Lauren Brown

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This study focused on identifying the sources of a harmful chemical called 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD) in the Lower Passaic River in New Jersey. Researchers found that the former Givaudan facility contributed significantly to the levels of this chemical, especially during the late 1950s to early 1960s, with discharges that matched estimates from another plant, the Diamond Alkali plant. This matters because it helps us identify and address pollution sources in the river, which is important for the health of the environment and public safety. Who this helps: This helps local communities and environmental regulators.

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This study looked at how a fungus called Candidozyma auris forms biofilms on plastic surfaces, which helps it survive and spread in healthcare settings. Researchers found that one type of this fungus could stay alive in these biofilms on dry surfaces for up to 28 days and was also less affected by certain disinfectants. These findings emphasize the need for effective cleaning practices and better evaluation of disinfectants to control outbreaks of this persistent fungus. Who this helps: This helps healthcare professionals and hospitals working to prevent infections in patients.

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This study looked at how different levels of fire intensity affect young conifer trees growing in cold and wet environments, specifically their health and survival. Researchers found that as fire intensity increased, the likelihood of sapling death also increased—about 40% of the saplings died at higher fire levels, but mortality was lower than expected at lower fire intensities due to the trees' unique characteristics. These findings help forest managers better understand and predict how young trees might respond to fires, shaping more effective forest management practices. Who this helps: Forest managers and land conservationists.

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This study looked at how ethnicity affects graduate-entry medical students in Wales and their experiences in medical training. Among the 17 students interviewed, 6 from Black, Asian, or Minority Ethnic backgrounds felt disadvantaged by their ethnicity, compared to just 2 White students. The study found that many students, regardless of background, faced microaggressions and disrespect, particularly from clinicians, which negatively impacted their learning and feeling of belonging. Who this helps: This helps medical students from diverse backgrounds, as well as educators in medical schools.

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Researchers studied a specific genetic change, called the IRF2BP2::JAK2 fusion, in a young patient with a dangerous form of leukemia called T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL). They found that this fusion allows leukemia cells to grow without the usual growth signals and can be targeted with existing medications, with two drugs tested (ruxolitinib and CHZ868) showing strong effectiveness against it. This discovery not only identifies a new cause of this type of leukemia but also highlights a potential treatment option that could improve care for patients. Who this helps: This helps children with high-risk T-ALL and their doctors.

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This study looked at patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) who underwent surgery, comparing those who started with minimally invasive surgery (MIS) but needed to switch to open surgery with those who had open surgery from the beginning. The researchers found that switching to open surgery did not lead to higher rates of complications; for example, patients who started with robotic surgery and converted to open had a complication rate of 33.9%, similar to the 30.5% rate for those planned for open surgery. This is important because it shows that starting with MIS, even if it ultimately requires switching, does not result in worse health outcomes than doing an open surgery right away. Who this helps: This helps patients with inflammatory bowel disease facing surgery and their doctors in making treatment decisions.

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This study looked at how effective online physiotherapy (telerehabilitation) is for people with early-stage Parkinson's disease. It involved 40 participants, with 21 receiving personalized video calls for exercises over 12 weeks and 19 receiving standard exercise advice. The results showed that those in the telerehabilitation group had a decrease in Parkinson's symptoms, with a change in score of -3.5, compared to an increase of 7 for the usual care group, and they also increased their step counts by over 4,200 steps weekly on average. Who this helps: This benefits patients with early Parkinson's and their healthcare providers by offering effective remote options for managing their condition.

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This study examined how proteins are distributed in individual cells of the human liver and how these patterns can change in diseases. Researchers found that out of 2,500 proteins studied in liver cells from 18 people, around half showed distinct zonation patterns, which are important for liver function. Furthermore, when liver architecture was disrupted, these zoning patterns were significantly lost, especially in proteins located in certain areas of the liver. Who this helps: This research benefits doctors and scientists studying liver diseases and may improve treatment strategies for patients with liver damage.

