Category Health/Medical

Elevated levels of air pollutants are associated with bone damage among postmenopausal women, according to new research led by scientists at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The effects were most evident on the lumbar spine, with nitrous oxides twice as damaging to the area as in normal aging.

The research findings appear in the journal eClinicalMedicine.

Previous studies on individual pollutants have suggested adverse effects on bone mineral density, osteoporosis risk, and fractures in older individuals...

Once thought incapable of encoding proteins due to their simple monotonous repetitions of DNA, tiny telomeres at the tips of our chromosomes seem to hold a potent biological function that’s potentially relevant to our understanding of cancer and aging.

Reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, UNC School of Medicine researchers Taghreed Al-Turki, Ph.D., and Jack Griffith, Ph.D...

Scientists at the University of East Anglia are a step closer to creating a new generation of light-activated cancer treatments. The futuristic sounding treatment would work by switching on LED lights embedded close to a tumour, which would then activate biotherapeutic drugs.

These new treatments would be highly targeted and more effective than current state-of-the-art cancer immunotherapies.

New research published today reveals the science behind this innovative idea.

It shows how the UEA team have engineered antibody fragments – which not only ‘fuse’ with their target but are also light activated.

It means that in future, immunotherapy treatments could be engineered to attack tumours more precisely than ever before.

The principal scientist for this study, ...

University of Virginia Health neuroscientists have discovered a potential way to disrupt the chronic inflammation responsible for multiple sclerosis.

UVA’s new study identifies a vital contributor to the hyperactive autoimmune response and neuroinflammation that are the hallmarks of MS. Blocking this lynchpin in a research model of MS alleviated the inflammation, giving researchers a prime target in developing new treatments for multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases.

The research was conducted by Andrea Merchak, a doctoral candidate in neuroscience, and her colleagues in the lab of Alban Gaultier of the University of Virginia School of Medicine’s Department of Neuroscience and its Ce...