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Published on July 1, 2020
SARS-CoV-2 infection induces functional changes in platelets that make them more likely to aggregate and cause clots, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Utah. Those changes may explain some the disease’s most dangerous complications, such as heart attacks and strokes. Until now, little was known…
Published on June 16, 2020
The cholesterol-lowering medications called statins are taken by millions of people around the globe and represent one of the most widely prescribed drug classes. While these compounds were designed to effectively reduce heart attack and stroke, a recent finding has shown that there is a clear link between improved gut…
Published on June 9, 2020
Researchers report the emergence of a new, rare inflammatory condition in 58 children from the UK, which they believe is linked with SARS-CoV-2 infection. The syndrome is similar to Kawasaki disease—a rare condition that causes inflammation of the blood vessels in children under 5 years. However, an analysis by clinicians…
Published on June 1, 2020
US researchers have analyzed the available literature on COVID-19 infections to assess factors linked with severe cases and to inform medical professionals about drugs that could be repurposed to treat the disease. Since the end of 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus behind COVID-19 has spread across the globe in a way…
Published on June 1, 2020
A new study led by scientists at University of Chicago Medicine shows that people with a rare genetic disease that causes bleeding in the brain have gut microbiomes distinct from those without the disease. Moreover, it is the molecules produced by this bacterial imbalance that cause lesions to form in…
Published on May 11, 2020
The use of some medications, such as stomach acid neutralizers—proton pump inhibitors—are associated with disruption of the microbial communities of the gut. Now, researchers find that statins could potentially modulate the disrupted gut microbiota and linked inflammation in obesity. The findings are published in Nature in a paper titled, “Statin therapy is…
Published on April 10, 2020
A new study from investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School sheds new light on the risk of developing long-term diseases and overall human lifespan. The researchers found that the combined effects of rare, damaging mutations present at birth have a negative impact on healthspan and longevity.…
Published on April 3, 2020
A study by National Institutes of Health researchers has offered up new genetic insights that might help to explain why autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is more common in boys than it is in girls. The findings suggest that just a single amino acid change in the version of a gene…
Published on February 13, 2020
Biomarkers are indicators of biological events. They are either present, or not; they may increase or decrease; or simply change form. They relate to normal biological states, the presence of disease (or the risk of it), or in response to intrusions into the body, including medical treatment or injury. Above…
Published on December 24, 2019
Geisinger Health announced last week that its precision medicine project MyCode reached the milestone enrollment of 250,000 participants in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. To date, the project has both DNA sequence and health data on 145,000 of those participants and has returned medically actionable results to nearly 1,500 participants. “Geisinger…
Published on December 3, 2019
Specific patterns of protein levels in our blood could be used to provide a comprehensive “liquid health check” that gives a snapshot of health and potentially an indication of the likelihood that we will develop certain diseases or health risk factors in the future, according to research by scientists in…
Published on October 21, 2019
The FH Foundation, a research and advocacy organization focused on familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), published a study today showing that a machine learning model it developed effectively identified individuals with probable FH for the first time at a national scale. The FH Foundation study was designed to validate and implement the…
Published on July 19, 2019
A new study has revealed a novel gene associated with Type 2 diabetes. The study, which was published in the July 19, 2019 issue of Nature Communications, included genomic data from more than 5,000 people of Sub-Saharan African origin with the disease. According to its authors, it is the largest…
Published on July 5, 2019
A new study led by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) adds more weight to previous findings implicating variants of the gene ARMC5 in the increased risk of hypertension in blacks. Researchers identified 17 variants in the gene that were associated with high blood pressure in individuals of…
Published on June 26, 2019
Picking the right blood pressure drug for the right person is not easy, especially when there are so many to choose from. There are five major classes of these drugs and more than 60 options total used to treat heart disease, a condition 1 in 3 Americans have. Having high…