Research News

Metabolic syndrome increases a person’s risk for diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, and includes conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure and high blood sugar. In a recent mouse-model study, published in Cell Metabolism, researchers at University Hospitals (UH), Harrington Discovery Institute at UH, and Case Western Reserve University have furthered their progress to develop a drug to treat metabolic syndrome by identifying a receptor that controls appetite and body weight.

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.1 sublineage has been supplanted in many countries by the BA.2 sublineage. Although Omicron is responsible for less severe forms in the general population, immunocompromised people are still at higher risk of developing severe forms of COVID-19. Several monoclonal antibodies are currently available in clinical practice as a preventive treatment for these patients.

The largest ever genetic study of schizophrenia has identified large numbers of specific genes that could play important roles in the psychiatric disorder.

A group of hundreds of researchers across 45 countries analysed DNA from 76,755 people with schizophrenia and 243,649 without it to better understand the genes and biological processes underpinning the condition.

Scientists have published the first complete, gapless sequence of a human genome, two decades after the Human Genome Project produced the first draft human genome sequence. According to researchers, having a complete, gap-free sequence of the roughly 3 billion bases in our DNA is critical for understanding the full spectrum of human genomic variation and for understanding the genetic contributions to certain diseases.

Although SARS-CoV-2 has taken the world by storm, it’s not the only coronavirus that can infect humans. But unlike SARS-CoV-2, common human coronaviruses (HCoVs) generally cause only mild disease. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Infectious Diseases have shown that infections with two different HCoVs don’t generate antibodies that effectively cross-react with SARS-CoV-2. So, prior infection with HCoVs is unlikely to protect against COVID-19 or worsen a SARS-CoV-2 infection through antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), the researchers say.

Clinician-scientists in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai developed a clinical algorithm that, for the first time, distinguishes between treatable sudden cardiac arrest and untreatable forms of the condition.

The findings, published today in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Clinical Electrophysiology, have the potential to enhance prevention of sudden cardiac arrest unexpected loss of heart function—based on key risk factors identified in this study.

Researchers at the George Washington University published findings from the world’s largest cohort study showing that hospitalized patients with moderate COVID-19 who were given aspirin early on in their treatment had a lower risk of dying compared to patients who were not given aspirin.

University of Notre Dame researchers have discovered another way tumor cells transfer genetic material to other cells in their microenvironment, causing cancer to spread.