For years, research to pin down the underlying cause of Alzheimer’s disease has been focused on plaque found to be building up in the brain in AD patients. But treatments targeted at breaking down that buildup have been ineffective in…
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Disrupted biochemical pathway in the brain linked to bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder affects millions of Americans, causing dramatic swings in mood and, in some people, additional effects such as memory problems. While bipolar disorder is linked to many genes, each one making small contributions to the disease, scientists don’t know…
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Drug could be a ‘game-changer’ in fighting esophageal cancers
Patients who have surgery for esophageal cancer commonly see the disease return, but a drug that boosts the immune system may help delay or prevent that, a new trial has found. The drug, called Opdivo (nivolumab), doubled the amount of…
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Improving equity in the physics of medical devices
Achuta Kadambi, an assistant professor at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, published a column in the journal Science about how medical devices can be fundamentally biased—not just in dataset representation as has been widely reported, but from a deeper…
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A single injection reverses blindness in patient with rare genetic disorder
A Penn Medicine patient with a genetic form of childhood blindness gained vision, which lasted more than a year, after receiving a single injection of an experimental RNA therapy into the eye. The clinical trial was conducted by researchers at…
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How the gut microbiota develops in the first five years of life
The human gut microbiota largely reaches an adult-like composition by five years of age, but important differences remain, finds a study published on March 31st in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. Several bacterial taxa that have been associated with…
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Researchers prove structural and functional plasticity in human synapses
Neuroscientists agree that a person’s brain is constantly changing, rewiring itself and adapting to environmental stimuli. This is how humans learn new things and create memories. This adaptability and malleability is called plasticity. “Physicians have long suspected that remodeling processes…
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Big investments in vaccine capacity can help governments save lives and boost economies
Wherever they are available, COVID-19 vaccines are saving lives, lowering infection rates, and enabling economies to start recovering from the pandemic’s debilitating effects. But on a global level, there are not enough vaccine courses to go around as demand outstrips…
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Scientists identify new biomarkers in patients with malignant melanoma, which could help in its diagnosis and prognosis
A team of researchers has studied the molecular profile of small “messenger” vesicles called exosomes, produced by cancer stem cells (CSCs), which play a key role in the process of carcinogenesis and metastasis in the blood of patients with malignant…
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COVID vaccine found highly effective in real-world US study
The U.S government’s first look at the real-world use of COVID-19 vaccines found their effectiveness was nearly as robust as it was in controlled studies. The two vaccines available since December—Pfizer and Moderna—were 90% effective after two doses, the Centers…
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