https://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Stimulating two brain areas, nudging them to collectively fire in the same way, increases a person's ability to behave altruistically, according to a study published in the PLOS Biology by Jie Hu from East China Normal University in China and colleagues from University of Zurich in Switzerland. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-gamma-synced-brain-nudge-people.html Tue, 10 Feb 2026 14:00:01 EST news689849702 As instigators of immunity, monoclonal antibodies are marvels of modern medicine, lab-made proteins that can treat cancers, autoimmune diseases, and many other conditions. With the market for these therapies forecast to double by 2030, it might seem that the only thing they can't do is grow fast enough. New research from the University of Oklahoma aims to put an end to that limitation, too. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-ai-antibody-drug-production.html Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:40:04 EST news689873354 A genetic test developed by researchers at Broad Clinical Labs and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is now enabling a large, nationwide clinical trial aimed at improving health care for men at increased risk of developing prostate cancer, the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in U.S. men. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-clinical-trial-explores-genetic-early.html Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:24:38 EST news689876641 Blood vessels in the brain are highly interconnected and efficient in actively regulating blood flow. Yet, the mechanisms that regulate flow are not well studied on a holistic level. To determine how the brain can reliably control such a seemingly complicated network, UC San Diego Professor of Physics David Kleinfeld and Postdoctoral Scholar Ji Xiang formulated a mathematical model that uses the measured connections among vessels to predict the impact of a change in a single vessel on the flow through all the other vessels. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-brain-blood.html Mon, 09 Feb 2026 14:00:05 EST news689867495 Many people may have a dim view of their fat tissue, yet scientists have come to recognize adipose as a necessary and metabolically active organ, carrying out many vital functions within the body. In the case of obesity, too much fat can contribute to conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. Intriguingly, for people with certain rare genetic and autoimmune disorders, such as familial partial lipodystrophy type 2 (FPLD2), the abnormal loss and distribution of adipose tissue can also lead to diabetes and metabolic disease. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-uncovering-rare-disease-resulting-abnormal.html Mon, 09 Feb 2026 13:21:51 EST news689865661 Next time you're considering consulting Dr. ChatGPT, perhaps think again. Despite now being able to ace most medical licensing exams, artificial intelligence chatbots do not give humans better health advice than they can find using more traditional methods, according to a study published on Monday. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-ai-doctor.html Mon, 09 Feb 2026 12:07:47 EST news689861205 When scientists sequence tumor DNA, they typically find small amounts of genetic code from bacteria, viruses and fungi—microorganisms that—if actually present in tumor tissues—could influence how they grow, evade immunity or respond to treatment. But do microorganisms truly reside in tumors, or do the samples become contaminated before sequencing occurs? https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-prism-reanalyzes-tumors-reshaping-debate.html Sat, 07 Feb 2026 11:00:11 EST news689528186 A team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI) at Texas Children's Hospital has uncovered a chain of events that connects genetic alterations, disruptions in lipid metabolism and the manifestation of Parkinson's disease in patients. The findings, published in the journal Brain, bring forward the possibility of identifying people at risk before symptoms appear and developing strategies to treat the disease rather than manage the symptoms. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-path-genetic-parkinson-disease-possibilities.html Fri, 06 Feb 2026 13:57:29 EST news689608561 Supriya Chakraborty might have been studying insects in a lab had it not been for an immunology college instructor in India who taught him about the superheroes inside him—immune cells that wage a battle against bacteria, parasites, and a host of other adversaries that invade our bodies. "That really fascinated me," Chakraborty recalled. "My focus shifted from entomology to wanting to solve illnesses that affect humans, specifically neurodegenerative disorders." https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-preclinical-successfully-reverses-loss-blood.html Fri, 06 Feb 2026 11:44:51 EST news689600641 An AI-powered model developed at the University of Michigan can read a brain MRI and diagnose a person in seconds, a study suggests. The model detected neurological conditions with up to 97.5% accuracy and predicted how urgently a patient required treatment. