Medical Xpress news

Medical Xpress / Pleasure and pain: Tiny worm reveals secret to protecting skin sensations

A tiny roundworm has helped University of Queensland scientists uncover minuscule structures in skin tissue that may protect the body's ability to feel temperature, touch and pain. The research is published in Science Advances.

Jan 30, 2026 in Neuroscience
Medical Xpress / Night owl or early bird: Chronotype can influence your health and muscle strength

Being more active in the morning or afternoon is not just a matter of personal preference. Chronotype, which is each person's biological tendency to function better at certain times of the day, can play a significant role ...

Jan 30, 2026 in Health
Medical Xpress / RNA therapy may be a solution for infant hydrocephalus

Hydrocephalus is a life-threatening condition that occurs in about 1 in 1,000 newborns and is often treated with invasive surgery. Now, a new study offers hope of preventing hydrocephalus before it even occurs. The paper ...

Jan 30, 2026 in Neuroscience
Medical Xpress / Researchers discover genetic ancestry is a critical component of assessing head and neck cancerous tumors

Genetic ancestry plays a key role in determining the behavior of head and neck tumors and may help explain why African-American patients survive for half as long as their counterparts of European ancestry, according to a ...

Jan 30, 2026 in Oncology & Cancer
Medical Xpress / Emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

Anxiety is the second leading cause of disability and mortality worldwide. Roughly a third of adults in the United States will experience an anxiety disorder within their lifetime, and the median age of onset is 17 years ...

Jan 30, 2026 in Psychology & Psychiatry
Medical Xpress / The brain's protein cleanup process may play a role in dementia

Microglia are the brain's immune cells that clean out debris, such as damaged proteins and old cell parts, to keep the organ healthy. But the very properties that make these cells so useful might also be a driving factor ...

Jan 29, 2026 in Neuroscience
Medical Xpress / Procrastination in adulthood linked to brain development during adolescence

Procrastination, the tendency to unnecessarily delay or put off tasks even if this will have negative consequences, is a common behavior for many people. While occasionally delaying or putting off bothersome tasks is not ...

Jan 29, 2026 in Psychology & Psychiatry
Medical Xpress / AI-supported mammography screening results in fewer aggressive and advanced breast cancers

Artificial intelligence (AI)-supported mammography identifies more cancers during screening and reduces the rate of breast cancer diagnosis by 12% in the years following, finds the first randomized controlled trial of its ...

Jan 29, 2026 in Health informatics
Medical Xpress / Metformin shown to prevent long COVID across risk groups in multiple randomized trials

Multiple randomized clinical trials and electronic health record studies now show that metformin, a widely used and well-established medication, significantly reduces the risk of developing long COVID when taken during or ...

Medical Xpress / Scientific 'spam filter' flags over 250,000 potentially fake cancer studies

A new machine learning tool has identified more than 250,000 cancer research papers that may have been produced by so-called "paper mills." Developed by QUT researcher Professor Adrian Barnett, from the School of Public Health ...

Jan 29, 2026 in Oncology & Cancer
Medical Xpress / New guide aims to tame the chaos of UTI care

Millions of times a year, Americans seek urgent treatment for painful, embarrassing urinary tract infections. But while they once had to go in person for testing and treatment, now they can type messages to their clinic into ...

Jan 29, 2026 in Medical economics
Medical Xpress / Simple dietary change may slow liver cancer in at-risk patients

People with compromised liver function may be able to reduce their risk of liver cancer or slow its progression with a simple dietary change: eating less protein. A Rutgers-led study in Science Advances has found that low-protein ...