Lifeboat Foundation

A lung disease called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can have close connections to bacteria in the human gastrointestinal tract, according to new research published in the journal Gut. COPD is a chronic lung disease in which patients have difficulty breathing. It is usually attributed to the inhalation of toxins like long-term cigarette use or exposure to air pollution, for example. Worldwide, COPD is the third leading cause of death. Now we can add it to the long list of conditions that have been associated with the vast community of microbes in the GI tract, called the gut microbiome.

Researchers have shown that specific types of gut bacteria are linked to the development of COPD. While this does not show a cause and effect relationship, the investigators also determined that when fecal bacteria were transferred from healthy mice to mice with COPD, symptoms of COPD were relieved in the recipient mice.

Researchers from U of T Medicine pinpoint issue that could be hampering common chemotherapy drug ➡️

Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research have found two enzymes that work against the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine, preventing it from effectively treating pancreatic cancer.

The enzymes – APOBEC3C and APOBEC3D – increase during gemcitabine treatment and promote resistance to DNA replication stress in pancreatic cancer cells.

Continue reading “Researchers pinpoint issue that could be hampering common chemotherapy drug” »

Lonely young adults are more prone to being disengaged from education or employment and perceive themselves as less employable, according to the study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine recently. As a consequence, such individuals tend to get positioned lower on the economic ladder compared to their less lonely counterparts.

Findings revealed that young adults who grappled with loneliness earlier in life encountered challenges in their young adulthood, irrespective of their current loneliness status. This underscores the long-term economic implications of loneliness and the potential economic benefits of addressing loneliness during early adolescence.

A clinical trial of a new method to activate and kill HIV in the body shows small success, but it’s not yet a cure.

Your knees have lots of parts, and you use them a lot, so there’s plenty that could go wrong. WebMD explains common things that can cause knee pain.

“Cannabis vapes are newly regulated products in Canada, so we don’t yet have much scientific data about them,” said Dr. Andrew Waye. “This is an opportunity for us to look at some of the questions concerning the risks and unknowns of cannabis vapes.”

Do vapes pose health risks on par with the very tobacco and cannabis products it’s using to safeguard against? This is what a recent study presented at the ACS (American Chemical Society) Spring 2024 meeting hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the potential health risks that vaping devices could pose, specifically pertaining to the vaping liquids that possess toxic metal nanoparticles, with both regulated and unregulated vaping devices. This study holds the potential to help researchers, medical professionals, and the public better understand the long-term health risks by vaping, which until now have been deemed a “safer” alternative to smoking cigarettes or cannabis.

“The challenge is getting into those hidden places,” says Machado. “It’s rare that Aedes aegypti breeding areas are found out in the open, like on a sidewalk, because when people see them, they destroy them. But with drones, we can get into areas we just can’t otherwise.”

Birdview has carried out studies with several partners since 2021, including the United Nations, the University of São Paulo (USP), and the state-owned Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), to better understand the effectiveness of releasing the disease-fighting mosquitoes with drones. First they looked at how the mechanism of the drone and outside conditions, like wind turbulence, affected the survival rate of the mosquitoes and their ability to fly.

The results were positive, so they moved on to flight-and-release tests in the Brazilian states of Pernambuco and Paraná, as well as Florida, where they’ve been working with the Lee County Mosquito Control District to see how far the mosquitoes spread upon release. They used the “mark, release and recapture” method, which involves sterile male mosquitoes being marked with a certain color before being released and later recaptured with traps so the team could see how far they had flown. They also set traps where eggs could be laid and monitored.

Marking a significant advancement in medical technologies, a team of researchers from the Medical University of Vienna and Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) has 3D printed the world’s first high-resolution brain.

Modeled after the structure of brain fibers, the 3D-printed “brain phantom” can be imaged with a specialized form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) known as dMRI.

March 14, 2024 – Detecting colorectal cancer may be as easy as a simple blood test one day.

Promising results of this new option — the results of the study were published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine — could help convert the estimated 1 in 3 people who don’t stay up-to-date on screenings that should begin at age 45. If everyone in the U.S. got screened regularly, as many as 90% of deaths linked to colorectal cancer may be avoided, the researchers wrote. Current screening options are often considered unpleasant experiences — collecting a fecal sample at home and mailing it, or taking laxatives and going under sedation for a colonoscopy procedure.

The blood test can detect DNA shed into the bloodstream from tumors, and in a trial of more than 7,800 people, the new test accurately detected colon cancer at early, treatable stages 87% of the time. The false-positive rate was 10%. The test was less successful at detecting advanced precancerous lesions, with just 13% being detected. In comparison, fecal tests are about 42% successful at early detection, and colonoscopies are up to 93% accurate, according to a summary from the American College of Surgeons.