Irvine, Calif., Jan. 6, 2025 — A research team from the University of California, Irvine has revealed a previously unknown mechanism that triggers an inflammatory immune response in cells when their DNA is damaged. This discovery deepens the understanding of a new type of cell signaling that may lead to more effective treatments for cancer.   The study, published online today in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, found that UV irradiation or certain chemotherapeutic drugs activate a specific response when cells are too damaged to be repaired correctly, preventing them from becoming cancerous.   “This discovery could have significant ...

January 6, 2025 — Loneliness is a key driver in the maintenance of borderline personality disorder (BPD), Harvard researchers argue. Thus, many patients cite increased social connection as a primary treatment goal. In the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, part of the Lippincott portfolio from Wolters Kluwer, Lois W. Choi-Kain, MD, MEd, DFAPA, of Harvard’s McLean Hospital, and colleagues call for BPD treatment to extend beyond exclusive therapeutic relationships to help patients build durable connections with others in the community. "Any support in building small connections can provide some relief from loneliness and work against cycles of dependency, ...

BUFFALO, NY- January 6, 2025 – We are pleased to announce that Dr. Marco Demaria, a leading expert in aging and cellular senescence, has joined Aging (Aging-US) as Editor-in-Chief, effective January 1, 2025. Dr. Demaria will work alongside an esteemed Editorial Board. Dr. Demaria has an impressive background in aging research. He earned his PhD in Molecular Medicine from the University of Torino, Italy. In 2010, he joined the laboratory of Aging Founding Editor, the late Dr. Judith Campisi, at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. There ...

A varied diet rich in vegetables is known to be healthy for one’s well-being. Excessive consumption of meat, especially red meat, can lead to chronic and cardiovascular diseases. That is also because what we eat shapes the gut microbiome. At the same time, excluding certain foods, such as dairy or animal products, is not necessarily a general solution to achieve microbial balance. But can we find out which food products determine differences in the gut microbiome? Starting from this question, a group of researchers analyzed biological samples from 21,561 individuals (vegans, vegetarians and omnivores) living in the ...

A new study from researchers at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, which published in Nature Medicine on January 6, estimates that 2.2 million new cases of type 2 diabetes and 1.2 million new cases of cardiovascular disease occur each year globally due to consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. In developing countries, the case count is particularly sobering. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the study found that sugar-sweetened beverages contributed to more than 21% of all new diabetes cases. In Latin America and the Caribbean, they contributed to nearly 24% of new diabetes cases and more than 11% of new cases of cardiovascular ...

About The Study: This systematic review and meta-analysis found inverse associations and a dose-response association between fluoride measurements in urine and drinking water and children’s IQ across the large multi-country epidemiological literature. There were limited data and uncertainty in the dose-response association between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ when fluoride exposure was estimated by drinking water alone at concentrations less than 1.5 mg/L. These findings may inform future comprehensive public health risk-benefit assessments of fluoride exposures. Corresponding ...

About The Study: This cross-sectional study’s analysis underscores a public health crisis of substance use disorder. The prevalence of substance use disorder surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet the receipt of treatment declined initially as health care services were disrupted. Treatment rates began to recover in 2022, likely due to reopened treatment programs and increased telehealth use. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Milap C. Nahata, PharmD, MS, email nahata.1@osu.edu. To access ...

Embargoed for release: Monday, Jan. 6, 2025, 11:00 AM ET Key points: Less than 0.1% of U.S. adolescents were transgender and gender diverse (TGD) and prescribed puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones in a study of private insurance claims representing 5.1 million patients ages eight to 17. No TGD patients under age 12 received hormones. According to the researchers, the findings counter a growing concern among policymakers that gender-affirming care is frequently over-prescribed to children. Boston, MA—Puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones are rarely prescribed to U.S. transgender and gender diverse (TGD) adolescents, according to a new study from researchers ...

About The Study: This longitudinal cohort study suggests that early-life infection burden may continue throughout childhood and is associated with later antibiotic treatments independent of social and environmental risk factors. These findings are important for prognosis and follow-up of children experiencing a high burden of common infections in early life.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Nicklas Brustad, MD, PhD, email nicklas.brustad@dbac.dk. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.53284) Editor’s ...

Key Takeaways: A new study in JAMA Internal Medicine led by the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute examined whether doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis (doxyPEP) was associated with declines in bacterial sexually transmitted infections in routine care. The study represents the largest cohort of doxyPEP recipients reported globally to date. Findings showed doxyPEP was associated with a 79% reduction in chlamydia, 80% reduction in syphilis, and 12% reduction in gonorrhea. Boston, MA — A new study has found that rates of chlamydia and syphilis plummet among people prescribed doxycycline for sexually transmitted ...

Billions of years ago, in the frigid outer reaches of our solar system, two icy worlds collided. Rather than destroying each other in a cosmic catastrophe, they spun together like a celestial snowman, finally separating while remaining forever linked in orbit. This is how Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, originated, according to a new University of Arizona study that challenges decades of scientific assumptions. A study led by Adeene Denton, a NASA postdoctoral fellow who conducted the research at the U of A Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, has revealed this unexpected "kiss and capture" mechanism, which could help scientists better ...

Introducing Annotatability—a powerful new framework to address a major challenge in biological research by examining how artificial neural networks learn to label genomic data. Genomic datasets often contain vast amounts of annotated samples, but many of these samples are annotated either incorrectly or ambiguously. Borrowing from recent advances in the fields of natural language processing and computer vision, the team used artificial neural networks (ANNs) in a non-conventional way: instead of merely using the ANNs to make predictions, the group inspected the difficulty with which they learned to label ...