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This study examined how changing to and from daylight-saving time (DST) affects health. Researchers found that switching to DST can lead to more heart attacks and traffic accidents, but it also reduces physical crimes. Overall, living with DST during summer months seems to lower the risk of death and traffic accidents, while standard time may disrupt sleep in winter. Who this helps: This information benefits public health officials and policymakers as they consider the impacts of daylight-saving time.

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This study focused on improving the diagnosis of talaromycosis, a serious fungal infection that affects people with advanced HIV, particularly in Southeast Asia. Researchers tested two types of antibody tests (IgM and IgG) in 423 individuals with confirmed talaromycosis and 206 healthy controls. The tests showed low accuracy: for IgM, the best performance was only 62.3% in detecting the disease, while IgG reached 52.2%. Although these tests are not effective for diagnosing acute infections, they can help identify whether people have been exposed to the fungus, which is important for understanding the spread of the disease. Who this helps: This research benefits healthcare providers and public health officials working to manage and prevent talaromycosis.

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This study focused on creating a support program for 4-year-old children with mild motor delays in childcare settings. Researchers gathered input from 70 experts, including educators and therapists, and found that the best approach involves multiple professionals working together to provide 30-minute sessions, both individually and in groups, two to three times a week for eight to ten weeks. This matters because it offers a structured way to help young children improve their development through regular, planned support. Who this helps: This benefits children with mild developmental delays and their caregivers in childcare settings.

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Pediatric primary care offices are often poorly equipped to handle medical emergencies, and this study tested whether partnering with local academic medical centers and running realistic practice drills could improve readiness. Median preparedness scores rose from 68% to 82%, and performance during simulated respiratory and seizure emergencies nearly doubled across 21 offices. The results demonstrate that a structured collaboration model can meaningfully improve emergency readiness in community pediatric practices.

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In 572 people with type 2 diabetes, cardiac MRI was used to measure both reduced blood flow reserve (a marker of silent ischemia) and evidence of prior heart attacks to see which better predicted future cardiovascular events. Having either abnormality raised the risk of a major cardiac event to about twice that of people with neither, and having both together tripled the risk. The finding supports combining these two measurements in routine cardiac imaging to identify which diabetic patients are at highest risk.

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A qualitative review of 44 studies examined how survivors of intensive care describe the experience of regaining independence in everyday activities after discharge. Three consistent themes emerged: loss of autonomy, the drive to reclaim independence, and the emotional burden of depending on family. The review recommends that ICU recovery programs combine physical rehabilitation with psychological support and mealtime assistance to address the full range of challenges survivors face.

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Depression is extremely common in people with COPD but is rarely treated, and this trial is testing whether teaching coping skills to both patients and their family caregivers together reduces depressive symptoms more effectively than COPD education alone. The SERENE trial will enroll 375 patient-caregiver pairs across two health systems and measure five potential mechanisms — including relationship quality, self-efficacy, and loneliness — through which the intervention might work. Results will inform how family-centered behavioral interventions can be scaled for people living with serious chronic lung disease.

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ME/CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) is poorly understood and has no approved treatments, so researchers analyzed gene and protein expression data from multiple studies to find consistent patterns. Two mitochondrial genes showed lower expression in ME/CFS patients across multiple datasets, and other studies found elevated mitochondrial gene activity in platelets, collectively pointing to disrupted energy production in cells as a key feature of the illness. Drug databases were searched using these gene targets to identify existing approved compounds that could potentially be repurposed for ME/CFS.

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A review of 36 studies examined what factors lead pregnant people to experience loss of control while eating. Most risk factors — like depression, anxiety, and trauma history — mirror those seen in non-pregnant populations, but factors specific to pregnancy itself were rarely studied. The review calls for larger, more diverse studies using validated measurement tools and longitudinal designs to better understand and eventually prevent disordered eating during pregnancy.

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Seventeen autistic adults aged 46-72 were interviewed about what ageing well means to them and what support they need from health and social services. Participants felt that ageing with autism is poorly understood by services, that current support is often incompatible with autistic traits, and that peer support and flexible, autism-informed services would significantly improve their experience. The study produces a set of practical recommendations for professionals, including involving autistic people in service design and adopting trauma-informed approaches.

