Chatter between cell populations drives progression of gastrointestinal tumors

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are a subytpe of cancers known as sarcomas. GIST is the most common type of sarcoma with approximately 5,000 to 6,000 new patient cases annually in the United States. GIST cannot be cured by drugs alone, and targeted therapies are only modestly effective, with a high rate of drug resistance. In […]

We Broke Down the Differences Between COVID Vaccines

When the coronavirus pandemic was first declared, there was only hope—and a big rush on science’s part—for a vaccine that might work. Now, it seems hard to keep them straight. In less than a year, we have gone from learning about the virus to administering shots to more than 4 million people—and we still don’t […]

New study shows correlation between teen obesity and mental health issues

Half of all young people treated for severe obesity have neuropsychiatric problems, according to a new study by researchers from Lund University and Gothenburg, Sweden, among others. Two thirds of the teens suffered from some type of mental health problem, as reported by themselves or their parents. Both obesity and mental illness have increased among […]

New report details links between widespread ocean pollution and human health risks

Ocean pollution is widespread and getting worse, and when toxins in the oceans make landfall they imperil the health and well-being of more than 3 billion people, according to a new report by an international coalition of scientists led by Boston College’s Global Observatory on Pollution on Health and the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, supported […]

Study shows link between economic, social, environmental factors and oral health

More than one in four adults in California report having poor oral health, but that figure rises to roughly one in two for the state’s lowest-income residents and drops to one in five for those with the highest incomes, according to a UCLA policy brief that looks at the role economic, social and environmental factors […]

Stable connections between nerve cells are the basis of memory

Memories are part of our lives, the good and the bad. Through our senses, experiences reach our brain where networks of nerve cells encode them into a memory. It was previously unclear why only certain nerve cells join together for this purpose. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich have now discovered […]

Link between sleep apnea and increased risk of dementia

A new study by Monash University has found that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has been linked to an increased risk of dementia. The study, published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, and led by Dr Melinda Jackson from the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, found that severe OSA is linked to an increase […]

The link between glaucoma, the immune system and protein tenascin-C

Researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have studied the role of the immune response in the development of glaucoma in mice. They showed that inflammatory processes are associated with the pathogenesis of the disease and that the extracellular matrix molecule tenascin-C plays a key role as a modulator of the immune response. Glaucoma is a common […]

Research team identifies differences between benign and pathogenic gene variants

An international team of researchers led by Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute has performed for the first time a wide-scale characterization of missense variants from 1,330 disease-associated genes. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study identifies features associated with pathogenic and benign variants that reveal the effects of the mutations at […]