Culture
A new collaborative study from researchers at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and the University of Washington (UW) and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), reveals unexpected insights into how skin exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light can worsen clinical symptoms in autoimmune diseases such as lupus.
Lupus, an autoimmune disease that can cause inflammation of the joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, brain, heart and lungs, is caused when the immune system attacks its own tissue.
Doctors may be able to predict their patients' risks of fatal coronary heart disease more accurately by taking into account the number of adverse social factors affecting them, according to a new study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian.
Friends are more than just trusted confidantes, say Michigan State University researchers who have examined the cultural and health benefits of close human relationships in a new study.
"Friendships are one of the untapped resources people can draw on to pursue a happier and healthier life. They literally cost nothing and have health and well-being benefits," said William Chopik, an assistant professor of psychology at MSU and the study's senior author.
The year 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of a fundamental discovery that's taught in every biochemistry textbook. In 1921, German physician Otto Warburg observed that cancer cells harvest energy from glucose sugar in a strangely inefficient manner: rather than "burn" it using oxygen, cancer cells do what yeast do -- they ferment it. This oxygen-independent process occurs quickly, but leaves much of the energy in glucose untapped.
A new study exploring the impact of repeated sleep loss during a simulated working week has found that consuming caffeinated coffee during the day helps to minimize reductions in attention and cognitive function, compared to decaffeinated coffee1.
In the first systematic large-scale evaluation of the UK National Early Warning Risk Score (NEWS) 2 as a scoring system for predicting severe COVID-19 outcomes in patients, researchers at King's College London have found poor-to-moderate accuracy for identifying patients at risk of being transferred to intensive care units (ICUs) or dying after 14 days of hospitalisation. Accuracy of predictions in short term (three days) showed moderate success.
Just over 200,000 Americans suffer from systemic lupus erythematosus, or SLE, a condition in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks its own healthy tissues, especially joints and skin, a new study shows.
New research has shown that people are more likely to follow Covid-19 restrictions based on what their friends do, rather than their own principles.
Pharmacists play an important role in managing medication-based therapies for older community-dwelling patients, according to a study published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.
Pathogenic bacteria in humans are developing resistance to antibiotics much faster than expected. Now, computational research at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, shows that one reason could be significant genetic transfer between bacteria in our ecosystems and to humans. This work has also led to new tools for resistance researchers.
According to the World Health Organisation, antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest threats to global health, food safety and development. It already causes over 33,000 deaths a year in Europe alone.
In the Early Bronze Age of Europe, ancient people used bronze objects as an early form of money, even going so far as to standardize the shape and weight of their currency, according to a study published January 20, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Maikel H. G. Kuijpers and C?t?lin N. Popa of Leiden University, Netherlands.
The onset date of the yearly rainy season reliably predicts if seasonal drought will occur in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa that are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity, and could help to mitigate its effects. Shraddhanand Shukla and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara's Climate Hazards Center, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on January 20, 2021.
Fixed dose combinations of antibiotics are consumed in huge quantities globally, but 80 percent of combinations are not on the WHO Essential Medicines List, and 92 percent are not FDA-approved, - with inappropriate combinations risking inefficacy, toxicity, and selection for antimicrobial resistance
Attine ants are farmers, and they grow fungus as food. Pseudonocardia and Streptomyces bacteria are their farmhands, producing metabolites that protect the crop from pathogens. Surprisingly, these metabolites lack common structural features across bacteria from different geographic locations, even though the ants share a common ancestor. Now, researchers report in ACS Central Science they have identified the first shared antifungal compound among many of these bacteria across Brazil. The compound could someday have medical applications.
Boston, Mass. -- Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the most common form of cancer of the kidney. In 2018, there were an estimated 403,000 new cases of RCC and 175,000 deaths due to kidney cancer worldwide. Currently, the 5-year survival rate for patients with metastatic RCC is only about 12 percent. Current treatments include inhibitors of the VEGF and PD-1 pathways. However, resistance to therapy occurs in most patients and new combination treatments are still needed to enhance the efficacy of these current approaches.