US panel replaced under Trump backs new shot for kids

Most people experience periods of loneliness, isolation or solitude in their lives. But these are different things, and the proportion of people feeling lonely is stable over time. So why do we keep talking about an epidemic of loneliness?

A major UK-led clinical trial has found that a treatment commonly used to help premature babies breathe offers no benefit for infants on life support with severe bronchiolitis—a seasonal viral illness that hospitalizes thousands of babies each year.

Empagliflozin has kidney protective effects and reduces heart failure outcomes across baseline kidney function among patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI), according to a study published online June 13 in Nature Cardiovascular Research.

A research team has made a significant finding that sheds new light on dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB). The team was led by Associate Professor Ayako Okado-Matsumoto from the Department of Biology at Toho University in collaboration with Professor Ryuji Sakakibara from the Department of Neurology at Sakura Medical Center, and Professors Hitoshi Nukada and Soroku Yagihashi from the Department of Exploratory Medicine on Nature, Life and Man at Toho University.

Prior studies have shown veterans are particularly at risk of dying by opioid overdose and the possibility of that occurring has been rising steadily over the past two decades. From 2010–2019, there was a 61.2% increase in risk of overdose death among male veterans.

Research carried out on mice has revealed how a hormone released by the intestine acts on the brain and helps regulate the body's energy expenditure. FGF19 (fibroblast growth factor 19) activates mechanisms that stimulate the use of more energy, burn fat, and favor weight control and blood glucose levels in obese animals.

Exposure to fire smoke—which can be composed of particulate matter, gases, materials from buildings such as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), toxic metals, and carcinogenic compounds—may alter the immune system on a cellular level, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study is the first to examine the specific cellular changes associated with fire smoke exposure, documenting how smoke can damage the body through the immune system.

In a recent study published in World Journal of Experimental Medicine, scientist Dr. Renee Dufault at the Food Ingredient and Health Research Institute provides a protocol for determining the role ultra-processed foods play in prenatal heavy metal exposures and changes in the expression of the zinc dependent MT-1 (metallothionein) gene that impacts child neurodevelopment.

Sophisticated new emotional wellness apps powered by AI are growing in popularity.

Instead of using a patient's own bone or titanium to repair skull fractures, researchers are working on using artificial materials. New research—surprisingly—shows that the body's immune system helps strengthen artificial materials.

New basic science insights into programmed cell death could offer relief for inflammatory bowel disease.

While chemotherapy can be lifesaving, it also damages DNA and leads to cognitive issues known as "chemo brain." These effects resemble the memory and learning problems seen in older adults, prompting University of Oklahoma researchers to investigate this unique overlap of cognitive decline.

It has been known for several years that abnormal chromosome numbers lead to protein imbalances in the affected cells. Researchers at RPTU have now investigated the detailed effects of such imbalances. Surprisingly, they found that imbalanced proteome changes impair mitochondrial function. This, in turn, could be relevant for the drug treatment of cancer. The results are published in the journal Nature Communications.

In order to understand the structure and functioning of the brain, neuroscientists need to study the complex, three-dimensional pathways and connections of nerve fibers. The intersection of multiple nerve fibers poses a particular challenge for neuroimaging.

A research team led by the University of the Basque Country has identified hundreds of molecular markers in saliva that could reveal the risk of a person developing major diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. Their results, published in npj Genomic Medicine, lay the foundation for the development of a powerful, non-invasive tool for early diagnosis and precision medicine.

BCG therapy—the gold standard treatment for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC), where the cancer has not penetrated the muscle layer—is one of the earliest forms of cancer immunotherapy. Now, 50 years after it was first developed from the tuberculosis vaccine, its therapeutic power could be dramatically enhanced by combining it with a natural molecule derived from fungi, as demonstrated by a team of scientists led by Maziar Divangahi, Senior Scientist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center (The Institute) and Professor in McGill's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Academic medical centers could transform patient care by adopting principles from learning health systems principles, according to researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and the University of California, San Diego. In this approach, information from electronic health records, clinical trials and day-to-day hospital operations is analyzed in real-time to uncover insights that continuously improve patient care.

Malnutrition could be a hidden culprit that lowers quality of life for people with larger bodies, especially if they have a health condition like osteoarthritis, University of Alberta research has found.