There is conflicting evidence about whether digoxin, a drug that has been used worldwide for centuries to treat heart disease, might contribute to an increase in deaths in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) or congestive heart failure (CHF). Now, the largest review of all the evidence to date shows that it is associated with an increased risk of death in these patients, particularly in those being treated for AF.
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Researchers at the Babraham Institute and the Francis Crick Institute have developed and used a new technique to join the dots in the genomic puzzle. Just as a dot to dot puzzle needs to be completed to visualise the full picture, the researchers' analysis connected regulatory elements called promoters and enhancers and showed their physical interactions over long distances within the mouse and human genomes. The ability to map promoter-enhancer interactions in the human genome has huge potential in understanding the genetic basis of disease.
A group of Cambridge computer scientists have set a new gold standard for openness and reproducibility in research by sharing the more than 200GB of data and 20,000 lines of code behind their latest results - an unprecedented degree of openness in a peer-reviewed publication. The researchers hope that this new gold standard will be adopted by other fields, increasing the reliability of research results, especially for work which is publicly funded.
A University of Cincinnati (UC)-led research team has found that generic formulations of tacrolimus, a drug used post-transplant to lower the risk of organ rejection, are just as good as the name-brand version. The findings were presented Sunday, May 3, by lead investigator Rita Alloway, PharmD, UC research professor of medicine and director of transplant clinical research within the UC Department of Internal Medicine, and her study collaborators at the 2015 American Transplant Congress annual meeting in Philadelphia.
Bats are masters of flight in the night sky, capable of steep nosedives and sharp turns that put our best aircrafts to shame. Although the role of echolocation in bats' impressive midair maneuvering has been extensively studied, the contribution of touch has been largely overlooked. A study published April 30 in Cell Reports shows, for the first time, that a unique array of sensory receptors in the wing provides feedback to a bat during flight.
Consumers can reduce the risk of Campylobacter food poisoning by up to 99.2% by using disinfectant wipes in the kitchen after preparing poultry, according to research in the Journal of Applied Microbiology.
Recent evidence demonstrating the feasibility of using novel CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology to make targeted changes in the DNA of human embryos is forcing researchers, clinicians, and ethicists to revisit the highly controversial issue of altering the inherited human genome. A provocative Editorial exploring the current technical limitations, safety concerns, and moral acceptability of therapeutic germline gene editing is published in Human Gene Therapy.
When the common chemotherapy drugs cisplatin or oxaliplatin hit cancer cells, they damage DNA so that the cells can't replicate. But the cells have ways to repair the DNA. The cancer drugs aren't as effective as patients need. Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine and UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed a method for finding where this DNA repair happens throughout all of human DNA.
Genome editing using CRISPR/Cas system has enabled direct modification of the mouse genome in fertilized mouse eggs, leading to rapid, convenient, and efficient one-step production of knockout mice without embryonic stem cells. In contrast to the ease of targeted gene deletion, the complementary application, called targeted gene cassette insertion or knock-in, in fertilized mouse eggs by CRISPR/Cas mediated genome editing still remains a tough challenge.
New research has brought us closer to being able to understand the health benefits of coffee.
Monash researchers, in collaboration with Italian coffee roasting company Illycaffè, have conducted the most comprehensive study to date on how free radicals and antioxidants behave during every stage of the coffee brewing process, from intact bean to coffee brew.
Crowdsourced science helped predict the path of a deadly plant disease over a six-year period, demonstrating the contributions that trained citizen scientists can make in large-scale geographic tracking projects. That's the conclusion of a study of sudden oak death monitoring in California, published today in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
A research team led by geoscientists from Brown University and the Marine Biological Laboratory has provided some crucial ground-truth for a method of measuring plant photosynthesis on a global scale from low-Earth orbit.
The researchers have shown that chlorophyll fluorescence, a faint glow produced by plant leaves as a byproduct of photosynthesis, is a strong proxy for photosynthetic activity in the canopy of a deciduous forest. That glow can be detected by orbiting satellites and could be used to monitor global photosynthetic activity in real time.
Obesity is everywhere so it's not really a surprise that targeted obesity would become a cosmetic competitive advantage, or that cosmetic surgeons would develop best practices to satisfy that demand.
By mounting cameras and spectral sensors over a forest canopy in central Massachusetts, scientists have developed an innovative system to measure plant photosynthesis over large areas, such as acres of crops or trees, using information on solar-induced fluorescence in the leaves. The system, which can monitor plant growth and several other ecosystem changes, was developed by a team led by Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and Brown University scientists. It is described in a recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters.
The New England Journal of Medicine reports results of a multi-center phase I/II study of the investigational anti-cancer agent rociletinib (CO-1686) in patients with EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that had progressed after previous treatment with EGFR inhibitors. Responses were seen in 59 percent of evaluable patients with the T790M mutation (n=46). In this same population, median progression-free survival (PFS) at the time of analysis was 13.1 months; these data continue to mature.