Cutting-edge DNA mapping technology identified new genetic information that can help researchers decipher more genetic diseases, a new study found. The research will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2025 Meeting, held April 24-28 in Honolulu.  The technology identified more genomic imprinting in DNA—10 times as much—than previously published data. Genomic imprinting occurs when only one parent’s gene is expressed in a child’s genetic makeup, which contributes to rare pediatric diseases, ...

Taking antibiotics within the first two years of life is linked to a higher body mass index (BMI) in childhood, according to a new study. The research will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2025 Meeting, held April 24-28 in Honolulu.  Researchers found that children exposed to antibiotics in the first two years of life had a 0.067 higher BMI adjusted for age and sex, a 9% greater risk to be overweight, and a 20% greater risk to be obese than children who were unexposed. Researchers found no correlation between BMI and antibiotic use before pregnancy, during pregnancy, or at birth. Antibiotics ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help better identify prevalence of physical abuse of children seen in the emergency room, a new study found. The research will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2025 Meeting, held April 24-28 in Honolulu.  Researchers used a machine-learning model to estimate instances of child abuse seen in emergency departments based on diagnostic codes for high-risk injury and physical abuse. The researchers’ approach better predicted abuse rates than those that rely solely on diagnostic codes entered by a provider or administrative staff. Relying on abuse codes alone ...

Pregnant women living with opioid use disorder (OUD) and their infants had significantly better health outcomes when treated with buprenorphine, according to a new study at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. The research will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2025 Meeting, held April 24-28 in Honolulu.  Pregnant women who received buprenorphine, a medication used to treat OUD, were less likely to have a preterm birth, face serious health complications, or have their infants hospitalized in the NICU compared to those ...

More information about gun safety has increasingly led parents to ask about firearms in the homes their kids visit, according to a new national study. The research will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2025 Meeting, held April 24-28 in Honolulu.   Every new source of information increased parents’ likelihood of asking by 40%. Researchers found that 16% of caregivers who had never received firearm safety information asked about firearms where their child was visiting, compared to 79% of those who had ...

Erythropoietin, a treatment for newborns with critically low levels of oxygen or blood supply to the brain at birth, does not prevent death or disability, according to a new multinational study. The research will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2025 Meeting, held April 24-28 in Honolulu.  Researchers found that a high-dose treatment with erythropoietin, paired with standard cooling treatments, does not reduce death, rate of cerebral palsy, or physical or cognitive impairment ...

Young children with chronic conditions are more likely to be hospitalized for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) than healthy children, according to a new study. The research will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2025 Meeting, held April 24-28 in Honolulu.   Toddlers with chronic conditions are hospitalized for RSV at twice the rate as healthy toddlers over their first two seasons. The risk was highest for children born very prematurely under 28 weeks of gestation, or with conditions affecting multiple organs, the lungs, heart, or digestive system. Researchers recommend that children with those specific conditions ...

Children treated with primary care telehealth visits were less likely to receive antibiotics for acute respiratory tract infections than those examined in person, according to a new study. The research will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2025 Meeting, held April 24-28 in Honolulu.  While providers prescribed 12% fewer antibiotics during initial primary care telehealth visits compared to in-person appointments, both settings had similarly high rates of following established guidelines, according to researchers. In the two weeks after the initial ...

Energy scarcity is a central driver of animal behavior and evolution. The amazing diversity of life on this planet is a testament to the plethora of novel biological solutions to the problem of securing and maintaining energy. However, despite being so central to biology, it remains difficult to quantify, and thereby empirically analyze, energy consumption. While organisms use energy for a very wide variety of processes – from growth to cognition – one activity is a major drain for many animals: movement. For highly mobile animals, movement is as such a powerful lens through which to estimate ...

Mapping soybean cultivation with high precision is crucial for maximizing agricultural productivity and ensuring food security. However, conventional methods often struggle with regional inconsistencies and require extensive datasets. A breakthrough study has introduced the Spectral Gaussian Mixture Model (SGMM), a novel approach that leverages key physiological traits—such as chlorophyll content and canopy greenness—to dramatically enhance classification accuracy. Validated across four major soybean-producing regions, SGMM sets a new standard for global crop monitoring, offering a scalable, efficient, and ...

About The Study: The results of this randomized clinical trial support use of metformin for treatment of symptomatic knee osteoarthritis in people with overweight or obesity. Because of the modest sample size, confirmation in a larger clinical trial is warranted. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Flavia M. Cicuttini, PhD, email flavia.cicuttini@monash.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.3471) Editor’s ...

A common diabetes drug can reduce the pain of people with knee osteoarthritis and overweight or obesity, possibly delaying the need for knee replacements, Monash University-led research has found. Metformin, which is commonly prescribed to treat type 2 diabetes, reduced knee arthritis pain over six months in a clinical trial published in JAMA. The randomised clinical trial looked at whether metformin, compared to a placebo, reduced knee pain in patients with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis (knee OA) and overweight or obesity. The research was performed entirely as a community-based study using telehealth. Some of ...

Most people living in cities in Low- and Middle-Income Countries can reach primary care clinics within 30 minutes – yet average quality of care remains poor with clinicians failing to make correct diagnoses or implement appropriate treatments, new studies reveal.   The costs of providing services vary significantly and while most people report low out-of-pocket expenses, a minority face catastrophic health costs. Patients often bypass closer, cheaper clinics to access higher-quality care, even if it means traveling further and ...

