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A short burst of immunotherapy before surgery is delivering surprisingly powerful results for a specific type of colorectal cancer. Patients in a UK-led trial who received just nine weeks of pembrolizumab prior to surgery have remained cancer-free nearly three years later—an outcome that challenges the standard approach of surgery followed by months of chemotherapy.

A major 10-year clinical trial is turning one of the world’s most common knee surgeries on its head. Researchers found that trimming a damaged meniscus—a procedure long believed to relieve pain—offers no real benefit over placebo surgery. Even more surprising, patients who had the operation actually fared worse over time, with more symptoms, poorer function, faster progression of osteoarthritis, and a greater likelihood of needing additional surgery.

Two high-profile tools have been shown to make up data and “p-hack” their results

A chaotic sleep schedule in your 40s might be quietly setting the stage for heart trouble later. Researchers tracking thousands of people for over a decade found that those with highly inconsistent bedtimes—especially when they slept less than eight hours—faced about double the risk of serious cardiovascular events like heart attacks or strokes. Interestingly, it wasn’t when people woke up that mattered most, but how erratic their bedtime was.

A revived technique could reveal planets near their stars and the inner workings of galaxies

Ganymede discovery could force rethink of how worlds power their magnetic fields

Scientists have developed a breakthrough injectable biomaterial that travels through the bloodstream to repair damaged tissue from within, reducing inflammation and jumpstarting healing. In animal studies, it successfully treated heart attack damage and even showed promise for conditions like traumatic brain injury and pulmonary hypertension. Unlike earlier approaches that required direct injection into the heart, this new therapy can be delivered intravenously, allowing it to spread evenly and act quickly.

GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are often celebrated as game-changing solutions—but new research reveals a surprising social twist. People who lose weight using these medications may actually face more judgment than those who lose weight through diet and exercise—or even those who don’t lose weight at all. The stigma seems rooted in a perception that these drugs are an “easy way out,” creating a double bind where individuals are judged both for their weight and for how they choose to manage it.

Questions about the culprit virus and its route of spread remain as health officials make plans for stranded passengers

Levodopa-induced dyskinesia (LID) is a debilitating complication of symptomatic therapy in Parkinson's disease. Although there is compelling evidence that striatal pathophysiology is a major driver of LID, the specific circuit mechanisms governing its expression remain obscure. To address this gap, molecular, cellular, and behavioral strategies were used to interrogate circuits in a mouse model of LID. These studies revealed that LID induction led to an upregulation of GluN2B-containing...

Microplastics (MPs), defined as plastic fragments less than 5 mm in diameter, are ubiquitous in the environment. As an emerging environmental pollutant, MPs can infiltrate the human body through multiple pathways, including inhalation, ingestion, dermal contact and bloodborne transmission.Correspondingly, MPs, which can penetrate the blood-brain barrier and enter the central nervous system (CNS), have been linked to the development of neurodegenerative diseases (NDs).In this review, we provide a...

Mitochondrial dynamics play a critical role in the development of aging-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes mellitus. To investigate how mitochondrial dynamics influence cellular behavior in pancreatic beta-cells, we developed a rule-based, multi-level simulation model of insulin secretion. The pancreatic beta-cell model encompasses metabolic pathways (glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation), compartmental processes (mitochondrial fusion and fission), and cellular processes (insulin...

Sepsis disproportionately affects older adults and children, two immunologically vulnerable extremes of age. Yet sepsis is superimposed on distinct baselines-immunosenescence in the elderly and immune immaturity in neonates and young children-leading to different pathways toward immune failure. This comparative narrative review synthesizes clinical and experimental evidence on age-specific and shared alterations in lymphocyte subsets in sepsis, including lymphopenia; CD4^(+) and CD8^(+) T cell...

In this prospective cohort study of 1545 participants aged 80 years and older from the China Hainan Centenarian Cohort Study, we investigated the independent and joint associations of modifiable risk factors and genetic predisposition with life expectancy. A weighted modifiable risk factor score (MRFS) based on 11 factors and a polygenic risk score (PRS) for longevity were constructed. A favorable modifiable risk factor profile (low MRFS) was associated with a 40.7% lower death risk (HR 0.593,...

Cancer-causing mutations have been identified primarily from positive selection signals in cancer genomes. However, positive selection is also a ubiquitous feature of normal tissue aging. Here we develop a statistical framework to disentangle selection in normal tissue and causation of carcinogenesis. By comparing cancer and normal tissue genomes, we estimate the effects of mutations on cancer risk in the blood, esophagus and colon. We determine that stronger cancer-causing mutations are...

No abstract

Cellular senescence is a multifaceted stress response marked by stable proliferative arrest and the secretion of diverse biologically active factors, collectively known as the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). The senescent phenotype is remarkably variable and subject to various regulatory influences. We previously demonstrated that mitochondrial dysfunction induced by diverse stimuli, including the loss of sirtuin 3 (SIRT3), leads to the hyperactivation of AMPK and p53,...

With an ageing population comes a growing burden of age-related cognitive decline. While evidence supports a relationship between higher diet quality and better cognitive outcomes, the association between ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and cognitive function remains underexplored. We examined this association using prospective data from the ASPirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly (ASPREE) study, a cohort of Australian adults aged 70 years and older. Dietary intake was assessed via a mail-based...

This study examined associations between diet quality, epigenetic age acceleration (EAA), and mortality in two U.S. cohorts: NHANES (n = 2158) and HRS (n = 1752), while accounting for demographic and socioeconomic (SES) determinants. Diet was evaluated as a potentially modifiable exposure within broader social and biological pathways. Participants were linked to the National Death Index. Cox proportional hazards models, additive Bayesian networks (ABN), generalized structural equation models...

Vascular aging, characterized by progressive structural and functional deterioration of the vasculature, serves as a critical pathophysiological nexus between chronological aging and cardiovascular disease (CVD). This study establishes a quantitative vascular age model to decode individualized vascular senescence patterns, thereby enabling early identification of accelerated aging phenotypes for targeted intervention. We collected physical examination records from 2009 to 2019 and a total of...