Health & Medicine
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Health & MedicineMaking Bone: Novel form of vitamin D builds up rat skeleton
A newly synthesized form of Vitamin D induces bone-making cells to capture calcium and fortify bone mass in rats, suggesting it might work against osteoporosis in people.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & Medicine‘Bubble’ babies thrive on gene therapy
Gene therapy to repair mutations that thwart development of essential immune cells has helped three babies to overcome severe combined immunodeficiency, in which a child is born without a functional immune system.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & MedicineCalcium may become a dieter’s best friend
Enriching the diet with calcium, especially from dairy products, can switch the body's fat cells from storing calories to burning them.
By Janet Raloff -
Health & MedicineAttention Loss: ADHD may lower volume of brain
Brain-scan data show that the brains of children diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder are slightly smaller than those of their peers who are free of psychiatric disorders.
By Bruce Bower -
Health & MedicineInducing eye-tumor cells to self-destruct
By restarting the subdued self-destruct signal in cancer cells, researchers studying eye cancers have found a way to stop these cancers in cell cultures and in a rabbit model.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & MedicineMove your head, hurt your golf game
Right-handed golfers using a conventional grip move their head and eyes more during putts than they do when using a cross-handed or one-handed grip, suggesting these alternative grips might work better.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & MedicineMaking the optic nerve sprout anew
A compound made during inflammation, a natural reaction to injury, can induce optic nerve regeneration in a lab-dish concoction including rat retinal ganglion cells.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & MedicineFDA Launches Acrylamide Investigations
You knew french fries and potato chips werent health foods. Sure, theyre veggies, but their deep-fat frying adds scads of fat. Depending on whos doing the cooking, that fat can be the saturated type, which can lead to clogged arteries. But until April, who could have suspected that these oh-so-yummy golden-brown spuds were also laced […]
By Janet Raloff -
Health & MedicineCatching macular degeneration early
Scientists have developed a test that uses the eye's ability to adapt to darkness as a test for age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in elderly people.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & MedicineA Prized Worm
This year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine went to researchers who pioneered the use of the tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans as an animal model for exploring basic processes involved in the development and behavior of multicellular organisms. Learn more about the remarkable C. elegans from a Vanderbilt University news feature about this “elegant worm” […]
By Science News -
Health & MedicineStressing out
A gene variant reduces people's response to the stress hormone cortisol, and people with the variant are less likely to have risk factors for heart disease and diabetes.
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Health & MedicineAsthma pressure may shrink airways
Mechanical stress from constricting muscles could cause airway-lining cells to reproduce, eventually thickening the lining and narrowing the air passage.