Medical Xpress news

Medical Xpress / When a helpful brain signal gets stuck: An autism-linked chain reaction

Think of the brain as a city with traffic lights that keep signals flowing smoothly. In a new study, researchers followed a clue about nitric oxide, a common chemical messenger, and found that, in some forms of autism, if ...

Mar 4, 2026
Medical Xpress / Chemists shed light on how age-related cataracts may begin

Cataracts are a leading cause of blindness worldwide and are considered a priority disease by the World Health Organization. In a new study, researchers at the University of California, Irvine uncovered how a subtle chemical ...

Mar 4, 2026
Medical Xpress / Using tiny ripples at skin level to monitor for possible health problems below

Caltech scientists have developed a method that detects tiny, imperceptible movements at the surface of objects to reveal details about what lies beneath. By analyzing the physics of waves traveling across the surface of ...

Mar 4, 2026
Medical Xpress / Ongoing problems with kids' heart transplant waitlists found in two studies

More babies and children survive the wait for a heart transplant than in the past, but improvements are due to better medical care, not changes to waitlist rules, a new study finds. The method used across the United States ...

Mar 4, 2026
Medical Xpress / How the fats we eat shape our ability to fight disease

The types of fats we consume directly impacts the survival and strength of the body's immune cells and ability to fight disease, researchers have found. A University of Queensland team led an international collaboration that ...

Mar 4, 2026
Medical Xpress / Common anticholinergic medicines may raise cardiovascular risk, large study suggests

People who use drugs with anticholinergic effects, including certain antidepressants, drugs for urinary incontinence and common antihistamines, are at higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease, according to a new study ...

Mar 4, 2026
Medical Xpress / AI-based liquid biopsy may detect liver fibrosis, cirrhosis and chronic disease signals

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center report that an artificial intelligence (AI)-based liquid biopsy test using genome-wide cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragmentation patterns and repeat landscapes can detect early ...

Mar 4, 2026
Medical Xpress / Brain neuropeptides identified as key drivers behind delayed antidepressant effects

A research team led by Professor Oh Yong-Seok of the Department of Brain Sciences at the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology has, for the first time, identified the key cause of the "treatment delay" phenomenon, ...

Mar 4, 2026
Medical Xpress / The 'itch-to-brain' circuit, neural change and depression

People who suffer from chronic itching in the form of atopic dermatitis (AD) are seven times more likely to develop a major depressive disorder. This link is well established, but the "why" remains elusive. Are the depressive ...

Mar 4, 2026
Medical Xpress / One-hour saliva test spots biomarker linked to several cancers

QUT researchers have developed a simple one-hour saliva test for a protein biomarker that has been linked with oral, colon and pancreatic cancers. The findings are published in the journal Talanta.

Mar 4, 2026
Medical Xpress / Why zebrafish larvae prefer to circle left or right may explain how human brains encode right‑ and left‑handedness

Being right- or left-handed is a familiar fact about yourself that you likely don't think about much on a day-to-day basis. However, your handedness affects how you interact with the world.

Mar 4, 2026
Medical Xpress / International trauma analysis finds big transfusion differences, with whole blood common in low-resource hospitals

A new international study published in eClinicalMedicine has mapped global blood transfusion practices for life-threatening abdominal injuries, highlighting significant variation in care worldwide and opportunities for health ...

Mar 4, 2026