News by Subject Medicine & Health

Medical researchers have identified a key signaling protein that regulates hemoglobin production in red blood cells, offering a possible target for a future innovative drug to treat sickle cell disease. Experiments in cultured human cells reveal that blocking the protein reduces the characteristic sickling that distorts the shape of red blood cells and gives the disease its name.

For the first time, a team of international researchers have mapped the family trees of cancer cells in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) to understand how this blood cancer responds to a new drug, enasidenib. The work also explains what happens when a patient stops responding to the treatment, providing important clues about how to combine enasidenib with other anti-cancer drugs to produce longer-lasting remissions and to prevent relapse.

When it comes to diagnosing a condition in which the plasma cells that normally make antibodies to protect us instead become cancerous, it may be better to look at the urine as well as the serum of our blood for answers, pathologists say.

Some patients with COPD demonstrate signs of accelerated aging. In a new study published in the journal CHEST® researchers report that measuring blood telomeres, a marker of aging of cells, can be used to predict future risk of the disease worsening or death. Further, they have determined that the drug azithromycin may help patients with short telomeres, an indicator of more rapid biological aging, stave off negative clinical outcomes.

Researchers discover new clues about a recently identified blood cell condition known as clonal hematopoiesis, implicated in hematologic cancers, cardiovascular illness. Surprisingly, the study reveals that inherited genetic variants can drive the condition by fueling additional mutations later in life. The findings can help inform ways to gauge disease risk based on specific mutations, develop strategies to avert disease. Clonal hematopoiesis is estimated to affect more than 1 in 10 people older than 65.

Knowledge that the gastrointestinal flora affects both healthy physiological processes and various disease mechanisms has increased in recent years. A study conducted at Lund University is now published in one of the leading hematology journals, Blood Advances, and reveals a previously unknown link between the bacteria in the gut and acute lung injury after blood transfusions.

The protein complex is mTORC1, which regulates cell growth and metabolism. St. Jude immunologists found mTORC1 acts in response to cues from in and around developing T cells and intersects with metabolic activity, to influence whether the cells become conventional or unconventional T cells. To their surprise, researchers found that disrupting mTORC1 led to metabolic changes that favored development of unconventional T cells at the expense of conventional T cells.

Inferior vena cava (IVC) filter placement and retrieval procedures have markedly declined over the last decade from previous large growth in Medicare beneficiaries, according to a new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute® study published online in the Journal of American College of Radiology (JACR).