Category Health/Medical

A new study in rats suggests that caffeine may offset some of the negative effects of an obesogenic diet by reducing the storage of lipids in fat cells and limiting weight gain and the production of triglycerides.

Rats that consumed the caffeine extracted from mate tea gained 16% less weight and accumulated 22% less body fat than rats that consumed decaffeinated mate tea, scientists at the University of Illinois found in a new study. The effects were similar with synthetic caffeine and that extracted from coffee.

Mate tea is an herbal beverage rich in phytochemicals, flavonoids and amino acids that’s consumed as a stimulant by people in southeastern Latin American countries...

Technique may help remotely image and assess health of infants, burn victims, and accident survivors in hard-to-reach place...

Tiny mealworms may hold part of the solution to our giant plastics problem. Not only are they able to consume various forms of plastic, as previous Stanford research has shown, they can eat Styrofoam containing a common toxic chemical additive and still be safely used as protein-rich feedstock for other animals, according to a new Stanford study published in Environmental Science & Technology.

The study is the first to look at where chemicals in plastic end up after being broken down in a natural system – a yellow mealworm’s gut, in this case...

After a day hiking in the forest, the last thing a person wants to discover is a tick burrowing into their skin. Days after plucking off the bloodsucking insect, the hiker might develop a rash resembling a bull’s-eye, a tell-tale sign of Lyme disease. Yet not everybody who contracts Lyme disease gets the rash. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have devised a blood test that quickly and sensitively diagnoses the disease at early stages.

About 300,000 cases of Lyme disease, which is caused by the tick-borne bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, are diagnosed in the U.S. each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...