Researchers have taken a step toward personalized medicine for Parkinson's disease, by investigating signs of the disease in patient-derived cells and testing how the cells respond to drug treatments. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

A new approach to testing medical treatment options could ensure that more patients get the most beneficial treatment for them - but still yield valuable research results that stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Research suggests that patients with leukemia sometimes relapse because standard chemotherapy fails to kill the self-renewing leukemia initiating cells, often referred to as cancer stem cells. In such cancers, the cells lie dormant for a time, only to later begin cloning, resulting in a return and metastasis of the disease.

Research carried out at the University of Southampton has concluded that participants in drug trials should be better informed about the potential significant benefits and possible side-effects of placebos. Placebos are traditionally thought of as 'inert' pills, given in trials to act as a yardstick or constant by which to measure the effects of new 'active' drugs, known in clinical trials as the 'target treatment'.

Scientists at UCLA have identified a new compound that could treat certain types of genetic disorders in muscles. It is a big first step in what they hope will lead to human clinical trials for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

A commonly prescribed diabetes drug, metformin, reduces the overall cancer risk in people with Type 2 diabetes, a large systematic review study finds. The results have been presented at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston.

Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered an association between a commonly prescribed blood pressure drug, Olmesartan, and severe gastrointestinal issues such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss and electrolyte abnormalities - symptoms common among those who have celiac disease. The findings are published online in the medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.