Research finds potential for Alzheimer’s therapy

Clinical trial results, published in The Journal of Neuroscienceby Eli Lilly & Co., suggest a promising new therapy for Alzheimer’s disease.  The BACE1 inhibitor drug called LY2811376 prevents beta-secretase 1 from producing amyloid-beta, a protein fragment commonly associated with Alzheimer’s.  Researchers considered BACE1 inhibition to be a potential therapy for more than a decade, but [...]

An Apple a Day…?

‘Shrooms fight depression

Recent research performed by the Imperial College London on the effects of “magic mushrooms” suggests psychedelic drugs may not be detrimental to our health. Psilocybin, a hallucinogenic chemical found in psychedelic mushrooms, is being tested as an alternative therapeutic treatment for depression and migraines. The research found psilocybin reduces the overall amount of brain activity, [...]

Males endure pain better

Males appear to endure pain better than females in most regions of the body, excluding childbirth, according to analysis of nearly 72,000 medical records by the Stanford School of Medicine,  Researches evaluated patients suffering from one of 47 common health disorders, including cancer, back conditions, joint problems and digestive track issues.   Patients ranked the [...]

New Year’s resolution

‘Tis the season for the ultimate test: sticking to your New Year’s resolutions. We’ve all made them at one point or another — whether it is sticking to a diet or pledging to end procrastination. According to The Wall Street Journal, the most popular of them all is losing weight. As students frequent the Aquatic [...]

Health care in Iraq: the forgotten focus

The U.S. troops which were in Iraq are now gone. More than 30 million Iraqis in Iraq, and many more across the world, celebrated “Iraq Day,” or the “Day of Defeating the Occupier,” Dec. 31. But with the end to the U.S. presence in Iraq comes a tremendous burden: that of rebuilding a country which [...]

Week in review

The definition of autism could change in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. As a result, the rate at which this disorder is diagnosed could decrease exponentially and people who no longer meet the criteria might not be able to receive any more health and educational benefits. Researchers who [...]

The painkiller’s irony

Aspirin is not effective as a preventative measure for healthy people hoping to avoid heart attacks and strokes, according to a study published earlier this month in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Examining nine trials with 102,621 people, researchers observed that taking aspirin did not result in a reduction in deaths from heart attack, stroke [...]

Web user’s dilemma

Internet Addiction Disorder is changing the structure of the brain, according to a study of 17 individuals at Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan. Researchers observed that the white matter of the brain, which contains nerve fibers, showed changes in addicts compared to non-addicts. In MRI scans, the images displayed disruptions to connections in fibers linking [...]

Tech of the Week: The smallest bit

Who: Researchers at IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science What: The world’s smallest magnetic storage device, a single bit which is made of just 12 atoms. The Future: The new device will not be incorporated into hard disks in the near future because it has yet to be replicated outside a laboratory. —compiled [...]