News by Subject Biology

Most patients with type 2 diabetes are treated with a 'one-size-fits-all' protocol, but this approach can leave many cases inadequately managed. New work by scientists at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital indicates that inherited genetic changes may underlie the variability seen among diabetes patients, with different physiological processes potentially leading to high blood sugar. This work represents a first step toward using genetics to identify subtypes of type 2 diabetes.

Attention has focused on how NSAIDs may cause dysfunction of the immune system. Researchers now have found that sub-acute pretreatment with the NSAID carprofen before experimental heart attack in mice impaired resolution of acute inflammation following cardiac injury. They focused on three aspects of the inflammation resolution axis -- cardiac function, leukocyte profiling and inflammation-resolution markers.

A novel mathematical approach has uncovered that some animal cells have robust 12-hour cycles of genetic activity, in addition to circadian or 24-hour cycles.

A few minutes of high-intensity interval or sprinting exercise may be as effective as much longer exercise sessions in spurring beneficial improvements in mitochondrial function, according to new research. The small study is published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology -- Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.

A new study is challenging the long-held belief that specialization in mammal backbones date back to the earliest land animals. Evidence suggests that the spine gained regions during mammal evolution, with the first -- located in close proximity to the shoulders and front legs -- appearing some 250 million years ago, just as dramatic changes began to appear in the forelimbs of animals known as non-mammalian therapsids.

Brains of baby boys born prematurely are affected differently and more severely than premature infant girls' brains. This is according to a study published in the Springer Nature-branded journal Pediatric Research. Lead authors Amanda Benavides and Peg Nopoulos of the University of Iowa in the US used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans as part of an ongoing study on premature babies to examine how the brains of baby boys and girls changed and developed.