A number of studies in recent times have cast doubt over the efficacy of gingko biloba for most of its touted benefits, and today another study published this week in JAMA concludes that gingko biloba supplements have no effect on the incidence or severity of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
More than 3,000 participants aged more than [...]

A new study to be published in the Journal of Applied Physiology has confirmed that exercise can restore the decline in neural stem cells normally associated with aging.
The brain constantly produces new cells that differentiate into a wide variety of mature neurons in a process called neurogenesis. Particularly in the hippocampus, a decline in the [...]

A report published in the November 14 Cell has revealed 13 new tumor suppressor genes, 12 of which have never previously been linked to cancer.
The researchers used an interesting combination of technologies to arrive at their results. Viz:

First, they identified genes recurrently deleted in 100 human livers cancers, resulting in 362 candidates
Then, they created short-hairpin [...]

The February 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN) reports that high phosphate levels in youth are correlated with greater calcium in the coronary arteries years later, an indicator of athersclerosis.
The interesting point of this study is that high phosphate levels are often a result of chronic kidney disease (CKD). [...]

Researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine have come up with a preliminary answer as to why some people remain mentally nimble into extreme old age.
By analyzing the brains of people who had died when they were older than 80, yet who scored well on tests of brain function, the researchers discovered that these [...]

Researchers at the University of Maryland reported that the unhappier you are, the more TV you watch in an article in the December Social Indicators Research.
They also found that happy people tend to read more and socialize more.
However, I’ve found that for the most part TV makes me unhappy, so perhaps they’ve got the cause [...]

Previously reported-on future experimental muscle drug MK-677 has been found to not help with Alzheimer’s progression despite stimulating production of IGF-I.
A study from the American Academy of Neurology reports that despite evidence that increased IGF-I helps reduce beta-amyloid plaques in the minds of mice, the IGF-I stimulating drug MK-677 did not help humans given the [...]

A study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research’s Seventh Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research has shown that physical exercise decreases cancer risk, but only if it’s accompanied by sufficient nightly sleep.
The study looked at 5,968 women at least 18 years old with no previous cancer diagnoses.
The results revealed that [...]

An article in the Archives of Dermatology reports that patients with chronic leg ulcers benefited from topical protein C treatment.
All study participants with recalcitrant leg ulcers saw rapidly improved healing following treatment with activated protein C.
The likely mechanism of action is activated protein C’s recognized ability to stimulate angiogenesis and reepithelialization and to inhibit inflammation.
What [...]

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology have worked out why it’s so much easier to re-learn something that has been learnt before, even if it feels like you’ve totally forgotten it.
I find this very comforting, because there are so many things I’ve spent countless hours learning, but have subsequently forgotten. I always thought, [...]