A combination of two drugs can selectively block pain-sensing neurons in rats without impairing movement or other sensations such as touch, according to a new study by National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported investigators.
Extremely low birth weight premature infants who received breast milk shortly after birth, while still in intensive care units, had greater mental development scores at 30 months than did infants who were not fed breast milk, reported researchers in an NIH network.
Scientists have discovered a link between a mutated gene and a protein found in dead brain cells of people who suffer from a form of dementia and other neurological disorders.
The rare immunodeficiency disorder known as Job’s syndrome is caused by a specific genetic mutation that both overstimulates and understimulates the human immune system, leading to harmful bacterial and fungal infections and the physical features characteristic of the syndrome, according to two independent groups of scientists, one from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the other from the Tokyo Medical and Dental University.
More than 150 million people worldwide are infected with filarial parasites — long, thread-like worms that can live for years inside the human body and cause severe, debilitating diseases such as elephantiasis.
Tendon, the cord-like tissue that connects muscle to bone, contains a small subset of previously unknown adult stem cells, federal scientists have discovered.
Our ability to hear is made possible by way of a Rube Goldberg-style process in which sound vibrations entering the ear shake and jostle a successive chain of structures until, lo and behold, they are converted into electrical signals that can be interpreted by the brain. Exactly how the electrical signal is generated has been the subject of ongoing research interest.
The number of visits to a doctor’s office that resulted in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents has increased by 40 times over the last decade, reported researchers funded in part by the National Institutes of Health.
Using genetic engineering, researchers have created an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)-like set of behaviors in mice and reversed them with antidepressants and genetic targeting of a key brain circuit. The study, by National Institutes of Health (NIH) -funded researchers, suggests new strategies for treating the disorder.
Scientists have reported new evidence that infection with a common virus may be a contributing factor to the obesity epidemic sweeping through the United States and other countries.
Finding out whether that unusual sore in your mouth is cancerous should become a lot faster and easier in the years ahead.
As other emerging technologies have in the past, nanotechnology poses questions regarding the adequacy and application of regulatory authorities. The then Acting Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) initiated the Nanotechnology Task Force (Task Force) in 2006 to help assess these questions with respect to FDA’s regulatory authorities, in light of the current state of the science for nanotechnology. This report offers the Task Force’s initial findings and recommendations to the Commissioner.
Hundreds of thousands of babies around the world are born each year with HIV–more than half a million in 2006 alone. Caring for these children is complicated by the fact that their immune systems are not fully developed in the first year of life, which makes them especially susceptible to rapid HIV disease progression and death. The current standard of HIV care in many parts of the world is to treat infants with antiretroviral therapy–but only after they show signs of illness or a weakened immune system.
Researchers funded in part by the National Institutes of Health have identified the gene that accounts for most cases of Goltz syndrome, a rare skin disorder that can also affect bone and eye development.