News by Subject Medicine & Health

Sarecycline, a drug approved for use in the United States in 2018, is the first new antibiotic approved to treat acne in more than 40 years. Now, researchers at Yale and the University of Illinois-Chicago have discovered how its unique chemical structure makes it effective.

By analyzing the FDA database of adverse drug effects, UC San Diego researchers discovered that people who received Botox injections -- not just in the forehead -- reported depression significantly less often than patients undergoing different treatments for the same conditions.

Videos recorded in public transportation stations, streets and parks among the general population in China, Japan, South Korea, Western Europe and in the United States were used to analyze mask-wearing and face-touching behavior in public areas before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Psoriasis afflicts millions of people worldwide, but treatments are limited to small molecules like steroids, which can cause skin thinning and lose their effectiveness over time. A Wyss Institute collaboration has circumvented those problems by using a topical ionic liquid to effectively deliver an RNA-based therapy directly into the skin of mice with psoriasis, which reduced multiple psoriasis-related gene products as well as redness and inflammation, resolving the longstanding challenge of delivering nucleic acids into cells.

Researchers at the George Washington University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine published a review in the journal Nitric Oxide suggesting that nitric oxide treatment can be pivotal in the fight against SARS-CoV-2.

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have shown by in vitro experimentation that changes of glycans in mouse epidermal stem cells may serve as a biomarker of aging. Further, by overexpression of specific glycogenes in mouse keratinocytes, they replicated the glycome profile of aging cells as well as their decreased proliferation ability. These findings hold promise for stem cell research into skin disorders, specifically senile degeneration, wound healing and skin cancer.

Harvard researchers have discovered that the cells that cause goosebumps are also important for regulating the stem cells that regenerate hair. In the skin, the muscle that contracts to create goosebumps is necessary to bridge the sympathetic nerve's connection to hair follicle stem cells. The sympathetic nerve reacts to cold by contracting the muscle and causing goosebumps in the short term, and by driving stem cell activation and new hair growth over the long term.

Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine report that roflumilast cream (ARQ-151), which contains a highly potent, selective phosphodiesterase-4 (PDE4) inhibitor demonstrated significant improvements in patients with psoriasis signs and symptoms in as early as two weeks. The phase 2b trial results showed that when patients with plaque psoriasis applied topical roflumilast once-daily they reported clear skin as well as improvement in itch and burden of disease.