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Two new platinum-based chemotherapy compounds were synthesized and tested against lung and triple-negative breast cancer cells in the lab. The new compounds belong to a class called phosphaplatins that carry a negative charge at body pH, which reduces DNA binding and may change how they interact with cancer cells compared to standard cisplatin. While they were less potent than the leading phosphaplatin candidate, the work advances understanding of how structural changes affect anticancer activity in this drug class.

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Allied health students who completed extended rural placements in New South Wales were interviewed about how the experience shaped their learning and career intentions. Students progressed from focusing on their own learning needs to engaging with the community and considering rural careers, with longer placements enabling deeper reflection and broader understanding of rural health contexts. The study concludes that extended rural placements build clinical skills, interprofessional teamwork, and genuine career interest in rural practice.

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A population study followed 6,102 teenagers for three years to track how depression and anxiety symptoms changed over time and what predicted those trajectories. Four groups emerged: most stayed consistently low, about 11-18% stayed persistently high, and smaller groups improved or worsened over time. Being female or gender diverse, lower socioeconomic status, higher neuroticism, childhood adversity, and peer problems were all linked to worse trajectories, suggesting prevention needs to address social and family environments, not just individual risk factors.

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Emergency physicians at four hospitals tested an AI tool that listens to patient encounters and automatically drafts clinical notes. Most physicians were satisfied and reported saving documentation time, but fewer than half trusted the accuracy of the AI-generated notes compared to three-quarters who trusted human scribes. Key limitations included difficulty capturing physical exam findings and clinical reasoning, and challenges specific to the emergency department environment like noisy surroundings and complex patient populations.

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Robotic surgery for uterine cancer removal is expanding in the UK, and this review examined whether access to it is equitable across the Midlands region. A review of 12 systematic analyses confirmed robotic hysterectomy reduces blood loss and hospital stay compared to open surgery, though advantages over standard keyhole surgery are less clear. Regional data showed that areas with higher rates of uterine cancer did not consistently have better robotic surgery access, pointing to a need for coordinated referral systems and service planning.

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Most people with OCD cannot access the recommended first-line treatment (exposure and response prevention therapy) because there are too few trained therapists. A self-guided web app called BOLD, used with minimal therapist check-ins, reduced OCD symptoms with large effect sizes in a small trial and matched outcomes from traditional in-person therapy while requiring 73% less therapist time. The results support testing BOLD in a larger randomized trial as a scalable, low-cost treatment option.

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Researchers tested three opioid drugs — morphine, 7-OH mitragynine, and tianeptine — in mice while progressively blocking opioid receptors to understand how receptor availability affects pain relief versus side effects. Reducing receptor availability hit pain relief and gut effects harder than respiratory depression for the lower-potency opioid, but respiratory depression proved similarly susceptible to receptor loss across all three drugs. The results show that reduced drug potency partially separates pain relief from some side effects, but not from respiratory depression, which remains a concern regardless.

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Cat fleas carry dangerous bacteria like Bartonella henselae and Yersinia pestis, but little was known about the gut environment these pathogens must survive in. This study found that trypsin digestive activity peaks about 24 hours after a blood meal, the gut briefly turns alkaline then returns acidic, and bacterial infection prolongs acidification and delays but amplifies trypsin activity. These findings reveal that the flea gut actively responds to infection and that understanding these dynamics is key to explaining how flea-borne pathogens persist and are transmitted.

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Potato crops are protected from a destructive soil worm (Globodera rostochiensis) by a resistance gene called H1, but the full genetic structure of this region had never been mapped because potato genetics are unusually complex. By creating a simpler experimental plant line carrying H1 and sequencing it with long-read technology, the researchers reconstructed the entire resistance region, including its boundaries. This complete map will accelerate breeding programs aiming to maintain or improve nematode resistance in commercial potato varieties.

