News by Subject Medicine & Health

Adding refined soluble fiber to processed foods could present a health risk for certain people, researchers say in newly published study.

Physicians are encountering a growing number of younger patients who are testing positive for hepatitis C virus (HCV) fueled largely by the opioid crisis impacting communities around the country. That increase and more effective and tolerable drug regimens for HCV infection, means one-time universal screening of all adults for HCV is now cost effective and recommended, say physician researchers in the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine.

Patients with alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) tend to have worse outcomes than others following a stay in intensive care, research shows.

In a UCI-led study, researchers found evidence that mast cells, an important group of immune cells typically associated with allergies, actually enable the body to survive fasting or intense exercise. The study was published today in Cell Metabolism.

For the first time, scientists have performed prenatal gene editing to prevent a lethal metabolic disorder in laboratory animals, offering the potential to treat human congenital diseases before birth. Published today in Nature Medicine, research from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania offers proof-of-concept for prenatal use of a sophisticated, low-toxicity tool that efficiently edits DNA building blocks in disease-causing genes.

Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD), which is not caused by significant alcohol consumption, has become the most common liver disease in the United States and comprises more than two thirds of patients with chronic liver disease. In a Hepatology study of patients with NAFLD, modest alcohol consumption was associated with a 36 percent decreased risk of early death, while drinking 1.5 or more drinks per day was associated with a 45 percent increased risk, after adjustments.

Obese patients who underwent a life-saving liver transplant and weight-loss surgery at the same time were better able to keep the weight off long term and had fewer metabolic complications than those who lost weight on their own before undergoing a liver transplant, Mayo Clinic research shows. The findings were recently published in Hepatology.