Category: Health Problems

Military couples look forward to joyful celebrations and reunions after long deployments. Difficulties may lie ahead, though, and new research with more than 500 couples in the months after homecoming suggests how and when to help. “Military couples are incredibly resilient,” says University of Illinois communication professor Leanne Knobloch, the lead author of a first-of-its-kind

Our brains are incredibly good at processing faces, and even have specific regions specialized for this function. But what face dimensions are we observing? Do we observe general properties first, then look at the details? Or are dimensions such as gender or other identity details decoded interdependently? In a study published in Nature Communications, neuroscientists

Ebola virus particles (red) on a larger cell. Credit: NIAID The number of cases in a nearly eight-month-old epidemic of Ebola in eastern DR Congo now exceeds 1,000, almost two-thirds of whom have died, the health ministry said late Sunday. “The accumulated number of cases is 1,009,” of which 629 cases were fatal, it said.

Anyone who trains for a marathon knows that individual running workouts add up over time to yield a big improvement in physical fitness. So, it should not be surprising that the cognitive benefits from workouts also accumulate to yield long-term cognitive gains. Yet, until now, there was has been little research to describe and support

A team led by Lida Kanari now reports a new system for distinguishing cell types in the brain, an algorithmic classification method that the researchers say will benefit the entire field of neuroscience. Blue Brain founder Professor Henry Markram says, “For nearly 100 years, scientists have been trying to name cells. They have been describing

Patients suffering from severe, treatment-resistant depression can benefit not only acutely but also the long term from deep brain stimulation, as researchers from the Medical Center – University of Freiburg and their colleagues from the University Hospital Bonn demonstrate in a current study. The team used thin electrodes to stimulate a deep seated part of

A new method of determining the sequence of molecules in DNA can be used to detect small fragments of cancerous genetic material in blood samples from lung cancer patients with a high degree of accuracy, according to new research published in the leading cancer journal Annals of Oncology today. Results from analyses of so-called “liquid

It’s easy to miss something you’re not looking for. In a famous example, people were asked to closely observe two groups of people—one group clad in black, the other in white—pass a ball among themselves. Viewers were asked to count the number of times the ball passed from black to white. Remarkably, most observers did

One-year follow-up results show that a newer, non-invasive technology to evaluate heart pain provided a reliable way to identify which patients had dangerous artery blockages, according to a study co-led by the Duke Clinical Research Institute. The findings, reported Sunday at the American College of Cardiology meeting, suggest that fractional flow reserve CT (FFR-CT) scans

People whose high cholesterol is resistant to treatment with statin drugs may soon have a new treatment option. This new class of drugs helps block synthesis of artery-clogging cholesterol, researchers explained. The drugs target an enzyme called ATP citrate lyase (ACL), part of the production pathway for “bad” LDL cholesterol in the body. In the

Now that we’ve just commemorated the Mental Health Week, we have opened our minds and raised awareness to the importance of mental health and depression. We may know about some famous celebrities who battled depression which ended tragically but this illness is much more common than you may think. In fact, according to a study

People with mental illness swing in and out of doctors offices every day, but their ailments often go unnoticed and untreated. Bogged down by busy work schedules, general physicians don’t have the time—or the expertise—to dig into mental illness. The result is a large population of sick, yet untreated, people in America. Now, a new

Adolescents in developing countries are more likely to make suicide attempts or have suicidal thoughts than those living in high-income countries, a University of Queensland-led study has found. UQ School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences researcher, Associate Professor Asad Khan, said suicide-related issues had become a major public health challenge in low and middle income

Millions of Americans are progressively losing their sight as cells in their eyes deteriorate, but a new therapy developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, could help prolong useful vision and delay total blindness. The treatment—involving either a drug or gene therapy—works by reducing the noise generated by nerve cells in the eye,

Having a parent with Alzheimer’s disease has been known to raise a person’s risk of developing the disease, but new research suggests that having second- and third-degree relatives who have had Alzheimer’s may also increase risk. The study is published in the March 13, 2019, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American

An approved drug normally used to treat fungal infections could also do the job of a protein channel that is missing in the lungs of people with cystic fibrosis, operating as a prosthesis on the molecular scale, says new research from the University of Illinois and the University of Iowa. Cystic fibrosis is a lifelong

Self-confidence is critical for teens as they prepare for the challenges of adulthood, and both families and schools may together play a vital role in boosting adolescents’ confidence even in the face of difficulties with family, according to researchers. The researchers examined how a variety of factors affected adolescents’ self-efficacy—a person’s belief that they have

The search by scientists to find ways to combat obesity continues. Recently, investigators have been exploring whether they can engage the lymphatic system to help regulate obesity-induced inflammation of fat (adipose) tissue and restore systemic metabolic fitness. In a study appearing in he American Journal of Pathology, researchers report that augmenting lymphatic vessel formation in

Heart attack, or myocardial infarction, is the number one cause of death worldwide. A study published in the European Heart Journal by scientists at Helmholtz Zentrum München and colleagues from a range of other Bavarian institutions shows that the risk of suffering a heat-induced heart attack has increased significantly in recent years. During the same

An investigation led by a team of researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) departments of Neurology, Psychiatry and Radiology has found altered connectivity among brain regions that handle sensorimotor, emotional and cognitive signaling in patients with functional neurological disorder, a common condition involving neurologic symptoms that have no readily apparent physical cause. Their report