A number of competitors at the Rio Olympics have reported stomach problems. Team GB officials have denied that athletes have fallen victim to food poisoning at the Olympic athletes' village in Rio, despite a number complaining of upset stomachs. Professor Raymond Playford, a Professor of Medicine at Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, suggests that the culprit may, in some cases, be 'leaky gut' syndrome.
Body
An improved therapy to replace essential steroids in the body is a step closer thanks to new research.
The new treatment - expected to have fewer side effects than existing therapies - could help people with disorders of the adrenal gland whose bodies are unable to produce a class of steroids called corticosteroids.
Corticosteroids are involved in a wide range of physiological processes in the body, including regulating metabolism, blood pressure and helping the body to cope with physical stress.
WASHINGTON, DC - August 17, 2016 - The multidrug-resistant yeast Candida auris, which has caused fatal infections in some hospitalized patients, has at least two different growth patterns and some of its strains are as capable of causing disease as the most invasive type of yeast called Candida albicans, according to a study published this week in mSphere, an open access journal from the American Society for Microbiology.
People who gained health coverage following the implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act's coverage expansion sharply increased their use of prescription drugs, while their out-of-pocket spending for medications dropped significantly, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
One of the great transformations required for the descendants of fish to become creatures that could walk on land was the replacement of long, elegant fin rays by fingers and toes. In the Aug. 17, 2016 issue of Nature, scientists from the University of Chicago show that the same cells that make fin rays in fish play a central role in forming the fingers and toes of four-legged creatures.
Investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine and their collaborators at three other institutions have identified a novel compound that appears to exhibit painkilling power comparable to morphine but lacks that drug's most lethal property: respiratory suppression, which results in some 30,000 drug overdose deaths annually in the United States.
An analysis of about 1,300 peer-reviewed research articles found that few studies included men and women equally, less than one-third performed data analysis by sex, and there was wide variation in inclusion and matching of the sexes among the specialties and the journals reviewed, according to a study published online by JAMA Surgery.
Among patients with intermittent claudication, those who had revascularization had significantly improved walking function, better health-related quality of life, and fewer symptoms of claudication at 12 months compared with those who had medical management (walking program, smoking cessation counseling, and medications), according to a study published online by JAMA Surgery.
One year into the National Institutes of Health's Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), the massive project could still benefit from incorporating experimental studies of animal models of human disease, according to Kent Lloyd and colleagues in this Editorial. The PMI hopes to prompt a new era of individualized medicine, where a person's own genetic profile along with personal environmental exposures and behaviors can be used to target therapies more effectively.
The number of microbes in, on, and around the planet - on the order of a nonillion, or 10^30 - is estimated to outnumber the stars in the Milky Way. Microbes are known to play crucial roles in regulating carbon fixation, as well as maintaining global cycles involving nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus and other nutrients, but the majority of them remain uncultured and unknown. The U.S.
In a recent survey designed to measure public attitudes about the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) Cohort Program, a majority of respondents expressed willingness to participate in the nationwide research effort. The findings were published online in PLOS ONE by a team of National Institutes of Health researchers.
With temperatures soaring across the UK, our ability to detect and avoid places that are too warm is vital for regulating our body temperature. However, until now, little was known about the molecular mechanisms responsible for detecting warmth in the sensory neurons of our skin.
A new King's College London study, published today in Nature, reveals that a gene called TRPM2 initiates a 'warm' signal in mice that drives them to seek cooler environments. When this gene is removed, the mice are unable to distinguish between cool and warm temperatures.
Long ago, one great ocean flowed between North and South America. When the narrow Isthmus of Panama joined the continents about 3 million years ago, it also separated the Atlantic from the Pacific Ocean. If this took place millions of years earlier, as recently asserted by some, the implications for both land and sea life would be revolutionary. Aaron O'Dea, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), and colleagues writing in Science Advances firmly set the date at 2.8 million years ago.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Children are less likely to be diagnosed with crossed eyes, a condition known as strabismus, if they live in poor communities, according to an analysis led by researchers at the University of Michigan's Kellogg Eye Center.
It is a cause for concern because strabismus can lead to permanent vision loss if not treated early in life, not to mention the adverse impact on the child's self-image.
Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have discovered a flaw in the armor of the most aggressive form of lung cancer, a weakness that doctors may be able to exploit to slow or even stop the disease. Remarkably, this vulnerability stems from the very aggressiveness that makes the cancer so deadly.