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.
Children and young adults scanned multiple times by computed tomography (CT), a commonly used diagnostic tool, have a small increased risk of leukemia and brain tumors in the decade following their first scan. These findings are from a study of more than 175,000 children and young adults that was led by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and at the Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, England.
Medical experts feared personal genetic test results might drive overuse of expensive medical care
People have increasing opportunities to participate in genetic testing that can indicate their range of risk for developing a disease. Receiving these results does not appreciably drive up or diminish test recipients' demand for potentially costly follow-up health services, according to a study performed by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and colleagues at other institutions.
Older adults who drank coffee — caffeinated or decaffeinated — had a lower risk of death overall than others who did not drink coffee, according a study by researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and AARP.
The National Institutes of Health has selected a talented pool of 45 medical, dental, and veterinary students representing 34 different U.S.-accredited universities for its inaugural class of the Medical Research Scholars Program (MRSP). The new NIH MRSP is a year-long enrichment program designed to provide mentored training to creative, research-oriented medical, dental, and veterinary students at the intramural campus of the NIH in Bethesda, Md.
Two new studies have found that large structural abnormalities in chromosomes, some of which have been associated with increased risk of cancer, can be detected in a small fraction of people without a prior history of cancer. The studies found that these alterations in chromosomes appear to increase with age, particularly after the age of 50, and may be associated with an increased risk for cancer... The results of the studies were published online May 6, 2012, in Nature Genetics.
NIH study indicates drug safe during pregnancy, but infants smaller at first birthday
Infants born to women who used the anti-HIV drug tenofovir as part of an anti-HIV drug regimen during pregnancy do not weigh less at birth and are not of shorter length than infants born to women who used anti-HIV drug regimens that do not include tenofovir during pregnancy, according to findings from a National Institutes of Health network study. However, at 1 year of age, children born to the tenofovir-treated mothers were slightly shorter and had slightly smaller head circumference — about 1 centimeter each, on average — than were infants whose mothers did not take tenofovir.
Boosts sociability, quells repetitiveness — NIH study
National Institutes of Health researchers have reversed behaviors in mice resembling two of the three core symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). An experimental compound, called GRN-529, increased social interactions and lessened repetitive self-grooming behavior in a strain of mice that normally display such autism-like behaviors, the researchers say. (Video at https://youtu.be/5EfoqT9kPmI)
NIH-supported research underscores value of screening for toxoplasmosis
Scientists have identified which strains of the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, the cause of toxoplasmosis, are most strongly associated with premature births and severe birth defects in the United States. The researchers used a new blood test developed by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, to pinpoint T. gondii strains that children acquire from their acutely infected mothers while in the womb.
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have discovered how exposure to arsenic can turn normal stem cells into cancer stem cells and spur tumor growth.
Preliminary results from clinical trials in a subtype of lymphoma show that for a number of patients whose disease was not cured by other treatments, the drug ibrutinib can provide significant anti-cancer responses with modest side effects. These results were presented as part of the opening plenary session at the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2012 on April 1 by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and colleagues.
