Tata Group and IISc partner to establish medical school to pioneer healthcare education and research

Hepatitis E, a potentially serious viral liver disease, is transmitted through contaminated water. The risk is particularly high in populations with limited access to safe water and sanitation. In South Sudan, outbreaks have regularly ravaged camps for internally displaced persons and their host populations. Although a vaccine has been available since 2011, its 3-dose regimen makes it difficult to administer in such a context. A team from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), MSF Epicentre, Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the South Sudanese Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization (WHO), the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) conducted clinical and lab studies after a vaccination campaign to assess its effectiveness in protecting individuals and helping to control the epidemic. Their results showed that the vaccine was effective with just the first two doses. These results can be read in the Lancet Infectious Diseases.

CLEVELAND—Researchers at Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals and Houston Methodist will harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to more accurately predict risk of heart failure and other cardiovascular events, including estimating when an adverse event might occur, by developing an AI model that “learns” from patient scans.

A groundbreaking UK study in The Lancet has examined whether an additional blood test called procalcitonin (PCT) could safely shorten the time children spend on intravenous (IV) antibiotics in hospitals.

This is the largest trial of its kind to evaluate PCT-guided antibiotic treatment in children but, despite promising previous analysis, the study found that using the PCT biomarker to guide treatment decisions did not reduce antibiotic duration when compared with usual care.

The study in The Lancet is part of the ‘Biomarker-guided duration of Antibiotic Treatment in Children Hospitalised with confirmed or suspected bacterial infection’ (BATCH) trial - a national research trial to tackle antibiotic overuse in hospitalised children and reduce the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

There may be a link between hearing impairment and an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s according to research led by Lancaster University.

This is one of the first studies to examine whether sensory impairments, such as hearing loss, might increase the risk for Parkinson’s or serve as an early warning sign.

Epigenetic modifiers, enzymes that catalyze covalent modifications on chromatin, play a pivotal role in establishing stable states for gene expression and cellular identity. Mutations in these modifiers have been linked to a variety of human diseases, including developmental disorders and cancers, highlighting the importance of understanding how these mutations impact the functions of epigenetic modifiers in development and disease. Recent findings suggest that some epigenetic modifiers may have noncatalytic functions, independent of their catalytic activities, which raises questions about the determinants of their dependency on catalytic activity and the implications for chromatin modifications. In this context, a comment by Chen et al. provides valuable insights into the catalytic and noncatalytic functions of the histone methyltransferase SETD2, a protein responsible for histone H3 lysine 36 trimethylation (H3K36me3) and frequently mutated in clear cell renal cell carcinoma.