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.
In what may lead to a shift in treatment, the largest prospective study of children with chronic kidney disease (CKD) has confirmed some experts’ suspicions that complications occur early. The findings suggest the need for earlier, more aggressive management of blood pressure, anemia and other problems associated with kidney disease, according to Dr. Marva Moxey-Mims, a pediatric kidney specialist at the NIH.
The immune response to an H5N1 avian influenza vaccine was greatly enhanced in healthy adults if they were first primed with a DNA vaccine expressing a gene for a key H5N1 protein, researchers say. Their report describes results from two clinical studies conducted by researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.
National Institutes of Health has joined with organizations interested in Down syndrome to form a consortium that will foster the exchange of information on biomedical and biobehavioral research on the chromosomal condition.
A novel technique that enables scientists to measure and document tumor-inducing changes in DNA is providing new insight into the earliest events involved in the formation of leukemias, lymphomas and sarcomas, and could potentially lead to the discovery of ways to stop those events.
National Institutes of Health scientists and worldwide teams of researchers have identified the most common genetic cause known to date for two neurological diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The discovery offers clues to underlying mechanisms of these diseases, and may eventually contribute to the design and testing of possible therapies. The research results appeared online in Neuron on Sept. 21, 2011.
Researchers have a new weapon in their arsenal to diagnose and treat traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among military service members and civilians. The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center began imaging patients last week on a first-of-its-kind, whole-body simultaneous positron emission topography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device. The Biograph mMR offers a more complete picture of abnormal metabolic activity in a shorter time frame than separate MRI and PET scans, two tests many patients undergo.
A study supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services could not validate or confirm previous research findings that suggested the presence of one of several viruses in blood samples of people living with chronic fatigue syndrome. The new study also could not find the viruses in blood samples of healthy donors who were previously known to not have the viruses.
Hospitalizations for alcohol and drug overdoses — alone or in combination — increased dramatically among 18- to 24-year-olds between 1999 and 2008, according to a study by researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health.
Investigators have identified a new class of human immune cells that behave like stem cells. These cells, a subtype of T lymphocytes, which comprise a small fraction of white blood cells, may prove more effective than any previously reported type of T cell for treating tumors. The study, by scientists at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institute of Health, describes how these stem cell-like T cells can trigger a prolonged immune attack against tumor cells by continuously generating killer T cells and regenerating themselves. The findings were published online Sept. 18, 2011, in Nature Medicine.
In one of the largest genomics studies ever, an international research consortium that includes the National Institutes of Health has identified 29 genetic variations across 28 regions of the human genome that influence blood pressure. This unprecedented effort brought together more than 230 researchers across six continents and scanned the genomes of over 200,000 people. The results will appear in the Sept. 11 edition of Nature.
