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New results from the world's biggest ovarian cancer screening trial led by UCL suggest that screening based on an annual blood test may help reduce the number of women dying from the disease by around 20%. The research, published today (Thursday) in the Lancet , also cautions that longer follow up is needed to establish more certain estimates of how many deaths from ovarian cancer could be prevented by screening.

People vary according to different personality traits, such as extraversion or conscientiousness, and new UCL research suggests that they also vary according to a particular cognitive trait: distractibility. The findings are published in Psychological Science , a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The study was set up to test ways of narrowing the gap in uptake between rich and poor. The results highlight just how wide this gap currently is, and also provide the first published national figures on bowel screening uptake since the scheme was fully rolled out in 2010. Four randomised controlled trials were conducted across the whole of England to see if uptake could be increased, particularly among the most disadvantaged members of society, by making cheap, simple and easy-to-implement changes to the screening invitation letters and information materials.

A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle physics and quantum physics is provably unsolvable, according to scientists at UCL, Universidad Complutense de Madrid - ICMAT and Technische Universität München. The findings show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.

A new test for detecting multiple explosives simultaneously has been developed by UCL scientists. The proof-of-concept sensor is designed to quickly identify and quantify five commonly used explosives in solution to help track toxic contamination in waste water and improve the safety of public spaces.

Concentrating attention on a visual task can render you momentarily 'deaf' to sounds at normal levels, reports a new UCL study funded by the Wellcome Trust. The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggests that the senses of hearing and vision share a limited neural resource. Brain scans from 13 volunteers found that when they were engaged in a demanding visual task, the brain response to sound was significantly reduced.

People born with a rare genetic mutation are unable to feel pain, but previous attempts to recreate this effect with drugs have had surprisingly little success. Using mice modified to carry the same mutation, UCL researchers funded by the MRC and Wellcome Trust have now discovered the recipe for painlessness.

A new study from UCL and King's College London has revealed that 7.5 per cent of adults in a South London sample could be diagnosed as having an eating disorder. The clinical criteria surrounding eating disorders recently changed with the introduction of the fifth and latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5), the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals across the world.

Drinking caffeinated drinks and using social media 30 minutes before bedtime is significantly reducing sleep quantity in teenagers and negatively affecting their school performance, according to new research from UCL Institute of Education (IOE)'s Lifespan Learning and Sleep Laboratory. The role of environmental factors on sleep patterns and school performance in adolescents  written by Dr Dagmara Dimitriou, Dr Frances Le Cornu Knight and Patrick Milton shows that the total sleep and bedtimes of teenagers on weekdays are strongly associated with poorer academic achievement at school.

Dementia patients from more affluent areas in England are 27% more likely to be prescribed anti-dementia drugs than patients from poorer areas, finds a new UCL study of 77,045 dementia patients across the UK. This inequality was not seen in Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales. The new research, published in Age and Ageing , also found that compared to English practices, anti-dementia drugs were prescribed more often in Northern Ireland and Scotland but less often in Wales.

Researchers at UCL have revealed that a change in sense of humour could be an early sign of dementia. The findings could help improve dementia diagnosis, by highlighting changes not commonly thought to be linked to the condition. The research team was particularly interested in how sense of humour can change in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer's disease.

The number of people diagnosed with bronchiectasis, a lung condition thought to be a 'disease of the past', has risen considerably in the past decade and now affects more than 1% of UK pensioners, finds a new study by UCL, University College London Hospitals (UCLH) NHS Foundation Trust, Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Withdrawing a commonly-prescribed Alzheimer's disease drug from people in the advanced stages of the disease doubles their risk of being placed in a nursing home within a year, according to UCL research published today in The Lancet Neurology . Researchers funded by the Medical Research Council and Alzheimer's Society followed 295 people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease to monitor the effects of continuing or discontinuing the drug donepezil - which is typically withdrawn in the later stages of the disease because of a lack of perceived benefit by clinicians.

A new trial launches today, which aims to answer once and for all whether or not a daily dose of aspirin can help prevent some cancers from coming back. Some previous studies have suggested it might, but the evidence has not been conclusive. Doctors need clear proof that it is a safe and effective treatment before prescribing it for their patients.

UCL and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited today announced a new research collaboration to identify and validate novel target genes for the treatment of neurodegenerative disease. This collaboration will focus on mechanistic approaches for the identification of genes or signalling pathways that modify neurodegenerative disease processes affecting neuronal health (for example motor neurone disease (MND or ALS), Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease).

Archaeologists from a consortium of universities including UCL have found out what people ate while building Stonehenge, by analysing the food residues preserved in their pots as well as the animal bones and other food waste from the large settlement of Durrington Walls near Stonehenge. Pork and beef were the prime foods, barbecued and boiled.

The way our brain responds to others' good fortune is linked to how empathetic people report themselves to be, according to new UCL-led research. The study, published today in the Journal of Neuroscience and funded by the Medical Research Council, shows that a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) seems particularly attuned to other people's good news, but how it responds varies substantially depending on our levels of empathy.

Islamist insurgency has had a strong effect on where polio cases occur since 2011, potentially as a reaction to the use of counterinsurgency strategies, according to new research led by UCL. In research published today in the open access journal Globalization and Health, lead author Dr Jonathan Kennedy (UCL Political Science) and colleagues from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Cambridge University (Professor Lawrence King) analysed cross-national data for the period 2003-14.

US fans of the National Football League (NFL) and sports reporters assigned to specific teams have unrealistic expectations about how well their team will perform, finds new research from UCL and Oxford University. The study, published in PLOS ONE, also reveals which teams are most liked and disliked, as well as which teams have the most optimistic fans.

Amyloid beta pathology in the grey matter and blood vessel walls characteristic of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and the related cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is observed in the brains of deceased patients who acquired Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) following treatment with prion-contaminated human growth hormone.