Category Health/Medical

Around the globe, heart disease remains one of the top causes of death. Once patients begin to suffer from serious heart problems, like heart attacks and heart failure, the heart muscles become damaged and are difficult to treat and repair. Although many therapies have been developed to treat symptoms, full recovery to a pre-disease state has been essentially impossible. This is due to a lack of regeneration ability in adult human heart cells. Studies using stem cells or progenitor cells for repair have demonstrated limited efficacy in clinical trials, thus far.

However, there may be new hope for these patients...

Imagine a surgeon in the middle of a complex operation, able to get instant biochemical feedback not from a lab down the hall, but from the very tool in their hand. This vision is now one step closer to reality thanks to researchers at the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague (UCT Prague).

The team, led by Professor Zdeněk Sofer, has developed and validated a “Lab-on-a-Scalpel” concept, a surgical tool with an integrated diagnostic sensor. They published their findings in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

This innovation addresses a critical challenge in surgery: the time lag between sample collection and lab results...

Even small amounts of bisphenol A can lead to long-term health effects. When researchers studied adult rats exposed in the fetal stage, they found that females had developed a more masculine and males a more feminine gene expression pattern. This led to females progressing towards a cancer-like state, while males progressed towards metabolic syndrome, which can increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Bisphenol A is a synthetic chemical with estrogen-like properties that is commonly used in food packaging materials. The substance is banned in many products, but is still present in some packaging. Levels of bisphenol A in people’s bodies are often above levels considered safe, with previous research showing that the substance can cause adverse health effects.

Females masc...