Probiotics are a multibillion-dollar industry with marketing claims of being an effective treatment for a multitude of ailments, including diarrhea. However, findings from a new study from the University of Calgary show the popular product has no effect on gastroenteritis, commonly yet erroneously called the stomach flu, in children.

One of the most successful techniques to combat multidrug resistance in cancer cells is the downregulation of those genes responsible for drug resistance. Chinese scientists have now developed a nanoplatform that selectively delivers small hairpin RNA transcription templates and chemotherapeutics into multidrug-resistant tumors. A deadly cocktail of gene-silencing elements and chemotherapeutic drugs effectively and selectively kills cells, they reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

Both aspirin and a purified omega-3, called EPA, reduce the number of pre-cancerous polyps in patients found to be at high risk of developing bowel cancer, according to new research. A clinical trial, led by the University of Leeds, found that both aspirin and EPA reduced the number of bowel polyps in patients one year on from a screening colonoscopy (large bowel camera test), although they did not reduce the chances of an individual having any polyps present in the bowel.

The Peptides and Proteins lab at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) has published a paper in Chemical Communications describing the capacity of a small molecule (peptide) derived from chlorotoxin, found in scorpion venom (Giant Yellow Israeli scorpion), to carry drugs across the blood-brain barrier (BBB).

If patient engagement is the new 'blockbuster drug,' why are we not seeing spectacular effects? A team of researchers from The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and the Berkeley School of Public Health at UC Berkeley recently conducted a study designed to help answer that question and to better understand how patient engagement and activation (PAE) practices

A groundbreaking new study by UC Davis researchers has uncovered why obesity both fuels cancer growth and allows blockbuster new immunotherapies to work better against those same tumors. The paradoxical findings, published today in Nature Medicine, give cancer doctors important new information when choosing drugs and other treatments for cancer patients.

Exposure to blue light decreases blood pressure, reducing the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, a new study from the University of Surrey and Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf in collaboration with Philips reports. During this study, published in the prestigious European Journal of Preventative Cardiology, participants were exposed to 30 minutes of whole-body blue light at approximately 450 nanometres, a dose comparable to daily sunlight - followed by exposure to a control light on a different day.