Health News

Historically redlined communities face higher asthma rates

The long-term effects of redlining, which for decades was used to justify discriminatory mortgage lending practices, may be impacting the current health of affected communities, suggests new research from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco.

Anxiety ‘epidemic’ brewing on college campuses, researchers find

The number of 18- to 26-year-old students who report suffering from anxiety disorder has doubled since 2008, perhaps as a result of rising financial stress and increased time spent on digital devices, according to preliminary findings released Thursday by a team of UC Berkeley researchers.

Insulin Insights

Many aspects of insulin signaling remain unclear, particularly its long-term effects on cells, and there are currently no effective cures for the hundreds of millions of people around the world living with diabetes. Now, Professor Anders Näär and collaborators from Harvard Medical School (HMS) have made key new insights into the molecular behavior of insulin.

Discovery could help improve cystic fibrosis treatment

Researchers exploring the effects of a long-standing treatment for cystic fibrosis have discovered a potential new target for drugs to treat the disease, which has no cure and typically cuts decades off the lives of patients.

Whopping big viruses prey on human gut bacteria

Viruses plague bacteria just as viruses like influenza plague humans. Some of the largest of these so-called bacteriophages have now been found in the human gut, where they periodically devastate bacteria just as seasonal outbreaks of flu lay humans low, according to a new study led by UC Berkeley scientists.

Thanks to rapid, 3D imaging, anyone can tour the fly brain

A new fly-through of the fly brain allows anyone to whizz past neurons and visit any of the 40 million synapses where neurons touch neuron. It’s a super-resolution view of the complex network connections in the insect’s brain that underlie behaviors ranging from feeding to mating.