Not too much and not too little: the dosage of drugs must be optimally adjusted for general anesthesia. This is no easy task, especially for pediatric patients. A pilot study now shows that breath analysis can help anesthesia personnel administer the optimal dose of a common anesthetic. And that's not all: breath analysis can also be used to determine how the body reacts to the anesthesia.

A new study led by Prof. BI Yuhai and Prof. George F. Gao (GAO Fu) from the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has uncovered significant genetic and antigenic diversity among H9N2 avian influenza viruses (AIVs) circulating in poultry across China, highlighting the growing public health risk posed by H9N2 AIVs.

Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) infections can lead to deadly brain inflammation, yet treatment options remain limited. Japanese researchers have now uncovered how HSV-1 evades the host’s intrinsic immunity by using an enzyme, uracil-DNA glycosylase, to block APOBEC1, a host protein that edits viral DNA to suppress infection. They also developed a promising therapeutic strategy to restore immune defense in the brain, offering new hope for managing HSV-1-induced encephalitis.

The biosynthesis of the great variety of natural plant products has not yet been elucidated for many medically interesting substances. In a new study, an international team of researchers was able to show how ipecacuanha alkaloids, substances used in traditional medicine, are synthesized. They compared two distantly related plant species and were able to show that although both plant species use a comparable chemical approach, the enzymes they need for synthesis differ and a different starting material is used. Further investigations revealed that the biosynthetic pathways of these complex chemical compounds have developed independently in the two species. These results help to enable the synthesis of these and related substances on a larger scale for medical use.

There is a growing body of evidence on the occupational health experiences of nail technicians. While these studies are vital to work towards safe worksites, they may inadvertently reduce nail salons to sites of hazards and harms as well as obscure the complexities of nail technicians' relationships to their work.

Using an arts-based approach, 19 Toronto-based nail technicians visualized their experiences of work and health on life-sized body-maps. The body-maps highlight multiple layers of emotion—in the nail technicians' framing of their work experiences, in their labor as beauty service workers, and in their body-map creation processes.

The arts-based body-maps allow for a more comprehensive story of nail technicians' resiliencies and relationships to their work, beyond hazard-focused narratives that may inadvertently reduce nail technicians and nail salon-based work to sites of hazard and harm. Through body-maps and follow-up interviews, the workers visually, textually, and orally demonstrate the complexities of their relationships to work – their joys, pains, strengths, stressors, and hopes.