LONDON – A population level study tracking every pregnancy in Scotland between the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and the end of October 2021 lays bare the devastating impact of COVID-19 on perinatal mortality.

Researchers at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, the University of Queensland, Griffith University, the University of Adelaide and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have unlocked a key to making existing front-line antibiotics work again against Streptococcus pneumoniae, the bacteria that cause pneumonia.

A number of possible mechanisms have been explored, but there is still no safe, reliable and universally applicable method for delivering drugs across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to treat central nervous system diseases. Now researchers have succeeded in tuning the effect of methamphetamine, a cause of BBB breakdown, enabling brain penetration of small molecules and therapeutic proteins, without damaging the epithelial cells that constitute the main physical element of the barrier.

Clinicians at the University of Maryland have transplanted a heart from a genetically modified pig bred by Revivicor Inc., a subsidiary of United Therapeutics Corp., into a patient with end-stage heart failure.

LONDON – T cells generated as a result of infection with common cold coronaviruses provide cross-protection against being infected with SARS-CoV-2, according to a new study.

Trisomy 21, the abnormal third copy of chromosome 21 causing developmental disorders in Down syndrome, has been shown to promote reorganization of the entire neural progenitor cell (NPC) genome, with the resulting gene transcription and cell function disruption being so similar to senescence that anti-senescence drugs could correct them in cell cultures.

Space travel has known effects on human health and biology. Some, such as loss of bone density, are well understood, while others, like inflammation, are not. Now, organ-on-a-chip maker Emulate Inc. is conducting experiments on the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory (ISS-NL) aimed at revealing clues to how the brain functions in microgravity.

University of California San Diego engineers have developed tiny 2D sensors that pop up to become a 3D assemblage of microscopic sensors for directly measuring the movement and speed of electrical signals inside the heart. According to nanoengineering professor Sheng Xu, the nanotechnology has enormous implications for heart doctors anxious to better diagnose and treat arrhythmia, heart attack and other diseases.

The accepted wisdom that resistance to antibiotics is a modern phenomenon driven by their overuse is called into question by new research showing the genes that give methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) its superbug status existed in nature long before antibiotics were first deployed in the clinic.