Diabetes is one of the comorbidities most strongly associated with severe COVID-19 in the US, and data from early in the pandemic suggested individuals with type 2 diabetes faced twice the risk of death from COVID-19 and a greater risk of requiring hospitalization and intensive care. A new study shows best treatment options.
Scientists created a potentially powerful new strategy for treating cystic fibrosis and potentially other diseases; it involves small, nucleic acid molecules called oligonucleotides that can correct some of the gene defects that underlie CF but are not addressed by existing modulator therapies.
The Moderna mRNA vaccine and a protein-based vaccine candidate elicited durable neutralizing antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 in pre-clinical research. There were no adverse effects.
UNC Medical Center has received the American College of Cardiology’s NCDR “Chest Pain ̶ MI Registry Platinum Performance Achievement Award” for 2021, one of only 212 hospitals nationwide to receive the honor.
Research published by JAMA Network Open shows how non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) like mask wearing and physical distancing can help prevent spikes in COVID-19 cases as populations continue to get vaccinated.
A new study published in Nature Communications demonstrates that a consortium of bacteria designed to complement missing or underrepresented functions in the imbalanced microbiome of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients, prevented and treated chronic immune-mediated colitis in humanized mouse models.
A new study in the Journal of the American Heart Association is the first to show that exposure to a stressful political election is strongly associated with an increase in potentially life-threatening cardiac events.
A study led by Emily Sickbert-Bennett, PhD, associate professor of infectious diseases at the UNC School of Medicine and director of UNC Medical Center Infection Prevention, and William D. Bennett, PhD, professor of medicine in the UNC Center for Environmental Medicine, Asthma, and Lung Biology, shows that wearing two masks can significantly increase the effectiveness of preventing the spread of COVID-19, but is heavily dependent on how well they fit over a person’s nose and mouth.
The lab of Rahima Benhabbour, PhD, has received a $3.74 million grant over five years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant will fund the creation of an injectable that will provide long-acting protection for women against sexually transmitted pathogens and prevent pregnancy, but is also removable.
A team led by scientists at the UNC School of Medicine identified a molecule called microRNA-29 as a powerful controller of brain maturation in mammals.
UNC School of Medicine scientists found that HIV boosts a key process in human cells to fuel its replication. They also found that the diabetes drug metformin inhibits that process and thereby suppresses HIV replication in these cells in cell lines and animal models.
This discovery from UNC School of Medicine scientists, published in the journal Neuron, could help the scientific community devise better pain management strategies, particularly for women, who are disproportionally affected by pain throughout their lifespans.
A first-of-its-kind study out today in JAMA Surgery suggests that patients have a more difficult time understanding and building trust with their surgeons when they cannot see the surgeon’s entire face due to masking requirements.
Inflammation is a hallmark of chronic pain, and scientists at the UNC School of Medicine have discovered that anti-inflammatory cells called MRC1+ macrophages are dysfunctional in an animal model of neuropathic pain.
Research out on the pre-publication website medRxiv shows how non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) like mask wearing and physical distancing can help prevent spikes in COVID-19 cases as populations continue to get vaccinated.
By pursuing biochemical answers to how life on Earth began, UNC-Chapel Hill scientists hope to enhance our understanding of important cellular processes to open new avenues for disease detection and treatment strategies. Their research is funded by the W.M. Keck Foundation.
Publishing their work in Nature, UNC-Chapel Hill scientists showed how the orally administered experimental drug EIDD-2801 halts SARS-CoV-2 replication and prevents infection of human cells in a new in vivo research model containing human lung tissue. Separate phase 2 and 3 clinical trials are ongoing to evaluate EIDD-2801 safety in humans and its effect on viral shedding in COVID-19 patients.
Scientists discovered that the molecule AIM2 is important for the proper function of regulatory T cells and plays a key role in mitigating autoimmune disease. Treg cells are a seminal population of adaptive immune cells that prevents an overzealous immune responses.
Some people still refuse to wear a mask. So UNC School of Medicine scientists researched the protectiveness of various kinds of consumer-grade and modified masks, assuming the mask wearer was exposed to the virus, like when we interact with an unmasked infected person.
Using data collected from many different resources, a multidisciplinary team led by NASA scientists reports the discovery of a common but surprising thread that drives cell and tissue damage during space travel: mitochondrial dysfunction.
This research helps illuminate the neural roots of emotions, and points to the possibility that a population of arousal-related neurons might be a target of future treatments for anxiety disorders and other illnesses involving abnormal arousal responses.
In a controlled study, scientists found that smokers and e-cigarette users exhibited significantly altered immune responses to a model of influenza virus infection, suggesting increased susceptibility to disease, including COVID-19
Thanks to a data-driven and boots-on-the-ground approach, 219 medical practices in North Carolina were able to reduce the percent of patients at a high 10-year risk of serious cardiovascular events from 23 percent to 17 percent. After adjusting for clinical-patient efforts outside this intervention, the 25 percent relative reduction is essentially equivalent to preventing 6,000 patients from suffering a heart attack or stroke, or dying due to cardiovascular disease within 10 years.
GLP-1 receptor agonists and SGLT2 inhibitors reduce high blood sugar and adverse events related to heart and kidney disease, but cardiologists rarely prescribe these drugs. A leading group of diabetes doctors and cardiologists are trying to change that.
