Inserm Newsroom - Press room of the French national institute of health and medical research

Space and Health In the presence of the President of France, CNES and Inserm sign a framework agreement at the Elysée Palace

CNES and Inserm, respectively the institution in charge of proposing and implementing French space policy and the leading biomedical research organisation in Europe, have decided to expand their cooperation in the area of space and health. For the first time, they have signed a framework agreement that will cover the advances in basic research made possible by studying the human being in space, as well as the applications of findings from space research in matters of health.

Saturday 10 September 2016: World Suicide Prevention Day

Suicide causes more than 800,000 deaths every year according to estimates by the World Health Organisation, i.e. one death every 40 seconds. It affects all age categories, and spares no region of the world.

Saturday 10 September 2016: World Suicide Prevention Day

Suicide causes more than 800,000 deaths every year according to estimates by the World Health Organisation, i.e. one death every 40 seconds. It affects all age categories, and spares no region of the world. To find out more about suicide mortality data for France, you may contact Grégoire Rey, director of CépiDc-Inserm (Epidemiological Center on […]

Biological Engineering: Marine Vessels

Researchers are aiming to produce flexible and malleable substitute materials to replace defective small blood vessels. The team led by Didier Letourneur, in Inserm Unit 1148, took inspiration from the composition of algae when designing polysaccharide-based vessels. Read the whole article in Science & Santé magazine issue no. 31 (April/May 2016) These synthetic vessels have […]

Rare genetic obesity: promising results from a clinical trial

  POMC (proopiomelanocortin) deficiency obesity is an orphan disease which has been described in 50 patients to date, although it is estimated to affect 100–500 people worldwide. Although there is currently no specific treatment, a publication in NEJM reports promising results from a phase 2 clinical trial that led to considerable weight loss in female […]

Caffeine and its analogues revert memory deficits by normalizing stress responses in the brain

A study published in the journal Scientific Reports from Nature publishing group, describes the mechanism by which caffeine counteracts age-related cognitive deficits in animals.

The study coordinated by Portuguese researchers from Instituto de Medicina Molecular (iMM Lisboa) and collaborators from Inserm in Lille, France, along with teams from Germany and United States, showed that the abnormalexpression of a particular receptor – the adenosine A2A, target for caffeine – in the brain of rats induces an aging-like profile namely memory impairments linked to the loss of stress controlling mechanisms.

Artificial retinas: promising leads towards clearer vision

A major therapeutic challenge, the retinal prostheses that have been under development during the past ten years can enable some blind subjects to perceive light signals, but the image thus restored is still far from being clear. By comparing in rodents the activity of the visual cortex generated artificially by implants against that produced by “natural sight”, scientists from CNRS, CEA, Inserm, AP-HM and Aix-Marseille Université identified two factors that limit the resolution of prostheses. Based on these findings, they were able to improve the precision of prosthetic activation. These multidisciplinary efforts, published on 23 August 2016 in eLife, thus open the way towards further advances in retinal prostheses that will enhance the quality of life of implanted patients.

The 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio

The world’s finest athletes will meet at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro to try to win Olympic medals, thus testing their bodies to the limit.

The 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio

The world’s finest athletes will meet at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro to try to win Olympic medals, thus testing their bodies to the limit. What are the risks for the top athletes? What methods would enable them to optimise their physical abilities? What lines of prevention can be developed? How […]

Unconscious processing operates under conscious influence

In a study published in the new international scientific journal Neuroscience of Consciousness, Benjamin Rohaut, Inserm researcher, and Lionel Naccache, leader of the team “Picnic lab: Physiological Investigation of Clinically Normal and Impaired Cognition,” both of whom are also clinicians attached to the Neurology Department at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, AP-HP, provide proof that unconscious semantic processing of a word exists, but that it is subject to very strong conscious influences. The work was conducted in collaboration with their colleagues at the Brain and Spine Institute – AP-HP/CNRS/Inserm/UPMC and the Laboratory of Cognitive Psychology (CNRS/AMU).