Highly processed foods (e.g., chips, cookies, ice cream, French fries) can be considered addictive on par with tobacco, say psychologists from the University of Michigan and Virginia Tech. The authors of the paper, published in the journal Addiction, used criteria from a 1988 U.S. Surgeon General’s report that found tobacco to be addictive. They showed…
Are you feeling blue lately? Have you recently witnessed a sudden shift in your mood and energy? Don’t worry, you are not alone as you might be experiencing the so-called “Winter Blues”. What are winter blues? Shorter days, colder weather, and gloomy skies can take a toll on most people. In fact, colder months…
In the fight against cardiovascular diseases, quitting smoking is five times more effective than controlling blood pressure and three and a half times more effective than controlling cholesterol levels, head of Russian Association for Medical Risk Modification, cardiologist Alexander Rozanov told News.am MED. He listed the risk factors of cardiovascular diseases, noting that they have…
The man with the longest case of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom has recovered, with 411 days of illness. According to Sky News television, the man, age 59, tested positive for COVID-19 in December 2020. Despite the disappearance of symptoms, the tests remained positive until January 2022. The man had an early strain of the…
A new type of antibiotic has been developed that has shown efficacy against treatment-resistant bacteria – enterococci. Researchers from the University of Umea (Sweden) and the University of Washington School of Medicine (USA) have published the results in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The new class of antibiotics GmPcides was…
For the first time, biologists have been able to document how two common respiratory viruses fuse together to form a hybrid capable of bypassing the human immune system and infecting lung cells. Scientists believe their work will help explain why co-infection, for some patients, significantly aggravates the course of the disease and makes it more…
U.S. scientists have developed a highly accurate test to detect markers of cervical cancer as well as determine the likelihood of developing the disease. The work of scientists at the University of California was published in the journal Genome Medicine. The researchers studied the process of DNA methylation. This is a biological process that uses…
The co-founders of the biotechnology company BioNTech announced the creation of a personalized cancer vaccine by 2030. Breakthroughs in mRNA vaccines from COVID-19, achieved during the pandemic, helped speed up the process. Professors Ugur Şahin and Özlem Turecı, founders of the biotechnology company BioNTech in Germany, told the BBC. BioNTech, in partnership with Pfizer, was…
“Your kid is spoiled”; “Your little one seems selfish”; “Poor little kid, he will grow up lonely!” If you are a mother of an only-child, you have definitely heard the same mantra over and over again. And of course, you have been told that your one and only has “only-child syndrome” just because he…
Scientists have discovered a compound that makes the bacterium methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) more vulnerable to antibiotics. The work of British biologists from the University of Bath was published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology. Staphylococcus aureus causes difficult-to-treat diseases such as sepsis and pneumonia. It differs in that it is resistant to most antibiotics…
