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Category: health

An unusual public health policy in Wales may have produced the strongest evidence yet that a vaccine can reduce the risk of dementia. In a new study led by Stanford Medicine, researchers analyzing the health records of Welsh older adults discovered that those who received the shingles vaccine were 20% less likely to develop dementia over the next seven years than those who did not receive the vaccine.

The remarkable findings, published in Nature, support an emerging theory that viruses that affect the can increase the risk of . If further confirmed, the new findings suggest that a preventive intervention for dementia is already close at hand.

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When the International Maritime Organization enacted a mandatory cap on the sulfur content of marine fuels in 2020, with an eye toward reducing harmful environmental and health impacts, it left shipping companies with several main options.

They could burn low-sulfur fossil fuels, like marine gas oil, or install cleaning systems to remove sulfur from the produced by burning heavy fuel oil. Biofuels with lower sulfur content offer another alternative, though their limited availability makes them a less feasible option.

While installing exhaust gas cleaning systems, known as scrubbers, is the most feasible and cost-effective option, there has been a great deal of uncertainty among firms, policymakers, and scientists as to how “green” these scrubbers are.

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A new model of Alzheimer’s disease has been proposed, which could speed up efforts to understand and cure the complex condition – while bringing all manifestations of the condition under one unifying theory.

Researchers from Arizona State University suggest that stress granules – protein and RNA clumps that form around cells in stressful conditions due to genetic and environmental risk factors – are the primary culprit behind the disease.

In their new study, the team reviewed data from multiple health databases and past papers – particularly a 2022 study on Alzheimer’s progression – to identify widespread changes in gene expression that come with it.

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As you age you naturally lose neurons and muscle mass and experience a decline in fertility and wound healing ability. Previous research in animals has offered several potential techniques for turning back the biological clock in specific tissues, including exercise and calorie restriction. However, age reversal of blood cells or at whole organism level has so far been elusive.

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Big data has gotten too big. Now, a research team with statisticians from Cornell has developed a data representation method inspired by quantum mechanics that handles large data sets more efficiently than traditional methods by simplifying them and filtering out noise.

This method could spur innovation in data-rich but statistically intimidating fields, like and epigenetics, where traditional data methods have thus far proved insufficient.

The paper is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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A recently discovered inflammatory disease known as VEXAS syndrome is more common, variable, and dangerous than previously understood, according to results of a retrospective observational study of a large health care system database. The findings, published in JAMA, found that it struck 1 in 4,269 men over the age of 50 in a largely White population and caused a wide variety of symptoms.

“The disease is quite severe,” study lead author David Beck, MD, PhD, of the department of medicine at NYU Langone Health, said in an interview. Patients with the condition “have a variety of clinical symptoms affecting different parts of the body and are being managed by different medical specialties.”

Dr. Beck and colleagues first described VEXAS (vacuoles, E1-ubiquitin-activating enzyme, X-linked, autoinflammatory, somatic) syndrome in 2020. They linked it to mutations in the UBA1 (ubiquitin-like modifier activating enzyme 1) gene. The enzyme initiates a process that identifies misfolded proteins as targets for degradation.

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Nearly 16 million American adults have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but evidence suggests that more than 30% of them don’t respond well to stimulant medications like Ritalin and Adderall.

A new clinical trial provides a surprising explanation for why this may be the case: There are in how our are wired, including the chemical circuits responsible for memory and concentration, according to a new study co-led by the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and performed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center.

Our brain cells have different types of chemical receptors that work together to produce optimal performance of brain function. Differences in the balance of these receptors can help explain who is likely to benefit from Ritalin and other stimulant medications. That is the finding of the new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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