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PARIS, France (AFP) — Treating younger people with high cholesterol levels may help reduce their risk of heart attack or stroke in later life, a major study showed Wednesday. Described as the “most comprehensive” review of its kind covering almost 400,000 patients over more than 40 years, the study in The Lancet said its findings on the link between cholesterol levels and ill health “may be particularly important in people under 45 years.” A summary […]
by Issam AHMED For people diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer, the outlook is about as grim as it gets: the average patient won’t live longer than a year. But a new study involving a targeted drug therapy has demonstrated it may be possible to significantly slow its spread, with a third of patients receiving the medication still alive two years into a clinical trial, a researcher reported on Sunday. The trial specifically looked at patients […]
by Ivan Couronne WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Measuring melting ice is a fairly precise business in 2019 — thanks to satellites, weather stations and sophisticated climate models. By the 1990s and 2000s, scientists were able to make pretty good estimates, although work from previous decades was unreliable due to less advanced technology. Now, researchers have recalculated the amount of ice lost in Greenland since 1972, the year the first Landsat satellites entered orbit to […]
by Sara HUSSEIN Agence France-Presse TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — For years, insecticide-soaked mosquito nets have helped dramatically lower malaria infections, but insecticide resistance has driven a search for alternatives and a new study may have uncovered one option. The weapon is a familiar one: an anti-malarial drug already used by humans to prevent them contracting the disease, and researchers now envisage using it on netting like insecticides. Their research shows the drug works on mosquitoes, […]
by Robin MILLARD Agence France-Presse LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — A mission to explore uncharted depths in the Indian Ocean was launched on Wednesday, hoping to discover hundreds of new species and find out what impact plastic is having way below the surface. The First Descent expedition, led by British-based ocean research institute Nekton, is set to send submersibles as deep as 3,000 meters off the Seychelles from March to test the health of the […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Women tend to outlive men and stay mentally sharp longer, and a new study out Monday could explain why: female brains appear on average about three years younger. The study enrolled 121 women and 84 men, who underwent PET scans to measure brain metabolism or the flow of oxygen and glucose in their brains. Like other organs in the body, the brain uses sugar as fuel. But just how it […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Almost half of Americans have heart disease, a significant increase over prior years largely because of a newly expanded definition of high blood pressure, the American Heart Association said Thursday. The report in the journal Circulation found that 121.5 million adults in the United States in 2016 “have some type of cardiovascular disease.” By definition, cardiovascular disease includes coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke and high blood pressure. In 2017, […]
by Jerome TAYLOR Agence France Presse HONG KONG, China (AFP) — Hong Kong scientists claim they have made a potential breakthrough discovery in the fight against infectious diseases — a chemical that could slow the spread of deadly viral illnesses. A team from the University of Hong Kong described the newly discovered chemical as “highly potent in interrupting the life cycle of diverse viruses” in a study published this month in the journal Nature Communications. […]
by Ivan COURONNE with Nathalie OLOF-ORS in Basel Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — In the ongoing hunt for more effective weapons against malaria, international researchers said Thursday they are exploring a pathway that has until now been little studied — killing parasites in the liver, before the illness emerges. “It’s very difficult to work on the liver stage,” said Elizabeth Winzeler, professor of pharmacology and drug discovery at University of California San Diego […]
by Kerry SHERIDAN Agence France Presse TAMPA, United States (AFP) — Probiotics are a multibillion dollar international industry, but new research Wednesday showed they don’t help children recover from stomach flu any better than a placebo. The results of two randomized clinical trials — which came to the same conclusions — were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. “Probiotics had no effect on the children,” said co-author Phillip Tarr, a professor of pediatrics […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US researchers, armed with high-speed video cameras, have revealed the secret to cat grooming. It’s all in the tongue. Just not the way they thought. A cat’s tongue contains 300 little scoop-shaped spines called filiform papillae which they moisten with saliva to clean their fur, said the report Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal. Until now, the scientific consensus on the matter was […]
by Sara HUSSEIN Agence France Presse TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — A breakthrough treatment involving electrical stimulation of the spine has enabled paralyzed patients to walk again, apparently reactivating nerve connections and providing hope for people even years after accidents. A team including neurosurgeons and engineers used targeted electrical pulses to achieve the results, triggering individual muscles in a sequence, the way the brain would. The pulses are produced by an implant placed over the spine […]
