Adults aged 50 and older have a new option for fall immunization after the U.S. Produced by Moderna, the shot uses lipid particles to deliver mRNA sequences into human cells, instructing them to temporarily produce a harmless hemagglutinin protein to stimulate an immune response against circulating influenza strains. How the mRNA Flu Vaccine Works Compared … Read more
University of Maryland School of Public Health researchers are leading a $2.5 million National Institutes of Health grant to study how combined exposure to extreme heat and wildfire smoke impacts maternal health and pregnancy outcomes across the United States. According to principal investigator Dr. Jennifer Stowell, the research team aims to identify which pollutant combinations … Read more
Researchers at the University of Geneva have successfully restored the defective respiratory protective barrier in cystic fibrosis patients, tackling a primary driver of chronic bacterial infections in one of Switzerland’s most common genetic diseases. According to a study published in the journal Communications Biology, scientists traced the core dysfunction to the abnormal activation of a … Read more
According to a nationwide population-based study accepted for publication in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers examining persistent post-COVID symptoms found no convincing clinical, neurological, or paraclinical biomarkers to definitively diagnose long COVID. Investigators tracked a cohort of residents in the Faroe Islands who contracted COVID-19 during the early phase of the pandemic, utilizing regular clinical … Read more
Rare CD4 cytotoxic T lymphocytes reach strikingly high levels in people who live beyond 110, revealing an unusual pattern of clonal expansion and functional flexibility, according to a study published in the journal Cell Reports. Researchers characterising these immune cells found that supercentenarians maintain immune profiles that exhibit advanced differentiation without the typical markers of … Read more
Researchers at the University of California Riverside found that nanomolar concentrations of vanillin cause stem cells to lose pluripotency and prematurely differentiate into endoderm tissue, a mechanism that may help explain clinical links between vaping, difficulty conceiving, and miscarriages. How Vanillin Targets Embryonic Stem Cells Laboratory tests conducted on human embryonic stem cells—which are similar … Read more
Human infections with highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) remain rare and mild among exposed poultry workers, according to a cohort study published in the journal Eurosurveillance. Researchers investigating outbreak sites in England between April 2023 and March 2025 found that fewer than 1% of monitored individuals met criteria for infection, even as rising animal spillover … Read more
Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence model that decodes neural, cardiac, and respiratory signals from routine sleep studies to identify high-risk patients that conventional apnea measurements miss, according to a study published in Nature Communications. Sleep disorders affect nearly one billion adults globally, making accurate long-risk stratification an urgent priority for healthcare systems. Limitations of … Read more
A nationwide cohort study of more than half a million Korean births has found no statistically significant link between maternal diabetes and the overall risk of childhood cancer. Researchers tracking data from 2003 to 2021 identified an 81% higher relative risk of urinary tract cancer in offspring of mothers with diabetes, though they emphasized the … Read more
According to a study published in BMC Biology, researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and Howard University have discovered that modern human immune responses bear genetic marks of ancient battles with infectious diseases, while also identifying rare variants linked to severe COVID-19. The findings bridge human evolution and infectious disease. … Read more