Research News

Seven out of 10 pregnant women were cured of their multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and delivered healthy babies after taking a medication that had previously been considered unsafe in pregnancy, a new Curtin and Telethon Kids Institute study has found.

Published in JAMA Network Open, the study examined the experiences of 275 pregnant women with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis living in South Africa, Peru, Brazil, Iran and Uganda.

An estimated one-quarter of adults in the U.S. have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), an excess of fat in liver cells that can cause chronic inflammation and liver damage, increasing the risk of liver cancer. Now, UT Southwestern researchers have developed a simple blood test to predict which NAFLD patients are most likely to develop liver cancer.

Rabies virus kills a shocking 59,000 people each year, many of them children. Some victims, especially kids, don’t realize they’ve been exposed until it is too late. For others, the intense rabies treatment regimen is out of the question: treatment is not widely available and the average 3,800 Dollar expense poses unthinkable economic burden for most people around the world.

Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) studied the human immune response after immunization with the malaria pathogen Plasmodium falciparum. Their goal was to find out against which protein components the T helper cells induced in this way are directed. To the researchers' surprise, the T helper cells reacted exclusively to the protein sequence of the vaccine strain and showed hardly any cross-reactivity with the naturally occurring pathogen variants.

A stress protein that is overactive in many types of tumor cells also has a key role in tumor-supporting cells called fibroblasts, and may be a good target for future cancer treatments, suggests a study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

University of Leeds Virus Host Interaction Team researchers have discovered that the molecule, called sialokinin, makes it easier for a number of viruses to pass from mosquitoes to humans, where they can then take hold – leading to unpleasant and potentially deadly diseases.

These viruses include Yellow Fever, which causes serious illness in about 15% of people infected; dengue, which can develop into the potentially fatal disease dengue fever, and Zika, which caused a global medical emergency in 2016.

A blood clot in the brain that blocks the supply of oxygen can cause an acute stroke. In this case, every minute counts. A team from Empa, the University Hospital in Geneva and the Hirslanden Clinic is currently developing a diagnostic procedure that can be used to start a tailored therapy in a timely manner, as they write in the current issue of the scientific journal Scientific Reports.

Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics today announced the Annals of Internal Medicine has published additional data from the Phase 3 MOVe-OUT trial evaluating LAGEVRIO™ (molnupiravir), an investigational oral antiviral medicine, in non-hospitalized adults with mild to moderate COVID-19 who were at high risk for progressing to severe disease.

A vaccine for eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV), western equine encephalitis virus (WEEV), and Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV) was found to be safe, well-tolerated and induced a neutralizing antibody response in adult volunteers, according to newly published results from a Phase 1 clinical trial. The vaccine candidate was developed by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Vaccine Research Center (VRC), part of the National Institutes of Health.