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

Medicine & Health

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 27-Jul-2025 09:10 ET (27-Jul-2025 13:10 GMT/UTC)

26-Mar-2025

MSU engineers create “smart” system to prevent future infrastructure disasters

When the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, collapsed on March 26, 2024, engineers and city managers around the U.S. and world scrambled to assess the safety of infrastructure in their communities. Michigan State University researchers have developed a “deploy-and-forget” system that combines sensors with artificial intelligence, or AI, to assess the health of infrastructure like bridges, roads and dams, before and after events that could damage them.

Journal: Nature Communications

26-Mar-2025

Sensor technology uses nature’s blueprint and machinery to monitor metabolism in body

California NanoSystems Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A UCLA-led team has developed an advanced sensor platform that measures metabolites — key molecules involved in sustaining life through metabolism — inside the body in real time.

By mimicking natural metabolic pathways and using biological molecular toolkits, the sensors can track thousands of metabolites, far beyond the small set detectable by traditional sensors, while simplifying the technology development process.

This advance opens up new possibilities for diagnosing and managing disease, developing new drugs and unlocking deeper insights into how biological systems function.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Funder: NIH/National Institutes of Health, Louis and Harold Price Foundation, H and H Evergreen Foundation

26-Mar-2025

Rare disease drug nitisinone makes human blood deadly to mosquitoes

University of Notre Dame
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A study in Science Translational Medicine found when patients take the drug nitisinone, their blood becomes deadly to mosquitoes.

Journal: Science Translational Medicine
Funder: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Medical Research Council

26-Mar-2025

Children of moms who smoked or were obese are more likely to become obese adults

PLOS
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A study finds that factors beyond a person’s control, like socioeconomic status and whether their mom smoked or was obese, can influence whether they are overweight or obese as teenagers or adults. Glenna Nightingale of the University of Edinburgh, UK and colleagues report these findings on March 26, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One.

Journal: PLOS One

26-Mar-2025

Mice flown on the International Space Station in microgravity experience bone loss mostly in weight-bearing bones, which might help inform human acclimation to spaceflight

PLOS
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Mice flown on the International Space Station in microgravity experience bone loss mostly in weight-bearing bones, which might help inform human acclimation to spaceflight

Journal: PLOS One

26-Mar-2025

How inherited cancer risks can be used for effective personalized therapy

Yale University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

New Haven, Conn. — Mutations in BRCA2 — a gene known to repair damaged DNA and suppress tumor formation — can predict an individuals’ predisposition to develop breast cancer, ovarian, prostate, pancreatic, and other epithelial tumors.

A new study led by scientists at Yale School of Medicine and New York University (NYU) Grossman School of Medicine unveils a previously unknown protective mechanism employed by the gene — and how an existing class of drugs used to treat cancer might be improved.

The study was published March 26 in the journal Nature.

Journal: Nature

26-Mar-2025

Introducing 'Between a Rocket & a Hard Space': the ISS National Lab’s new podcast exploring the future of space innovation

International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory
Business Announcement

The International Space Station (ISSInternational Space Station) National Laboratory is launching a bold new way to bring the excitement of space-based research down to Earth—introducing Between a Rocket & a Hard Space, the official ISS National Lab podcast. This podcast series dives deep into the discoveries, innovations, and people shaping the future of space, with the first episode now available.