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.
A pilot trial to assess whether assigning treatment based on specific gene mutations can provide benefit to patients with metastatic solid tumors is being launched this month by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health. The Molecular Profiling based Assignment of Cancer Therapeutics, or M-PACT, trial is one of the first to use a randomized trial design to assess if assigning treatment based on genetic screening can improve the rate and duration of response in patients with advanced solid tumors.
Scientists have mapped the genetic changes that drive tumors in rhabdomyosarcoma, a pediatric soft-tissue cancer, and found that the disease is characterized by two distinct genotypes. The genetic alterations identified in this malignancy could be useful in developing targeted diagnostic tools and treatments for children with the disease. The study, by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and their colleagues, appeared in the Jan. 23, 2014, issue of the journal Cancer Discovery.
Strategies recommended by the Surgeon General to reduce underage drinking have shown promise when put into practice, according to scientists at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health. These approaches include nighttime restrictions on young drivers and strict license suspension policies, interventions focused on partnerships between college campuses and the community, and routine screening by physicians to identify and counsel underage drinkers.
Greg Alushin (age 29), an Early Independent Scientist at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), and Anna F. Lau (age 29), a Clinical Microbiology Fellow at the NIH Clinical Center, were both named to the third annual Forbes "30 Under 30" list in Science and Healthcare.
NIH, Virginia Tech study shows crash risks greatest for teens
Drivers eat, reach for the phone, text, or otherwise take their eyes off the road about 10 percent of the time they are behind the wheel, according to a study using video technology and in-vehicle sensors.
Risks of distracted driving were greatest for newly licensed teen drivers, who were substantially more likely than adults to be involved in a crash or near miss while texting or engaging in tasks secondary to driving, according to the researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Virginia Tech.
Origins of “timezyme” have implications for understanding sleep, retina disorders
An international team of scientists led by National Institutes of Health researchers has traced the likely origin of the enzyme needed to manufacture the hormone melatonin to roughly 500 million years ago. Their work indicates that this crucial enzyme, which plays an essential role in regulating the body’s internal clock, likely began its role in timekeeping when vertebrates (animals with spinal columns) diverged from their nonvertebrate ancestors.
President Obama has chosen 20 NIH scientists for this year’s Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. Of the 20 NIH honorees, 17 are new investigators working at institutions around the nation. The others have positions in the NIH Intramural Programs.
In a study of African-American men, researchers from the National Institutes of Health found that boys who grew up in two-parent homes were less likely to have high blood pressure as adults compared to those raised by a single parent.
Study calls for a shift in understanding of how complex cell types evolved
In a study that compares the genomes of aquatic life forms, researchers have found evidence to shuffle the branches of the tree of life. For more than a century, scientists thought that complex cell types, like neurons and muscles, evolved only once, after simple animals that lack these cell types branched from the rest of animals on the evolutionary tree. A team of researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health, has provided new evidence from the genomic study of a ctenophore species — a comb jelly — that challenges this long-held view.
Smoking tobacco or marijuana, taking prescription painkillers, or using illegal drugs during pregnancy is associated with double or even triple the risk of stillbirth, according to research funded by the National Institutes of Health.
