Early results from randomized trials are sometimes published before the trial is completed. The results of such interim publications may generate a great deal of interest in the medical community because the findings often hold a great deal of promise for new and effective therapies. However, in an article recently published in JAMA, Dartmouth researchers compared the consistency and prominence of interim publications with the final publications.

Researchers at the Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), the University of Tokyo, CNRS and INSERM, report a new organ-on-a-chip technology for the study of blood vessel formation and drugs targeting this event. The technology recreates a human blood vessel and shows how new capillaries grow from a single vessel (parent vessel) in response to proper biochemical signaling cues.

New research published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine exposes the extent of redactions in protocols for industry-sponsored randomised drug trials. Trial protocols are needed for a proper assessment of the veracity of drug trial reports. The researchers, from the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen, found widespread redactions in the protocols for commercially sponsored trials they received from research ethics committees in Denmark.

In both cell cultures and mouse models, a drug used to treat Hepatitis C effectively protected and rescued neural cells infected by the Zika virus - and blocked transmission of the virus to mouse fetuses. Writing in the current online issue of the journal Scientific Reports, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues in Brazil and elsewhere, say their findings support further investigation of using the repurposed drug as a potential treatment for Zika-infected adults, including pregnant women.

More patients could be eligible for critical treatments to remove or dissolve blood clots that cause strokes, according to a new treatment guideline issued by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. The guideline, based on the most recent science available, was published in the Association's journal Stroke, and released during the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2018, the premier global meeting for researchers and clinicians dedicated to the prevention and treatment of stroke.

Researchers at Southern Methodist University have discovered three drug-like compounds that successfully reverse chemotherapy failure in three of the most commonly aggressive cancers - ovarian, prostate and breast. The molecules were first discovered computationally via high-performance supercomputing. Now their effectiveness against specific cancers has been confirmed via wet-lab experiments, said biochemistry professors Pia Vogel and John G. Wise, who led the study.

An ingredient commonly found in toothpaste could be employed as an anti-malarial drug against strains of malaria parasite that have grown resistant to one of the currently-used drugs. This discovery, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge, was aided by Eve, an artificially-intelligent 'robot scientist'.