ScienceDaily: Top Health News

Researchers are developing a new filter membrane that is highly efficient at filtering and inactivating a wide variety of air-borne and water-borne viruses.

Sickle cell disease leads to chronic pain, organ failure, and early death in patients worldwide. A team has demonstrated a gene editing approach that efficiently corrects the mutation underlying SCD in patient blood stem cells and in mice. This treatment rescued disease symptoms in animal models, enabling long-lasting production of healthy blood cells, and could inspire a therapeutic strategy for SCD.

A recent study revealed that a long-term value memory maintained in the ventral striatum in the brain is a neural basis of our habitual seeking behavior.

Hydrogels are polymer materials made mostly from water. They can be used in a wide range of medical and other applications. However, previous incarnations of the materials suffered from repeated mechanical stress and would easily become deformed. A novel crystal that can reversibly form and deform, allows hydrogels to rapidly recover from mechanical stress. This opens up the use of such biocompatible materials in the field of artificial joints and ligaments.

Researchers have discovered that the immune cells that protect the brain and spinal cord come primarily from the skull. The finding opens up the possibility of developing therapies to target such cells as a way to prevent or treat brain conditions.

Study confirms invasive lionfish now threaten species along Brazilian coast; management is critical to protecting local biodiversity.

New research into Alzheimer's disease (AD) suggests that secondary infections and new inflammatory events amplify the brain's immune response and affect memory in mice and in humans -- even when these secondary events occur outside the brain.

A new study shows the combination of two early reading programs had positive effects on preschool students entering kindergarten.

All fish are not created equal, at least when it comes to nutritional benefits. This truth has important implications for how declining fish biodiversity can affect human nutrition, according to a computer modeling study.

Researchers found that culture helps humans adapt to their environment and overcome challenges better and faster than genetics. Tim Waring and Zach Wood found that humans are experiencing a 'special evolutionary transition' in which the importance of culture is surpassing the value of genes as the primary driver of human evolution. Due to the group-orientated nature of culture, they also concluded that human evolution itself is becoming more group-oriented.

Scientists have detected Zika virus RNA in free-ranging African bats. RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is a molecule that plays a central role in the function of genes.

A new study sheds light on why many COVID-19 patients, even those not in hospital, are suffering from hypoxia -- a potentially dangerous condition in which there is decreased oxygenation in the body's tissues. The study also shows why the anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone has been an effective treatment.