Science and Health News

Results from study led by Brown University researchers illustrate that Sirt4, also found in humans, may be an important factor in age-related metabolic decline and healthy lifespan.

Stanford scientists have found links between changes in a person’s weight and shifts in their microbiome, immune system and cardiovascular system.

Among postmenopausal women with normal body mass index (BMI), those with higher body fat levels had an increased risk for invasive breast cancer, according to data presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Special Conference Obesity and Cancer: Mechanisms Underlying Etiology and Outcomes, held Jan. 27-30.

An antibiotic overlooked since its discovery 40 years ago could help develop new drugs against life-threatening infections caused by some of the world’s most dangerous superbugs.

Calico scientists published new findings in the journal eLife demonstrating that the long-lived naked mole rat has a flat mortality curve, defying Gompertzian laws that an animal’s risk of death grows exponentially with age.  The paper, titled “Naked mole-rat mortality rates defy gompertzian laws by not increasing with age,” was authored by J. Graham Ruby, Megan Smith and Rochelle (Shelley) Buffenstein.

Food scientist Lili He and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report that they have developed a new, rapid and low-cost method for detecting bacteria in water or a food sample. Once commercially available, it should be useful to cooks using fresh fruits and vegetables, for example, and aid workers in the field responding to natural disasters, He says.

Nerve cells in the skin help wounds to heal. When an injury occurs, cells known as glial cells change into repair cells and disseminate into the wound, where they help the skin to regenerate, researchers from the University of Zurich have shown.

Newcastle University research reveals that the number of older people diagnosed with four or more diseases will double between 2015 and 2035.