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Daily insulin injections are painful and inconvenient, which is why scientists are developing implants that treat diabetes without any need for needles. A new one looks particularly promising, as it produces oxygen to feed onboard islet cells.
Tags: MIT, Boston Children’s Hospital, Diabetes, Implant, Treatment, Oxygen
Continue reading Diabetes-treating implant produces oxygen to support islet cells
Surgeons have successfully performed a first-of-its-kind procedure in utero to treat a potentially fatal genetic defect in the brain. Usually treated after birth, the new procedure could give newborns a better chance of a normal life.
Tags: Brain, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Baby, Health, Strokes, Heart, Heart Failure, Children, Boston Children’s Hospital
Continue reading World-first in-utero procedure successfully treats dangerous brain defect
A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine is offering some of the first real-world data on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against the Omicron variant in children aged 5 to 11. The findings reveal vaccination reduce a child’s risk of severe illness and hospitalization by two-thirds compared to unvaccinated children.
Category: Health & Wellbeing, Lifestyle
Tags: Coronavirus (COVID-19), Children, Boston Children’s Hospital, Vaccines, Virus
Continue reading COVID vaccines in children cut Omicron hospitalizations by 68%
Type 1 diabetes begins when beta cells in the pancreas die off, meaning a patient can no longer produce enough insulin. Scientists have now identified a cellular pathway that can contribute to the death of these cells, and found that blocking it in mice and human cells keeps the beta cells alive for longer, delaying or preventing the onset of diabetes.
Tags: Diabetes, Diabetic, Boston Children’s Hospital, Insulin, New Atlas Audio
Continue reading Blocking cellular pathway delays or prevents onset of diabetes in mice
Type 1 diabetes begins when beta cells in the pancreas die off, meaning a patient can no longer produce enough insulin. Scientists have now identified a cellular pathway that can contribute to the death of these cells, and found that blocking it in mice and human cells keeps the beta cells alive for longer, delaying or preventing the onset of diabetes.
Tags: Diabetes, Diabetic, Boston Children’s Hospital, Insulin, New Atlas Audio
Continue reading Blocking cellular pathway delays or prevents onset of diabetes in mice
Although it’s vitally important to know if someone has experienced a concussion, the injuries are notoriously difficult to diagnose. According to a new study, however, urine tests may do the trick – plus they could be used to monitor the healing process.
Tags: Boston Children’s Hospital, Concussions, Traumatic Brain Injury
Continue reading Urine analysis could definitively diagnose concussions
Scientists at Boston Children’s Hospital have successfully used gene therapy to reverse a form of genetic hearing loss in mice. The team corrected a gene mutation that affects sensory hair cells in the inner ear, and the new jigsaw-like method could help improve gene therapy for other disorders.
Tags: Hearing, ear, gene therapy, Boston Children’s Hospital
Continue reading Jigsaw gene therapy reverses genetic hearing loss in mice
Scientists investigating a root cause of leukemia have made a key discovery around how genetic mutations can cause blood stem cells to go rogue, forming dangerous populations of cloned cells that can go on to become cancerous. The team’s experiments on zebrafish not only shed new light on how these cells protect themselves as they rapidly multiply, but reveal new targets for scientists looking to halt blood cancer in its early stages.
Tags: Leukemia, Blood, Cancer, Boston Children’s Hospital, New Atlas Audio
Continue reading Preventing rogue cells from cloning could nip blood cancer in the bud
A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics is reporting one half of American children under the age of six have detectable levels of lead in their blood. The research looked at recent blood test results from over one million children and is the first study of this scale to analyze minute traces of lead in blood samples.
Category: Health & Wellbeing, Lifestyle
Tags: Blood, Children, toxic, Environmental, Safety, Boston Children’s Hospital, New Atlas Audio
Continue reading Toxic lead found in over half of blood samples from US children
Central to a lot of scientific research into aging are tiny caps on the ends of our chromosomes called telomeres. These protective sequences of DNA grow a little shorter each time a cell divides, but by intervening in this process, researchers hope to one day regulate the process of aging and the ill health effects it can bring. A Harvard team is now offering an exciting pathway forward, discovering a set of small molecules capable of restoring telomere length in mice.
Tags: Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard, Aging, Telomere, DNA, New Atlas Audio
Continue reading Molecules identified that reverse cellular aging process