Everyone knows that tobacco products are bad for your health, and even the new e-cigarettes may have harmful toxins. However, according to research at Texas A&M, it turns out the nicotine itself - when given independently from tobacco - could help protect the brain as it ages, and even ward off Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease. Ursula Winzer-Serhan, PhD, an associate professor at the Texas A&M College of Medicine, and her collaborators found that nicotine's ability to be neuroprotective may be partly due to its well-known ability to suppress the appetite.

Using archival documents, a new report published online by JAMA Internal Medicine examines the sugar industry's role in coronary heart disease research and suggests the industry sponsored research to influence the scientific debate to cast doubt on the hazards of sugar and to promote dietary fat as the culprit in heart disease. Stanton A. Glantz, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, and coauthors examined internal documents from the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF), which later evolved into the Sugar Association, historical reports and other material to create a chronological case study.

The spread of malignant cells around the body, known as metastasis, is the leading cause of mortality in women with breast cancer. Now, a new gene therapy technique being developed by researchers at MIT is showing promise as a way to prevent breast cancer tumors from metastasizing. The treatment, described in a paper published today in the journal Nature Communications, uses microRNAs - small noncoding RNA molecules that regulate gene expression - to control metastasis.

Advertising prescription drugs to consumers is forbidden in most of the world, but since U.S. guidelines were relaxed in 1997, such ads have become nearly ubiquitous in American media. In a newly published review, Brown University researchers examined what has been learned since then about the effect of all that advertising on psychiatric conditions. They found that the data are very limited, but what does exist suggests that ads succeed in driving prescribing with potentially mixed effects on patient care.

Adoptive cell-therapies, in which a patient's own immune cells are used to recognize and target tumors, have shown breakthrough results for patients with certain B-cell malignancies, or cancers of the blood, but this therapy has not seen similar success in patients with solid tumors. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Cancer Center are working to change that, and a new study has shown promising results for several pediatric and adult solid tumor cancers.

A new study suggests gaps exist in the treatment of depression with many individuals who screen positive for the mental health disorder not receiving treatment, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Previous research has suggested many adults with depression are not treated for their symptoms. Screening for depression has received increased attention with the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommending that adults be screened for depression and that follow-up services for treatment be provided.

A one-step solution to make nitrogen-laden molecular precursors for the preparation of drugs and other bioactive molecules has been discovered by researchers at Rice University, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSWMC) and Brigham Young University. Research announced this month in Science will simplify the process and cut the cost of creating key nitrogen-containing functional groups for pharmaceuticals, said László Kürti, a synthetic chemist at Rice who developed the technique with his colleague at UTSWMC, John Falck.