More than 15.3 million people in the U.S. suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is the third leading cause of death in this country, according to the American Lung Association. Patients often experience potentially life-threatening exacerbations, which can include days-long flare-ups of symptoms including shortness of breath that occur when the airways narrow from muscle tightness, swelling and mucus.

An important class of drug used to treat cancer patients could be used to treat brain aneurysms, according to new research published this week. Brain aneurysms are a bulge in a blood vessel caused by a weakness in the blood vessel wall. As blood passes through the weakened blood vessel, blood pressure causes a small area to bulge outwards.

In breast cancer, there are cases of women and men whose cancer returns in their bones 20-30 years after they were treated for their primary disease and thought they were cancer-free. This phenomenon always puzzled Jefferson researcher Karen Bussard, PhD. How is it possible that breast cancer cells from a primary tumor are able to reach the bones when a patient is deemed "cancer-free" after treatment?

Researchers from King's College London have found that therapy that can induce heart cells to regenerate after a heart attack. Myocardial infarction, more commonly known as a heart attack, caused by the sudden blocking of one of the cardiac coronary arteries, is the main cause of heart failure, a condition that now affects over 23 million population in the world, according to the World Health Organisation.

A brain disorder that mimics symptoms of Alzheimer's disease has been defined with recommended diagnostic criteria and guidelines for advancing future research on the condition. Researchers at Rush University Medical Center and scientists from several National Institutes of Health-funded institutions, in collaboration with international peers, described the newly-named pathway to dementia, Limbic-predominant Age-related TDP-43 Encephalopathy, or LATE, in a report published in the journal Brain.

An international team led by Duke-NUS Medical School has found a potential link between autistic-like behaviour in adult mice and exposure to a common antidepressant in the womb. They also identified a treatment that helped improve memory loss and social interactions, according to the new study published in the journal Molecular Brain.

When combined with a diet low in saturated fats, eating walnuts may help lower blood pressure in people at risk for cardiovascular disease, according to a new Penn State study. In a randomized, controlled trial, researchers examined the effects of replacing some of the saturated fats in participants' diets with walnuts. They found that when participants ate whole walnuts daily in combination with lower overall amounts of saturated fat, they had lower central blood pressure.