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:
The act of cooking offers the chance to unwind and create something special, whether you’re planning to feed a crowd or just yourself. And while you may have noticed feeling good after whipping up that perfect pie or braise, there’s actually a lot of scientific data to suggest that cooking can have a positive impact on mental health.
One meta-analysis (a report of pre-existing research) from the National Institutes of Health looked at 11 studies and found that “cooking interventions” — encouraging people to follow certain recipes or giving people cooking classes — can improve a person’s mental well-being. It specifically found that people who participated in cooking interventions reported having better self-esteem and quality of life, as well as a more positive emotional state after the fact. Another study even discovered that baking can help raise a person’s confidence level.
Doctoral students in the basic biomedical sciences have a new resource for an introduction to clinical and translational research in a pilot program at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center that aims to increase the pool of potential researchers and collaborators.
Nehal N. Mehta, M.D., has been named the inaugural Lasker Clinical Research Scholar, through a joint initiative of The National Institutes of Health and the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation.
Microbes inhabit just about every part of the human body, living on the skin, in the gut, and up the nose. Sometimes they cause sickness, but most of the time, microorganisms live in harmony with their human hosts, providing vital functions essential for human survival. For the first time, a consortium of researchers organized by the National Institutes of Health has mapped the normal microbial makeup of healthy humans, producing numerous insights and even a few surprises.
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)
