A common heart drug may slow the progression of Huntington's disease (HD), according to a new study by University of Iowa Health Care researchers.

Using clinical information from a large, observational database of over 21,000 people with HD, the UI team found that the use of beta-blocker drugs - commonly used to treat heart and blood pressure issues - was associated with both a significantly later onset of HD symptoms for people in the pre-symptomatic stages, and a slower rate of symptom worsening for those with symptoms.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to help speed up the process of matching potential volunteers to relevant clinical research trials listed on ClinicalTrials.gov. A study published in Nature Communications found that the AI algorithm, called TrialGPT, could successfully identify relevant clinical trials for which a person is eligible and provide a summary that clearly explains how that person meets the criteria for study enrollment.

Large language models, a type of AI that analyses text, can predict the results of proposed neuroscience studies more accurately than human experts, finds a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers.

The findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, demonstrate that large language models (LLMs) trained on vast datasets of text can distil patterns from scientific literature, enabling them to forecast scientific outcomes with superhuman accuracy.

An injection given during some asthma and COPD attacks is more effective than the current treatment of steroid tablets, reducing the need for further treatment by 30%.

The findings, published today in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, could be "game-changing" for millions of people with asthma and COPD around the world, scientists say.

With the rapid development of antibiotics in the 1930s, phage therapy - using viruses known as bacteriophages or phages to tackle bacterial infections - fell into oblivion. But as the current rise in antibiotic resistance is making it increasingly difficult to treat bacterial infections, phage therapy is once again sparking interest among physicians and scientists - although it remains complex in practice because of the great diversity and specificity of phages. Against this backdrop, scientists from the Institut Pasteur, Inserm, the Paris Public Hospital Network (AP-HP) and Université Paris Cité have developed a simple and effective new tool that recommends the best possible phage cocktail for a given patient.

The preclinical study, published in Cardiovascular Diabetology, found LXA4, which is known for its "calming agent" action in turning off the body’s inflammatory response and preventing chronic inflammation, could also serve as a potential new treatment for diabetes-induced heart disease.

Heart conditions like atherosclerosis, heart attacks and heart failure are the leading killers of people with diabetes, driving a growing global health crisis.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have found a molecule that can both help the intestines to heal after damage and suppress tumour growth in colorectal cancer. The discovery could lead to new treatments for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and cancer. The results are published in the journal Nature.

Many patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) such as Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis do not respond to available treatments, highlighting the need to identify novel therapeutic strategies.