Articles by Delthia Ricks
Medical Xpress / Scientists find cause of rare devastating, autoimmune disease in Puerto Ricans—but also find potential treatment
A rare autoimmune condition with a tongue-twister of a name may impact people of Puerto Rican heritage through a newly discovered genetic pathway, a discovery that may ultimately guide genetic counseling and treatment, scientists ...
Medical Xpress / UTIs are extraordinarily common but kidney infections are not—now doctors know why
Infections in the lower urinary tract rarely migrate to the kidneys, but the precise mechanism that the human body employs to keep the twin organs disease-free has remained a medical mystery—until now.
Medical Xpress / New model uses infection 'signatures' to predict who lives or dies of COVID-19
A critical challenge during the early COVID-19 pandemic was determining whether a patient would survive the infection or die from it. And even though a host of lifesaving therapeutics now spares substantially more lives than ...
Medical Xpress / Twin study illuminates how turncoat T cells launch nervous system assaults in multiple sclerosis
Few autoimmune disorders are more challenging for patients than multiple sclerosis, a progressive condition that can affect vision, impair the ability to walk, cause extreme bouts of neuropathic pain, and tends to strike ...
Medical Xpress / In depth analysis explains why preschoolers are less likely to develop severe COVID-19
Five years ago, at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, a phenomenon became abundantly clear: Preschool-age children rarely developed severe cases of COVID-19.
Medical Xpress / Fibrosis lacks treatments and methods of reversal: Study pinpoints a promising target for drug therapy
Medical science has long been on the hunt for a deeper understanding of the devastating scarring of the body's organs known as fibrosis, which leads to irrevocable loss of function.
Medical Xpress / Experimental AI method boosts doctors' ability to diagnose cancers and precancers of the esophagus
Artificial intelligence is being used in a wide variety of applications in medicine, and now scientists have developed an AI system that can boost detection rates for cancerous and precancerous lesions of the esophagus, which ...
Medical Xpress / Front-line drug for ulcerative colitis found to have additional mechanism of action that until now remained elusive
Monoclonal antibodies have become indispensable in medicine to combat cancers, infectious diseases and autoimmune disorders. But the mechanism of action of a major monoclonal antibody developed for ulcerative colitis has ...
Medical Xpress / Scientists developing a monoclonal antibody to neutralize Nipah virus one of the deadliest zoonotic pathogens
An experimental monoclonal antibody has been engineered to target the deadly Nipah virus, an emerging zoonotic pathogen with a human mortality rate ranging as high as a staggering 90%.
Medical Xpress / A new look at why old age is linked to severe, even fatal COVID
A longstanding question has nagged the COVID battle for more than four years: Why does the infection cause severe disease in older people? The question has remained despite a global cadre of medical investigators having produced ...
Medical Xpress / Doctors develop minimally invasive procedure to avoid drilling a 'burr hole' in the skull to treat clot on the brain
In 2018, a New York surgeon-scientist and his team demonstrated in a proof-of-concept study that a minimally invasive procedure could effectively treat one of the world's most common conditions requiring neurosurgical intervention.
Medical Xpress / Scientists demystify why subsequent bouts of dengue are worse than a first-time infection
A massive upsurge in dengue cases marked by multiple outbreaks is occurring worldwide and raising new questions about who is at elevated risk of severe forms of the mosquito-transmitted disease.
Medical Xpress / An infamous 'inflammasome'—a rogue protein complex—appears to underlie a rare and disabling autoimmune disorder
Autoimmune diseases are among the most puzzling because turncoat constituents of the body wage a constant state of war. Sometimes the underlying cause of an autoimmune condition is so obscure—hidden within chemical miscues ...
Medical Xpress / Scientists consider fighting potentially lethal form of breast cancer with chemical produced by the disease
Triple negative breast cancer is the most aggressive subtype of the disease and is notorious for a poor prognosis, but scientists are working on a breakthrough method of converting these treatment-resistant tumors into a ...
Medical Xpress / How does vaccination thwart pneumococcal infection? Animal model uncovers 'capture and kill' scenario
In findings that are nothing short of surprising, scientists have demonstrated that the liver is the site where the immune system unleashes its assault on pneumococcal bacteria following vaccination against the potentially ...
