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Medicine & Science As part of a MedUni Vienna-led study conducted in cooperation with Stockholm's Karolinska Institute and the Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences in Krems, a comprehensive European allergy atlas has been compiled for the first time using a newly developed test method.

People of the MedUni Vienna Erdem Yildiz from the University Department of Otorhinolaryngology received the internationally renowned Spoendlin Junior Award for young basic scientists in hearing research for his research work "Investigation of Inner Ear Drug Delivery with a Cochlear Catheter in Piglets as a Representative Model for Human Cochlear Pharmacokinetics".

Medicine & Science In stem cell transplants, which are used for the treatment of leukaemia, the patient's haematopoietic system is eliminated and replaced by haematopoietic cells from donors. Even though the amount of complications occurring in this process is steadily decreasing due to medical progress, the exact mechanisms for the restoration of the immune system in these patients have not yet been conclusively clarified.

Medicine & Science An international research group, including scientists from MedUni Vienna and led by Leiden University Medical Center, has found that patients have 30% fewer serious side-effects when the drug dose is adapted to their DNA. The study, published in "The Lancet", is the first to demonstrate the practical application of prescribing drugs based on a person's genetic information.

Medicine & Science A study led last year by Wolfgang Schreiner from MedUni Vienna demonstrated the advantage of decision theory as a valuable extension of conventional statistics in therapy selection in precision medicine. In a research study based thereon, a new method was investigated to render medical decisions more justifiable and independent of intuitions.

Medicine & Science The cancer therapy of the future is increasingly customised in the sense of precision medicine. The basis for this is comprehensive "profiling" of each individual tumour, which extensively analyses the genetic make-up of the individual tumour at molecular level. This "comprehensive cancer profiling" is already being used at the Comprehensive Cancer Center Vienna (CCC) of MedUni Vienna and Vienna General Hospital for all types of cancer and permits the identification of changes in a tumour that argue for or against the use of a particular therapy.

Medicine & Science Alcohol-related liver disease is among the most common causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Due to an incomplete understanding of the factors contributing to disease development, liver transplantation is still the only available cure. A team led by Tim Hendrikx from MedUni Vienna's Department of Laboratory Medicine has now uncovered a new mechanism that plays an important role in the progression of the disease.

Medicine & Science Using prenatal magnetic resonance imaging, a group of MedUni Vienna researchers examined the placentas and foetuses of women who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy. Their research results demonstrate that the different strains of the virus that emerged during the pandemic led to varying degrees of damage: especially involving pre-Omicron variants, the detected placental lesions could potentially harm both development and health in some of the affected unborn children.

Medicine & Science Christoph Bock's team at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Artificial Intelligence of MedUni Vienna established a catalog of DNA methylation across 580 animal species. These data ena-bled a detailed dissection of the evolution of epigenetic regulation and the epigenome.

Medicine & Science Medical science has not yet been able to explain why the Epstein-Barr virus triggers infectious mononucleosis (IM) in some people with initial infections and not in others. But now, a research team led by Elisabeth Puchhammer-Stöckl, head of the Center for Virology at MedUni Vienna, has identified a specific immune response to the virus as the cause, and as a potential target for the development of vaccines.

A MedUni Vienna research team has discovered a highly potent biomarker for clinical response to CAR-T cell therapy, describing the prerequisites for optimal use of this novel therapy for lymphoma treatment. The current findings are an essential step forward towards optimizing this promising therapy.

Cervical cancer is the cancer with the fourth highest mortality rate among women worldwide. Locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC) is treated with a combination of external and internal radiotherapy (brachytherapy) and chemotherapy. For the first time, a study conducted by a research group at the Comprehensive Cancer Centre Vienna of MedUni Vienna and Vienna General Hospital using data from the multicentre EMBRACE-I trial demonstrated the superiority of a targeted approach in brachytherapy.

Severe covid 19 disease is characterized by excessive immune and inflammatory processes in the body. Conversely, long covid syndrome is likely to have a strong anti-inflammatory immune status. Scientists have now found this out with extensive blood plasma analyses of vaccinated persons without subsequent disease, persons with completely survived covid 19 infection and long covid patients.

Using several million medical records, a research group from MedUni Vienna and the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) showed that there was a correlation between the dosage of statins and the diagnosis of osteoporosis as early as 2019. This finding has now been confirmed in a preclinical study, which was recently published in the journal Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy.

The diagnosis and treatment of long COVID syndrome (LCS) is still very difficult, and there is only little knowledge about the factors causing accompanying symptoms. Researchers at the Joint Metabolome Facility of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna have now presented new evidence of triggers for fatigue following SARS-COV-2 infection.

Leukemic cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (L-CTCL) is a rare type of skin cancer that presents varied clinical features and symptoms. In a recently published study by the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and the Medical Universities of Vienna and Graz, the researchers managed to integrate the genomic data from affected patients with pharmacologic studies.

The Austrian Society of Dermatology and Venereology (ÖGDV) honoured MedUni Vienna researchers for their scientific achievements at its annual conference. Georg Stary received the Ferdinand von Hebra award, while Johanna Strobl and Laura Marie Gail of Georg Stary's research group were awarded the Science Award for a research paper.

A scientific team led by Thomas Niederkrotenthaler and Hannah Metzler from MedUni Vienna and Complexity Science Hub Vienna analysed approximately seven million postings on the topic of suicide and suicide prevention on Twitter. In the process, it was shown that content on the prevention and management of suicidal crises increased the number of contacts with mental health services.

Complete abstinence from alcohol is considered a cornerstone in the treatment of patients with alcohol-related liver disease. It has not yet been sufficiently researched whether this measure can still improve the prognosis even in the case of advanced liver cirrhosis. Scientists at the Department of Internal Medicine III at MedUni Vienna and AKH Vienna have now provided evidence of the positive effects of alcohol abstinence even at very advanced stages of the disease.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is almost always accompanied by fatigue, a massive tiredness that is described by the vast majority of patients as the most distressing symptom. In a recent scientific study, a research group led by Stefan Seidel from the Department of Neurology at MedUni Vienna and AKH Vienna identified light therapy as a promising non-drug treatment option: patients included in the study showed a measurable improvement after just 14 days of use.