Nearly half a million people missed out on starting medication to lower their blood pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to research supported by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Data Science Centre at Health Data Research UK published today in Nature Medicine.

The researchers say that thousands of people could suffer an avoidable heart attack or stroke due to delays in starting these vital medications known to stave-off deadly heart and circulatory diseases.

Many genetic diseases are caused by diverse mutations spread across an entire gene, and designing genome editing approaches for each patient’s mutation would be impractical and costly.

Investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) recently developed an optimized method that improves the accuracy of inserting large DNA segments into a genome.

Targeting iron metabolism in immune system cells may offer a new approach for treating systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) - the most common form of the chronic autoimmune disease lupus.

A multidisciplinary team of investigators at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has discovered that blocking an iron uptake receptor reduces disease pathology and promotes the activity of anti-inflammatory regulatory T cells in a mouse model of SLE.

Using nanotechnology that enabled mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, a new approach to gene therapy may improve how physicians treat inherited forms of blindness.

A collaborative team of researchers with Oregon Health & Science University and Oregon State University have developed an approach that uses lipid nanoparticles - tiny, lab-made balls of fat - to deliver strands of messenger ribonucleic acid, or mRNA, inside the eye.

Research led by Associate Professor Duc Dong, Ph.D., has shown for the first time that the effects of Alagille syndrome, an incurable genetic disorder that affects the liver, could be reversed with a single drug. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has the potential to transform treatment for this rare disease and may also have implications for more common diseases.

Scientists are harnessing a new way to turn cancer cells into potent, anti-cancer agents. In the latest work from the lab of Khalid Shah, MS, PhD, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, investigators have developed a new cell therapy approach to eliminate established tumors and induce long-term immunity, training the immune system so that it can prevent cancer from recurring.

Numerous studies have shown health benefits of time-restricted eating including increase in life span in laboratory studies, making practices like intermittent fasting a hot topic in the wellness industry. However, exactly how it affects the body on the molecular level, and how those changes interact across multiple organ systems, has not been well understood.