Category Health/Medical

Alzheimer ‘Tau’ protein far surpasses Amyloid in predicting toll on brain tissue

Brain MRI scans
Tau PET brain scans (green) in early clinical-stage Alzheimer’s patients accurately predict the location of brain atrophy measured by MRI 1–2 years later (magenta). Amyloid PET imaging (blue) does not predict the location of either tau or future brain atrophy.

Tau PET brain imaging could launch precision medicine era for Alzheimer’s disease. Brain imaging of pathological tau-protein “tangles” reliably predicts the location of future brain atrophy in Alzheimer’s patients a year or more in advance, according to a new study by scientists at the UC San Francisco Memory and Aging Center...

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UNC expert helps treat Astronaut’s Blood Clot during NASA mission

Stephan Moll, M.D., at NASA.
CREDIT
UNC School of Medicine

“My first reaction when NASA reached out to me was to ask if I could visit the International Space Station (ISS) to examine the patient myself,” said Stephan Moll, MD, UNC School of Medicine blood clot expert and long-time NASA enthusiast. “NASA told me they couldn’t get me up to space quickly enough, so I proceeded with the evaluation and treatment process from here in Chapel Hill.”

Moll was the only non-NASA physician NASA consulted when it was discovered that an astronaut aboard the ISS had a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) – or blood clot—in the jugular vein of their neck...

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Researchers build a Particle Accelerator that fits on a Chip, miniaturizing a technology that can now find new applications in research and medicine

This image, magnified 25,000 times, shows a section of an accelerator-on-a-chip. The gray structures focus infrared laser light (shown in yellow and purple) on electrons flowing through the center channel. By packing 1,000 channels onto an inch-sized chip, Stanford researchers hope to accelerate electrons to 94 percent of the speed of light. (Image credit: Courtesy Neil Sapra

On a hillside above Stanford University, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory operates a scientific instrument nearly 2 miles long...

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Delivering TB vaccine Intravenously dramatically Improves Potency, study shows

3D PET CT scans of monkey lungs showing inflammation (red and yellow) from TB infection. The top row were vaccinated the usual way with a shot into the skin The bottom row received the vaccine intravenously.
CREDIT
JoAnne Flynn, Ph.D., Alexander White, Pauline Maiello, and Mario Roederer, Ph.D.

Worldwide, more people die from tuberculosis (TB) than any other infectious disease, even though the vast majority were vaccinated. The vaccine just isn’t that reliable. But a new Nature study finds that simply changing the way the vaccine is administered could dramatically boost its protective power.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) discovered that intravenous TB vaccination is highly protecti...

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