Medical Xpress news

Medical Xpress / 3D atomic-level snapshots reveal ketamine binds to human opioid receptors

Ketamine, a drug approved for medical use in 1970 as a short-acting anesthetic, including during the Vietnam War for battlefield surgery, is still a pharmacological mystery. For a long time, scientists knew that ketamine, ...

Aug 31, 2026
Medical Xpress / Immune cells may have a biological memory that makes weight loss harder after obesity

According to the World Health Organization, one in eight people lives with obesity. Yet despite numerous health education programs, books, articles and treatments, many individuals still struggle to lose weight once they ...

Aug 31, 2026
Medical Xpress / Scientists in France pinpoint why STING pathway hasn't been harnessed for cancer therapy yet

Deep within the cellular landscape, a quiet failure was taking place, impeding a potentially successful form of cancer treatment. For years, scientists hoped an essential part of the innate immune system that detects foreign ...

Aug 31, 2026
Medical Xpress / Stress proteins actively sustain joint inflammation in osteoarthritis, study finds

Why do some joints remain chronically inflamed in osteoarthritis and other rheumatic diseases? Researchers have taken an important step toward answering this question. Their findings, published in the journal Cell Death & ...

Aug 31, 2026
Medical Xpress / LDL-cholesterol lowering medication linked to lower mortality in high-risk patients

Mass General Brigham Heart and Vascular Institute researchers have found that high-risk patients who had not previously experienced a heart attack or stroke had a lower risk of death after taking the cholesterol-lowering ...

Aug 31, 2026
Medical Xpress / Lab-grown nerves match human sensory signal speeds, enabling tests of myelin repair

Rice University and collaborators in Switzerland have developed a platform to grow human-derived nerve cells and Schwann cells, supporting cells that form a protective coating called myelin around nerve fibers. This platform ...

Aug 31, 2026
Medical Xpress / Computer vision 'sees' our organs age at different rates

We tend to think of age as a linear progression marked by birthdays and milestones dictating when we can vote, drink, rent a car or pass beyond the crest of an arbitrary metaphorical hill. When scientists look at how organs ...

Aug 31, 2026
Medical Xpress / T cell therapy shows promise in treating aggressive brain cancer

A new phase 1 clinical trial has found that an emerging immunotherapy is promising for treating recurrent glioblastoma, a highly aggressive and fatal brain cancer. Chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell therapy is a form ...

Aug 31, 2026
Medical Xpress / Night owls experience more mental health issues than early birds and take longer to recover from work

Balancing work and personal life is more challenging for evening types, or "night owls," than for morning types, or "early birds." Evening types have a harder time recovering from work and are more likely to have mental health ...

Aug 31, 2026
Medical Xpress / Scientists uncover microbiome signaling system that could open new paths for IBS-related constipation

Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered that chemical signals produced by gut bacteria work together to control intestinal movement. One bacterial signal helps set the intestines in motion, while another primes gut cells ...

Aug 31, 2026
Medical Xpress / Tumor 'floor plans' may predict immunotherapy response better than current biomarkers

Spatial transcriptomics is a powerful tool for creating a detailed map of not just how genes are expressed in a piece of tissue, but also where genetic activity takes place in different cells and locations within the tissue. ...

Aug 31, 2026
Medical Xpress / Breast density laws linked to higher ultrasound use after mammography

More than 40% of American women ages 40 and older have dense breast tissue, according to the National Cancer Institute. This type of tissue can make cancer harder to spot on mammograms and is itself associated with a higher ...

Aug 31, 2026