Category Health/Medical

Chronic pain is the leading cause of disability in the world.
Credit: © Kittiphan / Fotolia

For the first time, researchers at the UNC School of Medicine showed they could target one brain region with a weak alternating current of electricity, enhance the naturally occurring brain rhythms of that region, and significantly decrease symptoms associated with chronic lower back pain.

The results, published in the Journal of Pain and presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego this week, suggest that doctors could one day target parts of the brain with new noninvasive treatment strategies, such as transcranial alternating current stimulation, or tACS, which researchers used in this study to boost the naturally occurring brain waves they theorized were important for the tre...

Purdue University researchers have created a drug delivery method using silicon nanoneedles with diameters 100 times smaller than a mosquito’s needle. These nanoneedles are embedded in a stretchable and translucent elastomer patch that can be worn on the skin to deliver exact doses directly into cells.
Credit: Purdue image

Minimally invasive patch delivers exact doses directly into cells, lessens pain, toxicity. Purdue University researchers have developed a new flexible and translucent base for silicon nanoneedle patches to deliver exact doses of biomolecules directly into cells and expand observational opportunities.

“This means that eight or nine silicon nanoneedles can be injected into a single cell without significantly damaging a cell...

The illustration shows a diseased kidney on the left and a healthy kidney on the right, after rectangular DNA nanostructures migrated and accumulated in the kidney, acting to alleviate damage due to oxidative stress. Graphic by Shireen Dooling.

Researchers have developed a new method for treating and preventing acute kidney injury. Their technique involves the use of tiny, self-assembling forms measuring just billionths of a meter in diameter. Each year, there are some 13.3 million new cases of acute kidney injury (AKI), a serious affliction. Formerly known as acute renal failure, the ailment produces a rapid buildup of nitrogenous wastes and decreases urine output, usually within hours or days of disease onset. Severe complications often ensue.

AKI is responsible for 1...

Chlamydia bacteria (green), use a dual-function enzyme called ChlaDUB1 to build a shell around themselves with pieces of the host cell’s Golgi apparatus (red).
Credit: Robert Bastidas – Duke University

The bacterium remodels human cells for its own nefarious purposes. When Chlamydia trachomatis, the bacterium that causes one of the most common sexually transmitted infections worldwide, infects a human cell, it hijacks parts of the host to build protective layers around itself.

Inside this makeshift fortress, the bug grows and reproduces, eventually bursting out in search of a new target and killing the host cell. While scientists have known for years that Chlamydia protects itself in this way, they were missing the mechanics until now...