ScienceDaily: Top Health News

Federal funding for biomedical research has a 'ripple effect' of stimulating new studies even beyond the original purposes of a grant and may provide unexpected benefits, a new study suggests.

For years, the brain has been thought of as a biological computer that processes information through traditional circuits, whereby data zips straight from one cell to another. While that model is still accurate, a new study shows that there's also a second, very different way that the brain parses information: through the interactions of waves of neural activity. The findings help researchers better understand how the brain processes information.

Over the past 15 years, public health authorities have downgraded recommendations for the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test as a screening tool to reduce the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of men with low-grade prostate cancer. Now, researchers have found that while these efforts have been effective, the incidence of higher-grade disease and metastasis at diagnosis have risen.

In a study that included tests of three types of human cancer cells, researchers report that ST6Gal-I--mediated sialylation of the epidermal growth factor receptor modulates cell mechanics and enhances invasion by the cancer cells.

New evidence shows that cancer is not as heritable or purely genetic as once thought, and taking a multi-omics approach may lead to a better understanding of how to prevent and treat it.

The hunt for perfection and obsession over tiny mistakes are strongly linked to burnout in athletes, a new study has found.

Pancreatic cancer has a significantly poor prognosis; therefore, the development of effective treatments is an unmet clinical need. The major drawback in this field was the lack of useful model animals, which delayed the establishment of markers for early diagnosis and therapeutic options. The research group established an effective carcinogenesis method with wild-type rats by selectively introducing oncogenes into the pancreas, using the pancreas-targeted hydrodynamic gene delivery method that has been developed by the group.

Hypertension, a very common condition worldwide, can lead to arteriosclerosis through alterations in the structure of blood vessel walls known as 'vascular remodeling.' In a recent study, an international team of scientists unveiled a molecular pathway for the development of arteriosclerosis for the first time. This could pave the way to better medication for preventing and treating hypertension and arteriosclerosis.

Micropollutants in water often are hormones that accumulate in the environment and may have negative impacts on humans and animals. Researchers have now developed a process for the photocatalytic degradation of these pollutants when they flow through polymer membranes. Irradiation with light triggers a chemical reaction, as a result of which steroid hormones are degraded on the membranes coated with titanium dioxide.

Genetics and other factors that can determine if a woman is at risk for a recurrence of breast cancer have been identified, providing new research avenues for preventing a new tumor from developing.