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Physicians who are notified that a patient has died of a drug overdose are more judicious in issuing controlled substances if the notification includes a plan for what to do during subsequent patient visits, according to a study published today in Nature Communications.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry measured the pupillary reaction of participants while they were solving a task. In healthy participants, the pupils dilated during the task in anticipation of a reward, but this reaction was less pronounced in participants with depression.

Did smokers do better than non-smokers in a clinical trial for an experimental cancer treatment? That was the intriguing question that led University of Iowa researchers and their colleagues to develop a drinkable, carbon monoxide-infused foam that boosted the effectiveness of the therapy, known as autophagy inhibition, in mice and human cells.

Researchers at Tohoku University have discovered a new approach for treating lymph node metastasis. Anticancer drugs are administered directly into the LNs under ultrasound guidance (lymphatic drug delivery system or LDDS) to target sentinel lymph nodes (LNs) and generate antitumor effects locally, preventing distant metastasis. This approach not only improves the anticancer effect but also reduces the nasty side effects commonly associated with systemic chemotherapy.

Indiana University neuroscientists have found the first evidence that rodents can call upon their episodic memory—the ability to recall seemingly unimportant streams of events from the past—and use incidentally encoded information to answer unexpected questions.

Through transcriptomic profiling of more than 300,000 cells in human substantia nigra, a part of the brain that helps control the body’s movements, a research team has identified a previously unreported neuron type with vulnerability in Parkinson’s disease. This novel finding could help explain the complexity of the disease symptoms and direct new therapeutics development.

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Kaiser Permanente have found that communities with high prevalence of adults who fail to exercise in their free-time, experience significantly higher rates of death from cardiovascular disease (CVD), with middle-aged women and elderly Black individuals shouldering the heaviest burden.

The rate of twin deliveries increased with increasing body mass index (BMI), and part of this association was explained by higher use of assisted reproductive technology (ART), according to a study published online Jan. 9 in JAMA Network Open.

Nearly 42% of American adults were categorized as obese from 2017 to 2020, up from roughly 30% in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With that rise in obesity comes an increased risk for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers.

A study exploring the mechanisms behind why cognitive performance improves in response to exercise, has found that dopamine plays a key role.