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.
NIH team and colleagues believe microdevice may improve upon existing placenta models
National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers and their colleagues have developed a “placenta-on-a-chip” to study the inner workings of the human placenta and its role in pregnancy. The device was designed to imitate, on a micro-level, the structure and function of the placenta and model the transfer of nutrients from mother to fetus. This prototype is one of the latest in a series of organ-on-a-chip technologies developed to accelerate biomedical advances.
Trial to examine long-term health effects of Ebola virus disease
The Liberia-U.S. clinical research partnership known as PREVAIL has launched a study of people in Liberia who have survived Ebola virus disease (EVD) within the past two years. The study investigators hope to better understand the long-term health consequences of EVD, determine if survivors develop immunity that will protect them from future Ebola infection, and assess whether previously EVD-infected individuals can transmit infection to close contacts and sexual partners. The study, sponsored by the Ministry of Health of Liberia and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, will take place at various sites in Liberia and is expected to enroll approximately 7,500 people, including 1,500 people of any age who survived EVD and 6,000 of their close contacts.
Clinicians are challenged every day to make difficult decisions regarding patients’ suicide risk. Using Veterans Health Administration (VHA) health system electronic medical record data, Veterans Affairs (VA) and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) scientists were able to identify very small groups of individuals within the VHA’s patient population with very high, predicted suicide risk — most of whom had not been identified for suicide risk by clinicians. Such methods can help the VHA to target suicide prevention efforts for patients at high risk, and may have more wide-ranging benefits.
A relatively new method of targeting specific DNA sequences in zebrafish could dramatically accelerate the discovery of gene function and the identification of disease genes in humans, according to scientists at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health.
A new study by National Institutes of Health researchers has turned traditional genomics research on its head. Instead of trying to find a mutation in the genomic sequence of a person with a genetic disease, they sequenced the genomes of healthy participants, then analyzed the data to find “putative,” or presumed, mutations that would almost certainly lead to a genetic condition.
Alcohol use disorder, or AUD, is the medical diagnosis for problem drinking that causes mild to severe distress or harm. A new study supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health, reports that nearly one-third of adults in the United States have an AUD at some time in their lives, but only about 20 percent seek AUD treatment. The study also reveals a significant increase in AUDs over the last decade. The new findings are reported online today in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
In a new study, NIAID researchers describe the immune responses of healthy people who developed the fungal infection cryptococcosis. The researchers found that disease progression in otherwise healthy people differs from those who develop the infection due to complications that compromise the body’s immune system, like HIV infection. Therefore, different therapies should be explored for people without underlying infections. The study appears in the May 28, 2015, edition of PLOS Pathogens.
Scientists are reporting development of a new way to modify interleukin-2 (IL-2), a substance known as a cytokine that plays key roles in regulating immune system responses, in order to fine-tune its actions. Harnessing the action of IL-2 in a controllable fashion is of clinical interest with potential benefit in a range of situations, including transplantation and autoimmune disease.
Warren J. Leonard, M.D., NIH Distinguished Investigator, chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology, and director of the Immunology Center at the NHLBI, is available to comment on the findings and implications of this research.
NIH study provides a glimpse into the code that controls variety of cell functions
Cellular structures called microtubules are tagged with a variety of chemical markers that can influence cell functions. The pattern of these markers makes up the “tubulin code” and according to a paper published in Cell, scientists at National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) have uncovered the mechanism behind one of the main writers of this code, tubulin tyrosine ligase-7 (TTLL7).
NIH study finds varied responses to calorie restriction in obese adults
For the first time in a lab, researchers at the National Institutes of Health found evidence supporting the commonly held belief that people with certain physiologies lose less weight than others when limiting calories. Study results published May 11 in Diabetes.
