https://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Cutting across demographic and geographic lines, cancer remains the second-leading cause of death in the United States. According to the National Cancer Institute, more than one in three men and women in America will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives. Of those deaths, prostate cancer claims more than 40,000 lives every year. Each person lost to cancer is a tragedy for them, their families and their communities. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-08-goldilocks-radioisotopes-cancer.html Tue, 02 Aug 2022 09:44:37 EDT news578652273 As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, a team at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory set out to better understand how well face masks, ventilation, and physical distancing can cut down transmission of airborne pathogens like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04-layered-significantly-curb-exposure-covid-.html Wed, 13 Apr 2022 10:29:19 EDT news569064555 As the effort to combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus began, among the most pressing questions were how to gauge its infectivity and get a better picture of those dynamics from the inside out. Answering them initially would bring together nearly 30 researchers, representing a dozen institutions and nearly as many disciplines, including scientists from the Computational Science Initiative (CSI) at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-03-views-covid-peek-future.html Tue, 15 Mar 2022 10:23:34 EDT news566558609 Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have developed a new mathematical model for predicting how COVID-19 spreads. This model not only accounts for individuals' varying biological susceptibility to infection but also their levels of social activity, which naturally change over time. Using their model, the team showed that a temporary state of collective immunity—what they coined "transient collective immunity"—emerged during early, fast-paced stages of the epidemic. However, subsequent "waves," or surges in the number of cases, continued to appear because of changing social behaviors. Their results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-suppression-covid-time-dependent-social-herd.html Wed, 14 Apr 2021 08:15:13 EDT news537606902 A team of Stony Brook University (SBU) researchers is working on computer models that could help speed the discovery of drugs to combat the novel coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. They are doing this work in collaboration with scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, and will be leveraging those laboratories' computational resources and expertise. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-ways-covid-.html Tue, 07 Apr 2020 10:35:39 EDT news505474533 Accelerator physicists are natural-born problem solvers, finding ever more powerful ways to generate and steer particle beams for research into the mysteries of physics, materials, and matter. And from the very beginning, this field born at the dawn of the atomic age has actively sought ways to apply advanced technologies to tackle more practical problems. At the top of the list—even in those early days— was taking aim at cancer, the second leading cause of death in the U.S. today, affecting one in two men and one in three women. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-03-particle-cancer-therapy.html Tue, 04 Mar 2014 07:09:49 EST news313139241 Lisa Miller and Paul Gelfand, biophysical chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, recently visited the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory to supplement their research into the cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-12-teams-lou-gehrig-disease.html Tue, 10 Dec 2013 08:01:44 EST news305884770 (Medical Xpress)—Several brain-imaging studies have revealed disruptions in communication between brain regions in people addicted to cocaine. A new study conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory shows that a single oral dose of methylphenidate, a drug commonly used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), modifies connectivity in particular disrupted brain circuits in ways that could potentially help improve self-control and reduce craving among cocaine-addicted individuals. The research is published in JAMA Psychiatry as an Online First Publication, June 26, 2013. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-06-methylphenidate-modulates-brain-circuit-cocaine-addicted-individuals.html Thu, 27 Jun 2013 09:30:01 EDT news291541852 (Medical Xpress)—Using positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of the brain, researchers have identified a sweet spot that operates in a disorderly way when simple sugars are introduced to people with insulin resistance, a precursor to type 2 diabetes. For those who have the metabolic syndrome, a sugar drink resulted in a lower-than-normal release of the chemical dopamine in a major pleasure center of the brain. This chemical response may be indicative of a deficient reward system, which could potentially be setting the stage for insulin resistance. This research could revolutionize the medical community's understanding of how food-reward signaling contributes to obesity, according to a study being presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging's 2013 Annual Meeting. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-06-high-sugar-intake-linked-dopamine.html Tue, 11 Jun 2013 08:37:39 EDT news290158652 (Medical Xpress)—The results of a phase 1/2 clinical trial in Europe of an investigational Lyme disease vaccine co-developed by researchers at Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and at Baxter International Inc., a U.S. based healthcare company, revealed it to be promising and well tolerated, according to a research paper published online in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The vaccine was shown to produce substantial antibodies against all targeted species of Borrelia, the causative agent of Lyme disease in Europe and the United States. Baxter International conducted the clinical trial of the vaccine. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-lyme-disease-vaccine-clinical-trial.html Mon, 13 May 2013 07:54:50 EDT news287650482 (Medical Xpress)—Building on their history of innovative brain-imaging techniques, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators have developed a new way to use light and chemistry to map brain activity in fully-awake, moving animals. The technique employs light-activated proteins to stimulate particular brain cells and positron emission tomography (PET) scans to trace the effects of that site-specific stimulation throughout the entire brain. As described in a paper published online today in the Journal of Neuroscience, the method will allow researchers to map exactly which downstream neurological pathways are activated or deactivated by stimulation of targeted brain regions, and how that brain activity correlates with particular behaviors and/or disease conditions. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-pet-scans-brain-circuits-window.html Thu, 11 Apr 2013 07:01:39 EDT news284882490 (Medical Xpress)—Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, and collaborators may have found a way to predict drug-addicted individuals' responses to drug-related stimuli.  https://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-eeg-insight-drug-related-choice-addiction.html Wed, 14 Nov 2012 07:27:32 EST news272100439 (Medical Xpress)—Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have revealed a new connection between drug addiction and a distinct part of the brain that may govern motivation. The research, published October 23, 2012, in Translational Psychiatry as an Advance Online Publication, shows that individuals addicted to cocaine have abnormal functioning of the midbrain, a brain region responsible for releasing dopamine in the presence of important stimuli, such as food, to make individuals repeat the behaviors that would result in obtaining these stimuli again. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-mental-fatigue-impairs-midbrain-function.html Fri, 09 Nov 2012 07:19:03 EST news271667933 Brain scans of two strains of mice imbibing significant quantities of alcohol reveal serious shrinkage in some brain regions - but only in mice lacking a particular type of receptor for dopamine, the brain's "reward" chemical. The study, conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and published in the May 2012 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, now online, provides new evidence that these dopamine receptors, known as DRD2, may play a protective role against alcohol-induced brain damage. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-alcohol-critical-brain-regions-genetically.html Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:00:09 EST news248541266 Scientists investigating the interactions, or binding patterns, of a major tumor-suppressor protein known as p53 with the entire genome in normal human cells have turned up key differences from those observed in cancer cells. The distinct binding patterns reflect differences in the chromatin (the way DNA is packed with proteins), which may be important for understanding the function of the tumor suppressor protein in cancer cells. The study was conducted by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and is published in the December 15 issue of the journal Cell Cycle. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-analysis-tumor-suppressor-interactions-genome-human.html Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:30:02 EST news241867703 The more gray matter you have in the decision-making, thought-processing part of your brain, the better your ability to evaluate rewards and consequences. That may seem like an obvious conclusion, but a new study conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory is the first to show this link between structure and function in healthy people — and the impairment of both structure and function in people addicted to cocaine. The study appears in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-gray-brain-center-linked-ability.html Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:42:51 EST news241796563 A new study presented at SNM's 58th Annual Meeting could throw open the door to a recently established area of obesity research. Investigators have developed a novel molecular imaging agent that targets estrogenic mechanisms in the brain to find out what effect an enzyme called aromatase has on body mass index (BMI), a measurement of body fat based on height and weight. Aromatase is crucial for the production of estrogen in tissues throughout the body, including the brain. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-molecular-imaging-link-obesity-estrogen.html Tue, 07 Jun 2011 01:10:01 EDT news226584612