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Itch is easily one of the most annoying sensations. For chronic skin diseases like eczema, it’s a major symptom. Although it gives temporary relief, scratching only makes things worse because it can cause skin damage, additional inflammation and even more itch. EMBL researchers have now found a way to stop itch with light in mice. Nature Biomedical Engineering publishes their […]
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Extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) is used to treat chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD)—a complication of bone marrow or stem cell transplant that occurs when donor cells attack the recipient. How ECP works is unclear, and standardized treatment guidelines have not been established. Vanderbilt medical student Jocelyn Gandelman, Madan Jagasia, MBBS, and colleagues conducted a prospective, multicenter clinical trial of ECP for cGVHD. […]
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University of Toronto researchers have shone light on a well-known but mysterious gene that plays a key role in the growth of cancer. Genes contain blueprints for making proteins, the molecules that actually carry out tasks in a cell. The p53 gene helps make a protein known as p53, which tells cells to grow or not. This protein helps stop […]
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Scientists at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute (VTCRI) have found evidence that may disrupt conventional understanding about how electrical activity travels in the heart—a discovery that potentially can lead to new insight into medical problems such as heart arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death. The research study, now online but scheduled to appear as a final version on Tuesday, Sept. […]
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People with acquired prosopagnosia recognize few faces, a condition known also as “face blindness.” These are people who have suffered brain damage that interferes with their ability to recognize faces, even the faces of people they have met many times. The condition is rare. Only a few thousand people across North America have it. With support from the National Science […]
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Research by Cardiff University has uncovered the brain activity that underlies absence epilepsy, offering new hope for the development of innovative therapies for this disabling disease. Absence epilepsy—the most common form of epilepsy in children and teenagers—causes episodes of lack of awareness which are often mistaken for daydreaming. The brain activity that causes this form of epilepsy has remained poorly […]
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When we view natural images the colours we perceive are due to colour information at every local patch of an image, rather than how colours interact when they transition from one point to another, according to a new study from researchers at City, University of London. The finding supports the role that colour processing cells in the brain play when […]
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For some people, particularly those who are elderly, even a light touch of the skin or contact with clothing can lead to unbearable itching. What’s worse, anti-itch treatments, including hydrocortisone, don’t provide much relief for this type of itching. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis have discovered, in mice, why a touch can cause such […]
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Research led by a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside, shows that bilinguals regulate, or suppress, their native language when reading in a second language. Many in media and in science often assume that reading or speaking in a second language—one that has been learned later in life than the native or first language—is always going to be difficult. […]
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