People living in polluted urban areas are far less likely to be admitted to hospital with asthma when there are lots of trees in their neighbourhood, a study by the University of Exeter’s medical school has found.

When healthier food, like vegetables and dairy products, is pricier compared to unhealthy items, like salty snacks and sugary sweets, Americans are significantly less likely to have a high-quality diet, a new Drexel University study found. 

In 2016, news about the Zika virus in Brazil made the headlines in Europe for the first time. With approximately 65 million people affected, it is one of the largest epidemics in the last few years. The Olympics additionally fuelled fears that the virus could spread globally. When the first cases of newborns with microcephaly, i.e. malformations of the brain, were observed in connection to Zika, it became apparent that further research was called for. The DZIF responded to this global challenge and, under the leadership of Jan Felix Drexler, Charité – Universitätsklinikum Berlin, initiated a German alliance project with Brazilian scientists, which investigates the pathogenesis and epidemiology of Zika.

One could say that biomedical engineering grad Kelsey Collins is walking in the footsteps of giants.

When Collins started out as a grad student at the University of Calgary’s Human Performance Laboratory, she didn’t know that her path would lead her to a postdoctoral appointment at Washington University in St. Louis — home to no fewer than 17 Nobel laureates in medicine and physiology, and a world-renowned institute for orthopaedic research.

Individuals who have A, B, or AB blood types have an elevated risk of having a heart attack during periods of significant air pollution, compared to those with the O blood type, according to new research from the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute and Brigham Young University.

The new study is unique in that it links increased risk of heart attack associated with small particulate pollution to increased risk of heart attack for people with certain blood types who have coronary artery disease.

The presence of artificial sweeteners in rural groundwater shows evidence for contamination by local septic system wastewater, researchers from the University of Waterloo have found.

In a new study, MIT researchers have developed nanoparticles that can deliver the CRISPR genome-editing system and specifically modify genes in mice. The team used nanoparticles to carry the CRISPR components, eliminating the need to use viruses for delivery.

An international study has shed new light on the genetic factors associated with Parkinson’s disease, pointing at a group of lysosomal storage disorder genes as potential major contributors to the onset and progression of this common neurodegenerative disorder. The study appears in the journal Brain.

A simple colour-changing test to detect fluoride in drinking water, devised by researchers at the University of Bath, could in the future prevent the crippling bone disease, skeletal fluorosis, in developing countries such as India and Tanzania.

T-cells are one of the immune system’s major weapons. They detect the body’s cells infected with a virus and trigger their ablation, effectively killing the virus. T-cells cannot do the same with cancer cells, however, as they do not recognise them as foreign cells and are therefore unable to eliminate them.