News by Subject Medicine & Health

Fungal infections represent an increasing health crisis, especially for immune-deficient patients. American scientists now report in the journal Angewandte Chemie that specific help could be provided by small-molecule immunotherapeutics with novel mechanism of action. They developed small bifunctional molecules that simultaneously bind both chitin, a specific feature of the fungal cell wall and a molecule not found in humans, and naturally occurring human antibodies and redirect the human immune system to eliminate fungal pathogens.

A recently published paper in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy finds that US women report a diversity of preferences related to sexual pleasure and orgasm.

A team of MIT chemical engineers, inspired by the way that cells translate their own mRNA into proteins, has designed a synthetic delivery system that is four times more effective than delivering mRNA on its own.

A new study published in the Annals of Neurology found a link between head trauma in adolescence, particularly if repeated, with a raised risk of later developing multiple sclerosis.

The International and American Associations for Dental Research (IADR/AADR) have published a special issue in the Journal of Dental Research (JDR) on orofacial clefting and dental and craniofacial anomalies. Topics in this special issue range from tooth number and root formation, human and animal genetic studies on orofacial clefting, reviews that prioritize the variants most likely to cause disease, the pathways required for palatogenesis, experimental articles on the periderm and drug therapy articles that rescue cleft palate in mutant mice.

Communication breakdowns between care facilities can pave the way for outbreaks of infection, according to research on the spread of an extensively drug-resistant bacterium.

A group of scientists led by Ramkumar Menon at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has gained new insights into what factors lead to preterm birth. This study is currently available in The American Journal of Pathology.