ScienceDaily: Top Health News

A new study has found that RAAS inhibitors, a class of blood pressure-lowering medicine, may be better at reducing the risk of brain aneurysm rupture. People with a brain aneurysm -- a weakened area of a blood vessel -- who were being treated for high blood pressure with medication from the class of drugs called RAAS inhibitors had a significantly lower risk of a ruptured aneurysm compared to those who took other blood pressure medications. These results indicate that RAAS inhibitors may be preferable to other blood pressure-lowering medications and could inform treatment decisions for people with high blood pressure who have unruptured intracranial aneurysms.

A new method to combat malaria which sees the disease turn against itself could offer an effective treatment for the hundreds of millions of people infected globally each year, as the efficacy of current antimalarial drugs weakens. The research has identified an anti-malarial compound, ML901, which inhibits the malaria parasite but does not harm mammalian -- human or other mammals' -- cells.

Scientists have long known that cocaine works by latching on to molecular connectors on the surface of brain cells, allowing dopamine, a chemical that promotes feelings of pleasure and reward, to accumulate in the space between brain cells. Now scientists say they have found a molecular connector, known as the BASP1 receptor, that binds cocaine, even when the drug is present in very low doses.

Researchers have validated for the first time that a simple blood test called a liquid biopsy could be a better predictor of whether cancer immunotherapy will be successful for a patient with lung cancer than an invasive tumor biopsy procedure.

Researchers have developed a new highly sensitive blood test for tuberculosis (TB) that screens for DNA fragments of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria that causes the deadly disease.