A study by UNC School of Medicine researchers finds that neurodevelopmental scores and gray matter volumes at age two years did not differ between children who had MRI-confirmed asymptomatic subdural hemorrhages when they were neonates, compared to children with no history of subdural hemorrhage.
UNC-Chapel Hill scientists discovered that many rhinoviruses need a human protein called STING to make copies of its RNA, opening the door to a new strategy for controlling infection of these pesky and at times very dangerous pathogens.
Dirk Dittmer, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology at the UNC School of Medicine, is tracking the virus that causes COVID-19 by sequencing the genome of virus samples collected from diagnostic testing. Using next generation sequencing on SARS-CoV-2 will help accurately diagnose the novel coronavirus, identify mutations and track its history.
Babies born with a faulty maternal copy of the UBE3A gene will develop a severe neurodevelopmental disorder with no cure and limited treatments. Now, scientists show that gene editing/gene therapy techniques can be used to restore UBE3A in human neuron cultures and treat deficits in an animal model.
For the first time, scientists at UNC-Chapel Hill and Stanford solved the high-resolution structure of psychedelic drugs bound to the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor, a major step toward understanding how the drugs cause such wild effects and how they might be better used to treat psychiatric conditions.
UNC School of Medicine researchers took striking images of the SARS-CoV-2 virus produced by infected respiratory epithelial cells inside human respiratory tract cultures. The New England Journal of Medicine featured this work in its “Images in Medicine” section.
Infection prevention experts at the UNC Medical Center set out to gather evidence on the fitted filtration efficiency of dozens of different types of masks and mask modifications, including masks sterilized for reuse, expired masks, novel masks sourced from domestic and overseas sources, and homemade masks.
This research shows that both Pseudomonas and Burkholderia use toxic weaponry, called Type VI Secretion Systems (T6SS), to compete with and establish dominance over each other. It could be possible to target or mimic this weaponry to defeat the bacteria before they cause irreparable lung damage.
A study recently published in the journal Circulation looks at temporal trends in the burden of comorbidities and associated risk of mortality among patients with heart failure (HF) with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), in which the left ventricle of the heart is not able to relax enough to fill properly with blood, and HF with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), in which the left ventricle is not able contract enough to pump out as much blood.
CAR-T cell therapy, which attacks cancer cells using a person’s reprogrammed immune cells, has been used to treat Hodgkin lymphoma with remarkable success for the first time, according to the results of an early phase clinical trial.
Authors of a new perspective on health inequities say that, in addition to health policy and individual-level efforts, social policy solutions are needed. They identify two key lessons from the pandemic: public policy enables public health and health equity requires big investments in public policy.
The PHASES Working Group, co-led by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill, Georgetown, and Johns Hopkins, launched ethics guidance at hivpregnancyethics.org, in a project dedicated to ending the evidence gap for pregnant women around HIV and co-infections.
Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a team of internationally acclaimed researchers led by UNC School of Medicine’s Bryan L. Roth, MD, PhD, aims to create new medications to effectively and rapidly treat depression, anxiety, and substance abuse without major side effects.
Results from a six-month, multi-site clinical trial called the Wireless Innovation for Seniors with Diabetes Mellitus (WISDM) Study Group have been published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
UNC Chapel Hill scientists created a test that pinpoints human antibodies specific to a unique part of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The test can help document COVID-19 infections, identify asymptomatic virus infection, and measure the level of immunity in individuals.
UNC-Chapel Hill researchers show how SARS-CoV-2 infects the nasal cavity to a great degree, and progressively less so lower down the respiratory tract, suggesting the virus tends to become firmly established first in the nasal cavity, but can be aspirated into the lungs to cause serious disease.
University of North Carolina School of Medicine researchers designed experiments using gene-editing tools to discover how molecules called gangliosides serve as de facto gatekeepers to allow hepatitis A virus entry into liver cells.
This research, published in Nature, shows how different populations of people share most of the genetic susceptibilities to developing type 2 diabetes but do have some different genetic variations that can make them more or less susceptible to developing the condition.
The Healthcare Worker Exposure Response & Outcomes (HERO) Registry launched this week, inviting U.S. health care workers to share clinical and life experiences in order to understand the perspectives and problems faced by those on the COVID-19 pandemic front lines.
Next generation genetic sequencing – or next generation sequencing (NGS) – is becoming more common in research, although it still isn’t widely available. At the UNC School of Medicine, it is part of a research collaboration to better understand viral lung infections, including COVID-19 – the novel coronavirus sweeping the world.
In the review published in the journal European Urology Oncology, researchers compiled the results of 22 different studies that analyzed the urine of people who used e-cigarettes or other tobacco products, including cigarettes, to check for evidence of cancer-linked compounds or biomarkers of those compounds. They found six biomarkers or compounds with a strong link to bladder cancer.
For the third year in a row, the University of North Carolina School of Medicine was ranked first in the country for primary care education as a part of U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools.”
Researchers used a virtual reality system to trick subjects into thinking they were falling as they walked on a treadmill, finding clear differences in reactions between people with multiple sclerosis and people without. These differences were not evident without the “falling” illusion.
Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and colleagues created a new computational tool called H-MAGMA to study the genetic underpinnings of nine brain disorders, including the identification of new genes associated with each disorder.
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