Numerous light-related technological innovations were presented at the Onlylight trade fair, which took place in Lyon from June 13 to 15. This year a number of public health issues were discussed, including "illuminating for health", how to implement "good light habits", and how to "illuminate for learning without risking myopia".
Major prenatal stress reduces the lifespan of adult offspring by over 2 years. Inserm researchers have obtained these results by studying a cohort of children born between 1914 and 1916, some of whom lost their father in combat before they were even born. Stress suffered by the mother seems to weaken the fetus, at a developmental stage characterized by a high level of plasticity. These results were published in...
Teams from the AP-HP Paris public hospitals network, in collaboration with researchers from the Brain & Spine Institute (ICM) (Inserm/CNRS/UPMC), and Metafora biosystems, a start-up with links to the CNRS, have recently developed a diagnostic blood test for a rare but treatable condition called De Vivo disease. It was tested on 30 patients with the disease, which causes neurological deficits such as epilepsy and movement disorders. Compared with current diagnostic tests...
A study conducted by Inserm researchers at the Research Institute for Environmental and Occupational Health (Irset)[1] has shown that natural selection has "purged" our bodies of many of the traces of our ancient Neanderthal and Denisovan cousins in the genes responsible for the genetic mixing essential to reproduction. The researchers have shown that the genes expressed during meiosis in the cells that produce gametes (reproductive cells) are strongly deficient...
N-acetylcysteine (Mucomyst®, Exomuc®, Fluimucyl®) is commonly used as a treatment for clearing mucus from the airways, but researchers from Inserm Unit 1237, “Physiopathology and Imaging of Neurological Disorders” (Inserm/ UNICAEN), led by Denis Vivien, have shown that it is also capable of unblocking arteries obstructed by a blood clot. This study, coordinated by Maxime Gauberti and Sara Martinez de Lizarrondo, opens the way to a new treatment strategy in...
With exam time looming, a certain number of students with intense workloads are succumbing to the use of stimulants to boost their intellectual capacities. Classified as psychotropics, stimulants are medicinal doping agents that boost the brain's function by increasing its capacity for alertness and performance. A study by Inserm published in April 2016 showed that one third of the 1,700 medical students questioned were taking stimulants. Among them, 29.7%...
Multidisciplinary teams from the AP-HP Paris public hospitals network (SAMU75 emergency response dispatch centers and Hôpital européen Georges-Pompidou), as well as from Inserm, the Université Paris-Descartes, and the Paris BSPP medical emergency service, compared, in the French capital, two strategies of extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) used in patients suffering refractory cardiac arrest (defined as lack of return of spontaneous circulation after 30 minutes of resuscitation). The results of this study,...
JUMODA, a prospective study sponsored by the Paris public hospitals (AP-HP) and conducted between 2014 and 2015 by teams of researchers and clinicians from Inserm, Université Paris Descartes and AP-HP, has shed new light on the mode of delivering twins. According to the coordinators of JUMODA ("MOde D’Accouchement des JUmeaux"), Professors Thomas Schmitz and François Goffinet, vaginal delivery is associated with decreased neonatal morbidity and mortality rates for both...
After 6 months of life in space as part of the Proxima mission, French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet will land on Friday, June 2, 2017, in the middle of the afternoon (4:08 p.m. Paris time), aboard the Soyuz capsule which is expected to touch down in the Kazakhstani steppes.