Category: 4. Health

  • C. diff uses toxic compound to fuel growth advantage

    C. diff uses toxic compound to fuel growth advantage

    The pathogen C. diff — the most common cause of health care-associated infectious diarrhea — can use a compound that kills the human gut’s resident microbes to survive and grow, giving it a competitive advantage in the infected gut.

    A team led by investigators at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has discovered how C. diff (Clostridioides difficile) converts the poisonous compound 4-thiouracil, which could come from foods like broccoli, into a usable nutrient. Their findings, published…

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • Scientists unlock frogs' antibacterial secrets to combat superbugs

    Scientists unlock frogs' antibacterial secrets to combat superbugs

    Engineers have derived potent new antibiotics from a frog’s secretions. The new molecules demonstrated capabilities on par with existing last-resort antibiotics, without harming human cells or beneficial gut bacteria.

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • Novel pathway has potential to slow progression of pulmonary fibrosis

    Novel pathway has potential to slow progression of pulmonary fibrosis

    Researchers have found a potential new way to slow the progression of lung fibrosis and other fibrotic diseases by inhibiting the expression or function of Piezo2, a receptor that senses mechanical forces in tissues including stress, strain, and stiffness. The new study in The American Journal of Pathology, published by Elsevier, sheds light on the underlying mechanisms of pulmonary fibrotic diseases and identifies potential new targets and options for therapy to improve patients’ outcomes.

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • Bird Flu Found In Sheep For First Time, Sparking Health Concerns

    Bird Flu Found In Sheep For First Time, Sparking Health Concerns

    You can add one more animal to the list of mammals that the bird flu has infected.

    For the first time ever, the UK has reported a case of the bird flu in a sheep. This groundbreaking development occurred on a farm in Yorkshire, England where the highly pathogenic…

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    News Source: www.forbes.com

  • Helping You With Stress

    Helping You With Stress

    We all face stressful situations, but we do not all respond the same way. How we respond depends on the situation and differences in our biology. A new study from Canada may help us begin to understand these differences. While studying how mice react to stress, the team may have…

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    News Source: www.forbes.com

  • Marijuana Continues To Harm More And More Americans

    Marijuana Continues To Harm More And More Americans

    Despite the growing trend of legalizing marijuana across the majority of states throughout the United States, the drug may not be as safe as it is perceived to be.

    Currently, marijuana has been legalized for medical use in 38 states and Washington D.C., with 24 states and Washington D.C….

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    News Source: www.forbes.com

  • Tuberculosis could be eradicated. So why isn’t it?

    Tuberculosis could be eradicated. So why isn’t it?

    Everything Is Tuberculosis
    John Green
    Crash Course Books, $28

    A few years ago, renowned author John Green met a boy named Henry at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. Henry was small and, at first glance, looked about 9 years old to Green. Everyone at the hospital seemed to know and love him, making Green believe he was the child of a health care worker. That is until staff revealed that Henry was a patient with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis — and that he was…

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    News Source: www.sciencenews.org

  • Study confirms accuracy of blood test for early Alzheimer’s detection in Asian populations

    Study confirms accuracy of blood test for early Alzheimer’s detection in Asian populations

    A study in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, a leading journal in dementia research, has demonstrated the high accuracy of plasma p-tau217 as a blood-based biomarker for detecting abnormal brain beta-amyloid (Aβ) pathology, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). More significantly, the study validates its effectiveness even in individuals with cerebrovascular disease (CeVD), which is highly prevalent in Asian populations. This finding can enhance early diagnosis, improve patient risk stratification,…

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • New IVF method mimics fallopian tube environment, increasing sperm viability

    New IVF method mimics fallopian tube environment, increasing sperm viability

    The success of in vitro fertilization depends on many factors, one of which is sperm viability. A recent study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign documents a new way to select viable sperm and prolong their viability in the laboratory, reducing one source of variability during the process.

    “The fallopian tube in women, or the oviduct, has an ability to lengthen sperm lifespan that, until now, we couldn’t recreate in IVF. In 2020, we discovered that complex sugars called glycans…

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • The right moves to reign in fibrosis

    The right moves to reign in fibrosis

    The cells in human bodies are subject to both chemical and mechanical forces. But up until recently, scientists have not understood much about how to manipulate the mechanical side of that equation. That’s about to change.

    “This is a major breakthrough in our ability to be able to control the cells that drive fibrosis,” according to Guy Genin, the Harold and Kathleen Faught Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis,…

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com