by From Mayo Clinic News Network Credit: CC0 Public Domain Do vaccines cause autism? Is it OK to skip certain vaccines? Get the facts on these and other common questions. Childhood vaccines protect children from a variety of serious or potentially fatal diseases, including diphtheria, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, tetanus, whooping cough (pertussis) and others. If these diseases...
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Study finds increased risk of cancer death following treatment for hyperthyroidism
by National Cancer Institute Findings from a study of patients who received radioactive iodine (RAI) treatment for hyperthyroidism show an association between the dose of treatment and long-term risk of death from solid cancers, including breast cancer. The study, led by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, was published July...
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Blood-flow-restricted training: A new way to boost muscle performance
by Danny Christiansen, The Conversation Strapping a band tightly around your limbs to reduce blood flow while training may seem like an odd way to boost athletic performance, but our latest study suggests that it does just that. In our study, we show that if you do interval cycling with reduced blood flow by strapping nylon...
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The activity of disease allele-selective zinc finger proteins in preclinical models of Huntington’s disease
by Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc. Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc., a genomic medicine company, today announced the publication of a manuscript describing the activity of allele-selective zinc finger protein transcription-factors (ZFP-TFs) in preclinical models of Huntington’s disease (HD). The data were published online on July 1 and will appear in the July 2019 issue of Nature Medicine. The...
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Relieving two headaches with one process
by Jill Sakai, University of Wisconsin-Madison With a new method to synthesize a popular pain-relieving medication from plants rather than fossil fuels, researchers at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center have found a way to relieve two headaches at once. A team led by John Ralph, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has been awarded a patent...
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B cells off the rails early in lupus
by Quinn Eastman, Emory University New research on the autoimmune disease systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) provides hints to the origins of the puzzling disorder. The results were published Monday in Nature Immunology. In people with SLE, their B cells—part of the immune system—are abnormally activated. That makes them produce antibodies that react against their own tissues, causing a variety of symptoms,...
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UH researcher reports the way sickle cells form may be key to stopping them
Process could be similar to how first living cells formed; applications to industry possible UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON University of Houston associate professor of chemistry, Vassiliy Lubchenko, is reporting a new finding in Nature Communications on how sickle cells are formed. Lubchenko reports that droplets of liquid, enriched in hemoglobin, form clusters inside some red blood cells when two hemoglobin molecules form a bond – but only briefly, for one thousandth...
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Promising approach: Prevent diabetes with intermittent fasting
DEUTSCHES ZENTRUM FUER DIABETESFORSCHUNG DZD Intermittent fasting is known to improve sensitivity to the blood glucose-lowering hormone insulin and to protect against fatty liver. DZD scientists from DIfE have now discovered that mice on an intermittent fasting regimen also exhibited lower pancreatic fat. In their current study published in the journal Metabolism, the researchers showed the mechanism by which pancreatic fat...
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Using a common anticonvulsant to counteract inflammation
by Tokyo University of Science Serious conditions, including sepsis, stem from inflammation in the body, and there is a lack of effective medication for sepsis. A chromosomal protein called high-mobility group box 1 (HMGB1), secreted by immune and dying cells, binds to a specific cellular receptor—receptor for advanced glycation end-products (RAGE)—and triggers the process of inflammation in the body. Through...
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Metformin may cut mortality risk in post-pancreatitis diabetes
Jaelim Cho, M.D., M.P.H., from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and colleagues used nationwide pharmaceutical dispensing data (from 2006 to 2015) linked to hospital discharge data to identify 1,862 individuals with PCRD or PPDM. The researchers found that in individuals with PCRD, ever users of metformin (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 0.54) and ever users of insulin (aHR,...