According to a recent Portuguese study, drinking one beer a day could help keep the doctor away. The research, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, looked at men who drank one can of alcoholic or non-alcoholic lager a day and noted any health changes. They found that after four weeks, diversity improved in the gut microbiome, which […]

Enrolling representative populations in clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease is critical for finding treatments that will be safe and effective for all patients. African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately affected by this disease yet are substantially underrepresented in trials of promising therapies. For example, an analysis of data from more than 100 clinical trials testing new treatments for Alzheimer's disease […]

The study covered in this summary was published on medrxiv.org as a preprint and has not yet been peer reviewed. Key Takeaway Combining several cell-free DNA (cfDNA) liquid biopsy techniques improves cancer surveillance and detection in patients with Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS) and likely other hereditary cancer syndromes. Why This Matters People with LFS have nearly a 100% lifetime risk of […]

Humans can smell over 1 trillion odours. But no two people will react in quite the same way to the same smell. While there are some smells almost everyone agrees are unpleasant (such as paint thinner or rotten food), our reactions to other types of smells can be far more personal. Take perfume. While one person may find the smell […]

Research on decomposition often focuses on environmental factors like temperature or humidity, but researchers at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville have taken a closer look at contributions from inside the body. One factor that may play an important role is the body mass index (BMI) of a decomposing body, they report this week in  mSphere, a journal of the […]

Ah, the age-old breastfeeding versus formula feeding debate. The way in which a mother decides to feed her child is an incredibly heated topic — even though it’s an extremely personal choice that is not only different for every woman, but also for every child. While society largely touts breastfeeding as a priceless bonding experience and the healthiest method of […]

Photo: Jim Feen Southcoast Health System, based in New Bedford, Massachusetts, has employed a multi-pronged approach to solving different issues through telemedicine. THE PROBLEM While early goals involved keeping care accessible and safe during the pandemic, staff have worked to focus on continuous improvement and adding programs that would build for long-term value in care delivery. “One of the first […]

“Mama, today we had a bad guy drill at school. But there were no real bad guys,” my 5-year-old whispered before bed a few weeks ago as I was tucking him in. This kid knows more about dinosaurs than I do and plans on visiting outer space one day. He also checks to verify our neighbors’ Halloween decorations aren’t actually […]

Researchers at Penn State have successfully 3D bioprinted breast cancer tumors and treated them in a breakthrough study to better understand the disease that is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. A scientific first, the achievement lays the foundation for precision fabrication of tumor models. The advancement will enable future study and development of anti-cancer therapies without the […]

Sugar may disrupt the community of bacteria living in the gut, thereby depleting crucial immune cells and causing obesity down the line, a new mouse study suggests.  So far, the results have been shown only in mice. But if follow-up studies show similar trends in humans, that could eventually lead to treatments for metabolic disease and obesity, said senior author […]