All posts by : Felistas

Better sleep, less stress, stronger immune system—are these the results of a better diet? Exercise? It’s just “good sex.”

The human gut is home to trillions of bacteria that play vital roles in digestion, immunity, and overall health. When this microbial balance is disturbed, it can contribute to the development of chronic diseases like ulcerative colitis (UC), an inflammatory condition of the large intestine. For some patients, current treatments offer limited relief or carry significant risks, including immune suppression. Researchers are now exploring alternative ways to restore gut health, focusing on the microbiome’s ability to heal the intestinal lining.

With one of the largest tuberculosis (TB) outbreaks in US history, Kansas has more to worry about than its recent Super Bowl defeat. During the past year, 67 people with TB have been detected. This comes on the back of increasing rates of TB in the US year on year since the start of the COVID pandemic.

The comedian Shappi Khorsandi once commented that she used the mythical concept of “sugar worms” to get her children to brush their teeth after sweets. It’s a trick I poached to convince my daughter to do the same. She’s since grown wise to this, but now luckily manages to navigate her way around a toothbrush twice a day without resistance.

Despite its increasing prevalence, a painful condition called bladder pain syndrome, or interstitial cystitis, remains understudied with limited treatment options.

Many psychiatric disorders are linked to altered functioning of brain networks that drive reward processing and executive functions like making decisions, taking risks, planning, and memory. But a better understanding of how these networks typically develop to support reward-related executive functions is needed.

With the growing complexity of oncologic surgery, the decision-making process has become increasingly challenging. It demands not only advanced technical expertise but also meticulous patient selection to ensure that surgical interventions provide meaningful oncologic benefits while minimizing unnecessary risks.

A new study in the journal Human Gene Therapy showed that more than half of individuals with Niemann-Pick disease, type C1 (NPC1) who were tested lacked neutralizing antibodies against either adeno-associated virus (AAV) 2 or AAV9.

Over the past two weeks, the media has reported several cases of serious “adverse events,” where babies, children and an adult experienced harm and ultimately died while receiving care in separate Australian hospitals.

Solid tumors often provide a challenging environment for the T cells of our immune system. By reprogramming the metabolism of T cells, scientists at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology and their collaborators demonstrated a remarkable ability to boost the immune system’s fight against cancer, showing promise for improving patient outcomes in difficult-to-treat malignancies. Their work is published in Nature Metabolism.