Research advances from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Intramural Research Program (IRP) often make headlines. Read the news releases that describe our most recent findings:
Whether you’re shedding pounds with the help of effective new medicines, slimming down after weight loss surgery or cutting calories and adding exercise, there will come a day when the numbers on the scale stop going down, and you hit the dreaded weight loss plateau.
In a recent study, Kevin Hall, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health who specializes in measuring metabolism and weight change, looked at when weight loss typically stops depending on the method people were using todrop pounds. He broke down the plateau into mathematical models using data from high-quality clinical trials of different ways to lose weight to understand why people stop losing when they do. The study published Monday in the journal Obesity.
Recent findings in mice suggest that blocking the production of small molecules produced in the body, known as epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs), may represent a novel strategy for treating cancer by eliminating the blood vessels that feed cancer tumors. This research is the first to show that EETs work in concert with vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a protein known to induce blood vessel growth. Together, EETs and VEGF promote metastasis, or the spread of cancer, by encouraging the growth of blood vessels that supply nutrients to cancer cells.
The National Institutes of Health has launched the Transfer Agreement Dashboard, or TAD, to streamline the transfer of NIH-developed research materials to the biomedical research community.
An analysis of five previous studies has uncovered additional evidence of the effectiveness of progesterone, a naturally occurring hormone, in reducing the rate of preterm birth among a high-risk category of women.
The scientists suggest that some of the genetic changes that lead to MMD may also be responsible for the observed increase in cancer risk, but more research is needed to confirm this hypothesis. The study appeared Dec. 14, 2011, in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Prenatal steroids — given to pregnant women at risk for giving birth prematurely — appear to improve survival and limit brain injury among infants born as early as the 23rd week of pregnancy, according to a study by a National Institutes of Health research network.
The National Institutes of Health is launching the electronic Research Materials catalogue (eRMa) to streamline the federal government's technology transfer process. This project addresses one of the important directives in a Presidential memorandum related to the commercialization of federal research and support for high-growth business potential. eRMa was designed and developed by the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) at NIH with support from the NIH’s National Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Research.
Toddlers receiving anti-HIV drugs have higher cholesterol levels, on average, than do their peers who do not have HIV, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions.
National Institutes of Health-funded researchers have identified two proteins that may be the key components of the long-sought after mechanotransduction channel in the inner ear—the place where the mechanical stimulation of sound waves is transformed into electrical signals that the brain recognizes as sound. The findings are published in the Nov. 21 online issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Xin Jin, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health, received the Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award from the Society for Neuroscience today during the society's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The $25,000 prize is awarded annually to two young scientists whose research includes significant international collaboration and shows exceptional potential for advancing the field.
People addicted to prescription painkillers reduce their opioid abuse when given sustained treatment with the medication buprenorphine plus naloxone (Suboxone), according to research published in yesterday’s Archives of General Psychiatry and conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The study, which was the first randomized large scale clinical trial using a medication for the treatment of prescription opioid abuse, also showed that the addition of intensive opioid dependence counseling provided no added benefit.