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Histoplasmosis, a fungal infection caused by inhaling spores, kills a large number of people with advanced HIV but is barely addressed in global HIV programs. Though once thought limited to the Americas, the infection is now recognized across sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, where diagnostic tests are nearly unavailable and misdiagnosis is common. The review calls for urgent investment in antigen-based testing and integration of histoplasmosis screening into HIV care packages, using Latin America's coordinated response as a model.

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When people with dementia report being depressed but their caregiver disagrees — or vice versa — it creates a diagnostic problem that can lead to undertreated or mistreated depression. In a study of 402 people with various dementias, about one-third had mismatched reports, and the pattern varied by dementia type: people with progressive supranuclear palsy were more likely to report depression their caregiver missed, while semantic dementia patients rarely contradicted caregivers. Caregivers often labeled depression-related behaviors as apathy or agitation instead, suggesting that combining self-report with caregiver input improves diagnostic accuracy.

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Before breast cancer spreads to the lungs, immune cells called neutrophils clog the lung capillaries in a way that may help incoming tumor cells take hold. Using a mouse model, the researchers found that neutrophils with impaired movement blocked blood flow in the small lung vessels, and that activating a surface protein (beta-integrin) to restore neutrophil mobility also reduced the number of tumor cells that successfully colonized the lungs. The results identify neutrophil congestion as a physical mechanism that prepares the lung for metastasis and a potential target for prevention.

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When the placenta fails to deliver enough oxygen and glucose to a fetus, the result is poor growth and underdeveloped organs — but directly supplying these two nutrients to the fetus reversed several of these deficits in sheep. Ten days of direct supplementation restored normal linear growth rates and increased the proliferation of pancreatic and muscle cells in growth-restricted fetuses, and improved insulin release by the eighth day. The study shows that targeting nutrients that cross the placenta by simple diffusion is a viable prenatal strategy to counter the effects of placental failure.

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The brain is traditionally thought to make decisions by slowly building up a signal in individual neurons, but recent animal studies show neurons firing in rapid sequences instead. Two computational circuit models were developed to explain how sequential neural firing can still accurately accumulate evidence, and recordings from four brain regions in decision-making rats matched the predictions of different models in different regions. The work suggests the brain uses more than one circuit strategy to gather and weigh evidence when making choices.

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This study compared outcomes of deep brain stimulation targeting two different brain regions — the subthalamic nucleus (STN) and the globus pallidus (GPi) — in 50 Parkinson's disease patients at the first center in the UAE to offer this therapy. Both targets produced large improvements in motor function and allowed patients to substantially reduce their medication doses, showing that outcomes match those from major international clinical trials. The study is limited by small and unequal group sizes, but establishes that high-quality neurosurgical care for Parkinson's is achievable in the region.

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Childhood and adolescent sarcomas rarely have the gene mutations that targeted drugs are designed to hit, leaving most young patients without options when standard treatments fail. By combining whole-genome sequencing, protein analysis, and drug-sensitivity testing across 107 pediatric sarcoma patients, the researchers identified that high activity of the FGFR4 protein in a specific rhabdomyosarcoma subtype predicts strong responses to FGFR-blocking drugs. One relapsed patient treated with lenvatinib had a clinical response, and all tested tumor models shrank significantly, making FGFR inhibition a promising direction for this subtype.

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Rats with large hippocampus lesions are expected to lose the ability to navigate using fixed environmental landmarks, but this study found that a subset of them could still do so even with nearly complete damage. Analyzing 53 lesioned rats on a standard water maze task, the researchers found that some developed and maintained landmark-based navigation strategies, and performance did not worsen with larger lesion size. The results suggest that other brain regions can compensate for hippocampal damage and support spatial memory.

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Black people in the UK are more likely to experience psychosis and to be involuntarily hospitalized under the Mental Health Act, in part because mental health literacy is lower in underserved communities and services are culturally misaligned. This protocol describes Co-STARS, a mental health training program co-designed with Black young people, to be tested in a randomized trial in Birmingham communities and NHS trusts. The study will assess whether the training improves knowledge, increases help-seeking, and reduces psychiatric inequities for Black communities.

