BRIGHAM AND WOMEN’S HOSPITAL Many public health initiatives today are focused on protecting vulnerable populations against the novel coronavirus and recommend that pregnant women routinely receive mRNA vaccines to prevent maternal and fetal morbidity as well as mortality. To gather more data on vaccine safety and any effects on the fetus, researchers at the Brigham...
Month: <span>May 2022</span>
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New nutrient profiling tools confirm starchy vegetables deliver comparable nutritional value as non-starchy vegetables and whole fruit
THE ALLIANCE FOR POTATO RESEARCH AND EDUCATION (APRE) A new study recently published in Frontiers in Nutrition has challenged the tendency in nutrition research to separate starchy vegetables from their non-starchy counterparts and categorize them with foods delivering lower nutritional value. Whole grains, legumes, non-starchy vegetables, and fresh fruit are typically considered to be higher...
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Killing cancers with Z-DNA: A new approach to treating therapy resistant tumors that targets a very-specific cell-death pathway
INSIDEOUTBIO IMAGE: A SMALL MOLECULE INDUCES Z-DNA FORMATION IN TUMORS TO ACTIVATE AN INFLAMMATORY CELL-DEATH PATHWAY THAT IS EXPRESSED IN THE CELLS SUPPORTING GROWTH OF THE CANCER CELL. THE RESULTING IMMUNE RESPONSE IS SPECIFIC FOR THE MUTANT PROTEINS EXPRESSED BY CANCER CELLS. TUMOR KILLING IS FURTHER ENHANCED BY INFUSING AN ANTI-PD-1 ANTIBODY THAT NEUTRALIZES THE...
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Scientists identify how the brain links memories
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – LOS ANGELES HEALTH SCIENCES Our brains rarely record single memories—instead, they store memories into groups so that the recollection of one significant memory triggers the recall of others connected by time. As we age, however, our brains gradually lose this ability to link related memories. Now UCLA researchers have discovered...
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Genetic roots of 3 mitochondrial diseases ID’d via new approach
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE When something goes wrong in mitochondria, the tiny organelles that power cells, it can cause a bewildering variety of symptoms such as poor growth, fatigue and weakness, seizures, developmental and cognitive disabilities, and vision problems. The culprit could be a defect in any of the 1,300 or so proteins that...
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Study reveals cause, potential precision therapies for aggressive type of lymphoma
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE DNA mutations are essential to the rapid development of an array of antibody-producing immune cells called B cells that collectively can recognize a vast number of specific targets. But this process can go awry in people with a mutation in a gene called SETD2, leading to a type of aggressive blood cancer,...
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World-first discovery of cornea T cells protecting eyes from viral infections
by The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity Immune cells (T cells, green) can be see entering the cornea of the eye, towards the Herpes Simplex virus infected cells (light blue). The eye is rich in nerves (purple). Credit: Doherty Institute The cornea—the transparent protective outer layer of the eye critical to helping us...
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Social dissatisfaction predicts vulnerability to financial exploitation in older adults
by Keck School of Medicine of USC Duke Han, PhD, director of neuropsychology in the Department of Family Medicine, Keck School of Medicine of USC. Credit: Ricardo Carrasco III Researchers who study elder abuse have long believed that when older adults face loneliness or relationship problems, they are more likely to fall victim to monetary...
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Blood biomarker predicts complicated Crohn’s disease years before diagnosis: Study
by Jim Oldfield, University of Toronto Illustration of bacteria in the human gut. Credit: Darryl Leja, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health An international team led by a University of Toronto researcher has found that an antibody detectable in blood predicts severe Crohn’s disease and is detectable up to seven years prior...
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Medicare program spent $1.8 billion in 2019 on drugs without confirmed clinical benefits
by Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain The U.S. federal government spent an estimated $1.8 billion in Medicare funds in 2019 on drugs whose clinical benefits have yet to be confirmed by the Food and Drug Administration, a new study led by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School...