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A brain pressure disorder that especially affects women, causing severe headaches and sometimes permanent sight loss, has risen six-fold in 15 years, and is linked to obesity and deprivation, a new study by Swansea University researchers has shown.
Rates of emergency hospital admissions in Wales for people with the disorder were also five times higher than for those without.
The condition is called idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH). It causes increased pressure in the fluid surrounding in the brain. This can lead to severely disabling headaches as well as vision loss, which can be permanent.
The research team, from Swansea University Medical School, used anonymised health records of Welsh patients held in the SAIL databank, a national healthcare database managed by the University. They analysed 35 million patient years of data from 2003 to 2017. They identified 1,765 people with IIH during that time, 85% of whom were women.
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Scientists have created a highly detailed map of skin, which reveals that cellular processes from development are re-activated in cells from patients with inflammatory skin disease. The researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Newcastle University and Kings College London, discovered that skin from eczema and psoriasis patients share many of the same molecular pathways as developing skin cells. This offers potential new drug targets for treating these painful skin diseases.
Published on 22nd January in
Science, the study also provides a completely new understanding of inflammatory disease, opening up new avenues for research on other inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.
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IMAGE: Time series graph showing daily hospital admissions from sample hospitals in England for patients with heart attack and acute heart failure. The graph also shows key dates in the COVID-19. view more
Credit: University of Leeds
Data analysis is revealing a second sharp drop in the number of people admitted to hospital in England with acute heart failure or a heart attack.
The decline began in October as the numbers of COVID-19 infections began to surge ahead of the second lockdown, which came into force in early November.
The findings, from a research group led by the University of Leeds, have been revealed in a letter to the
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IMAGE: Professor Sheena Radford FRS, Director of the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology, University of Leeds view more
Credit: University of Leeds
The UK s leading scientific academy - the Royal Society - has awarded one of its most prestigious research professorships to an academic at the University of Leeds, to develop new ways of seeing the unseen - the way that proteins interact to shape or to destroy memories.
The award will allow Professor Sheena Radford FRS, Director of the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology at Leeds, to focus on one of the big unanswered questions in biology - the role that a protein structure called amyloid plays in both building memories that can last for decades, but also in the devastating memory loss experienced by people with neurodegenerative diseases.
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Over 500 solar panels are being installed on the roof of one of the University of Huddersfield s largest buildings as part of a major carbon reduction scheme across the institution, in response to the climate emergency. The work is part of the University s 10 Point Plan towards achieving Carbon Neutral status for Scope 1 and 2 by 2030. Scope 1 emissions are those from sources directly owned or controlled by the University, while Scope 2 are those generated by use of energy bought from a utility provider.
The photovoltaic (PV) panels will be positioned on top of the Technology Building, the first phase of a planned investment of £1m in measures to reduce carbon emissions on the campus. The Plan was developed in conjunction with staff and students, and adopted by the University s Council in 2020. For further information see the IDTechEx report on Energy Harvesting Microwatt to Gigawatt: Opportunities 2020-2040.