Health | WPN World People News

Klebsiella bacteria.

To understand the link between aging and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, scientists from the National Institutes of Health compared the genetic clocks that tick during the lives of normal and mutant flies. They found that altering the activity of a gene called Cdk5 appeared to make the clocks run faster than normal, and the flies older than their chronological age. This caused the flies to have problems walking or flying later in life, to show signs of neurodegeneration, and to die earlier.

Yury Fedotov, the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) addresses the 61st session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs.

NIH-funded researchers at Stanford University used the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to rapidly identify genes in the human genome that might modify the severity of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) caused by mutations in a gene called C9orf72. The results of the search, uncovered a new set of genes that may hasten neuron death during the disease.

Scanning electron micrograph of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, which cause TB.

Ebola virus particles (red) on a larger cell. ZMAPP, a potential treatment for Ebola, includes a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies.

Prion protein fibrils.

Chronic kidney disease affects more women than men, but most people with this condition don’t know they have it. This World Kidney Day, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), part of the National Institutes of Health, joins organizations around the world in urging women to take action to prevent kidney disease — for themselves and their loved ones.

Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF), an antiviral drug commonly prescribed to treat hepatitis B infection, does not significantly reduce mother-to-child transmission of hepatitis B virus when taken during pregnancy and after delivery, according to a phase III clinical trial in Thailand funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Circuits in the brain act as an internal clock to tell us it is time to sleep and to control how long we then stay asleep. A new study in flies suggests a part of that clock constantly monitors changes in external temperature and integrates that information into the neural network controlling sleep. The study was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a part of the National Institutes of Health.