In a decades-long game of hide and seek, scientists from Sydney's Westmead Institute for Medical Research have confirmed for the very first time the specific immune memory T-cells where infectious HIV 'hides' in the human body to evade detection by the immune system. The team, led by Associate Professor Sarah Palmer from the University of Sydney, developed a pioneering full-length genetic sequencing assay for HIV.

Patients taking psilocybin to treat depression show reduced symptoms weeks after treatment following a 'reset' of their brain activity. The findings come from a study in which researchers from Imperial College London used psilocybin - the psychoactive compound that occurs naturally in magic mushrooms - to treat a small number of patients with depression in whom conventional treatment had failed.

A drug isolated from a marine pest holds promise for treating some of the world's nastiest diseases, and researchers would love to find out just how effective it is - if only they could get their hands on more. As it stands, the world's supply of the chemical is down to about half of what it was in the 1990s, and it is hard to extract in sufficient quantities from the feathery sea creatures that produce it.

Patients with a rare bone cancer of the skull and spine - chordoma - could be helped by existing drugs, suggest scientists from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University College London Cancer Institute and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust. In the largest genomics study of chordoma to date, published today in Nature Communications, scientists show that a group of chordoma patients have mutations in genes that are the target of existing drugs, known as PI3K inhibitors.

In a remarkably rapid translation of laboratory research findings into a treatment with the potential to benefit patients, UC San Francisco scientists have successfully completed a Phase II clinical trial showing that an FDA-approved antihistamine restores nervous system function in patients with chronic multiple sclerosis (MS).

In India, the sale of antibiotics requiring the tightest control and regulation is rising the fastest, according to an analysis by researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Newcastle University. The correspondence published in The Lancet Global Health highlights serious hurdles for controlling antimicrobial resistance in the country.

Stroke patients with dementia treated with intravenous thrombolysis using powerful clot-busting drugs are at no higher risk of brain haemorrhage or death than other patients receiving the same treatment, a study from Karolinska Institutet published in the journal Neurology reports.