Providing people with nutritious foods can improve the management of chronic metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension. However, most studies of "Food Is Medicine" programs have only looked at their short-term impacts—on the scale of weeks to months.

New research from two William & Mary students has found that the risk of heart attack could be significantly lowered with one simple dietary change: increasing the intake of pulses. But what is a pulse? A food group with diverse options, pulses are edible seeds from plants in the legume family. Some examples include dry beans, chickpeas, lentils and dry peas.

The angiopoietin-Tie signaling pathway has long been known to be essential for the maturation and maintenance of healthy blood vessels. It stabilizes the vessel wall and regulates vascular growth during development. At the same time, it plays an important role in inflammation, when blood vessels become activated and immune cells leave the bloodstream and enter the surrounding tissue. How the same signaling pathway can control such different biological functions has remained unclear.

For millions of people at risk of glaucoma, healthy eye pressure can mean the difference between preserving vision and losing it. Yet despite decades of research, scientists still do not fully understand what regulates daily changes in eye pressure or how those fluctuations may contribute to glaucoma. A series of three studies led by Christopher Passaglia, a University of South Florida professor and associate chair in the Department of Medical Engineering, is helping fill in those gaps.

Physicians typically use either a higher dose of cisplatin given every three weeks or a lower dose given weekly in combination with radiation to treat locally advanced head and neck cancer. However, before NRG-HN009, there was limited randomized evidence to determine which regimen provided the best balance of cancer control and treatment-related side effects.

In neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, progressive neuronal damage is associated with the accumulation of abnormal tau filaments in the brain. The core of these filaments forms a highly ordered structure, while molecules such as ubiquitin are attached to tau around the core as post-translational modifications. However, the role these peripheral modifications play in maintaining the structural stability of tau filaments remains unclear.

Cognitive flexibility, the ability to adjust one's way of thinking or behavior as a situation changes, is known to gradually decline with age or due to some conditions, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and substance use disorders. One aspect of cognitive flexibility is being able to switch between different tasks without becoming distracted and losing focus.

A recent BBC report described women posing as men to obtain testosterone gel, hoping to improve their menopause symptoms because female testosterone products are not easily available to them. But why is the appetite for this predominantly male hormone exploding, and are there risks involved?

Cut the power, and the machine stops. That was part of the motivation behind a four-year effort to map all the proteins in the mitochondria—often called the powerhouse of the cell—of the parasites that cause sleeping sickness, giardiasis, leishmaniasis and babesiosis, diseases that together affect nearly a billion people every year.

Tau is a protein that occurs naturally in the brain. It is essential for proper neuron development and for how neurons communicate with each other. The same protein, however, when misshapen or misfolded, can act as a driver of neurodegenerative diseases. Abnormal buildup of tau is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, and scientists have also found an association between misfolded tau and more than 20 neurodegenerative diseases.

Researchers at Upstate Medical University have identified a key mechanism that helps determine the length of myelin, the protective coating that surrounds many nerve fibers and allows signals to travel efficiently through the nervous system.

Indigenous children across the globe are experiencing significant climate-related health impacts, ranging from malnutrition and infectious diseases to effects on mental health and cultural well-being and problems before birth, according to a new study.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common mental health condition primarily characterized by persistent low mood or loss of interest in daily activities. While several medications are available to treat depression, finding one that works for each patient can take time.

A caulking gun filled with silicone compound is set to enable doctors and nurses in the future to seal even deep wounds caused by blast injuries—thereby preventing amputations and reducing mortality among patients with severe wounds.

Anyone with ovaries who lives long enough will experience menopause. While menopause is a natural transition in midlife, it can strongly affect a person's quality of life and their current and future risk of heart disease, osteoporosis and other issues. So you might think that whether someone is experiencing or has gone through menopause would be noted in their medical records.

Treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a mental health condition characterized by distressing, uncontrollable thoughts and repetitive behaviors, has centered on psychotherapy and medication to curb symptoms. New research identifying a previously unknown brain circuit involved in OCD could be a key step toward treatments that target specific brain regions to better control the condition.

More than 250 participants have been enrolled in a trial for a drug that could stop them from contracting Ebola in Congo, in what experts have described as a critical step to try to fight the deadliest outbreak of the disease in the Central African country.

The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that its inspectors detected cyclospora at the Mexican farm blamed for the largest foodborne illness outbreak of the parasite in U.S. history.

Florida's current dengue outbreak appears to be the largest in several decades in the continental United States.

In the United Kingdom, 2.9% of patients undergoing anesthesia reported receiving glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs), according to a study published online Sept. 16 in Anaesthesia to coincide with the annual meeting of the Association of Anaesthetists, held Sept. 16–18 in Liverpool, England.

Children born with certain heart defects may face fewer open-heart surgeries, thanks to a new replacement valve that grows with them.

It's October and time for flu shots. Medical experts urge getting a flu vaccination soon, before influenza starts spreading widely—and to get up to date on protection against other fall respiratory viruses, too. Updated COVID-19 shots are available now, plus shots for people especially vulnerable to another winter risk called RSV.

Global life expectancy is close to the levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the outlook for years lived in good health is recovering more slowly, the WHO said Friday.

Pulling an all-nighter before a test or assignment deadline is almost a teenage rite of passage, but scientists are concerned that these exceptions are becoming a regular habit. Insomnia symptoms during adolescence are linked to a range of adverse health and developmental outcomes. Studies have found that physical activity can be a good antidote to sleep issues, but can it help ease adolescent insomnia?

New research presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Milan, Italy (Sept. 28–Oct. 2), reports on pilot screening programs for type 1 diabetes in eight countries. The authors—a consortium including Dr. Peter Achenbach and professor Anette-Gabriele Ziegler from the Institute of Diabetes Research, Helmholtz Munich, Munich, Germany—say that screening should be rolled out across Europe, ideally with three testing windows: ages 2–4, 6–8 and 10–15.