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-ai-brain-mris-seconds-accuracy.html Fri, 06 Feb 2026 11:40:06 EST news689599224 Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, or OHCA, is a leading cause of mortality worldwide and 90% of cases are fatal. Patients lose cardiac function and circulation, and every minute they remain untreated decreases the likelihood of a good outcome. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-extreme-temperature-hospital-cardiac.html Thu, 05 Feb 2026 13:40:01 EST news689519271 Severe bleeding is one of the most common and preventable causes of death after traumatic injury, yet currently available tools have poor ability to determine which patients urgently need blood transfusions. A new multinational study, just published in Lancet Digital Health, suggests artificial intelligence (AI) may help close that gap. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-ai-tool-trauma-patients-blood.html Thu, 05 Feb 2026 10:08:57 EST news689508481 Mass General Brigham investigators have developed a robust new artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model that is capable of analyzing brain MRI datasets to perform numerous medical tasks, including identifying brain age, predicting dementia risk, detecting brain tumor mutations and predicting brain cancer survival. The tool, known as BrainIAC, outperformed other, more task-specific AI models and was especially efficient when limited training data were available. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-ai-tool-brain-age-cancer.html Thu, 05 Feb 2026 05:00:03 EST news689447341 A new study from Karolinska Institutet shows that damage to small blood vessels in the hereditary disease CADASIL may disrupt important brain functions in the hippocampus, a region involved in memory. The findings help explain why many people with CADASIL develop cognitive problems and dementia. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-hereditary-disease-cadasil-linked-brain.html Wed, 04 Feb 2026 19:30:03 EST news689425373 A pioneering study marks a major step toward eliminating the need for daily insulin injections for people with diabetes. The study was led by Assistant Professor Shady Farah of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, in co-correspondence with MIT, and in collaboration with Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Massachusetts. The findings are published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-implant-daily-insulin.html Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:40:01 EST news689437838 Researchers from the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain, the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Center and University College London used brain imaging studies to uncover how psychotic experiences, such as brief hallucinations or delusion-like thoughts in otherwise healthy individuals, might be associated with differences in brain age in young people. Their research is published in the journal Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-links-psychotic-older-brains-age.html Wed, 04 Feb 2026 07:40:01 EST news689412238 More than 100 million people in the United States suffer from metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), characterized by a buildup of fat in the liver. This condition can lead to the development of more severe liver disease that causes inflammation and fibrosis. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-tissue-drugs-liver-disease.html Tue, 03 Feb 2026 10:20:03 EST news689335659 Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) School of Engineering have developed a novel reinforcement learning–based generative model to predict neural signals, creating an artificial information pathway that effectively bypasses damaged brain areas. This research opens up new possibilities for neural rehabilitation in patients suffering from motor or cognitive impairments caused by conditions such as stroke or spinal cord injury. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-neural-injury.html Tue, 03 Feb 2026 08:23:30 EST news689329382 In a modeling study of women vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV), researchers found that cervical cancer screening could be done far less often than current recommendations without compromising health benefits. For women vaccinated at younger ages, screening just two or three times over a lifetime was both cost‑effective and associated with fewer unnecessary follow‑up procedures, suggesting that existing screening guidelines may be overly intensive for this growing population. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-cervical-cancer-screenings-hpvvaccinated-women.html Mon, 02 Feb 2026 17:00:04 EST news688898821 Despite major advances in genetic testing for breast cancer risk prediction, death rates remain disproportionately high among women of African ancestry. This is often due to a combination of factors, including failure of existing genetic models to accurately predict risk, higher rates of aggressive tumor subtypes, and later-stage diagnoses. