Meredith Knight
Gut bacteria easy scapegoat to explain diseases, but connections hard to prove
Blamed simultaneously for obesity, diabetes, bowel disease and even Alzheimer’s the colonies of bacteria that live in our gut get ...
Precision medicine revolution hits cost and tech barriers
Tailoring medicine to our personal DNA once promised revolutionary treatments and near miracle cures, but at the intersection of health, ...
Too good to be true: Skepticism necessary when media hype genetic, medical ‘breakthroughs’
Media coverage of genetic ‘breakthroughs’ creates hope for treatments that often never make it out of clinical trials. Complicated genetic ...
Buy your telomere testing kit here! Evidence based or psuedo-science?
Companies are soon to release at-home telomere testing for consumers who want to track their cellular age. But the science ...
Have a rare disease? Fund your own clinical trial
With research funding cuts on the rise and clinical trial spots running short, people are finding new ways to support ...
DNA testing fetus leads moms to their own cancer diagnoses
Moms undergoing genetic testing for fetal health sometimes learn they have cancer. Advances in fetal DNA testing are paving the ...
Gene therapy dilemma: Would you tweak your child’s genes if it might prolong life but leave her deaf?
New gene therapies can bring collateral consequences--solving one heath problem but creating another. Patients, healthcare providers and insurance companies are ...
Why are scientists vilified when they profit from their innovations?
A critic of biotech has pointedly identified the number of companies a researcher has founded to underscore what he claims ...
Drugs from where?! Female genitals may be source of uniquely effective antibiotic
Despite the yuck factor, bacteria that colonize our bodies are proving to be an effective source of medical treatments including ...
Too much and too little: Delicate balance of knowing risk and treating disease
One woman seeks out her genetic risk for familial breast cancer and finds she has a potentially lethal mutation for ...
Personal genomics and gene editing revolutions beg for global regulatory rethink
The scientific impact of personalized genome editing is easy to imagine: Designer babies, lab grown meat and the end of ...
Couples can protect children from devastating mutations with new IVF methods
IVF clinics are moving beyond chromosome counting to offer families a more in-depth genetic analysis of embryos before implantation. This ...
Human obesity and livestock growth: Are antibiotics the link?
Patients often request and use antibiotics thinking they have no long-term effects of the medications. But work on the human ...
Cost benefits of cancer screenings get political in the UK
Cancer screening have helped save many of lives, but have shifted the demographics of who gets the disease. Should we ...
Rationalizing health risks difficult, especially when emotions in play
From Ebola to breast cancer screenings, people have a difficult time understanding where their health risks truly lie. Our emotional ...
Is increase in ADHD an artifact of our modern educational system?
One in ten American children will be treated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD at some point in their ...
Should have asked Hamlet: Study finding Danish genes foster happiness needs some work
Why a study alleging Danes are happiest and French most grumpy because of their respective gene pool is not worth ...
Designer babies: You can screen for cystic fibrosis but intelligence is a ways off
Using a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, it’s possible to screen embryos for disease and sex before they are implanted ...
Mars bars for brain health? Not so fast
A widely publicized study showed that a component in chocolate may have protective anti-aging effects for the brain. But based ...
Genetic technologies offer long and short term views of Ebola dangers
High yield genetic sequencers, cell phones and paper-based diagnostics are all being employed to develop a cohesive picture of the ...
Gluten-free fad food choice, rarely medically dictated
Millions of people have lately adopted a gluten-free diet by self-diagnosing with gluten sensitivities in spite of the fact there ...
Addiction can be measured by epigenetics
Both alcohol and cocaine dependence are regulated by epigenetic changes in the brain that begin with abuse. Matched with the ...
Women carry fetal DNA long after children’s birth
Women and their offspring exchange small amounts of DNA during pregnancy. Those fetal DNA signatures can last a lifetime in ...
Closer examination of risk factors for Latinos underscores cultural diversity
Investigations into the genetics of disease in Latino populations are yielding interesting patterns of risk and protection from disease. The ...
Sperm mislabeling causes consternation for all-white family with mixed race child
Sperm is a product, but not a well-regulated one. After receiving donor sperm from an African American donor, a Caucasian ...
Media overhypes stem cell breakthrough for Type 1 diabetes
As the Harvard Stem Cell Institute announced it's cured diabetes in mice with stem cells reprogrammed to produce insulin, the ...
Can’t start the day without a cup of Joe? Zest for coffee linked to genes
The number of cups of coffee you have in a day is informed by your genetics as a combination of ...
Tall Genes: Thousands found responsible for height differences
There are more 600 of spots on the genome responsible for about a fifth of the variation in human height ...