The discovery of antibiotics remains one of the most important medical advances to date, but overuse and inappropriate use of antibiotics has led to many infections becoming resistant to treatment.
Giving severely depressed patients the arthritis drug celecoxib (Celebrex®) dramatically boosted the effectiveness of their antidepressant medication, a Loyola study has found.
Biochemists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have created the first atlas that maps where molecular tools that can switch genes on and off will bind to the human genome. It is a development they say could enable these tools to be targeted to specific parts of an individual’s genome for use in precision medicine, developing therapies and treating disease.
Scientists at Duke Health and Zhejiang Chinese Medical University have developed a strategy to stop the uncontrollable itch caused by urushiol, the oily sap common to poison ivy, poison sumac, poison oak and even mango trees. The team found that by blocking an immune system protein in the skin with an antibody, they could halt the processes that tell the brain the skin is itchy.
Researchers achieved an unexpected eye-popping reduction of ovarian cancer during a successful test of targeted nanohydrogel delivery in vivo in mice. Adding cisplatin eliminated or starkly diminished tumors.
Two widely prescribed antibiotics — chloramphenicol and linezolid — may fight bacteria in a different way from what scientists and doctors thought for years, University of Illinois at Chicago researchers have found. Instead of indiscriminately stopping protein synthesis, the drugs put the brakes on the protein synthesis machinery only at specific locations in the gene.
The International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) led a session this afternoon entitled, "From Testimonials to Qualitative Research Embedded in Clinical Trials: How Do Health Technology Assessment Bodies Consider the Voice of Rare Disease Patients When Granting Access to Orphan Drugs?" The discussion took place at the Society’s 19th Annual European Congress—in Vienna, Austria.
More than 4,000 children and teens are diagnosed with brain cancer each year and the disease kills more children than any other cancer. Writing this week in the journal Cell Reports, researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah report they have identified an existing group of drugs that appear to reduce or eliminate a certain subgroup of childhood brain cancers while sparing normal brain tissue. The research was conducted using a new zebrafish animal model system developed by the researchers, which closely resembles an aggressive subtype of pediatric brain tumors.
An experimental drug shows promise in treating Alzheimer’s disease by preventing inflammation and removing abnormal protein clumps in the brain that are associated with the disease, suggests a study in mice presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2016 annual meeting.
One of the earliest widespread applications of precision medicine in cancer care is helping patients and physicians decide whether chemotherapy is needed, a new study finds.
Millions of people take opioids for chronic back pain, but many of them get limited relief while experiencing side effects and worrying about the stigma associated with taking them, suggests research presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2016 annual meeting.
The University of Michigan will join nine other clinical centers across the country working to compare the effectiveness of different treatment strategies for women with uterine fibroids.
Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and The Scripps Research Institute, with colleagues in Los Angeles and Japan, report that depriving deadly brain cancer cells of cholesterol, which they import from neighboring healthy cells, specifically kills tumor cells and caused tumor regression and prolonged survival in mouse models.
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been awarded a five-year, $9.7 million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to support a Physical Sciences-Oncology Center (PS-OC). Researchers hope to learn more about the physical parameters that limit drug delivery into brain tumors and use this information to build models that will help physicians better predict how the body will distribute a particular drug to brain tumors and help them select the best drug to treat each patient based on their unique tumor.
A new study from the University of Missouri in partnership with scientists in Africa has uncovered evidence that these supplements and their antioxidants may reduce the effectiveness of prescription medications. The researchers examined the effects of a widely used African botanical supplement, called Sutherlandia, and found that it may disrupt the effectiveness of a common anti-tuberculosis drug. This could lead to the development of active tuberculosis and perhaps drug resistant forms of the pathogen in some patients.
For three days this week, Roanoke, Virginia, is the capital of the precision neuroscience world.
The top minds of precision neuroscience are coming together in a think-tank setting to explore the challenges and promise of bringing personalized medicine to brain health.
Individualized medicine is no longer the lore of science fiction. It is offering new hope for patients with cancer, heart disease, depression and rare diseases for which there historically have been no diagnosis or treatment. And that’s just the beginning.
What Karen Daggett didn’t know almost killed her. The medicine she relied on to control an irregular heartbeat wasn’t working and hadn’t for years and she didn’t understand why pain medication never seemed to make her feel better. She also had a history of not tolerating some over-the-counter medications. Silently, these drugs were building up in her system, causing harmful side effects until DNA testing at Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine showed some medications were incompatible with her genetic makeup.
The Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) announces a $2.1 million grant awarded to R. Scott Turner, MD, PhD, of Georgetown University Medical Center to conduct a phase II clinical trial of low-dose nilotinib (marketed as Tasigna® for use as a cancer therapy) in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
Hepatitis B (HBV) is a viral infection that increases the likelihood of developing liver cancer or liver failure. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 2 billion people currently are infected with HBV, which is more than 10 times the number of people who have human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Currently, treatment for hepatitis B infections is limited to one class of drugs that targets the virus. Stefan Sarafianos, an investigator with the University of Missouri Bond Life Sciences Center (BLSC) recently was awarded $3 million from the National Institutes of Health to study the disease. Building on existing research, he and his team will work on the development of new drugs to treat HBV.