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-genetic-tools-accurate-breast-cancer.html Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:07:40 EST news689267221 The loss of social connectedness as people age increases the odds of cognitive-related disorders and can worsen health outcomes in older populations. But is there a direct relationship between social behavior and cognition? Subhadeep Dutta Gupta, Peter Rapp, and colleagues, from the National Institute on Aging, developed a rat model to probe social cognition in the aging brain. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-aging-rats-social-choices-healthy.html Mon, 02 Feb 2026 13:00:01 EST news688888981 A new study by cell biologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, suggests that an early first pregnancy may protect against breast cancer decades later by preventing age-related changes in breast cells that are linked to tumor formation. Using a mouse model designed to mimic human aging and reproductive history, researchers found that pregnancy fundamentally alters how mammary tissue ages—reducing the buildup of abnormal cells that have the ability to change their identity in a way that could seed cancer in later life. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-early-pregnancy-impacts-aging-implications.html Mon, 02 Feb 2026 10:09:37 EST news689249342 When infectious diseases surge, response often comes down to timing: whether communities can position the right people and supplies before case counts spike. A new tool developed by UC San Diego with UNICEF and New Light Technologies helps Peru and Brazil anticipate dengue and malaria, plan resources and lay the groundwork for global expansion. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-dashboard-disease-outbreaks.html Sun, 01 Feb 2026 09:30:01 EST news688987309 Cardiovascular disease continues to be the leading cause of death worldwide. To save lives, constantly improving diagnostic and risk assessments is vital. One researcher from the University of Missouri School of Medicine is exploring ways to do just that by using machine learning, which is a type of artificial intelligence (AI). https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-ai-accurately-cardiac-event-pet.html Sat, 31 Jan 2026 13:00:03 EST news688827047 Scientists at The Wistar Institute have identified a previously overlooked mediator in the body's response to life-threatening infections: hippuric acid, a metabolite produced when gut bacteria break down polyphenols from berries, tea, and other plant-based foods. The research reveals that this molecule acts as an immune-system amplifier, boosting the body's inflammatory defenses during early infection but elevating them to deadly levels when infections progress to sepsis. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-gut-derived-metabolite-hippuric-acid.html Sat, 31 Jan 2026 08:10:01 EST news688916729 Tau protein aggregation is a shared feature in over 20 neurodegenerative diseases (collectively referred to as "tauopathies"). New research led by Boston Children's Hospital challenges the current "one-size-fits-all" approach to diagnosing and treating these tauopathies. The study is published in the journal Cell. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-molecular-atlas-tau-enables-precision.html Fri, 30 Jan 2026 13:30:01 EST news689001946 We build AI systems to mimic the human brain: writing emails, answering questions and predicting what comes next. But new research aims to turn that relationship around—using large language models (LLMs) to explore how our brains anticipate and process stories. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-human-mind-ai.html Fri, 30 Jan 2026 08:43:23 EST news688984981 Schizophrenia is a severe and often highly debilitating psychiatric disorder characterized by distorted emotions, thinking patterns and altered perceptions of reality, as well as mental impairments. This disorder typically emerges in late adolescence or early adulthood and requires lifelong treatment with antipsychotic medications. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-unveiling-schizophrenia-neural-mental-signatures.html Fri, 30 Jan 2026 07:50:01 EST news688907386 Driven by an older, more diverse population and a significant increase in risk factors, at least six in 10 U.S. adults are projected to have some form of cardiovascular disease, causing related health care costs to triple. That's a figure that is only expected to grow. Each year heart disease and stroke already kill more than all forms of cancer combined. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-barriers-health-impact-communities.html Fri, 30 Jan 2026 06:47:25 EST news688978021 A new machine learning tool has identified more than 250,000 cancer research papers that may have been produced by so-called "paper mills." Developed by QUT researcher Professor Adrian Barnett, from the School of Public Health and Social Work and Australian Center for Health Services and Innovation (AusHSI), and an international team of collaborators, the study, published in The BMJ, analyzed 2.6 million cancer studies from 1999 to 2024. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-scientific-spam-filter-flags-potentially.html Thu, 29 Jan 2026 20:00:01 EST news688907401