Drawing blood and testing it is standard practice for many medical diagnostics. As a less painful alternative, scientists are developing skin patches that could one day replace the syringe. In the American Chemical Society journal Analytical Chemistry, one team reports they have designed and successfully tested, for the first time, a small skin patch that detected malaria proteins in live mice. It could someday be adapted for use in humans to diagnose other diseases, too.

Medicinal plant market goes untested for health hazards, according to a recent study published in journal Fungal Biology 

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria can share resources to cause chronic infections, Vanderbilt investigators have discovered. Like the individual members of a gang who might be relatively harmless alone, they turn deadly when they get together with their “friends.”

Researchers uncovered a new class of lipids in humans that is linked to reduced inflammation and improved blood sugar levels in diabetes.

Study Shows Feasibility of Treating Clostridium difficile Infection With Oral Administration of Frozen Encapsulated Fecal Material

$15 million Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) commitment to action brings new resources to laboratories in sub-Saharan Africa.

The switch controls the growth of telomeres, the timekeepers of cells.

Fats are often considered the enemy of good nutrition, but when included in a healthy diet they can boast several potential health benefits. In the September issue of Food Technology magazine published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), Contributing Editor Linda Milo Ohr writes about how fatty acids and nutritional oils may benefit cognition, weight management, heart health, eye and brain development, and even mood. 

Dangerous new pathogens such as the Ebola virus invoke scary scenarios of deadly epidemics, but even ancient scourges such as the bubonic plague are still providing researchers with new insights on how the body responds to infections.

The current Ebola outbreak now requires a “rapid response at a massive global scale”, according to experts at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. 

A ‘game changer,’ says UCLA’s Dr. Antoni Ribas, the study’s principal investigator.

When they are not busy attacking us, germs go after each other. But when viruses invade bacteria, it doesn’t always spell disaster for the infected microbes: Sometimes viruses actually carry helpful genes that a bacterium can harness to, say, expand its diet or better attack its own hosts.