Articles by Delthia Ricks
Medical Xpress / Can deep sleep help devastating brain disorders? Scientists studying Parkinson's want to find out
Sleep may be one of the most potent medicines for the brain, scientists are discovering, as they explore the inner labyrinths of the three-pound organ during deep sleep and dream cycles in both health and disease.
Medical Xpress / In the lab: T cells artificially endowed with 2 cancer-seeking receptors aim to be an elite army of cancer killers
Despite high remission rates for patients treated with T cells that are supercharged in laboratories into elite cancer warriors, there is still a considerable population of patients who eventually relapse, their cancers invariably ...
Medical Xpress / HIV patients 'cured' by their own unique biology may harbor secrets to end the global scourge
Some people diagnosed with HIV are able to eradicate the virus without antiretroviral medications or even stem cell transplants, possessing the ability to naturally suppress the virus and achieve a medically verifiable cure.
Medical Xpress / Tiny device with a titanic impact: How neurosurgeons are treating one of the most dangerous brain aneurysms
Even as scientists in dozens of disciplines have turned their attention to the urgent needs of the global pandemic, an elite cadre of surgeon-scientists in the United States has been focusing on a potentially deadly brain ...
Medical Xpress / Scientists find additional molecular miscues in a genetic heart disorder that primarily afflicts young people
New research involving a devastating genetic heart condition suggests that mutations in adhesion proteins—molecules that should support the heart—apparently play a role in disrupting the integrity of the organ's outermost ...
Medical Xpress / Combat stress: A fact of life for T cells fighting cancer or viral infections
The immune system is an extraordinarily complex network made up of components that simultaneously launch attacks and mount defenses.
Medical Xpress / Secrets of antibodies: When it comes to dengue and Zika, dengue antibodies can knock out Zika—and vice versa
Cross-protective antibodies from dengue and Zika last far longer than previously thought, scientists have found in a massive study involving more than 4,000 children in Nicaragua.
Medical Xpress / Has a treatment for Alzheimer's been sitting on pharmacy shelves for decades? Scientists have two possible candidates
Two drugs approved decades ago not only counteract brain damage caused by Alzheimer's disease in animal models, the same therapeutic combination may also improve cognition.
Medical Xpress / A page from the COVID therapy playbook: Unleashing a flood of neutralizing antibodies against HIV
For more than 40 years a goal that too often has proved elusive is a pharmaceutical defeat of the human immunodeficiency virus—HIV. And the thrust in recent years has emphasized bringing newer, stealthier weapons to the fight.
Medical Xpress / A new way to prevent COVID-related clots and a biomarker that spots who's at highest risk
No aspect of SARS-CoV-2 infection has been more startling—or problematic—than the elevated risk for blood clotting, a concern that throughout the pandemic has been associated with severe COVID-19, frequently characterized ...
Medical Xpress / On the trail of a medical mystery: Scientists zero in on elevated MRSA susceptibility after liver transplants
For decades, recipients of liver transplants have been inexplicably vulnerable to MRSA infection after their lifesaving surgeries, but the molecular mechanisms underlying that risk had remained stubbornly mystifying, at least ...
Medical Xpress / Vaccination guards against certain bacterial infections and slows the spread of superbugs in populations
Vaccines that boost immunity against bacteria can protect the immunized from contracting drug-resistant infections, according to a team of scientists in the U.K. who also underscore that the shots can slow the spread of resistant ...
Medical Xpress / First responders haunted by 9/11 terrorism for 20 years to be treated with minute doses of electricity
Twenty years after the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States, survivors still suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder—PTSD—a condition that New York researchers will attempt to control through bioelectronic medicine, ...
Medical Xpress / Scientists in Sweden discover a rare, aggressive form of Alzheimer's that begins in the early 40s
A newly discovered gene mutation linked to early onset Alzheimer's disease has been discovered by an international team of scientists, who traced the DNA flaw through multiple members of a single family.
Medical Xpress / A turncoat protein allows viruses to ride roughshod in the liver, paving the way to cancer
Chronic viral infections in the liver can lead to organ dysfunction and ultimately to liver tumors in a progression invariably characterized by viruses that proliferate free of immune system restraints.