There is no difference over time in the spatial working memory of older people who have autistic traits and those who are neurotypical, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The new research, published in The Gerontologist, is the first study to explore age-related rate of decline in spatial working memory in older people who may be autistic. Spatial working memory helps people to remember and use information about where things are and how they are arranged. It is typically used for tasks that involve navigating spaces or organising objects. As people get older, spatial working memory can sometimes become less effective, which is an example of cognitive decline. This ...

ALBANY, N.Y. (April 24, 2025) — A new study published by researchers at the University at Albany has presented the first documented evidence that Adirondack surface waters made a near full recovery from metal pollution since the enactment of the Clean Air Act. Originally passed in 1963 and amended in subsequent decades, the Clean Air Act was one of the first major pieces of environmental legislation in the U.S., intended to reduce and control air pollution nationwide. The Adirondack Park was a prime target for the legislation, with decades of acid rain damage impacting the region’s ...

Every breath we take, every meal we eat, and every environment we encounter leaves a molecular fingerprint in our bodies—a hidden record of our lifelong exposures. In this week’s edition of the journal Science(link is external and opens in a new window), leading researchers in the field of exposomics explain how cutting-edge technologies are unlocking this biological archive, ushering in a new era of disease prevention and personalized medicine. The scientists lay out a roadmap to overcome technical and logistical challenges and realize the field’s full potential. Exposomics ...

A group of Brazilian researchers has, for the first time in the entire Atlantic Rainforest, estimated the population density of the five deer species of the biome. This allowed them to measure the main factors that influence the number of deer per square kilometer (km²) in forest areas. The results suggest a strong relationship between the low animal densities and human pressures such as hunting, predation by domestic dogs, livestock-borne diseases, and competition with wild boar, an invasive species that consumes the same resources as deer. The study was published in ...

Bad habits such as smoking, heavy drinking and lack of exercise must be tackled as early as possible to boost the odds of a happy and healthy old age. That is the message of a new peer-reviewed study, published in the Annals of Medicine (Elevate), that found smoking and other vices are associated with declines in health in people as young as 36. The impact is even greater when these bad habits are indulged in over the long-term, state experts whose study tracked the mental and physical health of hundreds of people for more than 30 years. Previous research has followed people from middle-age, typically for around 20 years.  Studies to-date have shown that smoking and other ...

Researchers have long recognized that quantum communication systems would transmit quantum information more faithfully and be impervious to certain forms of error if nonlinear optical processes were used. However, past efforts at incorporating such processes could not operate with the extremely low light levels required for quantum communication. Now, a team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has improved the technology by basing the nonlinear process on an indium-gallium-phosphide nanophotonic platform. The result is substantially more efficient than prior systems, meaning that it requires much less light and operates all the way down to single photons, ...

Lateral flow tests have transformed global healthcare by enabling rapid disease detection and improving access to medical diagnostics.  However, their widespread, single-use design is creating an environmental crisis.  A new study published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation (WHO) calls for urgent action to limit plastic waste in these essential diagnostic tools. Researchers from Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh propose limiting how much plastic is used in test kits to curb unnecessary plastic waste.  Their ...

Local authorities must do more to prepare communities in British Columbia for the dangers of extreme heat, according to a new research paper from Simon Fraser University.  Four years after the infamous 2021 heat dome, which killed more than 600 people in B.C. alone, the ground-breaking study found significant differences in how municipalities within the Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley regional districts are preparing for heat events.    While municipalities with larger populations and more financial resources are generally ...

National Foundation for Cancer Research Congratulates Dr. Rakesh Jain on AACR Lifetime Achievement Award Rockville, MD — The National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR) proudly congratulates Dr. Rakesh K. Jain—pioneering cancer researcher, educator, and longtime NFCR-supported scientist—on receiving the 2025 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research. The honor, presented by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), recognizes Dr. Jain’s profound impact on the understanding and treatment ...

Soil health hinges more on how agricultural land is managed than whether the farming system is organic or conventional, according to a new study showing that farms with more intensive management have lower overall soil functionality. The findings argue that optimizing yield whilst lowering management intensity – what the authors call "productive deintensification" – may be a more sustainable path forward that could boost soil health across diverse farming practices. Soils play a critical role in supporting ...

The spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in U.S. dairy cattle can be traced to a single spillover event from a wild bird, researchers report, raising concern over growing pandemic risks as the virus evolves and leaps between species. HPAI viruses pose serious threats to animal health, agriculture, and potentially human health due to their ability to cross species barriers. A specific strain, H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, has spread globally, infecting wild birds, poultry and, mammals – including a small number of humans – underscoring ...

A rare carnivorous caterpillar, previously unknown to biologists, stalks spiderwebs for food whilst dressed in the remains of its prey, researcher report. This unique new species, dubbed the “bone collector,” is found only on a single mountainside on the Hawai’ian island of Oa’hu. Hawai’i’s geographic isolation has given rise to uniquely adapted invertebrates, including several species of carnivorous caterpillars like the Hawaiian inchworm (Eupithecia spp.). However, the vast majority of Lepidoptera species are herbivorous; predatory caterpillars comprise roughly 0.1% of the nearly 200,000 moth and butterfly species currently known. Here, Daniel Rubinoff ...