"It just stops your life, stops you from living." This quote from an anonymous patient sums up the experience of millions of sufferers of a health problem that's rarely recognised or even discussed, yet has a major impact on their lives. Simply put, these people can't catch their breath. And when the problem gets worse it can lead to a crisis situation. In fact, it may be responsible for as many as 20% of ambulance trips to the hospital.
Scientists using a powerful new technology that sequences RNA in 20,000 individual cell nuclei have uncovered new insights into biological events in heart disease. In animal studies, the researchers identified a broad variety of cell types in both healthy and diseased hearts and investigated in rich detail the "transcriptional landscape," in which DNA transfers genetic information into RNA and proteins.
This is the first time to our knowledge that massively parallel single-nucleus RNA sequencing has been applied to postnatal mouse hearts, and it provides a wealth of detail about biological events in both normal heart development and heart disease. The study was published in Genes & Development.
Elite sport demands of athletes that they give the utmost of both body and mind. That physical rest is needed after training and competing is generally accepted, but relatively little consideration is given to mental recovery, knows researcher Yannick Balk. He proved that elite athletes—and their coaches—perform better if they relax regularly, and researched how they can best do that.
Myanmar is yet to create a conducive environment for the safe and dignified return of Rohingyas forcibly displaced from its Rakhine State who took shelter in Bangladesh, a UN assessment indicates.
Chemotherapy drugs to treat breast cancer may promote muscle mitochondrial dysfunction. Dysfunctional mitochondria, the energy centers of the cells, may contribute to fatigue and weakness that some people with breast cancer experience through the course of disease treatment. The study was published in the American Journal of Physiology-Cell Physiology.
Human stem cells seem to have an almost unlimited potential to advance disease treatment and prevention in the near future. While their study has been somewhat controversial at times, scientists around the world are excited about the possibilities that stem cells present.
Researchers from Australia report the most in-depth study ever of how human stem cells can be turned into heart cells. Researchers measured changes in gene activity in tens of thousands of individual cells as they move through the stages of heart development. The study was published in Cell Stem Cell.
Researchers have managed for the first time to differentiate human inner ear cells in a laboratory from somatic progenitors and to investigate their origin. This will make it possible to develop new treatment methods for hearing impairment in the future. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
The number of Americans with diabetes who wind up in hospitals with serious infections, or who develop them while in the hospital, is on the rise. Between 2010 and 2015, the number of diabetics hospitalized for infections rose 52 percent (from 16 per 1,000 people to 24 per 1,000), according to researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"People with diabetes are more susceptible to in-hospital infections as compared with people without diabetes, and this risk is increasing," said lead researcher Jessica Harding, from the CDC's Division of Diabetes Translation.