Category Health/Medical

The nanomaterial graphene oxide — which is used in everything from electronics to sensors for biomolecules — can indirectly affect the immune system via the gut microbiome, as shown in a new study on zebrafish by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The findings are reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

“This shows that we must factor the gut microbiome into our understanding of how nanomaterials affect the immune system,” says the paper’s corresponding author Bengt Fadeel, professor at the Institute o...

The findings shed a rare light on mitoribosomes, the unique ribosomes found within the cell’s mitochondria. Ribosomes, the tiny protein-producing factories within cells, are ubiquitous and look largely identical across the tree of life. Those that keep bacteria chugging along are, structurally, not much different from the ribosomes churning out proteins in our own human cells.

But even two organisms with similar ribosomes may display significant structural differences in the RNA and protein components of their mitoribosomes...

Bacteria known to cause oral infections may also be a contributory factor in patients developing potentially life-threatening abscesses on the brain, new research has shown. The study, published in the Journal of Dentistry, investigated brain abscesses and their association with bacteria that occur in the oral cavity. While this type of abscess is relatively uncommon, it can result in significant mortality and morbidity.

Researchers examined the records of 87 patients admitted to hospital with brain abscesses, and used microbiological data obtained from abscess sampling and peripheral cultures.

This allowed them to investigate the presence of oral bacteria in patients’ brain abscesses where a cause of the abscess had either been found, as was the case in just 35 patients, or not...

Successful cancer treatment approach extended to autoimmune disease. Researchers have shown that the cancer therapy known as CAR-T can be applied to multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune disease of the nervous system. The findings extend the powerful tool of immunotherapy to autoimmune diseases, a class of diseases that are often debilitating and difficult to treat.

The cancer therapy known as CAR-T has revolutionized treatment of some blood cancers since it was introduced in 2017. The therapy uses genetically altered immune cells to home in on cancer cells and destroy them.

Now, studying mice with an autoimmune disease similar to multiple sclerosis (MS), researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St...