not associated with a higher risk of blood clots or stroke. However, an increased cardiovascular risk was found for oral HRT, according to a large real-world study being presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Vienna (15-19 Sept). Among the findings are an analysis revealing women with T2D who took the oral form of HRT doubled their risk of developing a pulmonary embolism (PE - when a blood clot blocks an artery in the lung) and faced a 21% increased risk of heart disease compared with ...