Author: healthadmin

Researchers at the University of Houston School of Pharmacy have discovered an unexpectedly simple strategy for improving the performance of mRNA vaccines and gene therapy drugs: the addition of salt. The findings, published in the journal Small, solve one of the biggest challenges facing modern genetic medicine: delivering fragile therapeutic materials to the right places inside cells. We introduce salt-loaded lipid nanoparticles as a novel and widely applicable design principle for gene delivery. What’s interesting about this is that it doesn’t require inventing entirely new materials and can significantly improve delivery efficiency. ” Fanfei Meng, Assistant Professor and…

Between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first three months of 2026, telehealth usage increased by 10.1% across the United States, according to a new report from Fair Health. Telehealth utilization, measured as a percentage of medical claims, increased from 5.01% of medical claims in Q4 2025 to 5.51% in Q1 2026. The relative increases were 12% in the Midwest, 11.8% in the Northeast, 9% in the South and 8.1% in the West, according to Fair Health data. The percentage of patients billed for telehealth also increased nationally and in all four regions from the fourth quarter of 2025…

Experiencing abuse or neglect in childhood can increase the risk of intimate partner violence later in life. New research published in Lancet Community Health Europe reveals that childhood trauma changes a person’s mental health and personality, increasing their vulnerability to relationship abuse. These psychological changes account for much of the increased risk and suggest new ways to protect survivors. Previous research has shown that people who faced abuse or neglect as children are three to six times more likely to experience intimate partner violence as adults. To understand why this pattern exists, researchers looked at the psychological characteristics that link…

Romantic partnerships often serve as a buffer against loneliness for most people, but this protective relationship does not universally extend to asexual people. New research data shows that being in a romantic relationship is not associated with lower current feelings of loneliness among asexual people, challenging a long-held assumption in psychology. The study was published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. Julia Zopporat, a social psychologist at the Amsterdam University Medical Center, led a research team that investigated how romantic relationships and happiness are correlated across different sexual orientations. The researchers wanted to test two cultural assumptions that govern relationship…

People taking GLP-1 drugs for type 2 diabetes (liraglutide, semaglutide, or tirzepatide) may be more likely to stop and then restart treatment than many people realize, according to a study presented Sunday at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting ENDO 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. This study examined two questions that have received little attention to date. “Our study asks two questions that have not been fully answered to date: How many people with type 2 diabetes taking GLP-1 drugs actually stop taking them? And how many start taking them again?” said Dr. Sainikil Sonta, a researcher at the Boston University School…

JMIR Publications has released two feature articles in its News and Outlook section. Shalini Katuria Narang’s “Can human-like reasoning be replicated in large-scale language models for clinical decision-making?” and Sara Novak’s “How healthcare professionals can cope with digital fatigue” provide complementary insights into the capabilities of artificial intelligence in diagnosis and the real-world fatigue faced by healthcare professionals managing digital systems. Are LLMs equivalent to doctors in clinical reasoning? In “Can Humanlike Reasoning Be Replicated in Large Language Models for Clinical Decision-Making?,” Narang discusses recent research comparing diagnostic reasoning in OpenAI’s o1 model to that of physicians. Dr. Narang reports…

New research published in engineering uncovered a regulatory mechanism linking lysosomal function and mitochondrial stability in pathological cardiac hypertrophy and identified transient receptor potential mucolipin 1 (TRPML1) as an important protective factor against progression to heart failure. Researchers found that TRPML1 maintains mitochondrial homeostasis and reduces cardiac hypertrophy by directly inhibiting the oligomerization of voltage-dependent anion channel 1 (VDAC1) on the mitochondrial outer membrane. Transcriptomic analysis of heart failure samples from both mice and humans showed consistent downregulation of TRPML1 expression, suggesting a potential link between decreased TRPML1 levels and pathological cardiac remodeling. In animal models, cardiomyocyte-specific overexpression or pharmacological…

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have developed a new form of deep brain stimulation (DBS) that adjusts in real time to a person’s gait, improving gait and reducing falls in people with Parkinson’s disease. The study was published on June 15th. natural medicinedemonstrated for the first time that an implantable brain stimulator can detect neural signals associated with each step and automatically adjust stimulation within a fraction of a fraction of a second. The new system responds to the brain’s walking rhythm in the same way that a cardiac pacemaker responds to the rhythm of the heart.…

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is most commonly known as a disease that affects wild animals such as deer and elk. But a new study by researchers at the University of Calgary and their international collaborators investigated whether the disease could spread beyond cervids (ungulates, plant-eating animals) to other species. There are no confirmed cases of CWD in humans. Still, scientists say the new findings highlight the importance of continued surveillance and research as the disease continues to spread to new regions. CWD is a fatal neurological disease caused by infectious proteins called prions. It is becoming increasingly widespread throughout North…

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RA) are very popular for weight loss, but results vary from person to person and from drug to drug. Venky Soundararajan and colleagues investigate the full spectrum of responses to tirzepatide (e.g., Mounjaro or Zepbound) and semaglutide (e.g., Ozempic, Wegovy, or Rybelsus) by analyzing deidentified electronic medical records of a matched cohort of 10,339 tirzepatide-treated patients and 10,339 semaglutide-treated patients. In the real world, results range from minimal weight loss to more than 25% weight loss. Patients taking tirzepatide lost more weight than patients taking semaglutide (mean loss, 14.7% vs. 10.8% of body weight). There were…