Category Health/Medical

Mold in houses is unsightly and may cause unpleasant odors. More important though, mold has been linked to a range of health effects—especially triggering asthma.

However, is mold exposure linked to a serious lung disease in children, unrelated to asthma? As we’ll see, this link may not be real, or if it is, it’s so rare to not be a meaningful risk. Yet we still hear mold in damp homes described as “toxic.”

Indeed, moldy homes can harm people’s health, but not necessarily how you might think.

What is mold?
Mold is the general term for a variety of fungi. The mold that people have focused on in damp homes is “black mold.” This forms unsightly black patches on walls and other parts of damp-affected buildings.

Black mold is not a single fung...

Eating a high-fat diet containing a large amount of oleic acid—a type of fatty acid commonly found in olive oil—could drive obesity more than other types of dietary fats, according to a study published in the journal Cell Reports.

The study found that oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat associated with obesity, causes the body to make more fat cells. By boosting a signaling protein called AKT2 and reducing the activity of a regulating protein called LXR, high levels of oleic acid resulted in faster growth of the precursor cells that form new fat cells.

“We know that the types of fat that people eat have changed during the obesity epidemic...

As artificial intelligence and smart devices continue to evolve, machine vision is taking an increasingly pivotal role as a key enabler of modern technologies...

A newly discovered mechanism that leads to liver dysfunction may be a key factor in type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders in individuals with obesity, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The dysfunction identified—dysregulated hepatic coenzyme Q metabolism—leads to excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by mitochondria at a single specific site in an enzyme called complex I. The researchers say the discovery offers a potential path for new, precise treatments for metabolic diseases.

“Our findings provide the first step toward solving a complex problem in the field of metabolic disease research that has stood for three decades,” said corresponding author Gökhan S...