Category Biology/Biotechnology

A new Nature Immunologystudy led by University of Pittsburgh and National Institutes of Health researchers sheds light on how a rare type of helper T cell, called Th9, can drive allergic disease, suggesting new precision medicine approaches to treating allergies in patients with high levels of Th9.

“Th9 cells are kind of like the black sheep of helper T cells,” said senior author Daniella Schwartz, M.D., assistant professor of rheumatology at Pitt’s School of Medicine. “They need a perfect storm of occurrences to pop up, and they aren’t long-lived, which makes them hard to study. The other weird thing about Th9 cells is that they remain functional without seeing their antigen.”

T cells switch on when they encounter viruses, bacteria or other pathogens, causing them to ramp up pr...

Deep sleep, also known as non-REM slow-wave sleep, can act as a ‘cognitive reserve factor’ that may increase resilience against brain protein beta-amyloid that is linked to memory loss caused by dementia.

Disrupted sleep has previously been associated with faster accumulation of beta-amyloid protein in the brain...

Sweat is more than just a sign of a good workout. It holds vital information about our health, providing clues to dehydration, fatigue, blood sugar levels and even serious conditions such as cystic fibrosis, diabetes and heart failure. Researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa College of Engineering have taken a giant leap forward in sweat analysis with an innovative 3D-printed wearable sweat sensor called the “sweatainer.”

Harnessing the power of additive manufacturing (3D-printing), the researchers have developed a new type of wearable sweat sensor that expands the capability of wearable sweat devices. The sweatainer is a small, wearable device similar in size to a child’s sticker that collects and analyzes sweat, offering a glimpse into the future of health monitoring...

Neuropathic pain – abnormal hypersensitivity to stimuli – is associated with impaired quality of life and is often poorly managed. Estimates suggest that 3 percent to 17 percent of adults suffer from neuropathic pain, including a quarter of people with diabetes and a third of people with HIV.

In a paper published in the journal Neuron, researchers report that a mechanism involving the enzyme Tiam1 in dorsal horn excitatory neurons of the spinal cord both initiates and maintains neuropathic pain. Moreover, they show that targeting spinal Tiam1 with anti-sense oligonucleotides injected into the cerebrospinal fluid effectively alleviated neuropathic pain hypersensitivity.

“Thus, our study has uncovered a pathophysiological mechanism that initiates, ...