Advance in CAR T-cell therapy eliminates severe side effects

An advance in the breakthrough cancer treatment known as CAR T-cell therapy appears to eliminate its severe side effects, making the treatment safer and potentially available in outpatient settings, a new USC study shows. “This is a major improvement,” said Si-Yi Chen of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the […]

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Treatment for severe heartburn prevents cancer

Medical or surgical treatment of severe heartburn prevents cancer of the oesophagus, a study from Karolinska Institutet with almost one million Nordic patients reveals. The results are published in the scientific journal JAMA Oncology. Pathological heartburn and acid reflux affects 10-20 per cent of the adult population. Long and severe reflux is the strongest risk factor for cancer of the […]

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Lack of a single molecule may indicate severe and treatment-resistant depression

People with depression have low blood levels of a substance called acetyl-L-carnitine, according to a Stanford University School of Medicine scientist and her collaborators in a multicenter study. Naturally produced in the body, acetyl-L-carnitine is also widely available in drugstores, supermarkets and health food catalogs as a nutritional supplement. People with severe or treatment-resistant depression, or whose bouts of depression […]

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New technique fine-tunes treatment for severe epilepsy cases

One of three epilepsy patients experience no relief from drugs and are candidates for surgery. An advance by researchers at Yale and the Cleveland Clinic will enable surgeons to more precisely target areas of the brain causing debilitating symptoms in a subset of these patients. The technology called magnetoencephalography or MEG measures small amounts of magnetic-electrical activity on the surface […]

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Antibacterial in your toothpaste may combat severe lung disease

A common antibacterial substance found in toothpaste may combat life-threatening diseases such as cystic fibrosis, or CF, when combined with an already FDA-approved drug. Michigan State University researchers have found that when triclosan, a substance that reduces or prevents bacteria from growing, is combined with an antibiotic called tobramycin, it kills the cells that protect the CF bacteria, known as […]

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How a light touch can spur severe itching

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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Sunshine could hold clues on the timing for a severe form of heart attack, study says

The sun’s radiation could be a factor in seasonal patterns of a deadly type of heart attack, according to new research that tracked a “summer shift” in their occurrence across seven countries. Previous research has examined how these attacks – called ST-elevation myocardial infarctions, or STEMIs – seem to happen most often in the daytime during the colder winter months, […]

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