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Cancer is one of the four most likely conditions for clinicians to consider in older men who go to their GP with new-onset fatigue, a study led by UCL researchers has found. For the study, published in the British Journal of General Practice (BJGP) , researchers analysed the health records of more than a quarter of a million people in England whose doctor noted that they were tired.

Genetic variants that determine the shape of your teeth - including a gene inherited from Neanderthals - have been identified by a team co-led by UCL researchers. In a new paper published in Current Biology , scientists found substantial tooth differences between ethnicities, potentially due in part to a gene inherited from Neanderthals that was only found in study participants of European origin.

The short-term boost our brains get after we do exercise persists throughout the following day, suggests a new study led by UCL researchers. Previous research in a laboratory setting has shown that people's cognitive performance improves in the hours after exercise, but how long this benefit lasts is unknown.

People who are either too trusting or too mistrustful are more likely to believe conspiracy theories and ascribe to vaccine hesitancy, finds a new study by UCL researchers. The research, published in PLOS Global Public Health, also found that people who are highly credulous are less capable of recognising fake news.

Adults who frequently post on social media are at more risk of developing mental health problems than those who passively view social media content, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, investigated how different types of social media use might affect the mental health of adults over time.

Most young people who were confirmed to have long Covid three months after a positive PCR test had recovered within 24 months, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The Children and young people with Long Covid (CLoCK) study, published in Nature Communications Medicine and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), is the world's largest longitudinal cohort study on long Covid in children.

The first computer algorithm capable of identifying which tumour cells are driving aggressive cancer growth has been developed by Cancer Research scientists from UCL and The Francis Crick Institute. The innovative algorithm, called SPRINTER*, analyses individual cells within a tumour to identify those that are growing the most rapidly.

Large language models, a type of AI that analyses text, can predict the results of proposed neuroscience studies more accurately than human experts, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour , demonstrate that large language models (LLMs) trained on vast datasets of text can distil patterns from scientific literature, enabling them to forecast scientific outcomes with superhuman accuracy.

Infants whose mothers regularly use language to describe what their child is thinking or feeling, have higher levels of the hormone oxytocin, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. Oxytocin, a hormone that is involved in a range of psychological processes, plays an important role in social relationships, such as the development of the bond between a parent and child, and the formation of trust, and social understanding, across the lifespan.

People with poorer mental health are more prone to browsing negative content online, which further exacerbates their symptoms, finds a study led by UCL researchers. The relationship between mental health and web-browsing is causal and bi-directional, according to the study published in Nature Human Behaviour .

A potentially life-changing heart condition, dilated cardiomyopathy, can be caused by the cumulative influence of hundreds or thousands of genes and not just by a single "aberrant" genetic variant, as was previously thought, finds a new study co-led by researchers at UCL. Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a condition in which the heart becomes progressively enlarged and weakened, reducing its ability to pump blood efficiently.

About one in five people who have stopped smoking for more than a year in England currently vape, equivalent to 2.2 million people, according to a new study led by UCL researchers. The study, published in the journal BMC Medicine and funded by Cancer Research UK, found that this increased prevalence was largely driven by greater use of e-cigarettes in attempts to quit smoking.

Police services across Britain are failing to meet the public's minimum standards of service delivery, according to a new report from researchers at UCL and the ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre, which measures this sentiment for the first time. For the report , the research team sought the views of members of the public across Britain to establish the minimum standards of service that the public should be able to expect from the police.

Working days lost to long Covid could be costing the economy billions of pounds every year as patients struggle to cope with symptoms and return to work, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The research, published in BMJ Open and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), examined the impact of long Covid on 4,087 patients who were referred to a long Covid clinic and registered in the Living With Covid Recovery (LWCR) programme between August 2020 and August 2022.

Two conflicting memories can both be activated in a worm's brain, even if only one memory actively drives the animal's behaviour, finds a new study by UCL researchers. In the paper published in Current Biology , the researchers showed how an animal's sex drive can at times outweigh the need to eat when determining behaviour, as they investigated what happens when a worm smells an odour that has been linked to both good experiences (mating) and bad experiences (starvation).

The ageing and failure of cells that occurs when the liver is damaged can spread to other organs, suggests a new study in mice and humans from researchers at UCL, the University of Edinburgh and the CRUK Scotland Institute. In the study, published in Nature Cell Biology , scientists demonstrate for the first time that the deterioration of cells in a damaged liver can activate a process associated with ageing and impaired function, which then transmits to otherwise healthy organs elsewhere in the body.

Mysteries about Uranus that have baffled scientists for decades may have been the result of an unusually powerful solar storm that happened to occur as a spacecraft visited the planet, a new study involving UCL researchers has found. NASA's Voyager 2, which flew by Uranus in 1986, provided scientists' first, and so far only, close glimpse of the planet, shaping their understanding of it in the decades since.

Neuroscientists at UCL have discovered brain cells that form multiple coordinate systems to tell us "where we are" in a sequence of behaviours, in a new study in mice. These cells can play out different sequences of actions, just like a music box can be configured to play different sequences of tones.

Socioeconomic factors such as education, occupation, and wealth influence the likelihood of developing cognitive impairment or dementia in later life and whether a person is likely to recover, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The research, published in Scientific Reports , followed 8,442 adults aged 50 and above in England over 10 years from 2008/09 to 2018/19, to examine how socioeconomic factors at the start of the study were associated with changes in cognitive status.

People with atrial fibrillation (AF) who have a stroke could benefit from blood thinning treatments, known as anticoagulants, at an earlier stage than is currently recommended, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. Results from the British Heart Foundation funded OPTIMAS study are published in the Lancet and presented at the World Stroke Congress 2024.