Top medical news headlines for the week 46

Addiction

One enzyme could be behind alcohol addiction and liver disease

Scientists have uncovered a surprising connection between sugar metabolism and alcohol addiction, identifying a potential new therapeutic target for treating alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) and alcohol use disorder ...

Oncology & Cancer

Father–son team integrates AI into cancer research

For more than three decades, USF Distinguished University Professor Dmitry Goldgof in the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing has been at the forefront of artificial intelligence research. ...

Neuroscience

Removing toxic proteins before they can damage motor neurons

University of Wollongong (UOW) scientists have developed a breakthrough therapy that clears toxic proteins from nerve cells—a discovery that advances the work of the late Professor Justin Yerbury and could transform the ...

Oncology & Cancer

Pancreatic cancer forms 'synapses,' scientists discover

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest types of tumors. A team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) reports that pancreatic tumors exploit the body's nervous system by forming so-called pseudosynapses.

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Scientists tie lupus to a virus nearly all of us carry

One of humanity's most ubiquitous infectious pathogens bears the blame for the chronic autoimmune condition called systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus), Stanford Medicine investigators and their colleagues have found.

Genetics

Genes may predict suicide risk in depression

Depression in young adulthood has a stronger hereditary component and is associated with a higher risk of suicide attempts than depression that begins later in life, according to a new study published in Nature Genetics by ...

Overweight & Obesity

Gut bacterium could be key to tackling obesity crisis

The internet, libraries and bookshops are full of plans and advice on how to lose weight, from fad diets to intense exercise routines. But there could be another route to keeping the pounds away, and that's with a gut bacterium ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Unusual days signal rising migraine risk

Harvard Medical School researchers report that higher day-to-day "trigger surprisal" scores were associated with migraine attacks over the next 12 and 24 hours. In this cohort, higher surprisal scores aligned with greater ...

Genetics

New genetic test targets elusive cause of rare movement disorder

Scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School have developed a targeted genetic test to improve diagnosis for X-linked dystonia-parkinsonism (XDP), a rare and disabling movement disorder that affects ...