Health

A technological platform developed by Brazilian researchers could revolutionize the treatment of skin diseases such as psoriasis and vitiligo. The group, affiliated with the NanoGeneSkin laboratory at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Ribeirão Preto, is developing nanoparticles capable of delivering therapeutic RNA molecules directly to skin cells. These nanoparticles can precisely silence the genes responsible for chronic inflammation at the molecular level.

University of Maine researchers have published new findings about how muscles form, why certain muscle diseases develop and why symptoms may not appear until years after muscle degeneration begins.

New research tracks how cells prepare gene regulatory decisions that will define their fate during the earliest stages of human development. The study reconstructs a timeline of chromosome folding that brings remote DNA regulatory regions into physical contact with genes they control. This work, from a team at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences (LMS) and Imperial College London, with collaborators from the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, shows that some of these contacts form long before genes are activated, persist through later development and may help preselect the future gene targets of these regions. These findings highlight how the genome's 3D structure helps shape cell identity and could offer clues to how developmental disorders arise.

An international research team, led by Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU), the Institute for Lung Health (ILH) in Giessen, and the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim, has identified a promising mechanism for combating lung cancer. The researchers discovered that a specific endogenous metabolic process can induce the immune system to directly attack tumor cells and stop their growth. This opens new avenues for targeted therapies. The results have been published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Researchers in the lab of Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) member Xing Wang have discovered the influential role of structural chirality, or "handedness," of a DNA nanostructure to dictate cancer cell response to targeted therapeutics. The team's findings are reported in Advanced Materials.

Brain activity related to how young adults value reward appears to be linked to longer-term drinking patterns, according to a study of college students with family histories of alcohol use disorder (AUD). The findings raise the possibility of precision medicine—individualized interventions to modify risk—for young people vulnerable to addiction. A family history of AUD increases the risk of alcohol-related problems, including AUD, threefold or fourfold.

Cancer survivors significantly improved their strength and immune health after completing a 10-week resistance training program as part of a pilot study led by Shernan Holtan, MD, Chief of Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. Published in the journal Cancers, the study results suggest that this type of exercise has the potential to overcome some of the effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, which can cause rapid aging of both the immune and musculoskeletal systems.

Resistance to antimicrobial agents is rising among human infections with Escherichia coli bacteria that produce the Shiga toxin, according to a study analyzing data from nearly 2,000 infections in the United States between 2010 and 2021.

An 8-month-old infant with severe genetic epilepsy has become the first patient in the world to receive an experimental gene replacement therapy designed to restore the function of the WWOX gene directly in the brain. The treatment, administered at Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel, represents a significant milestone in the development of precision genetic therapies for rare neurological disorders.

A pilot study published today in Communications Medicine demonstrates the potential of a new approach to treating anorexia nervosa, a disorder for which effective treatments have been significantly limited. The research from UC San Diego School of Medicine reports that a ketogenic nutritional intervention—a high-fat, low-carbohydrate, moderate-protein diet—was feasible and safe for patients with weight-normalized and mildly underweight anorexia nervosa.

A new study has uncovered how antidepressants affect different groups of serotonin-producing brain cells in opposite ways, offering new insights into why selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can cause unpleasant side effects at the start of treatment but lead to symptom relief over time.

The number of patients living with neurodegenerative diseases that affect movement is rising steadily. Yet a large-scale study from the Paris Brain Institute and the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm shows that this is not an emerging health crisis: The trend conceals very different realities, with direct implications for public health policy and research. The findings are published in the journal Neurology.

By inducing specific patterns of activity in small portions of the brain in awake mice, researchers have triggered a recalibration of neural connections that normally only occurs during sleep. This new approach offset the effects of sleep deprivation on memory tasks and revealed features of sleep that are key to its restorative effect.

In a remote South African village, Paulina Mhlongo sits in the yard as health workers in green protective gear move briskly through her home, soaking the walls with anti-mosquito insecticide.

Black women experience disproportionately elevated risks of developing and dying from early-onset breast cancer. New research published in the journal Cancer reveals the genes that are most likely to be mutated to contribute to these increased risks.