2021

More than 20 years after the launch of a landmark clinical trial, follow-up examinations and analyses found that not all patients with elevated eye pressure need pressure-lowering treatment to prevent vision loss from glaucoma. When the study was launched, it was universally accepted that all patients with elevated eye pressure […]

A new study investigates a genetic culprit behind abdominal aortic aneurysm, a serious condition that puts people at risk of their aorta rupturing – a potentially deadly event. Finding a viable genetic target for AAA could change the game, says senior author Katherine Gallagher, M.D., a vascular surgeon and an associate professor of […]

More than half of cervical cancer cases in the United States occur in women who have not had timely Pap smears and/or HPV tests — screenings that allow for detection of precancerous or cancerous cells on the cervix. Encouraging low-income women, in particular, to participate in such screenings likely would […]

A new study from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Research Investigator Katharina Schmack and Adjunct Professor Adam Kepecs uncovered how hallucinations are produced in human and mouse brains. Their new mouse model for hallucination-like behaviours should help uncover mechanisms and treatments for schizophrenia. Schmack was working as a psychiatrist at the Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin […]

For a while now, heart disease researchers have known that a protein called GRK5 – expressed throughout the body, though most notably in the lungs, heart, and placenta – normally dwells in the outer membrane of heart cells and, upon exposure to stress, moves into the cell nucleus, switching on […]

The results of this epidemiological study suggest that suffering from untreated sleep apnea can raise the risk of later dementia and mild cognitive impairment by 20-30%. How the repeated hypoxia in the brain produced by sleep apnea results in a raised risk of dementia isn't understood in detail, but it […]

Researchers at the University of Alberta are looking for ways to prevent or slow cachexia, a muscle-wasting syndrome thought to cause up to a third of the 80,000 deaths related to cancer every year in Canada. By understanding the role of activin A, a growth factor that contributes to muscle […]

Scientists have figured out how to modify CRISPR’s basic architecture to extend its reach beyond the genome and into what’s known as the epigenome – proteins and small molecules that latch onto DNA and control when and where genes are switched on or off. In a paper published in the […]

Research from the University of Wisconsin–Madison finds that a new therapeutic approach for heart failure could help restore cardiac function by regenerating heart muscle. In a study recently published in the journal Circulation, the UW team describes its success in improving, in a mouse model, the function of heart muscle by […]

At its most basic level, it takes pictures. For UW–Madison biochemistry professor Elizabeth Wright, that’s the scaled-down explanation of cryogenic electron microscopy or cryo-EM. But it’s so much more than that. Through rapid freezing, controlled beams, and advanced lenses, this game-changing research tool reveals the intricate architecture of cells, viruses, and […]

Researchers at the DZNE (Germany), at Massachusetts General Hospital (USA) and at the genomic medicine company Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc. tested a novel gene regulation approach to treat brain diseases such as Alzheimer's in laboratory studies. It leverages zinc finger proteins, which specifically bind to the DNA that codes for the […]

McMaster University researchers have discovered a new treatment that could bring relief to millions of people worldwide living with peanut allergy. The current understanding is that in certain individuals, the immune system mistakenly identifies a specific food protein as harmful and triggers the production of an antibody called Immunoglobulin E […]