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Scientists discovered that human microglia, immune cells that help shape developing brain circuits, can take four to eight years to mature instead of just weeks as they do in mice. The unusually slow process may help explain how the human brain develops its remarkable complexity and cognitive abilities.

Witnessing thousands of seal pups die from bird flu could harm staff mental health, officials say

Researchers discovered a possible way cancer cells hide from the immune system: they build a thick, sugar-rich coating around themselves. High blood sugar can strengthen this protective shield under conditions that resemble the environment inside tumors, with the protein HSF1 playing a key role. Blocking this process could make cancer cells easier for the immune system to recognize and destroy.

Puzzling event could be an artifact of gravitational lensing, a new model suggests

Two widely used zero-calorie sweeteners, sucralose and stevia, may have effects that linger far longer than the sweet taste itself. In mice, researchers found that both sweeteners altered the gut microbiome, reduced beneficial compounds produced by gut bacteria, and changed the activity of genes involved in metabolism and inflammation. Some of those changes were also detected in later generations that had never consumed the sweeteners themselves.

Scientists have created an injectable gel that can remain inside arthritic joints for weeks, slowly releasing medication while also improving lubrication. The approach could make it easier to deliver disease-modifying drugs directly where they are needed while limiting exposure elsewhere in the body.

A simple waist measurement may be nearly as effective as more complicated methods for detecting unhealthy levels of body fat. Researchers also found that BMI alone missed many people with obesity, suggesting waist size could provide an important warning sign.

A long-standing picture of brain evolution as newer, rational layers stacked on top of an ancient “lizard brain” may be deeply misleading. Researchers found that evolution instead appears to balance two competing styles of brain wiring, expanding one while shrinking the other depending on what an animal needs to survive.

A new foundation could help scientists assess the effects of fresh safety measures—if the company agrees to share its data

Low levels of a placentamade protein predict preeclampsia and fetal growth restriction and could offer new target for prevention

Alcohol-related liver disease may trap damaged liver cells in a regenerative limbo, preventing the organ from rebuilding itself even after drinking stops. Researchers linked the problem to inflammation-driven RNA errors and identified a pathway that could potentially be targeted to restore liver repair.

Structurally diverse tau filaments form proteinaceous aggregates in a heterogeneous group of neurodegenerative diseases called tauopathies. The factors extrinsic to the highly ordered core structure that influence tau filament stability are not well understood. Here, we found that polyubiquitinated tau filaments from Alzheimer disease and vacuolar tauopathy human brain tissue exhibit distinct seeding patterns in mice, in association with differences in tau filament ultrastructure determined by...

Organ structure, including the organization of cells, vasculature and extracellular matrix, underpins its function, yet how structure changes with age remains mostly unknown. Here we developed PathStAR, a framework that quantifies tissue structural aging from routine histopathology images, without being trained to predict chronological age. Applying PathStAR to 25,306 post-mortem biopsies from 40 tissues in 970 donors aged 21-70 years revealed that organ structural aging progresses via distinct,...

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) frequently complicates heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), worsening prognosis despite limited therapeutic options. Whether sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) improve PH beyond their established hemodynamic effects remains unclear. Seventy-four patients with ischemic HFrEF after acute myocardial infarction and a high echocardiographic probability of PH were prospectively enrolled in a single-center, non-randomized study. Patients...

Levodopa is the gold-standard treatment for Parkinson's disease, but chronic use results in levodopa-induced dyskinesia (LID) in approximately 80% of patients. Previous research has identified critical network changes in the cortico-basal ganglia pathway associated with LID; however, no study has extensively recorded motor thalamus single-cell activity in a LID model. The motor thalamus is a key node in the movement pathway, receiving basal ganglia and cerebellar inputs and projecting an...

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Ageing is an independent, non-modifiable risk factor for myocardial infarction (MI). It is also characterized by chronic, low-grade inflammation (inflammaging) and progressive cardiovascular senescence. These ageing-associated processes alter cytokine networks and innate and adaptive immune-cell function, promote endothelial dysfunction, and compromise post-infarction repair, thereby increasing myocardial susceptibility to ischaemia and adverse cardiac remodelling in the elderly. Lifestyle...

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) maintain bone homeostasis through osteogenic differentiation. During aging, MSCs undergo a fate shift toward adipogenesis rather than osteogenesis, but the post-transcriptional mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we identify ovarian tumor domain-containing protein 1 (OTUD1) as an RNA-binding protein that controls MSC fate by stabilizing osteogenic transcripts. OTUD1 directly binds and stabilizes BMP2 mRNA, thereby supporting osteogenic differentiation. In vivo, OTUD1...

We develop an integrated, high-throughput platform to evaluate pharmacological lifespan-extending interventions across five model organisms spanning unicellular to mammalian biology including yeast, nematodes, fruit flies, killifish, and mice. By combining automated imaging, miniaturized assays, and deep-learning-based death detection, we evaluate over 400 compounds across thousands of conditions. In S. cerevisiae, a miniaturized PI/flow cytometry CLS assay enables scalable screening and...

Mismatch between growth of body and digestive system bends the body, study suggests