Increasing the percentage of elementary school children in the United States who participate in 25 minutes of physical activity three times a week from 32 percent to 50 percent would avoid $21.9 billion in medical costs and lost wages over the course of their lifetimes, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests.…

The brain has its own inbuilt processes for mopping up damaging cellular waste – and these processes may provide protection from stroke and dementia. University of Queensland scientists discovered a new type of lymphatic brain “scavenger” cell by studying tropical freshwater zebrafish – which share many of the same cell types and organs as humans.…

May is Asthma Awareness Month, and the National Institutes of Health is finding solutions to improve the health of the nearly 25 million people in the United States who currently have asthma. In recent decades, the prevalence of asthma has been increasing, resulting in millions of urgent medical visits and missed days of work and…

The message has been clear — we need to get medical research out of the lab and into the real world. It is vital for the health of the nation, both in the literal sense and to generate new economic drivers for our future prosperity. In a previous article exploring barriers to research commercialisation, I…

Two groundbreaking drugs developed in Auckland are being used to help scientists treat different types of cancer. New Zealand scientists will be closely following and analysing the findings of a trial in the United States with a drug developed at the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre, one of the world’s leading anti-cancer laboratories.   Read…

Pacific youth are three times more likely to attempt suicide than European youth, new research shows. The University of Auckland study, published on Friday in the New Zealand Medical Journal, also found young people between the ages of 12 and 18 years had the highest rates of suicide across Pacific ethnic groups. Read more

Objectives: To explore the challenges that arise through the multidisciplinary nature of evidence informed policy making (EIPM). Type of program or service: Education and practice for EIPM. Methods: This article summarises and compares four disciplinary approaches to EIPM with highly contrasting starting points: behavioural science, policy science, critical theory and intervention research. Key insights and…

Autism-related errant migration of neurons corrected in patient-derived 3D “spheroids” National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded neuroscientists have created a 3D window into the human brain’s budding executive hub assembling itself during a critical period in prenatal development. What’s more, they used it to discover and experimentally correct — in a petri dish — defective cell…

Research led by a UTS scientist has shown that the stimulation of bitter taste receptors could relieve features of allergic asthma. The breakthrough gives hope to the one in nine Australians (and 300 million people worldwide) who currently suffer from asthma and need more effective, long-term treatment plans. Read more

The CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals, Daniel O’Day, talks the future of biotech and how Big Data is saving lives. It could be argued that no-one knows the importance of innovation more than the team working at Roche Pharmaceuticals. As a company that is at the forefront of fighting cancer and other diseases, its innovations in…