Category Health/Medical

Jason Gerstner, assistant research professor in WSU’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, is lead author of a Science Advances paper describing a gene involved in the quality of sleep experienced by three different animals, including humans. Credit: Washington State University

Washington State University researchers have seen how a particular gene is involved in the quality of sleep experienced by 3 different animals, including humans. The gene and its function opens a new avenue for scientists exploring how sleep works and why animals need it so badly. As a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin, Gerstner looked at genes that change expression over the sleep-wake cycle and found expression of the gene FABP7 changed over the day throughout the brain of mice...

Inflamed mouse colon mucosa, with an expanded population of intestinal stromal cells identified by expression of podoplanin (green). Epithelium is identified by expression of EpCAM (magenta); cyan, nuclei. Credit: Dr. Samuel Bullers

Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology and Translational Gastroenterology Unit, University of Oxford have identified a potential therapeutic target for IBD. The findings are of particular importance to the 40% of patients who don’t respond to anti-TNF therapy, the current treatment option available. The new study published in Nature Medicine shows that IBD patients have higher concentrations of Oncostatin M (OSM), a protein linked to inflammation, in their intestine and suggest that blocking OSM could prove to be a successful treatment for IBD.

The research also sho...

Charles Gersbach, the Rooney Family Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. Credit: Duke University

Researchers have developed a method to swiftly the non-coding DNA of the human genome for links to diseases that are driven by changes in gene regulation. The technique could revolutionize modern medicine’s understanding of the genetically inherited risks of developing heart disease, diabetes, cancer, neurological disorders and others, and lead to new treatments.

“Identifying single mutations that cause rare, devastating diseases like muscular dystrophy has become relatively straightforward,” said Charles Gersbach, the Rooney Family Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University...

Just five more minutes … can a coffee before a nap really help you pay back your sleep debt? Credit: www.shutterstock.com

Taking a nap is a common way of overcoming your sleepiness and repaying your sleep debt. Drinking coffee can also help us get through the day. In a 1997 study, 12 sleep-deprived people drank the equivalent of one large cup of brewed coffee and 5 minutes later had the chance to nap for 15 minutes. They then did some driving tests in a simulator to check their alertness. Although drinking a coffee (without a nap) helped their driving performance, combining caffeine with a nap (a coffee nap) improved it even further...