A new study at Columbia University has found that shortening sleep by just 90 minutes for six weeks increased insulin resistance in women who are accustomed to getting adequate sleep. The effect was even more pronounced in postmenopausal women. The recommended amount of sleep for optimal health is between seven and nine hours per night, […]
Exposure to ultrafine particles from traffic alters the expression of many genes in human olfactory mucosa cells, a new study shows. The study, led by the University of Eastern Finland, is the first to combine an analysis of emissions from different diesel fuels and exhaust after-treatment systems with an examination of their effects in a […]
Slumbering among thousands of bacterial strains in a collection of natural specimens at The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology, several fragile vials held something unexpected, and possibly very useful. Writing in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, a team led by chemist Ben Shen, Ph.D., described discovery of two new enzymes, […]
Fasting interventions, which involve alternating periods of fasting and refeeding, are generally thought to improve health. But these interventions don’t work as well in old animals. The question is: Why? By studying the short-lived killifish, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne have shown that older fish deviate from a […]
Sensitivity to common food allergens such as dairy and peanuts could be an important and previously unappreciated cause of heart disease, new research suggests — and the increased risk for cardiovascular death includes people without obvious food allergies. That increased risk could be comparable to — or exceed — the risks posed by smoking, as […]
A globe-spanning scientific team has compiled the most comprehensive list of genetic variants associated with prostate cancer risk — 451 in all — through a whole-genome analysis that ranks as the largest and most diverse investigation into prostate cancer genetics yet. The research, led by the USC Center for Genetic Epidemiology, the Keck School of […]
New research led by University of Colorado School of Medicine faculty members Fan Zhang, Ph.D., and Anna Helena Jonsson, M.D., Ph.D., may lead to new targeted treatments for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune disease that causes joint inflammation and destruction. The AMP: RA/SLE Network collected inflamed tissue from 70 patients with RA from across the […]
Using a technique that has shown promise in targeting cancer tumors, a Duke Health team has found a way to deploy a molecular warhead that can annihilate the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Tested in cell cultures using the Borrelia burgdoferi bacterium, the approach holds the potential to target not only bacteria, but also fungi […]
The connection between exercise and inflammation has captivated the imagination of researchers ever since an early 20th-century study showed a spike of white cells in the blood of Boston marathon runners following the race. Now, a new Harvard Medical School study published Nov. 3 in Science Immunology may offer a molecular explanation behind this century-old […]
As described in a new paper published in Science, Kıvanç Birsoy and his colleagues in Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Metabolic Regulation and Genetics have discovered the first such sensor for an organelle — specifically mitochondria, the cell’s power center. The sensor is part of a protein that does triple duty: it senses, regulates, and delivers the […]