Health News

New sensors track dopamine in the brain for more than year: Tiny probes could be useful for monitoring patients with Parkinson’s and other diseases

Dopamine, a signaling molecule used throughout the brain, plays a major role in regulating our mood, as well as controlling movement. Many disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, depression, and schizophrenia, are linked to dopamine deficiencies. MIT neuroscientists have now devised a way to measure dopamine in the brain for more than a year, which they believe […]

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Heart attack: Substitute muscle thanks to stem cells

Myocardial infarction — commonly known as a heart attack — is still one of the main causes of death. According to the Federal Statistical Office, more than 49,00 people died of its consequences. And yet the mortality after heart attack has greatly decreased over the past decades: As compared to the early 1990s, it has […]

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Canine melanoma study identifies genetic basis of disease; potential drug targets: Discoveries among dogs could someday lead to improved genome-based cancer treatments for both dogs and humans

As a veterinarian, Dr. Carolyn Duregger is familiar with the telltale signs of canine melanoma. So when she gave her own dog, Parker, a routine oral examination, the 1-centimeter-diameter discolored lump in the pup’s upper right gums took her breath away. “It’s an aggressive cancer with poor prognosis that I’ve seen many times. My stomach […]

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Misfolded proteins serve as ‘inherited memory’ of toxic insults

Protein aggregates have a bad reputation in conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, but in bacteria, inheritance of aggregates by daughter cells may help protect against the same toxic stresses that triggered them in parental cells, according to a new study publishing 28 August in the open access journal PLOS Biology, by Sander […]

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Traumatic brain injury recovery via petri dish: Synchronized brain-like activity created, recorded and influenced by electrical stimulation

Researchers in the University of Georgia’s Regenerative Bioscience Center have succeeded in reproducing the effects of traumatic brain injury and stimulating recovery in neuron cells grown in a petri dish. This makes them the first known scientific team in the country to do so using stem cell-derived neurons. The procedure, detailed in a new paper […]

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Common skin cancer can signal increased risk of other cancers

People who develop abnormally frequent cases of a skin cancer known as basal cell carcinoma appear to be at significantly increased risk for the development of other cancers, including blood, breast, colon and prostate cancers, according to a preliminary study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The increased susceptibility is likely caused […]