For people living with blinding diseases like age-related macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa, the damage usually starts in one specific place: the photoreceptors, the light-detecting cells lining the retina. Once these cells degenerate, the rest of the visual system, the... Continue Reading →
Sleep advice tends to arrive as a single round number: eight hours. A new study out of Columbia University suggests the real target is both narrower and more consequential than that, and it applies to nearly every organ in the... Continue Reading →
For decades, our picture of how the body kills dangerous or infected cells has been built almost entirely around blood-derived immune cells, T cells, natural killer cells, neutrophils. A new study out of Stanford, published in Cell, just added something... Continue Reading →
The German anatomist who invented plastination and built the Body Worlds exhibitions has died at 81, leaving behind a technique that reshaped how anatomy is taught and displayed worldwide.
A machine that's been running in hospitals for roughly four decades just turned up an unexpected side effect. Therapeutic apheresis , a treatment that filters blood to strip out excess cholesterol in patients whose levels won't budge with medication, appears... Continue Reading →
Sticking to the same daily schedule, waking up, eating, working and going to bed at roughly the same times, may do more for your body and mind than you'd expect. A new study from the University of Missouri found that... Continue Reading →
Summer in the US usually means sunshine and beach trips. This year, for thousands of people across at least 34 states, it's also meant abdominal cramping, nausea, and explosive diarrhea, the result of ingesting a microscopic parasite called Cyclospora. Nearly... Continue Reading →
Most anti-inflammatory drugs work the same way: they turn down the immune system as a whole, which calms the flare-up but also leaves patients more vulnerable to infection. Researchers at VIB and KU Leuven, working with international collaborators, have found... Continue Reading →
Every year, seasonal flu kills up to 650,000 people worldwide and sickens millions more. We've had vaccines and antivirals against it for decades, but there's still a lot we don't know about exactly how the influenza A virus takes over... Continue Reading →