Instead of supporting recovery, food served in hospitals and nursing homes may actually undermine patients’ and residents’ health – and the environment – according to a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health. Researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Stanford University, have found that meals in healthcare settings include too few healthy, plant-based foods and too many unhealthy and unsustainable options, making them inadequate for both individual and planetary health.

A new review co-led by Dr. Folasade May, a gastroenterologist and cancer prevention researcher at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, provides a deeper look into why these disparities persist and what can be done to eliminate them. 

During a heart attack, heart muscle cells die and are replaced by scar tissue. This delays the electrical conduction in the heart and favours the onset of cardiac arrhythmia. To reduce this potentially life-threatening complication, researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn intended to partially restore electrical conduction in the scar tissue. To this end, they developed a gene therapy in mice to enrich the gap junction protein connexin 43 in the scar area in order to improve electrical conduction. By this approach, the research team could significantly reduce the frequency of arrhythmia in lesioned hearts. The results are recently published in the Journal of Physiology.

A new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reveals how genetic changes in the parasite responsible for one of the world’s most common sexually transmitted infections may have helped it adapt to human hosts.