Charged particles may be small, but they matter to astronauts. NASA’s Human Research Program (HRP) is investigating these particles to solve one of its biggest challenges for a human journey to Mars: space radiation and its effects on the human body.

Outdoor air pollution has long been linked to major health conditions such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A new study now adds kidney disease to the list, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Veterans Affairs (VA) St. Louis Health Care System.

Diet and exercise may improve treatment outcomes in pediatric cancer patients, according to a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital.

Checkpoint inhibitor-based immunotherapy has been shown to be very effective in recurrent and metastatic head and neck cancer but only in a minority of patients. University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers may have found a way to double down on immunotherapy’s effectiveness.

By delivering strands of genetic material known as messenger RNA (mRNA) into cells, researchers can induce the cells to produce any protein encoded by the mRNA. This technique holds great potential for administering vaccines or treating diseases such as cancer, but achieving efficient delivery of mRNA has proven challenging.

First, the good news. Washington State University researchers have found that a rat exposed to a popular herbicide while in the womb developed no diseases and showed no apparent health effects aside from lower weight.

Victims of gunshots and stabbings are significantly less likely to die if they’re taken to the trauma center by a private vehicle than ground emergency medical services (EMS), according to results of a new analysis.

Opening up a new pathway to fight cancer, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found a way to target an enzyme that is crucial to tumor growth while also blocking the mechanism that has made past attempts to target that enzyme resistant to treatment. Researchers were able to use this finding to develop a drug that successfully inhibits tumor growth of melanoma as well as pancreatic and colorectal cancer in mice. The journal Cancer Discovery published the findings online this month.

People who handle paper receipts regularly may be at increased risk for exposure to a chemical linked to breast and prostate cancers, according to new UAlberta research.

“We found that people who handled receipts printed on thermal paper containing the chemical had it lingering in their body for a week or more,” said Jiaying Liu, a PhD candidate in UAlberta’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology.

Teenagers who try e-cigarettes double their risk for smoking tobacco cigarettes, according to a new study.

The study — from the University of Waterloo and the Wake Forest School of Medicine — found that students in grades seven to 12 who had tried an e-cigarette are 2.16 times more likely to be susceptible to cigarette smoking.