Category Health/Medical

Andrea Hohmann. Credit: Indiana University

Indiana University neuroscientist Andrea Hohmann has found evidence that the brain’s cannabis receptors may be used to treat chronic pain without the side effects associated with opioid-based pain relievers or medical marijuana. “The most exciting aspect of this research is the potential to produce the same therapeutic benefits as opioid-based pain relievers without side effects like addiction risk or increased tolerance over time,” said Hohmann, a Linda and Jack Gill Chair of Neuroscience and professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

Chronic pain is estimated to affect nearly 50 million adults in the US...

Dr. Yanbin Dong, geneticist and cardiologist at the Georgia Prevention Institute at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University and Dr. Haidong Zhu, molecular geneticist at the GPI. Credit: Phil Jones

The length of your telomeres appears to be a window into your heart health and longevity, and scientists are measuring them to see if vitamin D and omega-3 supplements really improve both. “Many people take these supplements every day to help protect their heart and slow aging without significant clinical evidence that they do either,” said Dr. Yanbin Dong, geneticist and cardiologist at the Georgia Prevention Institute at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

Telomeres are found on either end of the chromosomes inside your cells where they essentially function as a b...

Scientists Develop Tissue-Engineered Model of Human Lung and Trachea

Scientists at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles have developed a tissue-engineered model of lung and trachea which contains the diverse cell types present in the human respiratory tract. Lung disease causes >200,000 deaths annually in the US. Although the lung is generally considered slow to respond to disease and injury, it does undergo regenerative processes, most of which are not fully understood. Building an understanding of these processes might lead to harnessing these innate mechanisms to help damaged lungs repair. A first step is a proper 3D model in which the disease process can be studied.

Previously, Grikscheit’s lab developed tissue-engineered small intestine (TESI) and showed that this regenerated tissue was fu...

Researchers have discovered that the intestinal parasite Tritrichomonas muris (pictured) increases the susceptibility of its host to colitis. Credit: Escalante et al., 2016

Researchers from University of Toronto have discovered that mice infected with the common gut parasite Tritrichomonas muris are at an increased risk of developing inflammatory colitis. Their findings expand the type of gut-resident microorganism that can affect the health of their host and suggest that related parasites may cause gastrointestinal disease in humans. Though some protozoan species, which are part of the protist kingdom of life, cause diseases like malaria and leishmaniasis, the protozoa that commonly live in the gut are generally thought to be harmless.

While studying the inflammatory mechanisms underlying...