A study led by researchers at McMaster University has found that that trans fats are associated with greater risk of death and coronary heart disease, but saturated fats are not associated with an increased risk of death, heart disease, stroke, or Type 2 diabetes. The findings were published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

A drug which has already been in use for decades to treat liver disease could be an effective treatment to slow down progression of Parkinson's disease, scientists from the University of Sheffield have discovered. The pioneering research led by academics from the Sheffield Institute of Translational Neuroscience (SITraN), in collaboration with scientists from the University of York, supports the fast-tracking of the drug ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) for a clinical trial in Parkinson's patients.

Researchers have packaged a widely used cancer drug into nanoparticles, more than doubling its effectiveness at destroying tumors. The drug paclitaxel has been used for decades to fight breast, ovarian, lung and other cancers. But its effectiveness has been limited by its small molecular size and insolubility in water - properties that allow the body to clear the drug too quickly, reducing its accumulation in tumors.

The adoption of new transparent reporting standards may have contributed to a significant reduction in the percentage of studies reporting positive research findings among large-budget clinical trials funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, a study published in the journal PLOS ONE has found.

Ebola is a preventable disease, and yet a safe and effective vaccine has not been deployed. As with many vaccines, financial barriers persist: pharmaceutical companies see high costs with limited market potential, and government support is lacking. But there may be a solution to this vaccine crisis with the ability to save at-risk populations, according to a perspective piece written by physicians based at Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania and the Wellcome Trust.

The importance of a diet rich in fish oils - now a billion dollar food-supplement industry - has been debated for over half a century. A few large clinical trials have supported the idea that fish oils confer therapeutic benefits to patients with cardiovascular disease. Researchers think that hearts and blood vessels may benefit in part from their anti-inflammatory properties.

Pharmaceutical firms "underinvest" in long-term research to develop new cancer-fighting drugs due to the greater time and cost required to conduct such research, according to a newly published study co-authored by MIT economists. Specifically, drugs to treat late-stage cancers are less costly to develop than drugs for earlier-stage cancers, partly because the late-stage drugs extend people's lives for shorter durations of time.