Many know Botox as a trendy way to get rid of wrinkles, but the popular drug — made from botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) — can do more than just fill lines.
Seventy-five percent of patients with an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss had significant hair regrowth after treatment with ruxolitinib, according to a study from Columbia University Medical Center.
Three UCSF researchers have been awarded $680,000 in grants from Susan G. Komen to support projects in breast cancer research. The grants to UCSF were among a total of $32.7 million given to researchers in 23 states and seven countries for projects including research into metastatic disease, novel treatments for aggressive types of breast cancer, new technologies, and health equity.
Researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear have discovered a new mutation in a highly antibiotic-resistant strain of E. coli that resists clearance by the body’s own immune system by inhibiting white blood cells that ordinarily kill and remove bacteria. In a paper published online today in JAMA Ophthalmology, the researchers describe the case that led them to discover the mutation, and offer suggestions for how to recognize and address this particular microbe if encountered in the future.
New research from The Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai identifies a protein that may be an unexplored target to develop new cancer therapies. The protein, known as kinase suppressor of Ras, or KSR, is a pseudoenzyme that plays a critical role in the transmission of signals in the cell determining whether cells grow, divide, or die.
A study of a new mouse model identifies a drug target that has the potential to increase social interaction in individuals with some forms of autism spectrum disorder.
Type II diabetes and Parkinson’s disease may not appear to have much in common but a look below the surface reveals important molecular similarities that provide a potential target for fighting Parkinson’s.
The antidepressant fluoxetine causes bone loss by instructing the brain to send out signals that increase bone breakdown, but a beta-blocker can intercept the signals, a new study in mice has found.
Edible ginger-derived nano-lipids created from a specific population of ginger nanoparticles show promise for effectively targeting and delivering chemotherapeutic drugs used to treat colon cancer, according to a study by researchers at the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University, the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Wenzhou Medical University and Southwest University in China.
Rush University Medical Center ’ Dr. Timothy Lubenow is first doctor in country to use a more advanced form of spinal cord stimulation that sends electrical pulses to Dorsal Root Ganglia; 90+ percent of chronic pain patients report substantial relief.
A contact lens designed to deliver medication gradually to the eye could improve outcomes for patients with conditions requiring treatment with eye drops, which are often imprecise and difficult to self-administer. In a study published online today in Ophthalmology, a team of researchers have shown that a novel contact lens-based system, which uses a strategically placed drug polymer film to deliver medication gradually to the eye, is at least as effective, and possibly more so, as daily latanoprost eye drops in a pre-clinical model for glaucoma.
Treatment with sertraline may provide nominal but important improvements in cognition and social participation in very young children with fragile X syndrome, the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability and the leading single-gene cause of autism, a study by researchers with the UC Davis MIND Institute has found.
By discouraging the use of medications that can cause dizziness or loss of balance and prescribing medications known to prevent bone loss, clinicians can help patients lower their risk of falls and fractures.
Researchers from Columbia University Medical Center found that men had greater pain relief than women after smoking marijuana. “These findings come at a time when more people, including women, are turning to the use of medical cannabis for pain relief,” said Ziva Cooper, PhD, one of the authors...
A large international study of metformin, the world’s most commonly used type 2 diabetes drug, reveals genetic differences among patients that may explain why some respond much better to the drug than others.
Jersey Shore University Medical Center is the first hospital in New Jersey to offer deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (dTMS) – a non-invasive treatment for depression that provides new hope for patients who have experienced side effects from medications or for whom medications have proven ineffective.
Genetic research is a valuable tool in understanding diseases and their prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. However, significant obstacles limit the clinical use of this knowledge to all groups. Genetic applications in healthcare must advance in a way that reduces racial and ethnic disparities.
University Hospitals Case Medical Center is the first site in the world to perform a procedure on a patient in RADIANCE-HTN, an international clinical trial evaluating the effect of the ReCor Paradise® Renal Denervation System on lowering blood pressure with hypertension. The system uses ultrasound energy to treat overactive nerves leading to the kidney.RADIANCE-HTN is a blinded, randomized, sham-controlled trial.
Inability to manage negative emotional and somatic stress is associated with opioid misuse in adults with chronic pain, according to new research reported in The Journal of Pain, published by the American Pain Society,
Researchers from Penn Medicine and other institutions found that treating metastatic thyroid cancer patients harboring a BRAF mutation with the targeted therapy vemurafenib —originally approved for melanoma patients with the mutation—showed promising anti-tumor activity in a third of patients. The results were published in this week’s Lancet Oncology.
Duke University could receive up to $19 million to lead early-stage clinical trials for new drugs to treat neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and neuropathy.
Advanced Instruments, Inc., a leader in laboratory instrumentation, announced today that it has received 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market its GloCyte Automated Cell Counter System and GloCyte Low and High Level Controls.