Health

In a recent study of U.S. adults, walking was—by far—the most popular leisure-time physical activity, while rural residents also enjoyed gardening, hunting and fishing, and urban residents more commonly reported running, weightlifting and dancing. Urban residents were more likely than rural residents to meet physical activity guidelines. Christiaan Abildso of West Virginia University, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in PLOS One.

A research team at Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin has developed a test that can determine a person's chronotype based on their hair roots. It is intended to lay the foundation for circadian medicine—that is, medicine that is more closely aligned with the human body's internal clock. Applied to approximately 4,000 people, the new method also reveals that women and men differ slightly in their biological rhythms, and that lifestyle has a greater influence than previously assumed. The results have now been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A research team from the Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology, School of Clinical Medicine, LKS Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed), has developed a titanium implant surface that can be activated by near-infrared (NIR). With just 15 minutes of NIR irradiation, this surface can eliminate 99.94% of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) biofilms without the use of antibiotics, while simultaneously promoting bone-implant fusion.

Psychiatric disorders, such as bipolar disorder (BD), major depressive disorder (MDD), schizophrenia and anxiety disorders, adversely affect the daily functioning and well-being of millions of people worldwide. Understanding the neural and genetic underpinnings of these disorders can help medical and psychiatry researchers to devise more effective methods to predict the risk that they will emerge, as well as diagnosing and treating them.

Obesity is known to be a major risk factor that exacerbates metabolic disorders, such as type 2 diabetes. A key molecule involved in this process is endotrophin, a signaling protein that links excess fat accumulation to metabolic decline. Recent research from UNIST has identified a natural compound capable of directly inhibiting endotrophin production, paving the way for innovative therapeutic interventions.

For the first time, people who want to stop using crystal methamphetamine may be able to treat their addiction with a cheap and readily available medication, say researchers at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Center (NDARC), UNSW Sydney. Results from the landmark Tina Trial, published in JAMA Psychiatry, show that adults who took mirtazapine—a generic antidepressant—were significantly more likely to reduce their methamphetamine use compared to those given placebo.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have identified a novel, highly potent opioid that shows potential as a therapy for both pain and opioid use disorder. In a study published in Nature, the team observed the new drug's effect in laboratory animals. They showed that it has high pain-relieving effects without causing respiratory depression, tolerance or other indicators of potential for addiction in humans.

The American Society of Hematology (ASH) released guidelines on the diagnosis and management of severe acquired aplastic anemia, a rare and life-threatening bone marrow failure disorder. The guidelines, developed by a multidisciplinary expert panel including a patient with lived experience, outline evidence-based best practices to improve outcomes for individuals living with the disorder. They were published in Blood Advances.

Signaling is fundamental to how cells sense and respond to their environment—but in immune cells, those signals must be precisely amplified to mount an effective defense against invasive threats. New research by immunologists in Germany is shedding light on how that amplification occurs in T cells, revealing a key molecular mechanism that helps trigger immune responses—and may also contribute to inflammatory conditions.

A new study, published in Nature Health, reveals a strong link between exposure to agricultural pesticides in the environment and the risk of developing cancer. By combining environmental data, a nationwide cancer registry, and biological analyses, researchers from the IRD, the Institut Pasteur, the University of Toulouse, and the National Institute of Neoplastic Diseases (INEN) in Peru have shed new light on the role of pesticide exposure in the development of certain cancers.

Researchers in the UC Davis Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine have created a new tuberculosis blood test that can detect the active, infectious form of the disease. The discovery enables faster diagnosis and treatment. It also helps prevent the spread of tuberculosis (TB) by quickly identifying those who are contagious.

In what is believed to be the first randomized placebo-controlled trial of its kind, patients with a chronic total blockage of a coronary artery who received a nonsurgical procedure to reopen the artery showed statistically significant reductions in chest pain and improvements in quality of life compared with patients who received a placebo procedure. The research was presented at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session (ACC.26). The study was simultaneously published online in the JACC.

A research team from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, its Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has discovered how the immune system's CD8+ T cells use the nutrient cysteine to control two essential functions that compete for this resource—the immune cell's ability to multiply and its ability to kill cancer cells.

Stressful situations experienced during adolescence tend to cause deeper and more lasting changes to the brain than those experienced in adulthood. A study conducted on mice at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil has identified one of the neurological mechanisms behind this difference, shedding new light on the origins of psychiatric disorders such as depression and schizophrenia.

A new research study provides real-world evidence that deprescribing glucose-lowering medications is both feasible and safe when patients with type 2 diabetes receive lifestyle-informed care in primary care settings. The retrospective chart review, published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, examined electronic health records from 650 adults with type 2 diabetes receiving care at two primary care practices that integrate lifestyle medicine principles into routine visits. Using a structured deprescribing framework, researchers identified 41 confirmed cases—approximately 6.3% of patients—in which diabetes medications were safely reduced or discontinued following documented improvements in weight and blood glucose.