How viruses like Ebola, influenza or even the common cold adapt is a question that affects the health of everyone on earth.  A new Yale University study reveals that gradual exposure to new host species leads to major genetic changes in these pathogens — and possibly makes them more dangerous.

UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have identified a gene that protects the gut from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

A study published in JAMA Cardiology has added to growing evidence that electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are not harmless.

China’s rapid ascent to global economic superpower is taking a toll on some of its ancient ways. For millennia, people have patterned their lives and diets around the vast fisheries of the East China Sea, but now those waters are increasingly threatened by human-caused, harmful algal blooms that choke off vital fish populations, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Irvine.

“There has been massive growth in emissions from China’s factories and cars over the past few decades, and what comes out of the smokestacks and tailpipes tends to be richer in nitrogen than phosphorus,” said Katherine Mackey, assistant professor of Earth system science at UCI and lead author of the study, published recently in Frontiers in Marine Science.

Tiny air pollution particles — the type that mainly comes from power plants and automobiles — may greatly increase the chance of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, according to USC-led research.

Scientists and engineers found that older women who live in places with fine particulate matter exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standard are 81 percent more at risk for global cognitive decline and 92 percent more likely to develop dementia, including Alzheimer’s.

Research from Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station has identified a substance in oil that’s to blame for the cardiotoxicity seen in fish exposed to crude oil spills. More than a hazard for marine life exposed to oil, the contaminant this team identified is abundant in air pollution and could pose a global threat to human health.

We Now Have a Peek Into What the NASA Twins Study Will Reveal

A naturally occurring hormone that plays an important role in fetal development may be the basis for a new type of reversible contraceptive that can protect ovaries from the damage caused by chemotherapy drugs. In their report receiving online publication in PNAS, a team from the Pediatric Surgical Research Laboratories in the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Department of Surgery describes using Mullerian Inhibiting Substance (MIS) to halt, in a mouse model, the early development of the ovarian follicles in which oocytes mature, an accomplishment that protects these primordial follicles from chemotherapy-induced damage. 

A routine blood test that measures kidney function can be a valuable predictor of short-term outcomes for stroke patients, according to a study led by a neurologist at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

Florida State University researchers have found that the epithelial tissues that line the surfaces of organs throughout the body intrinsically have hot spots for cancerous tumors.