Details of a new injection that targets fat cells will be released at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Milan, Italy (Sept. 28–Oct. 2). Studies show that the new drug, CBL-514, reduces levels of subcutaneous and visceral fat. The data also suggest that it helps limit weight regain after people stop taking GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs (GLP1-RAs), says Dr. W. Timothy Garvey of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Sibling aggression takes many forms, like hitting, shoving, threatening or calling names. Although sibling aggression is widespread and can shape people for years, it hasn't been studied well by psychological researchers.

Researchers at Semmelweis University examined the connection between childhood trauma and adult suicide risk among 300 psychiatric inpatients. According to a study published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology, both emotional and physical neglect may be associated with repeated suicide attempts. While previous Hungarian and international studies have mainly focused on the consequences of physical and sexual abuse, the role of different forms of neglect has received less attention.

Understanding how fetal DNA travels in a pregnant woman's blood could unlock the next generation of prenatal screening, according to a new paper published in Science Advances.

Prevention measures, including vector control, vaccine deployment and cutting greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming, are critical to counter the growing burden of mosquito-borne diseases in a changing climate, according to a new paper by Monash University researchers.

New research presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Milan, Italy (Sept. 28–Oct. 2), and published in Diabetologia shows that the incidence (the new case rate) of type 1 diabetes (T1D) in children ages 0.5–5 years in Norway was 11% higher following the rapid rollout and uptake of the rotavirus vaccine in September 2014. The study is by doctoral student Maria Östman, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, and colleagues.

Very low-carbohydrate (VLC) diets may be associated with health benefits in children with type 1 diabetes (T1D) and were not associated with acute diabetes complications, new research being presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Milan, Italy (Sept. 28–Oct. 2), has found.

Heel-prick blood samples from newborns can be used to measure antibodies against group B Streptococcus, according to a new study from Aarhus University published in The Lancet Microbe journal. In the longer term, the method could contribute to the development of vaccines designed to protect infants against serious infections.

Two structurally modified compounds derived from an anti-inflammatory metabolite demonstrated enhanced anti-inflammatory activity in experimental ulcerative colitis in mice and human tissue, offering an underexplored drug discovery opportunity for this chronic inflammatory disease, according to a study led by researchers in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have investigated where adolescents eat during the school day and what types of food they choose. The study was conducted by the IMPACT research group at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge, led by Ioannis Ioakeimidis. The findings are published in the journal BMC Public Health.

For older adults, no disaster is simple. Repeated hurricanes, floods, wildfires and heat waves can combine with chronic illness, limited mobility, weak social support and strained care systems to create risks greater than any one factor alone. As disasters grow more severe and frequent—and increasingly overlap or strike before communities have fully recovered—preparing for and recovering from them becomes even more challenging.

Both the clinical effects and the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapies, from hair loss to mouth sores to gastrointestinal discomfort, stem from their indiscriminate destruction of cells prone to rapid proliferation. That includes CD8+ T cells, the body's frontline soldiers against viral infections and cancer, which multiply furiously when they're activated by their target antigens.

Seaweed piling up on a beach might look harmless, but as it begins to rot, it can release gases that are toxic to people.

For decades, body image researchers have focused almost exclusively on how we compare ourselves to others and the toll it takes on our well-being. But a new study from The Ohio State University shows that we are often our own worst critics, especially when comparing who we are today with past versions of ourselves.

More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek mathematician Euclid began his treatise "Optics" with an assumption that now sounds peculiar: visual rays traveled out from the eye toward the objects we see.

Lymphatic vessels act as the body's "drainage system," collecting excess fluid from tissues. When lymphatic drainage is impaired because lymphatic vessels are underdeveloped, damaged or dysfunctional, lymphedema can develop, causing swelling, particularly in the arms and legs.

Pharmacies across the United States continue to close at a rapid rate, leaving millions of Americans in "pharmacy deserts," where they lack convenient and reasonable access to the care these community health hubs provide. Past research indicates that nearly one in three pharmacies closed between 2010 and 2021, including more than 7,000 pharmacies since 2019.

A study led by UTSW researchers found that patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) taking generic versions of three commonly prescribed oral therapies had greater variability in blood proteins associated with MS disease activity than patients taking brand-name versions of the drugs.

Every day, hundreds of thousands of people undergo general anesthesia, trusting they'll drift into unconsciousness and wake safely after surgery. Yet despite decades of use, scientists still don't fully understand how anesthetic drugs reshape the brain's electrical activity to produce unconsciousness.

One in 100 adolescents and young adults in the United States has an opioid use disorder (OUD) and, with the rise of fentanyl in the drug supply, overdoses in this age group have risen sharply since 2019.

Researchers at the Cancer Epigenetics Institute (CEI) at Fox Chase Cancer Center have discovered how to control and stop the amplification of MYC—one of the most commonly altered cancer genes linked to aggressive tumor growth and treatment resistance.

While the transition to motherhood can be challenging for anyone, barriers such as inadequate health literacy, unreliable transportation, difficulty navigating a complex health care system, limited access to child care or insecure housing can be the tipping point between a new mom accessing needed care or going without it.

A small capsule could change how we study the microbiome of the small intestine. A team led by researchers at the University of Tokyo has created a pill-shaped device designed to take samples from the small intestine using a tiny extendable brush.

Glioma brain tumors are diffuse, so surgeons usually cannot excise all of the cancer during surgery. Currently, surgeons remove as much of the tumor as they can and then analyze the tumor's borders after surgery.

Taking out the trash is a chore that even our cells cannot escape. Through a process known as autophagy, they place misshapen proteins and other cellular garbage in biological containers to digest them into their molecular building blocks.