Aging, or senescent cells, which stop dividing but don’t die, can accumulate in the body over the years and fuel chronic inflammation that contributes to conditions such as cancer and degenerative disorders. In mice, eliminating senescent cells from aging tissues can restore tissue balance and lead to an increased healthy lifespan. A team led by […]
“There’s a dogma in the field that everyone needs eight hours of sleep, but our work to date confirms that the amount of sleep people need differs based on genetics,” said neurologist Louis Ptacek, MD, “Think of it as analogous to height; there’s no perfect amount of height, each person is different. We’ve shown that […]
Researchers at Simon Fraser University are studying the genes of superbugs to aid the development of new and effective treatments for drug-resistant bacterial infections. “Antimicrobial resistance occurs when the disease-causing bacteria has ways to overcome the antibiotics that we use in treatment for infections,” says assistant professor Amy Lee, of SFU’s Department of Molecular Biology […]
New research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst zeroes in on the root cause of adverse health effects from disruption of the body’s circadian rhythms, which typically occurs from jet lag and rotating work shifts. “Circadian disruption impacts a lot of things,” says lead author Michael Seifu Bahiru, a Ph.D. candidate in the lab of […]
In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors tried a variety of medications to determine what was helpful to prevent the deaths caused by a virus which humans had no natural immunity against. It was reported that using dexamethasone, a common steroid, prevented deaths in patients who had severe COVID-19 and were on ventilators […]
It might become possible to inject proteins into specific cells in the body thanks to bacterial “nanosyringes” tweaked to target human cells. This could lead to safer and more effective treatments for a wide range of conditions, including cancer. Large molecules such as proteins can have much more specific and powerful effects than small-molecule drugs […]
A new study led by Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) brings into sharper focus the structural details of the COVID-19 virus, revealing an elliptical shape that “breathes,” or changes shape, as it moves in the body. “Understanding the SARS-COV-2 virus envelope should allow us to model the actual process of the virus attaching to the cell […]
Using a new way of analysing mortality records, figures from 19 high-income countries suggest that we haven’t yet approached the maximum human lifespan and could see the record start to rise in the next few decades. “We don’t appear to be approaching a maximum limit at the moment,” says the study’s lead researcher David McCarthy […]
Investigators from the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai have discovered that patients who have round hearts shaped like baseballs are more likely to develop future heart failure and atrial fibrillation than patients who have longer hearts. “We found that individuals with spherical hearts were 31% more likely to develop atrial fibrillation and 24% more likely […]
In proof-of-concept experiments, Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists say they have successfully cultivated human muscle stem cells capable of renewing themselves and repairing muscle tissue damage in mice. To make the self-renewing stem cells, the scientists began with laboratory-grown human skin cells that were genetically reprogrammed to a more primitive state in which the cells have […]