Category Health/Medical

Coeliac disease incidence rate by month of birth in children aged 0–14.9 years during the period from 1991 to 2009 for the three nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS 1) regions in Sweden.

Circulating viral infections may help explain the temporal and geographical patterns associated with the risk of developing childhood celiac disease, conclude Swedish researchers in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. But the role of vitamin D during pregnancy may also have a part to play, they suggest. They base their findings on a long term study of almost 2 million children up to the age of 15 who had been born in Sweden between 1991 and 2009.

In all, 6569 of these children from 47 hospitals across the country were diagnosed with celiac disease before the age of 15...

The fMRI activity of a person with Parkinson’s disease is shown at baseline and one year later. The areas of high activity (orange) become areas of low activity (blue) in the second scan, showing progressive deterioration. Credit: Courtesy of David Vaillancourt

A new, non-invasive way to track the progression of Parkinson’s disease could help evaluate experimental treatments to slow or stop the disease’s progression. University of Florida researchers used fMRI to reveal areas where Parkinson’s disease and related conditions cause progressive decline in brain activity. While current treatments focus on controlling symptoms, biomarkers provide a quantifiable way to measure how medications address not just symptoms, but the neurological changes behind them.

Previous studies have used imagin...

CRISPR gene editing reveals new therapeutic approach for blood disorders. Credit: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

An international team has found a way to use CRISPR gene editing to help fix sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia in blood cells isolated from patients. The study in Nature Medicine, provides proof-of-principle for a new approach to treat common blood disorders by genome editing.

“Our approach to gene editing is informed by the known benefits of hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin,” said Mitchell J. Weiss, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the St. Jude Department of Hematology...

The legions of nanorobotic agents are actually composed of more than 100 million flagellated bacteria — and therefore self-propelled — and loaded with drugs that moved by taking the most direct path between the drug’s injection point and the area of the body to cure. Credit: Montréal Nanorobotics Laboratory

Researchers have just achieved a spectacular breakthrough in cancer research. They have developed new nanorobotic agents capable of navigating through the bloodstream to administer a drug with precision by specifically targeting the active cancerous cells of tumours. This way of injecting medication ensures the optimal targeting of a tumour and avoids jeopardizing the integrity of organs and surrounding healthy tissues...