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Water pipeline leaks were a big issue in Calgary this past summer , plunging the entire city into two extended periods of water-use restrictions after a mainline suffered a major break in June.

University of Queensland researchers have made a significant step towards enabling women with epilepsy safer access to a common and highly effective anti-seizure medication. Sodium Valproate or valproic acid is widely prescribed for epilepsy and certain mental health conditions, but is considered harmful to use during pregnancy because of links to spinal cord defects and other complications for newborns.

Using a cutting-edge AI technique, Johns Hopkins researchers present a potential clinical tool to predict waist circumference and identify patients at risk for obesity complications A new artificial intelligence tool can predict the size of a person's waistline by simply analyzing their age, height, weight, ethnicity, and level of education, Johns Hopkins University engineers have found.

Health + Behavior Using small 3D models that mimic a patient's tumor, UCLA researchers can quickly test hundreds of potential drugs Researchers at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have used cells from sarcoma patients to develop the largest collection of lab-grown 3D mini-tumors, or "organoids," to better understand this rare cancer and identify therapies most likely to work for each individual patient.

Lamotrigine, a drug commonly used to treat epilepsy and certain mood disorders, has been shown to be an excellent treatment option for a rare genetic neuromuscular disease known as non-dystrophic myotonia, in a world-first trial led by UCL researchers. The study, published in Lancet Neurology , detailed the "head-to-head" trial implemented by the researchers to test two drugs, mexiletine and lamotrigine, on people with the condition.

A research team led by Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and the University of Bern has shown that a high percentage of kidney stones are excreted without symptoms. This finding should be incorporated into the future treatment of patients with recurrent kidney stones. Kidney stones are caused by the deposition of minerals and salts in the kidneys and can lead to severe pain when passing through the urinary tract.

Results from a preclinical study in mice, led by EPFL, and a collaborative clinical study in patients show that the type 2 immune response - associated with parasitic infection and thought to play a negative role in cancer immunity - is positively correlated with long-term cancer remission. In 2012, 7-year-old Emily Whitehead became the first pediatric patient to receive pioneering chimeric antigen receptor (CAR-T) therapy to fight the recurrence of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

Scientists believe the hormone hepcidin, when produced in the skin, may be the root cause of psoriasis - a chronic disease affecting 2-3% of the population. Scientists may have uncovered the root cause of psoriasis, a chronic and sometimes debilitating skin disease that affects 2-3% of the global population.

VUB research on immunotherapy for multiple myeloma establishes baseline for improved long-term success Dr. Heleen Hanssens from the Molecular Imaging and Therapy (MITH) Research Group at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) has conducted research on the application of CAR T-cell therapy in multiple myeloma, a form of bone marrow cancer that remains considered incurable.

Antonio Landi, PhD assistant at the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences and winner of USI Equal Opportunities Award 2024 for scientific contributions on topics of equality and diversity , presented his research to us, providing a comprehensive examination of gender medicine. Antonio Landi, could you please explain the research you conducted and the results it led to? "The study, published in JAMA Cardiology, aimed to analyse the impact of gender on optimal drug therapy in patients with coronary atherosclerotic disease undergoing angioplasty with coronary stent placement.

The innovation, developed by Carnegie Mellon researchers, shows promise as an affordable and versatile solution for removing micropollutants from water Carnegie Mellon scientists have found that an environmentally friendly process involving a TAML catalyst and hydrogen peroxide effectively degrades several antibiotics and other drugs found in municipal secondary wastewater and contaminated river and lake water.

New statistical models based on physiological data from more than 100 surgeries provide objective, accurate measures of the body's subconscious perception of pain. The degree to which a surgical patient's subconscious processing of pain, or "nociception," is properly managed by their anesthesiologist will directly affect the degree of post-operative drug side effects they'll experience and the need for further pain management they'll require.

Here's a batch of fresh news and announcements from across Imperial. From ultrafast probing pulses to a free AI algorithm that could find new medicines more efficiently, here is some quick-read news from across Imperial. W-boson mass measurement   The Standard Model of particle physics - which describes all the subatomic particles and forces we know about - has triumphed again.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have used a drug screening platform they developed to show that an antidepressant, currently on the market, kills tumour cells in the dreaded glioblastoma - at least in the cell-culture dish. Glioblastoma is a particularly aggressive brain tumour that at present is incurable.

A novel drug molecule could potentially lead to new treatments to prevent Parkinson's disease in younger patients, according to new research. "We are excited about this drug compound because we might have the possibility to develop the first cure for Parkinson's disease, at least for a subset of patients," said lead author  Kalle Gehring , a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at McGill University and Canada Research Chair in Structural Studies of Neurodegenerative Diseases.

The Molecular Oncology research group, led by Prof. Andrea Alimonti at the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR, affiliated to USI and member of Bios+) has recently discovered that a factor involved in blood coagulation, Factor X, directly promotes resistance to hormonal therapies in preclinical models and is associated with poor survival in  metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) patients.

MIT researchers find that the first dose primes the immune system, helping it to generate a strong response to the second dose, a week later. One major reason why it has been difficult to develop an effective HIV vaccine is that the virus mutates very rapidly, allowing it to evade the antibody response generated by vaccines.

In a recent study published in the scientific journal "Blood", researchers from MedUni Vienna show that haemorrhages are more common in cancer patients than previously thought and are associated with a poor prognosis and an increased risk of death. The results emphasise the need to devote more attention to this serious complication in clinical practice and research in the future.

A widely used drug could be the key to treating many patients with uncontrolled high blood pressure, particularly for patients with a common gene variant, according to new research led by the University of Glasgow and published in the journal Hypertension. In the British Heart Foundation (BHF) study, people with high blood pressure who had two copies of the variation experienced a five per cent reduction in their average blood pressure after taking the drug torasemide for 16 weeks.

Without immediate action, humanity will face a potentially disastrous escalation in resistance in fungal disease, a renowned group of scientists from the across the world has warned. The comment piece - published in The Lancet - was coordinated by scientists at The University of Manchester, the Westerdijk Institute and the University of Amsterdam.