Research News

A study has found that much higher doses of antibiotics are needed to eliminate a bacterial infection of the airways when other microbes are present. It helps explain why respiratory infections often persist in people with lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis despite treatment.

To quote veteran science writer Ed Yong’s simple yet extremely accurate words in The Atlantic, “The immune system is very complicated.” As the COVID-19 pandemic had made abundantly clear, science still doesn’t fully understand the sophisticated defense mechanisms that protect us from microbe invaders. Why do some people show no symptoms when infected with SARS-CoV-2 while others suffer from severe fevers and body aches? Why do some succumb to cytokine storms of the body’s own making? We still lack exact answers to these questions.

A Johns Hopkins Children’s Center-led study in animals suggests that high doses of a widely used antibiotic called rifampin may safely treat and reduce the duration of treatment for the deadliest form of tuberculosis that affects the brain, potentially improving survival rates for patients and decreasing the likelihood of lasting adverse effects of the disease.

The ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has caused an imminent urge for both antiviral therapeutical drugs and vaccines. While the development of vaccines was accomplished in a remarkably short timeframe, the identification of direct antiviral treatments has progressed comparatively slowly. In the light of the further risk of pandemics in the future, however, there remains need for direct antiviral drugs and treatments. Moreover, emerging immune-evasive, I.e. camouflaged from the immune system, SARS-CoV-2 variants are of concern.

By employing artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to formulate therapeutic proteins, a team led by Rutgers researchers has successfully stabilized an enzyme able to degrade scar tissue resulting from spinal cord injuries and promote tissue regeneration.

Researchers from Columbia Engineering, Fiocruz’s Center for Technological Development in Health and the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Brazil, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Rockefeller University recently reported that, by combining inhibitors of polymerases and exonucleases enzymes that allow SARS-CoV-2 to reproduce--they were able to reduce SARS-CoV-2 replication 10 times more than when using just the polymerase inhibitors.

Recent large population cohort analysis demonstrated that a subset of individuals at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular diseases can be predicted years before disease incidence. The study is published in Plos Biology.

The research team discovered that drugs used to treat blood pressure unexpectedly increase the effect of opioids that the brain naturally produces. This can fine-tune the function of a specific brain circuit and counteract the addictive properties of opiates like fentanyl, which are used to treat pain.

New research from the University of Exeter reports the largest ever whole-genome sequencing project for the potentially fatal yeast infection Candida glabrata from hospitals across Scotland.