Science and Health News

Results provide insight into underlying mechanisms of inflammation that may help anticipate clinical trajectories of COVID-19 patients

Scientists have found that insulin has met an evolutionary cul-de-sac, limiting its ability to adapt to obesity and thereby rendering most people vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes.

Many people have had the experience of being poked in the back by those annoying plastic tags while trying on clothes in a store. That is just one example of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, which has become a mainstay not just in retail but also in manufacturing, logistics, transportation, health care, and more. And who wouldn’t recognize the series of black and white lines comprising that old grocery-store standby, the scannable barcode? That invention — which originally dates back to the 1950s — eventually gave rise to the QR code, whose pixel patterns serve as a bridge between physical and digital content in the smartphone era.

This drug is currently taken by one in four people to reduce cholesterol in the blood and thus prevent cardiovascular diseases. URV-IISPV researcher Lluís Masana has coordinated a study carried out at 19 Catalan hospitals during the first wave of the pandemic

Adoptively transferred T-cells can prolong survival and sometimes cure patients with advanced solid tumors. While promising, it can take months to generate the necessary T-cells to help these patients. Such slow speed makes this therapy impractical for most patients who need immediate treatment.

A new study by scientists at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and colleagues published Oct. 30, 2020, in Science, showed that mice exposed to potentially lethal levels of total body radiation were protected from radiation damage if they had specific types of bacteria in their gut. Radiation absorbed in a clinical setting or during an accidental exposure can cause damage to tissues. In this study, the bacteria mitigated radiation exposure and enhanced the recovery of blood cell production as well as repair of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract.

In Alzheimer’s disease, a protein (peptide) forms clumps in the brain and causes sufferers to lose their memory. In a recently published article, a research group at Uppsala University described a new treatment method that increases the body’s own degradation of the building blocks that lead to these protein clumps.

Researchers at the University of Basel have developed a precisely controllable system for mimicking biochemical reaction cascades in cells. Using microfluidic technology, they produce miniature polymeric reaction containers equipped with the desired properties. This “cell on a chip” is useful not only for studying processes in cells, but also for the development of new synthetic pathways for chemical applications or for biological active substances in medicine.