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Studies Yield ‘Impressive’ Results in Fight Against Cystic Fibrosis

A pair of new studies report “impressive” benefits from a drug therapy for cystic fibrosis, a deadly and devastating disease that affects tens of thousands of people worldwide, the director of the National Institutes of Health wrote in an editorial published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday.

“These findings indicate that it may soon be possible to offer safe and effective molecularly targeted therapies to 90 percent of persons with cystic fibrosis,” wrote the director, Dr. Francis S. Collins, who led the team that in 1989 identified the gene that causes the genetic disease affecting the lungs and digestive system.

“This should be a cause for major celebration,” he wrote in the Thursday editorial.

Sound waves: A noninvasive way to attack prostate cancer

Prostate cancer runs in Jeff Nelson’s family. His brother, uncle and cousins have all been diagnosed with the disease. When his prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test results jumped to 5.5 from 4 in summer 2018, he knew he had to move quickly.


Jeff Nelson chose UCI Health and an investigative treatment for prostate cancer that uses high-intensity sound waves to destroy only the cancer tissue. He’s glad he did.

The rise of ‘psychobiotics’? ‘Poop pills’ and probiotics could be game changers for mental illness

The calls started pouring in soon after word spread that Dr. Valerie Taylor was testing fecal microbiota transplantation — transferring poop from one body to another — for bipolar disorder.

The mental health condition is different from depression. It comes with mania, the “up” swings that can make people feel superhuman. “But so many people with depression called wanting to take part in the study we felt we had an obligation to try,” said Taylor, chief of psychiatry at the University of Calgary.

Two years after spearheading the bipolar study, the first of its kind in the world, Taylor has now launched a second study testing fecal transplants in people with depression, as well as a third for depression in people who also have irritable bowel syndrome.

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