With a goal of developing rheumatoid arthritis therapies with minimal side effects, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have genetically engineered cells that, when implanted in mice, will deliver a biologic drug in response to inflammation.

Metoprolol, a drug widely used to treat cardiovascular disease, is beneficial when administered to COVID-19patients. This is the finding of a study by investigators at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC), published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).

Researchers at the University of British Columbia's faculty of medicine and BC Cancer Research Institute have uncovered a weakness in a key enzyme that solid tumour cancer cells rely on to adapt and survive when oxygen levels are low.

The findings, published today in Science Advances, will help researchers develop new treatment strategies to limit the progression of solid cancer tumours, which represent the majority of tumour types that arise in the body.

Determining the 3D shapes of biological molecules is one of the hardest problems in modern biology and medical discovery. Companies and research institutions often spend millions of dollars to determine a molecular structure - and even such massive efforts are frequently unsuccessful.

A new study published in the journal Nature estimates that 103 million Americans, or 31 percent of the U.S. population, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end of 2020. Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health researchers modeled the spread of the coronavirus, finding that fewer than one-quarter of infections (22%) were accounted for in cases confirmed through public health reports based on testing.

Flavonoid-rich foods, including berries, apples, pears and wine, appear to have a positive effect on blood pressure levels, an association that is partially explained by characteristics of the gut microbiome, according to new research published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors in Wuhan noticed something surprising. Many of the elderly patients who survived the virus were poor: not exactly the demographic you would expect to fare well in a health crisis.

A review of the survivors’ medical records revealed that a significant number suffered from chronic heartburn and were taking an inexpensive drug called famotidine, the key ingredient in Pepcid.