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:
BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — Sam Srisatta, a 20-year-old Florida college student, spent a month living inside a government hospital here last fall, playing video games and allowing scientists to document every morsel of food that went into his mouth.
From big bowls of salad to platters of meatballs and spaghetti sauce, Srisatta noshed his way through a nutrition study aimed at understanding the health effects of ultraprocessed foods, the controversial fare that now accounts for more than 70% of the U.S. food supply. He allowed The Associated Press to tag along for a day.
“Today my lunch was chicken nuggets, some chips, some ketchup,” said Srisatta, one of three dozen participants paid $5,000 each to devote 28 days of their lives to science. “It was pretty fulfilling.”
Examining exactly what made those nuggets so satisfying is the goal of the widely anticipated research led by National Institutes of Health nutrition researcher Kevin Hall.
“What we hope to do is figure out what those mechanisms are so that we can better understand that process,” Hall said.
Later today, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center expects to admit the first nurse who contracted the Ebola virus at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital while providing patient care to the index patient who died of Ebola. The nurse is being admitted to the Special Clinical Studies Unit of the NIH Clinical Center at the request of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. She will receive state-of-the-art care in this high-level containment facility, which is one of a small number of such facilities in the United States.
A letter from Michael M. Gottesman, Deputy Director for Intramural Research
The NIH intramural program has placed its mark on another Nobel Prize. You likely heard last week that Eric Betzig of HHMI's Janelia Farm Research Campus will share the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy." Eric's key experiment came to life right here at the NIH, in the lab of Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz.
NIH scientists find that restocking new cells in the brain’s center for smell maintains crucial circuitry
For decades, scientists thought that neurons in the brain were born only during the early development period and could not be replenished. More recently, however, they discovered cells with the ability to divide and turn into new neurons in specific brain regions. The function of these neuroprogenitor cells remains an intense area of research. Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) report that newly formed brain cells in the mouse olfactory system — the area that processes smells — play a critical role in maintaining proper connections.
National Institutes of Health grantee William E. Moerner of Stanford University in California shares the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on optical microscopy that has opened the understanding of molecules by allowing researchers to see how the molecules work close up. Dr. Moerner won the award jointly with Eric Betzig from Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, Virginia, and Stefan W. Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Gottingen, Heidelberg, Germany. NIH was also instrumental in the development of the first working model of Dr. Betzig’s microscope.
Earlier today the patient who was flown back to the United States from Sierra Leone and admitted to the NIH Clinical Center on September 28 for observation, following a high-risk exposure to Ebola virus infection, was discharged to his home.
A patient with exposure to the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone has been transferred from an overseas location and admitted to the NIH Clinical Center for observation and to enroll in a clinical protocol. The patient arrived at the NIH Clinical Center on Sunday, September 28, at approximately 4 p.m. ET.
The National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will receive a top national award for the year’s most outstanding intellectual property licensing deal, for technology transfer of a pioneering, low-cost meningitis vaccine launched in sub-Saharan Africa. The 2014 Deals of Distinction Award will be presented to the two federal agencies and their collaborators by the Licensing Executives Society at the society’s 50th annual meeting, Oct. 5-8 in San Francisco.
NIDA IRP researchers have discovered a unique interaction between a nerve cell in the brain’s ventral tegmental area and the lateral habenula - a pathway implicated in mental health disorders such as addiction and depression. This nerve cell releases both excitatory (glutamate) and inhibitory (GABA) chemicals, contrary to long-established theories assuming release of a single chemical (either glutamate or GABA).
NIH study ties eating in response to food cues to habit-forming region in obese adults
People who are obese may be more susceptible to environmental food cues than their lean counterparts due to differences in brain chemistry that make eating more habitual and less rewarding, according to a National Institutes of Health study published in Molecular Psychiatry.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) will conduct a clinical trial of gabapentin enacarbil as a potential treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD). NIAAA estimates that the six-month trial will begin in the first half of 2015 and will enroll approximately 350 participants. The study will assess the safety and efficacy of gabapentin enacarbil in people who have been diagnosed with AUD. NIAAA is working in partnership with the biopharmaceutical company XenoPort Inc., of Santa Clara, California, which will supply the study drug.
