A comprehensive study examining clinical trials of more than 95,000 patients has found that glucose or sugar-lowering medications prescribed to patients with diabetes may pose an increased risk for the development of heart failure in these patients.

Patients who received the new drug Bendavia before undergoing angioplasty or receiving a stent to clear blocked arteries after a heart attack showed no significant reduction in scarring as compared to patients given a placebo, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session.

The annual Rethink Media conference was held yesterday at Birmingham City University to address the future of the digital landscape and the challenges facing the sector and, predictably, there was plenty of blame to go around, and assurances that the answers were simple - but as usual when panels get together to lament the future, no one was doing anything.

Schools got the brunt of the cultural shame and blame.

“Schools need to fix the fact that technology is not being made aspirational for females”, urged Talk Talk’s Head of Digital, Rahul Chakkara. “Half of the talent is being lost at school level.”

Whether you're baking bread or building an organism, the key to success is consistently adding ingredients in the correct order and in the right amounts, according to a new genetic study by University of Michigan researchers.

Using the baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Patricia Wittkopp and her colleagues developed a novel way to disentangle the effects of random genetic mutations and natural selection on the evolution of gene expression. Their findings are scheduled for online publication in the journal Nature on March 16.

When patients develop acute liver failure, severe complications arise rapidly after the first signs of liver disease, and patients' health can deteriorate rapidly. New research published in the American Journal of Transplantation indicates that emergency evaluations of living liver donors can be conducted safely to allow acute liver failure patients to undergo transplantation before their condition worsens.

Tumors acquiring resistance is one of the major barriers to successful cancer therapy. Feng Fu, Sebastian Bonhoeffer (ETH Zurich) and their collaborator Martin Nowak (Harvard) use mathematical models to characterize how important aspects of tumor microenvironment can impair the efficacy of targeted cancer therapies.

Failure of cancer therapy is commonly attributed to pre-existing resistant mutants already present prior to treatment. However, the research publishing this week in PLOS Computational Biology highlights the important role of tumor sanctuaries in the rapid acquisition of resistance.