Category Biology/Biotechnology

Low-frequency Ultrasound can Improve Oxygen Saturation in blood

Research conducted by a team of scientists from Kaunas universities, Lithuania, revealed that low-frequency ultrasound influences blood parameters. The findings suggest that ultrasound’s effect on haemoglobin can improve oxygen’s transfer from the lungs to bodily tissues.

The research was undertaken on 300 blood samples collected from 42 pulmonary patients. The samples were exposed to six different low-frequency ultrasound modes at the Institute of Mechatronics of Kaunas University of Technology (KTU).

The changes in 20 blood parameters were registered using the blood analysing equipment at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (LSMU) laboratories. For the prediction of ultrasound exposure, artificial intelligence, i.e...

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Scientists discover First Therapeutic Target for Preserving Heart Function in Patients with Pulmonary Hypertension

heart
Human heart. Credit: copyright American Heart Association

A research team has discovered a possible therapeutic target for pulmonary hypertension. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, identifies the first therapeutic target that can be modulated to preserve cardiac function in pulmonary hypertension, providing hope in the fight against this rare but fatal disease for which there is currently no cure.

Pulmonary hypertension is a condition of elevated blood pressure in the arteries that carry deoxygenated blood to the lungs. This increased pulmonary blood pressure puts the heart under continuous strain as it has to work harder to pump blood to the lungs.

Pulmonary hypertension affects between 15 and 50 people per million of the world’s population...

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New Medicine can Create a New Life for Diabetes Patients—Without Needles

New medicine can create a new life for diabetes patients—without needles!
These capsules containing nano-carriers with insulin will be tested on humans in 2025. Credit: Nicholas Hunt

There are approximately 425 million people worldwide with diabetes. Approximately 75 million of these inject themselves with insulin daily. Now, they may soon have a new alternative to syringes or insulin pumps. Scientists have found a new way to supply the body with smart insulin.

The new insulin can be eaten by taking a capsule or, even better, within a piece of chocolate.

Inside these are tiny nano-carriers in which the insulin is encapsulated. The particles are 1/10,000th the width of a human hair and so small that you cannot even see them under a normal microscope.

“This way of taking insulin is more precise because it delivers the insulin rapidly to the areas of t...

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New Gut-Brain Circuits found for Sugar and Fat Cravings

Fat, sugar, and the combination of both (chocolate) navigate a gut-brain maze. The blue path represents the sugar route, the green path signifies the fat route, and the yellow path represents the combined impact of fats and sugars. Each path leads to the brain, but the combined route has a greater impact, triggering heightened dopamine release in the reward circuits, emphasizing the synergistic effect of fat-sugar combinations on neural responses. Image credit: Isadora Barga, de Lartigue lab

A new study has unraveled the internal neural wiring of separate fat and sugar craving pathways. However, combining these pathways overly triggers a desire to eat more than usual. Understanding why we overeat unhealthy foods has been a long-standing mystery...

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