General

According to many observations, certain virus infections may play a part in the autoimmune attack that leads to type 1 diabetes. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and their Finnish colleagues have now produced a vaccine for these viruses in the hope that it could provide protection against the disease. […]

A group of researchers from the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children have developed a new way to deliver molecules that target specific genes within cells. The platform, which uses a modified form of diphtheria toxin, has been shown to “downregulate” critical genes in cancer cells, and could be […]

Both old and young people can get COVID-19. However, healthy young people usually get better without any treatment at all, while older patients can experience some life-threatening complications. Why older people are at higher risk of more difficult COVID-19 cases? Scientists from ETH Zurich have a good hypothesis. As you […]

Researchers are learning more about how to harness the immune system to find new treatment options for deadly brain cancer that strikes young children. Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG, tumors can’t be surgically removed due to their location on a critical structure of the brain called the brain stem. […]

Whole body diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW MRI) may aid in the assessment of cancer treatment response in children and youth at much lower levels of radiation than current approaches, suggests a small study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The results appear in Radiology. Researchers compared DW MRI, which […]

Most electrical activity in vertebrates and invertebrates occurs at extremely low frequencies, and the origin — and medical potential — of these frequencies have eluded scientists. Now a Tel Aviv University study provides evidence for a direct link between electrical fields in the atmosphere and those found in living organisms, including humans. […]

A group of researchers at the University at Buffalo have published a paper that clarifies certain cellular mechanisms that could lead to improved outcomes in patients with globoid cell leukodystrophy, commonly known as Krabbe disease. The paper, titled “Macrophages Expressing GALC Improve Peripheral Krabbe Disease by a Mechanism Independent of […]

The massive international effort to map the entire human genome, completed in 2003, opened a new field we now know as personalized medicine. The breakthrough, which identified the location and function of every human gene, offered the promise of medical care tailored specifically to individual patients, based on their personal […]

Precision medicine has the potential to tailor treatments to a patient’s unique genetic sequence. But achieving this precision — or developing new drugs — requires knowing which genes are involved in the disease. “Unfortunately, we don’t really have a good understanding of how these genetic differences can derive differences in […]

Disabling a gene in specific mouse cells, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have prevented mice from becoming obese, even after the animals had been fed a high-fat diet. The researchers blocked the activity of a gene in immune cells. Because these immune cells — called […]

Since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a public health concern of global interest on Jan. 30, more than one million have tested positive for the illness in the United States and more than 62,000 have died. With no FDA–approved treatments available to date, the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine has emerged as […]

Approximately 10 percent of infants are born with a congenital heart defect, with one of the most common being persistent truncus arteriosus—a hole in the heart. In a healthy baby, deoxygenated blood is pumped through a one-way blood vessel to the lungs, where it becomes oxygenated and is pumped through […]