Culture
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (March 30, 2020)--Researchers led by biomedical engineers at Tufts University invented a microfluidic chip containing cardiac cells that is capable of mimicking hypoxic conditions following a heart attack - specifically when an artery is blocked in the heart and then unblocked after treatment.
Patients with worsening heart failure and reduced ejection fraction who received the investigational drug vericiguat had a significantly lower rate of cardiovascular death or heart failure hospitalization compared with those receiving a placebo, based on research presented at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session Together with World Congress of Cardiology (ACC.20/WCC).
(Philadelphia, PA) - Overuse injuries - think muscle strains, tennis elbow, and rotator cuff tears - are a considerable problem in the United States, especially among young athletes. But while commonly associated with sports, overuse injuries - particularly those involving muscle strains - also affect significant numbers of workers whose jobs involve manual labor.
Mount Sinai researchers have discovered a pathway that regulates special immune system cells in lung cancer tumors, suppressing them and allowing tumors to grow. The scientists also figured out how to interrupt this pathway and ramp up the immune system to prevent tumor formation or growth, offering a potential boost to immunotherapy, according to a study published in Nature in March.
Doctors and nurses in emergency departments at four academic centers and four community hospitals in the Northeast reported a wide range of emotions triggered by patients, hospital resources and societal factors, according to a qualitative study led by a University of Massachusetts Amherst social psychologist.
Washington, DC - March 27, 2020 - As we enter the second quarter of the COVID-19 pandemic, with testing for SARS-CoV-2 increasingly available (though still limited and slow in some areas), clinicians and public health officials are faced with new questions and challenges regarding testing for this novel virus. Since SARS-CoV-2 is a new virus, there is little evidence to fall back on for test utilization and diagnostic stewardship.
Women who suffer from psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety, mania and schizophrenia following the live birth of their first child are less likely to go on to have more children, according to the first study to investigate this in a large nationwide population.
Women undergoing radiotherapy for many cancers are more likely than men to be cured, but the side effects are more brutal, according to one of Australia's most experienced radiation oncology medical physicists.
University of South Australia (UniSA) Professor of Medical Radiation, Eva Bezak, says women are generally more sensitive to radiation than men, but this is not considered in international guidelines for radiation dosages.
Current guidelines are generally based on a person's height, weight or BMI, and radiobiological responses of the general population.
WASHINGTON--Patients with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes who underwent a novel, minimally invasive, endoscopic procedure called Revita® duodenal mucosal resurfacing (DMR) had significantly improved blood glucose (sugar) levels, liver insulin sensitivity, and other metabolic measures three months later, according to new data from the REVITA-2 study. These results, from a mixed meal tolerance test, have helped researchers verify the insulin sensitizing mechanism by which hydrothermal ablation of the duodenum improves blood sugar in patients with type 2 diabetes.
West African lions are a critically endangered subpopulation, with an estimated 400 remaining and strong evidence of ongoing declines.
About 90% of these lions live in West Africa's largest protected area complex, the W-Arly-Pendjari. The WAP Complex includes five national parks and 14 hunting concessions across roughly 10,200 square miles in Burkina Faso, Niger and Benin.
Joint diseases, such as knee osteoarthritis, are common in the elderly population and severely impair their quality of life. Conventional treatments like artificial joint replacements offer temporary relief but come with several disadvantages, including limited functionality and the need for replacement. A better solution is to find a way to promote tissue regeneration in joints: interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) hydrogels, when injected into joints, do exactly this--by acting as scaffolds for the growth of new cells and mimicking the cellular environment.
They make sauerkraut sour, turn milk into yogurt and cheese, and give rye bread its intensive flavour: bacteria that ferment nutrients instead of using oxygen to extract their energy. Acetobacterium woodii (short: A. woodii) is one of these anaerobic living microbes. Cheese and bread are not its line of business - it lives far from oxygen in the sediments on the floor of the ocean, and can also be found in sewage treatment plants and the intestines of termites.
In recent years, brown fat has garnered increasing attention as the so-called good fat that can protect against obesity and associated health risks, like cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Brown fat is located in small pockets throughout the body and helps maintain body temperature in cold environments. It gets its color from high amounts of iron-containing mitochondria, unlike the standard white fat linked to obesity.
Nafamostat mesylate (brand name: Fusan), which is the drug used to treat acute pancreatitis, may effectively block the requisite viral entry process the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) uses to spread and cause disease (COVID-19). The University of Tokyo announced these new findings on March 18, 2020.
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have shown that zebrafish can provide genetic clues to smoking, a complex human behaviour.
By studying genetically-altered zebrafish they were able to pinpoint a human gene, Slit3, involved in nicotine addiction and also discover the ways in which it may act.
While zebrafish have been used extensively in genetic research, they've been used only in developmental models, such as identifying genes associated with disease, rather than to predict genes involved in a complex cognitive behaviour such as smoking.