All Stories by Damaris Christensen
- Health & Medicine
Gene variant linked to early puberty
A highly active version of a gene for faster testosterone metabolism is also associated with early breast development—by the age of 9.5 years—in girls.
- Health & Medicine
Making Sense of Centenarians
The number of centenarians is expected to double every ten years, making this formerly rare group one of the fastest-growing in the developed world. Researchers are turning to studies of the oldest old to determine how genes, lifestyle, and social factors contribute to longevity.
- Health & Medicine
New drug to treat blood poisoning
For the first time, a drug has reduced deaths from severe sepsis, a life-threatening immune reaction occurring in 750,000 people in the United States each year.
- Health & Medicine
Less morphine may be more
In mice, very low doses of morphine combined with even lower doses of a drug that usually blocks morphine's effect can give greater pain relief than higher doses of morphine alone.
- Health & Medicine
Medicinal Mimicry
While researchers tease out the mechanisms behind the ability of inert pills and sham procedures to trigger health benefits, the ethics of using such placebos in medical research trials is coming under increasing scrutiny.
- Health & Medicine
Success clearing clogged arteries
In the past 10 years, angioplasty and other procedures to unblock clogged arteries have steadily improved, probably due to increasing use of wire-mesh tubes called stents to help patients’ arteries stay open.
- Health & Medicine
A sticky problem solved
Researchers have identified a protein integral to making blood clot, a finding they hope will lead to better drugs for preventing clots in people at risk of heart attack or stroke.
- Health & Medicine
Mending a Broken Heart
Transplants of skeletal-muscle cells may help heal hearts damaged by illness or previous heart attacks.
- Health & Medicine
Weight Matters, Even in the Womb
Status at birth can foreshadow illnesses decades later.
- Health & Medicine
New role for cholesterol-lowering drugs
Drugs that lower cholesterol benefit patients who have just had a heart attack or chest pains, regardless of the patient's initial cholesterol levels.
- Health & Medicine
It’s that time. . .for heart attacks?
A small study of young women already at high risk of having a heart attack suggests that heart attacks are most frequent when estrogen levels are low, soon after a woman's period begins.
- Health & Medicine
Big meals boost heart attack risk
Unusually heavy meals boost a person's chance of developing a heart attack, at least among those people who already have risk factors for heart disease.
