News by Subject Medicine & Health

Positive family relationships might help youth to maintain good asthma management behaviors even in the face of difficult neighborhood conditions, according to a new Northwestern University study.

Fear, trust, and the likelihood of exposure are three leading factors that influence whether people are willing to be vaccinated against a virulent disease, according to a new study in the journal Heliyon, published by Elsevier.

Under physiological conditions, only certain sequences within the genome, called flipons, are capable of dynamically forming either right- or left-handed DNA. When a flipon is left-handed, genes change the transcripts they produce, affecting how cells respond to their environment. The outcomes depend on both the shape and sequence of a gene's DNA, each feature encoding a different subset of genetic information: one dynamic, the other static. Both flipons and codons are subject to natural selection.

A promising vaccine that clears an HIV-like virus from monkeys is closer to human testing after a new, weakened version of the vaccine has been shown to provide similar protection as its original version. The vaccine -- which uses a form of the common herpes virus cytomegalovirus, or CMV -- was live-attenuated, or weakened so CMV couldn't spread as easily. Having an attenuated version of the vaccine is key to being potentially able to use it in humans.

Women tend to have a greater immune response to a flu vaccination compared to men, but their advantage largely disappears as they age and their estrogen levels decline, suggests a study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

A team of researchers from the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medicine Centre's Viral Research and Experimental Medicine Centre (ViREMiCS) found that immune cells undergoing stress and an altered metabolism are the reasons why some individuals become sick from viral infections while others do not, when exposed to the same virus.

Most people have probably been stung by a bee and while it can be painful, it's especially dangerous for those at risk of suffering a life threatening allergic reaction. Australian researchers have successfully completed a human trial on a vaccine designed to eliminate the risk of a severe allergic reaction to European honeybee stings.

University of Calgary researchers are the first to discover a previously unidentified cell population in the pericardial fluid found inside the sac around the heart. The discovery could lead to new treatments for patients with injured hearts.