Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: health – Page 3

Harnessing mechanobiology to combat kidney disease

Chronic kidney disease affects an estimated 37 million people in the U.S., and for many, there is no cure. But a new research project at Washington University in St. Louis seeks to change that by uncovering the mechanical basis of kidney cell injury.

To tackle chronic kidney disease, Guy Genin, the Harold and Kathleen Faught Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the WashU McKelvey School of Engineering, and Jeffrey Miner, the Eduardo and Judith Slatopolsky Professor of Medicine in Nephrology at WashU Medicine, teamed up with Hani Suleiman, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. The interdisciplinary team, with expertise spanning medicine, cell biology, genetics and engineering, received a five-year $4 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

With the NIH’s support, the team plans to study the mechanobiology of podocytes, specialized cells in the kidney that help filter blood.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have received a $4 million grant to study specialized cells that could help treat kidney disease.

Maternal exposure to crude oil and flame retardants can affect later generations

A tiny fish with transparent embryos is helping University of California, Davis, researchers shed light on how exposure to crude oil and flame retardants can affect behavior, skeletal growth, cardiac health and other internal functions in offspring and subsequent generations.

The research on multiple generations of Atlantic killifish (mummichogs) was published across three papers in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The work, some dating back to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill off the Gulf coast, offers insight into how toxic exposures—even short ones—can unfold over time in many species.

Can immune cells stave off devastating neurodegenerative diseases? Scientists aim to find out

An evolving form of therapy to treat devastating neurodegenerative disorders by injecting fresh immune cells—microglia—directly into the brain, promises a new lease on health by slowing the progression of mind-robbing conditions.

The research, underway in China, is in the pre-clinical phase of investigation and is aimed at protecting vital neurons, while at the same time, combating the early hallmarks of neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease.

So far, the transplants have been performed in animal models, but they have ameliorated symptoms of neurological disease.

Wearable sweat sensor can detect responses to physical, emotional and pharmacological stress

Most people are well aware of the effects of chronic stress in the modern world. While some stress can be a good thing, like the type of stress your body feels during an intense workout, prolonged or chronic stress can lead to a myriad of health problems, including anxiety, heart disease, and inflammation. And, at a larger scale, the high prevalence of chronic stress in the population increases the burden on public health systems.

Tracking stress responses could help people better understand and manage stress, but stress can be difficult to measure and monitor in an objective and precise manner. Stress hormones fluctuate throughout the day, but current stress assessment methods rely on subjective self-reports, heart rate, or wearable sensors that only measure cortisol in a non-continuous manner. It is difficult to get a full picture of a person’s and its long-term effects with these current methods.

However, scientists have recently developed a device called the “Stressomic,” a wearable biosensor that can continuously monitor cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine in sweat—which might just pave the way for better stress management. The device was recently tested in a study published in Science Advances. They claim that it’s capable of distinguishing between acute and and can be worn as a simple biocompatible patch placed on the skin.

Your Eye Movements Could Be Hiding Signs of a Failing Memory

The ways our eyes explore the world change subtly over time, affected by age and illness.

A new study now suggests some of those changes could be used to identify problems with memory and cognition.

Researchers from Canada and the West Indies built on previous work by searching for variations in eye viewing patterns in people with and without a diagnosis for a brain health issue.

Under or over? Automated technique can visualize and measure DNA tangles

At school, it’s often presented as a tidy double helix but scientists are revealing the varied and intricate shapes of DNA molecules.

DNA is a molecule found in just about every . Because the molecule is long, it ends up twisting on itself and getting tangled. Enzymes in the body try to regulate this process but when that fails, normal activity in the cell can be disrupted, which triggers ill health and could be a factor in diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration.

To find cures for major illnesses, scientists need to understand the complex shape of DNA tangles. Existing lab techniques enable them to plot the shape and structure of DNA tangles, but it is laborious and time-consuming.

Depression shown to be both cause and consequence of poor health

A large international study led by researchers at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, shows that major depressive disorder (MDD) not only increases risk for a wide range of diseases and social problems, but is also partly driven by factors such as loneliness, obesity, smoking, and chronic pain.

The study, published in Nature Mental Health, applied to systematically test which traits are causes, and which are consequences, of depression. The findings highlight the double burden of MDD: it both arises from and contributes to poor health, making prevention and treatment particularly urgent.

“We show that depression sits at the center of a web of health problems,” says Joëlle Pasman, research associate at Amsterdam UMC and Karolinska Institutet, who led the study. “It is not only a debilitating condition in itself but also increases the risk of many diseases, while at the same time being triggered by social, behavioral, and medical factors.”

Microsoft: August Windows updates cause severe streaming issues

Microsoft has confirmed that the August 2025 security updates are causing severe lag and stuttering issues with NDI streaming software on some Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems.

This comes after widespread reports from users experiencing a wide range of performance problems when using various streaming apps, including OBS (Open Broadcast Software).

“Severe stuttering, lag, and choppy audio/video might occur when using NDI (Network Device Interface) for streaming or transferring audio/video feeds between PCs after installing the August 2025 Windows security update,” the company said in a new Windows release health update.

Scientists solve 30-year mystery of a hidden nutrient that shields the brain and fights cancer

Scientists have finally uncovered the missing link in how our bodies absorb queuosine, a rare micronutrient crucial for brain health, memory, stress response, and cancer defense. For decades, researchers suspected a transporter had to exist, but it remained elusive—until now.

Zooming in reveals a world of detail: Protein mapping technique reveals inner workings of cells

In the past decade, there has been significant interest in studying the expression of our genetic code down to the level of single cells, to identify the functions and activities of any cell through the course of health or disease.

The identity of a cell, and the way that identity can go awry, is critical to its role in many of the biggest health challenges we face, including cancer, neurodegeneration, or genetic and developmental disorders. Zooming in on single cells allows us to tell the difference between variants which would otherwise be lost in the average of a region. This is essential for finding new medical solutions to diseases.

Most single-cell gene expression experiments make use of a technology called single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), which produces a map of exactly which genes are being copied out into short “transcripts” inside the nucleus. However, scRNA-seq only gives us a window into the intermediate step between the genetic code and the proteins which take care of (almost) all the tasks inside our bodies.

/* */