Tropical forests, often referred to as the "lungs of the Earth," are essential for sustaining life on our planet. They provide clean air, water, and unparalleled biodiversity. While deforestation due to slash-and-burn agriculture, mining, and logging remains the most recognized threat, less visible but equally dangerous forces are at work. A new study reveals that nutrient enrichment – driven by human activities such as agriculture and fossil fuel combustion – poses a significant risk to the delicate dynamics of tropical forests. The research, conducted by an international team of scientists ...

Landfill gas, a mixture of gases produced when garbage breaks down within landfills, contains unwanted traces of siloxane compounds, which are chemical structures containing silicon and oxygen bonds and are found in various products like cosmetics and cleaning agents. These compounds can damage the equipment used to generate energy from landfill gas. In new research published in Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy, investigators have identified low-cost adsorbents for siloxane removal from landfill gas. The research highlights the potential of ...

Weill Cornell Medicine has received a five-year, $2.3 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to improve equitable access to care, quality of life and survival outcomes for young people with all stages of breast cancer. The grant will enable Weill Cornell Medicine to enhance care coordination for patients and caregivers to optimize support of physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual needs, while offering culturally relevant resources and targeted interventions. The initiative ...

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- Have you ever noticed a swath of similar business news stories about a particular topic during a Google search, all of them appearing to be reported by different news outlets? Why might a story on a news site in New York be so similar to one from a site in, for example, Wisconsin? It’s likely because the same media company owns them — and it’s become more commonplace nationwide as news outlets grapple with dwindling resources. A new study co-authored by Flora Sun, assistant professor of accounting at Binghamton University’s School of Management, ...

Imagine you’re at a dinner party, but you can’t smell the food cooking or hear the dinner bell. Sounds like a dream, right? What if it wasn’t? “When we experience the world and interact with people, we use all our senses,” Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Stephen Shea says. “That’s true for animals and humans.” However, that’s not always the case in developmental disorders like autism. These conditions can affect how the brain processes incoming information, making it difficult to interpret the social cues that drive conversations, dates, and other ...

2024 was another year of record-breaking temperatures, driving the global water cycle to new climate extremes and contributing to ferocious floods and crippling droughts, a new report led by The Australian National University (ANU) shows.  The 2024 Global Water Monitor Report, involving an international team of researchers and led by ANU Professor Albert van Dijk, found rising temperatures are changing the way water moves around the planet, “wreaking havoc” on the water cycle.  “Rising ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study used acoustic sensors that detect the sound of gunfire to show how often children in one Chicago neighborhood are exposed to gunshots while walking to and from school.   Results showed that nearly two-thirds of schools in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago had at least one gun incident within 400 meters (about one-quarter mile) of where children were walking home during the 2021-22 school year.   These findings suggest a need to redefine federal definitions of school gun violence to include indirect forms of violence that take place near schools, not only on school grounds, in order to more appropriately ...

Since the 1950s, scientists have used radio waves to uncover the molecular “fingerprints” of unknown materials, aiding in tasks as varied as scanning the human body with MRI machines and detecting explosives at airports. These methods, however, rely on signals averaged from trillions of atoms, making it impossible to detect tiny variations between individual molecules. Such limitations hinder applications in fields like protein research, where small differences in shape control functionality and can determine the difference between health and disease. Sub-Atomic Insights Now, engineers at the University of Pennsylvania ...

In recent years treatment with powerful biologic and targeted synthetic therapies has changed the landscape for arthritis, but currently finding the right treatment for each person is a matter of trial and error. Only a proportion of patients with inflammatory arthritis respond to each expensive therapy, which results in unnecessary treatment and a long and often frustrating journey for patients, not to mention significant cost to the NHS. University of Birmingham researchers have just been awarded £3.5 million funding from Johnson & Johnson to investigate ...

By Rachel Tompa, Ph.D Your blood is a delicate mixture. Researchers and clinicians often use blood to learn what’s going on inside our bodies, in part because siphoning off a tube of blood is easier and less painful than taking biopsies of an internal organ.  But in some cases, it turns out that blood can be very different outside our bodies. When it comes to certain emerging research techniques, the clock starts ticking as soon as your blood hits the tube. As little as six to eight hours later, some aspects of your blood’s ...

VANCOUVER, Wash. – Some of the most productive apple regions in America are facing big challenges from a changing climate, according to a Washington State University study. Researchers analyzed over 40 years of climate conditions that impact the growth cycle of apple trees from bud break and flowering through fruit development, maturation and color development. While many growing areas are facing increased climate risks, the top three largest apple producing counties in the U.S. were among the most impacted: Yakima in Washington, Kent in Michigan and Wayne ...

An up-close look at how patients respond to the drug at different times and doses adds nuance to a recent finding that Paxlovid does not work for long Covid.   An extended course of Paxlovid appears to help some patients with long Covid, according to a case series by UC San Francisco researchers that suggests this treatment option holds promise for some of those struggling with debilitating symptoms.  These results are at odds with recent research that has failed to show the antiviral can alleviate persistent symptoms of the disease. The authors said more study is needed to find out which patients may benefit from the drug and how long it should be given. The ...

From photographs of decimated buildings to military and civilian casualty counts to narratives of suffering, news media bring information about foreign conflicts to American audiences. But does this coverage actually affect public opinion about whether and how the United States should be involved in a conflict? Does it influence what Americans think about the U.S. providing military, diplomatic, and economic aid to foreign nations? A new paper from researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania examines these questions and finds that media coverage of civilian casualties increases public support for U.S. involvement in conflicts by evoking empathy ...