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Local government agencies increasingly want to use research evidence to make decisions, but there was no agreed-upon definition of what counts as "research" in that setting. Using a structured expert consensus process (Delphi method) with 60 local authority officers, researchers developed a consensus definition that covers both the purpose and process of local authority research. The agreed definition gives councils a shared language for identifying research activities and setting up appropriate ethics and governance procedures.

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This review synthesizes what is known about how the bacterium Bartonella henselae — the cause of cat scratch disease — moves from infected cats into new hosts via cat fleas. The flea picks up the bacteria while feeding on a bacteremic cat, the bacteria colonize the flea's gut, and transmission to new hosts occurs through flea feces contaminating skin wounds. The review identifies specific gaps in understanding the molecular mechanisms that allow Bartonella to survive in the flea gut and be transmitted efficiently.

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A clinical trial tested whether the antiviral drug favipiravir, combined with lopinavir-ritonavir, could fight SARS-CoV-2 in 235 COVID-19 patients. Mathematical modeling of viral levels and drug concentrations showed that neither drug had any measurable antiviral effect at the doses used. An unexpected finding was that lopinavir-ritonavir doubled how fast the body clears favipiravir, a drug-drug interaction that needs further investigation.

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This study mapped how liver cells handle fat differently depending on their location within the liver and what happens when the normal architecture breaks down. A protein called PLIN5 controls physical contacts between fat droplets and mitochondria, and its activity depends on a specific chemical modification; blocking that modification protected liver cells from fat toxicity in mice fed a Western diet. The results point to PLIN5 as a potential drug target for fatty liver disease.

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Researchers measured how much carbon tidal wetlands along California's coast store in their soils, filling a data gap outside the well-studied San Francisco Bay area. Carbon storage rates across 15 sites fell within typical global ranges, providing the first solid baseline data for the state's outer coastline. These numbers are directly needed for setting restoration targets, calculating greenhouse gas offsets, and predicting how wetlands will respond to sea-level rise.

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A national survey of Australian health professionals compared how diabetes care during pregnancy is delivered in cities versus rural areas. Rural providers were less likely to work alongside specialists like endocrinologists and obstetricians, relying more on face-to-face consultations without collocated specialist support. The findings highlight specific structural gaps in rural pregnancy diabetes care that need targeted solutions.

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This large UK phase 3 trial compared estrogen skin patches to standard hormone-blocking injections (LHRH agonists) as treatment for locally advanced prostate cancer in 1,360 men. The patch kept disease from spreading just as effectively as injections over three years, and men on patches had far fewer hot flashes (44% vs. 89%), though breast tissue growth was more common. The finding gives men and their doctors a comparable alternative to injections that avoids many of the estrogen-depletion side effects.

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Researchers tracked military veterans with suicidal ideation for 28 days using daily smartphone surveys and Fitbit sleep monitoring to see whether poor sleep predicted worse mental health the next day. Nights with bad sleep quality and nightmares consistently predicted higher suicidal urges, depression, and PTSD symptoms the following day. Self-reported sleep data outperformed wrist-worn device data alone, but combining both gave the best predictions, pointing toward wearable-plus-survey tools as a way to flag crisis risk in real time.

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A clinical trial used telehealth nutrition counseling to reduce heart disease risk in rural Australians, and researchers then measured the broader impact of running the trial itself. Beyond improving patients' heart health scores and diet, the study built local dietitian skills and primary care capacity that will outlast the trial. For every dollar invested, it returned $1.31 in measurable benefits, suggesting rural clinical trials deliver value well beyond their immediate research findings.

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Researchers measured blood vessel development in the skeletal muscles and hearts of fetal and newborn lambs to understand how the transition to breathing air affects circulation. Despite the muscles growing larger after birth and shifting toward more energy-demanding fiber types, blood vessel density actually fell in newborn lambs compared to late-stage fetuses. Elevated levels of VEGF protein in newborns suggest the body is primed to expand its blood supply in the days and weeks after birth to catch up with growing muscle demands.