EurekAlert! News by Subject: Medicine & Health - News by Subject: Medicine & Health

Medicine & Health

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 15-Jun-2025 05:09 ET (15-Jun-2025 09:09 GMT/UTC)

Head-to-head trial compares weight loss drugs

Weill Cornell Medicine
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Tirzepatide (trade name Zepbound) promoted greater weight loss in individuals with obesity than did semaglutide (trade name Wegovy) in a clinical trial that compared the safety and efficacy of the injectable drugs. In the 72-week trial—led by an investigator at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian and conducted with the University of Texas McGovern Medical School, the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, the University College Dublin and Eli Lilly—participants taking tirzepatide lost about 50 pounds—or 20.2% of their body weight—compared with those on semaglutide, who lost an average of 33 pounds or 13.7% of their baseline weight.

Journal: New England Journal of Medicine

Rosiglitazone prevents the development of kindling by modulating inflammatory cytokine production and brain cell apoptosis in mice

Xia & He Publishing Inc.
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Epileptogenesis involves complex mechanisms, including inflammation and apoptosis. Rosiglitazone, a peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma agonist, possesses anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties. This study investigated whether rosiglitazone can prevent pentylenetetrazole (PTZ)-induced kindling in mice by modulating inflammatory cytokines and apoptosis pathways.

Journal: Journal of Exploratory Research in Pharmacology

Exposome Moonshot launching in Washington D.C.

Exposome Moonshot
Meeting Announcement

The Exposome Moonshot Forum will take place May 12th to 15th in the heart of Washington, DC. This highly participatory, impact-driven, multi-stakeholder forum will consider issues and opportunities surrounding data protection, AI integrations, and multi-national representation to build an effective and ethically informed launchpad for the Human Exposome. The Human Exposome, a counterpart to the Human Genome Project, uses precision analytics, predictive environmental data, and biometrics to understand the impact of lived environment on individual health profiles and outcomes. This once-in-a-generation endeavor will revolutionize the way we understand and address public health challenges, offering highly precise health profiles that consider every individual’s lived experience and local context.

Funder: Johns Hopkins University

Let-7 is a key guardian of healthy lungs that keeps pulmonary fibrosis in check

Baylor College of Medicine
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions have uncovered a key molecular player that is involved in lung repair and in the development of pulmonary fibrosis, a common and severe class of adult lung diseases linked to respiratory failure.

Journal: Nature Communications

Common neural underpinnings identified for sleep disturbances associated with obsessive-compulsive spectrum, chronic tic, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorders

Wolters Kluwer Health
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Increased sleep difficulties in patients with obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders (OCSDs), chronic tic disorders (CTDs), and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are likely due to disruptions in the cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) pathway, according to a narrative review in the May issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry, part of the Lippincott portfolio from Wolters Kluwer.

Journal: Harvard Review of Psychiatry

Study reveals how social networks shape health in later life

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Study followed tracked over 1,500 older adults for a decade using three rounds of data from the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project. Led by Lissette Piedra, a professor of social work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; and James Iveniuk, a senior research scientist at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center; the team identified three types of social networks — enriched, focused and restricted — that reflected how socially connected people were as they aged and how their self-rated health was affected.

Journal: Innovation in Aging
Funder: NIH/National Institute on Aging, Center for Health Aging Behaviors and Longitudinal Investigations

What are the tradeoffs when people have to choose between clean air and clean water?

North Carolina State University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

People in many parts of the world lack access to clean water, but boiling water to make it safer often requires burning wood or other dirty fuels that expose them to air pollution. How do these two risks compare to each other? A new study suggests that, while health risks from the resulting air pollution are real, the benefits associated with boiling water generally outweigh those risks.

Journal: Environmental Health Perspectives
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation