Posts in category: Uncategorized

The way the brain regulates pupil size is different from previously thought: fundamentally responsible is the neurotransmitter orexin, as researchers at ETH Zurich have now shown. This discovery could well alter our understanding of consciousness and illnesses such as narcolepsy and Alzheimer’s. The study is published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

The sound of airplanes flying overhead late at night is linked to a slight increase in hospital admissions for heart-related problems the following day, a study from Imperial College London suggests.

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed an entirely new approach to building point-of-care diagnostic devices that only use gravity to transport, mix and otherwise manipulate the liquid droplets involved. The demonstration requires only commercially available materials and very little power to read results, making it a potentially attractive option for applications in low-resource settings.

An infectious disease is a condition in which a microorganism (virus, bacterium, or parasite) manages to penetrate and multiply in the human body, causing direct damage to the body’s cells. The damage to the body may also be indirect, as a result of the reaction of the immune system, for example, the creation of inflammation against the same disease-causing agent (pathogen).

Hispanic adults with mental health conditions are 17% less likely to receive treatment than their non-Hispanic white counterparts. But what causes this disparity and how can we fix it?

The specific or acquired immune system of vertebrates is a powerful weapon against pathogens and pathologically altered body cells. Here, T cells play a special role. After activation, they can systematically kill off target cells that have degenerated or are infected with a virus.

While pembrolizumab is an approved treatment for patients with stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), only some patients respond to this therapy. Treatment failure, researchers say, is often caused by differences in the tumor microenvironment.

Averting our eyes from things that scare us may be due to a specific cluster of neurons in a visual region of the brain, according to new research at the University of Tokyo, published in Nature Communications.

Recent studies have found that some cells of the brain, including neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes, can transport pieces of the genetic code (RNA) from the nucleus out to their distal processes which may be several microns away, and then locally translate proteins from this code within the process itself. Yet whether microglia, immune cells that protect the brain from damage and disease, might be able to engage in this process remains poorly understood.

Prostate cancer is a leading cause of death among American men, and it’s resistant to one of the most powerful chemotherapy medications—cisplatin. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have developed the first therapy of its kind that disrupts prostate cancer cells’ metabolism and releases cisplatin into the weakened cells, causing them to die. In mouse models, an orally administered version shrunk tumors substantially.