Body

BOSTON - Major infections such as influenza and bacterial sepsis kill millions of people each year, often resulting fro dangerous complications that impair the body's blood vessels. But the reasons why some patients experience these dramatic responses to infections -- and others don't -- have been unclear.

Heart attack patients who experience cardiogenic shock have a higher risk of death or rehospitalization than non-shock patients in the first 60 days post-discharge, but by the end of the first year, the gap between the two groups narrows, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Cardiogenic shock is low blood pressure that lasts for more than 30 minutes, often requiring the use of mechanical devices to sustain it at a safe level. The condition results in inadequate circulation of blood throughout the body.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Researchers today announced in the journal Nature Plants the discovery of the first-ever fossil specimens of an "asterid" - a family of flowering plants that gave us everything from the potato to tomatoes, tobacco, petunias and our morning cup of coffee.

But these two 20-30 million-year-old fossil flowers, found perfectly preserved in a piece of amber, came from the dark side of the asterid family - they belong to the genus Strychnos, which ultimately gave rise to some of the world's most famous poisons, including strychnine and curare.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Feb. 15, 2016 - Using a sophisticated, custom-designed 3D printer, regenerative medicine scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have proved that it is feasible to print living tissue structures to replace injured or diseased tissue in patients.

A Rutgers scientist has identified a flower trapped in ancient amber as belonging to a species completely new to science.

Lena Struwe, professor of botany in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, has discovered that two flowers found encased amber for at least 15 million years belong to none of the known 200 species of the genus Strychnos. Therefore, they represent a newly discovered species, Strychnos electri. Struwe coined the species name in honor of its amber origin, since elektron is the Greek word for amber.

A relatively newly discovered group of immune cells known as ILCs have been examined in detail in a new study published in the journal Nature Immunology. By analysing the gene expression in individual tonsil cells, scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found three previously unknown subgroups of ILCs, and revealed more about how these cells function in the human body.

Being a caregiver for an older adult isn't easy. A new study suggests that family and unpaid caregivers who provide substantial help with health care were more likely to miss out on valued activities, have a loss of work productivity and experience emotional, physical and financial difficulties, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.

Eating fish more than three times a week during pregnancy was associated with mothers giving birth to babies at increased risk of rapid growth in infancy and of childhood obesity, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.

A critical discovery about how bacteria feed on an unusual sugar molecule found in leafy green vegetables could hold the key to explaining how 'good' bacteria protect our gut and promote health.

The finding suggests that leafy greens are essential for feeding good gut bacteria, limiting the ability of bad bacteria to colonise the gut by shutting them out of the prime 'real estate'.

They live several kilometers under the surface of the earth, need no light or oxygen and can only be seen in a microscope. By sequencing genomes of a newly discovered group of microbes, the Hadesarchaea, an international team of researchers have found out how these microorganisms make a living in the deep subsurface biosphere of our planet.

An international research team has determined how inherited gene variations lead to severe drug toxicity that may threaten chances for a cure in children with leukemia. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists led the study, results of which set the stage to expand the use of a patient's genetic make-up to tailor chemotherapy.

DURHAM, N.H. -- The quality of colostrum -- the nutrient-rich milk newborn dairy calves first drink from their mothers - can be predicted by the mother's previous lactation performance and weather, according to new research from the NH Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of New Hampshire.

The search for new medicines is becoming unsustainably expensive despite huge technological advances because researchers are using the wrong methods, experts say.

They say drug discovery should focus on 'validity' - how well the results of experiments predict results in sick people. Instead, it has focused on methods that are easy to industrialize or methods that are academically fashionable.

Placental mammals consist of three main groups that diverged rapidly, evolving in wildly different directions: Afrotheria (for example, elephants and tenrecs), Xenarthra (such as armadillos and sloths) and Boreoeutheria (all other placental mammals). The relationships between them have been a subject of fierce controversy with multiple studies coming to incompatible conclusions over the last decade leading some researchers to suggest that these relationships might be impossible to resolve.

While working to improve a tool that measures the pushes and pulls sensed by proteins in living cells, biophysicists at Johns Hopkins say they've discovered one reason spiders' silk is so elastic: Pieces of the silk's protein threads act like supersprings, stretching to five times their initial length. The investigators say the tool will shed light on many biological events, including the shifting forces between cells during cancer metastasis.