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Category: biotech/medical – Page 740

Diabetic Nephropathy | Diabetic Kidney Disease

Kidney damage from diabetes is called diabetic nephropathy. You can slow down kidney damage or keep it from getting worse. Controlling your blood sugar and blood pressure, taking your medicines and not eating too much protein can help.

If you have diabetes, your blood glucose, or blood sugar, levels are too high. Over time, this can damage your kidneys. Your kidneys clean your blood. If they are damaged, waste and fluids build up in your blood instead of leaving your body.

Kidney damage from diabetes is called diabetic nephropathy. It begins long before you have symptoms. People with diabetes should get regular screenings for kidney disease. Tests include a urine test to detect protein in your urine and a blood test to show how well your kidneys are working.

If the damage continues, your kidneys could fail. In fact, diabetes is the most common cause of kidney failure in the United States. People with kidney failure need either dialysis or a kidney transplant.

Hypertension: Eating more tomatoes may help lower risk by 36%

For older adults with mild high blood pressure, a new study suggests consuming tomatoes may help manage hypertension and may even lower the risk of developing high blood pressure in the first place.

In the study, people without high blood pressure who ate the most tomatoes or tomato-based foods had a 36% lower risk of developing hypertension than those who ate the least.

In people who already had high blood pressure, especially those with stage 1 hypertension, moderate consumption of tomatoes was associated with a reduction in blood pressure.

There’s A Paradigm Shift In Immunology; And Big Pharma Is Paying Richly For It

This is good news potentially. TL1A have the potential of helping with inflammatory bowel disease, and arthritis and inflammatory diseases but it won’t come out, until half a decade from now.

Biotech stock investors are hoping for a repeat performance from the suite of TL1A drugs.

Proving The Drug’s Merit

First, the companies are looking to prove the drugs’ merit in ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. So far, that venture has paid off handsomely for the biotech stocks involved.

Researchers discover protein complex that controls DNA repair

The repair of damage to genetic material (DNA) in the human body is carried out by highly efficient mechanisms that have not yet been fully researched. A scientific team led by Christian Seiser from MedUni Vienna’s Center for Anatomy and Cell Biology has now discovered a previously unrecognized control point for these processes.

This discovery could lead to a new approach for the development of cancer therapies aimed at inhibiting the repair of damaged . The research work was recently published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

GSE1-CoREST is the name of the newly discovered complex that contains three enzymes that control DNA repair processes and could form the basis for novel cancer therapeutics. “In research, these proteins are already associated with cancer, but not in the context that we have now found,” emphasizes Seiser, who led the study in close collaboration with researchers from the Max Perutz Labs Vienna.

The Spinal Cord Could Provide a Radical New Way to Treat Depression

With depression affecting around 1 in 10 of us at some point during our lives, the need for new and improved treatments is a top priority for researchers – and it appears that spinal cord stimulation could be one route for experts to investigate.

A team led by researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine devised a pilot clinical trial in which a little black box was placed on the spinal cord of 20 volunteers with depression, with one electrode on the back and one on the right shoulder.

The box then delivered a specially customized, low-level electric buzz to half of the volunteers, for three sessions per week over eight weeks. This was shown to have a greater effect on depressive symptoms than the different, ‘placebo’ charge administered to the other half of the volunteers.

The Brain’s Secret Handshake: Research Reveals Function of Little-Understood Synapse

Discovery could be useful in developing new therapies for multiple sclerosis, neurodegenerative conditions, and brain cancer.

New research from Oregon Health & Science University for the first time reveals the function of a little-understood junction between cells in the brain that could have important treatment implications for conditions ranging from multiple sclerosis to Alzheimer’s disease, to a type of brain cancer known as glioma.

The study will be published today (January 12) in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Decoding the Universe’s DNA: Breakthroughs From the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams

Department of Energy user facility helps probe questions from changes in the structure of nuclei to nuclear reactions that shape the Universe.

The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) enables discoveries in the science of atomic nuclei, their role in the cosmos, and the fundamental symmetries of nature. This accelerator facility uses beams of short-lived nuclei not available elsewhere. Results from FRIB address questions such as the limits of the nuclear chart, the origin of the elements, and the reason for why there is more matter than antimatter in our Universe.

In FRIB’s first year, its measurements tackled the changes in the structure of the shortest-lived nuclei, exotic decay modes, nuclear reactions that affect cosmic events such as X-ray bursts, and processes in the crusts of neutron stars.

Unlocking Hypnosis: Stanford Enhances Brain Power With Neurostimulation

Stanford Medicine scientists used transcranial magnetic stimulation to temporarily enhance hypnotizability in patients with chronic pain, making them better candidates for hypnotherapy.

How deeply someone can be hypnotized — known as hypnotizability — appears to be a stable trait that changes little throughout adulthood, much like personality and IQ. But now, for the first time, Stanford Medicine researchers have demonstrated a way to temporarily heighten hypnotizablity — potentially allowing more people to access the benefits of hypnosis-based therapy.

In the new study, published on January 4 in Nature Mental Health, the researchers found that less than two minutes of electrical stimulation targeting a precise area of the brain could boost participants’ hypnotizability for about one hour.