by University of North Carolina Health Care Credit: University of North Carolina Health Care Understanding of how neuronal activity modulates brain function is a key first step towards creating more effective drugs to treat a variety of neuropsychiatric illnesses, including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, substance abuse, epilepsy, and others. To both manipulate and understand this basic...
by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Image of a retina. Credit: Akrit Sodhi and Johns Hopkins Medicine A pilot, “look-back” study of information about 106 patients with “wet” age-related macular degeneration (AMD) treated at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Medicine has revealed that nearly half of patients treated with aflibercept could safely...
by University of Washington This composite image shows three ganglion cells dyed red, pink and green. Credit: Levi Todd While fish, reptiles and even some birds can regenerate damaged brain, eye and spinal cord cells, mammals cannot. For the first time, non-neuronal cells have been induced to mimic specific ganglion cells in the eyes of...
Michelle Andrews October 28, 2022 When Katie Couric shared the news of her breast cancer diagnosis, the former co-host of NBC’s “Today” show said she considered this new health challenge to be a teachable moment to encourage people to get needed cancer screenings. “Please get your annual mammogram,” she wrote on her website in September. “But just as importantly,...
MICHIGAN MEDICINE – UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Systemic sclerosis — or scleroderma that affects the skin and internal organs -, is one of the rarest autoimmune diseases, affecting roughly 100,000 people (primarily women) in the United States., However, systemic sclerosis is devastating—it has the highest mortality rate among rheumatic diseases, according to Dinesh Khanna M.B.B.S., M.Sc.,...
VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY IMAGE: AZEDDINE ATFI, PH.D. CREDIT: VCU MASSEY CANCER CENTER New research out of VCU Massey Cancer Center points to the inactivation of a previously unidentified gene as a likely culprit in the development of pancreatic cancer. Recently published in Cell Reports, the findings could alter the scientific understanding of this deadly disease and inform the...
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA HEALTH CARE IMAGE: TANDEM REPEAT CREDIT: JIN SZATKIEWICZ LAB, UNC SCHOOL OF MEDICINE CHAPEL HILL, NC – In our cells, the language of DNA is written, making each of us unique. A tandem repeat occurs in DNA when a pattern of one or more nucleotides – the basic structural unit of...
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MIT neuroscientists have discovered that the adult brain contains millions of “silent synapses” — immature connections between neurons that remain inactive until they’re recruited to help form new memories. Until now, it was believed that silent synapses were present only during early development, when they help the brain learn the new...
