News • European congress
Rett syndrome: connect people, share knowledge
Genetics and research, transition and aging, activities and participation, pain orthopedics and physiotherapy as well as new treatment options...
Article • Neurological diseases
No health without brain health
A largely aged population is already a reality in some countries, and this will become a worldwide problem by 2047, when the number of the Earth’s old people is likely to surpass the number of young people.
News • Auditory Attention Decoding
Hearing aid uses deep neural network to filter out the noise
Columbia Engineers make major advance in helping the hearing impaired follow a conversation in a noisy environment - and bring cognitive hearing aids a step closer to reality.
News • Rise and shine
Caffeine shortens recovery time from general anesthesia
Caffeine helps quickly boost wakefulness following general anesthesia, a new study finds. The stimulant—used daily by more than 90 percent of adults in the U.S.—appears to alter physiological function in two different ways to shorten recovery time.
News • Caudate nucleus
How Alzheimer's puts your brain on autopilot - in a good way
Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) have a larger caudate nucleus, a brain area involved in habits and used to navigate in the environment on an autopilot mode, shows for the first time a Canadian-Norwegian study published in Acta Neurologica Scandinavica. Not good news, you may think. Hold on, this could open new research avenues for AD.
News • Virus study
Close contact not at fault for Zika spread
Saliva is no way to pass a Zika virus infection. According to researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who conducted studies with monkeys, casual contact like kissing or sharing a fork or spoon is not enough for the virus to move between hosts.
News • Vocalization
Speech impediment? The nucleus might be to blame
A genetic study identifies neuronal circuits responsible for ultrasonic calls uttered by mouse pups. The cries of human babies may well depend on similar connections, which could also be impaired in speech disorders.
Article • Skin protection
Self-improving DNA sun screen developed
Researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York have developed a coating made out of DNA that gets better at protecting skin from Ultraviolet light the more it is exposed to the sun and which could potentially be used as wound covering for extreme environments.
News • Mutation Study
Influential gene neighbourhood
Genes do not exist in isolation. So far, little has been known about how the position of a gene on a chromosome affects its evolution.
Article • Infection control
Zika-vaccine receives boost
A promising Zika vaccine is on its way. Themis Bioscience GmbH (Vienna, Austria), a company specialised in vaccine development, has announced that the firm will receive One milion pounds sterling in funding by the innovation agency of the United Kingdom, Innovate UK, for the further development of this prophylactic vaccine and the conducting of a Phase 1 clinical trial.
News • Blood test alternative
Oral "Hep E" test could simplify detection tremendously
A saliva test developed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health nearly matches the performance of a blood test widely used to assess recent or past hepatitis E virus infections, a new study reports. The findings could offer an easier, less expensive alternative to gathering data for studying and eventually treating the disease, which infects an estimated 20 million…
News • Exposure study
Got eye freckles? The sun might be to blame
In a study well-timed for summer, vision scientists have found that eye freckles, dark spots on the colored part of the eye (iris), are more frequently found in people with higher lifetime exposure to sunlight. While not malignant, eye freckles could indicate the presence or risk of sunlight-triggered eye diseases like cataract or macular degeneration.
News • Pregnancy loss
Single cell RNA-sequencing to offer miscarriage hope
A new technique – single cell RNA-sequencing – may offer answers and hope to the 200,000 mothers and partners affected by pregnancy loss in the UK every year.
News • Molecular mechanisms
The key to growing new arteries
Arteriogenesis is a critical event – not only during development but also in adult life. Many Cardiovascular life-threatening events could be overcome by inducing the formation of new arteries. A team of scientists led by Ralf Adams from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine has developed a genetic approach in mice to uncover molecular mechanisms of arterial growth.
News • Viral reproduction
A perfect shelter: How ebola lives on in the eyes of survivors
Researchers have found a clue to how the ebola virus may remain in the eyes of patients suffering from uveitis – one of the more serious and common complications of the disease.
News • 'Mito-riboscins'
Scientists stumble across new method of making antibiotics
Cancer researchers in the UK may have stumbled across a solution to reverse antibiotic drug resistance and stop infections like MRSA. Experts warn we are decades behind in the race against superbugs having already exploited naturally occurring antibiotics, with the creation of new ones requiring time, money and ingenuity. But a team of scientists at the University of Salford say they may have…
News • Ocular microbiome
Bugs in your eyes? More helpful than you think
Resident microbes living on the eye are essential for immune responses that protect the eye from infection, new research shows. The study demonstrates the existence of a resident ocular microbiome that trains the developing immune system to fend off pathogens. The research was conducted at the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health. "This is the first…
News • Mice study
Eating tomatoes might diminish skin cancer risk
Daily tomato consumption appeared to cut the development of skin cancer tumors by half in a mouse study at The Ohio State University. The new study focused on how nutritional interventions can alter the risk for skin cancers.
News • New biological approach
Old antibiotic could become valuable depression treatment
An antibiotic used mostly to treat acne has been found to improve the quality of life for people with major depression, in a clinical trial from Deakin University.
Surgery for early prostate cancer often harmful
A major 20-year study provides further evidence that prostate cancer surgery offers negligible benefits to many men with early-stage disease. In such men, who account for most cases of newly diagnosed prostate cancer, surgery did not prolong life and often caused serious complications such as infection, urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction.
News • Antioxidant study
How strawberries may prevent Alzheimer's
A natural compound in strawberries could help treat age-related mental decline and conditions like Alzheimer’s, a new study found.
News • Biomarker validation
Plodding toward a pancreatic cancer screening test
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly types of malignancies, with a 5-year survival rate after late diagnosis of only about 5%. The majority of patients—about 80%—receive their diagnosis too late for surgery. The disease spreads quickly and resists chemotherapy. In short, there is an urgent need for diagnostic tools to identify this cancer in its earliest stages.
News • Behavioral study
New understanding for autism through eye tracking
New research has uncovered compelling evidence that genetics plays a major role in how children look at the world and whether they have a preference for gazing at people’s eyes and faces or at objects. The discovery by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta adds new detail to understanding the causes of autism…
News • Clinical trials
How treating dogs might help human cancer patients
The UC Davis Comparative Oncology Program joins oncologists at both the vet school and cancer center to test novel treatments on companion dogs with spontaneous tumors that could be effective in human patients with cancer. Human clinical trials could be started this year.
News • Schizophrenia
When the internal clock is out of order
Persons suffering from schizophrenia have a different perception of time than healthy individuals, a new study finds. There is far more variation in the way that a time interval is perceived by people with schizophrenic disorders than by those who do not have the condition. Patients with schizophrenia are also less precise when it comes to judging the temporal order of events.
