news

It may be possible to assess the risk of developing dementia by analyzing information gathered during routine visits to the family doctor, according to research published in the open access journal BMC Medicine. Researchers from UCL have developed an algorithm that uses routinely collected data to predict a five-year risk of dementia as part of an NIHR-funded study.

The forests of Central Africa could be home to up to 920,000 Pygmies, according to researchers from UCL, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Malaga, who have conducted the first measured estimate of the population and distribution of these indigenous groups. Up until now it has not been possible to determine the numbers and actual geographic ranges of Pygmy communities, because of their location in remote forest areas, mobility, lack of census data, and imprecise and partial sources of information.

DNA has been used as a 'molecular building block' to construct synthetic bio-inspired pores which will improve the way drugs are delivered and help advance the field of synthetic biology, according to scientists from UCL and Nanion Technologies. The study, published today and funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Leverhulme Trust and UCL Chemistry, shows how DNA can be used to build stable and predictable pores that have a defined shape and charge to control which molecules can pass through the pore and when.

West Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia are most at risk from bat viruses 'spilling over' into humans resulting in new emerging diseases, according to a new global map compiled by scientists at UCL, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the University of Edinburgh. The map shows risk levels due to a variety of factors including large numbers of different bat viruses found locally, increasing population pressure, and hunting bats for bushmeat.

Two papers from UCL show that having early chemotherapy improves survival for men with prostate cancer. The papers, published in the Lancet and Lancet Oncology , report the results from the STAMPEDE clinical trial and a meta-analysis. Both papers looked at the use of a chemotherapy drug called docetaxel.

It took 100 million years for oxygen levels in the oceans and atmosphere to increase to the level that allowed the explosion of animal life on Earth about 600 million years ago, according to a UCL-led study funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. Before now it was not known how quickly Earth's oceans and atmosphere became oxygenated and if animal life expanded before or after oxygen levels rose.

How disposable Lithium batteries degrade during normal use has been tracked in real-time by a UCL-led team using sophisticated 3D imaging, giving a new way to non-invasively monitor performance loss and guide the development of more effective commercial battery designs. The team recently used the same technique to show how rechargeable Lithium-ion batteries fail when they are exposed to extreme levels of heat, but this is the first time the extent of day-to-day damage of disposable Lithium batteries has been shown.

Contrary to popular belief, the oral health of US citizens is not better than the English, finds a study in the Christmas issue of The BMJ. In addition, the research suggests there are consistently wider educational and income inequalities in oral health in the US compared with England. There is a popular belief in the US, dating back over a century, that the English have terrible teeth, much worse than Americans.

Reducing toddlers' portion sizes or number of eating occasions could potentially help to target weight gain in later life according to new research from UCL. It is the first study to look at how the appetitive traits of 'food responsiveness' (the urge to eat in response to the sight or smell of appetising food) and 'satiety responsiveness' (sensitivity to internal 'fullness' signals') relate to the eating behaviours of toddlers in an everyday context.

New results from the world's biggest ovarian cancer screening trial led by UCL suggest that screening based on an annual blood test may help reduce the number of women dying from the disease by around 20%. The research, published today (Thursday) in the Lancet , also cautions that longer follow up is needed to establish more certain estimates of how many deaths from ovarian cancer could be prevented by screening.

People vary according to different personality traits, such as extraversion or conscientiousness, and new UCL research suggests that they also vary according to a particular cognitive trait: distractibility. The findings are published in Psychological Science , a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The study was set up to test ways of narrowing the gap in uptake between rich and poor. The results highlight just how wide this gap currently is, and also provide the first published national figures on bowel screening uptake since the scheme was fully rolled out in 2010. Four randomised controlled trials were conducted across the whole of England to see if uptake could be increased, particularly among the most disadvantaged members of society, by making cheap, simple and easy-to-implement changes to the screening invitation letters and information materials.

A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle physics and quantum physics is provably unsolvable, according to scientists at UCL, Universidad Complutense de Madrid - ICMAT and Technische Universität München. The findings show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.

A new test for detecting multiple explosives simultaneously has been developed by UCL scientists. The proof-of-concept sensor is designed to quickly identify and quantify five commonly used explosives in solution to help track toxic contamination in waste water and improve the safety of public spaces.

Concentrating attention on a visual task can render you momentarily 'deaf' to sounds at normal levels, reports a new UCL study funded by the Wellcome Trust. The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggests that the senses of hearing and vision share a limited neural resource. Brain scans from 13 volunteers found that when they were engaged in a demanding visual task, the brain response to sound was significantly reduced.

People born with a rare genetic mutation are unable to feel pain, but previous attempts to recreate this effect with drugs have had surprisingly little success. Using mice modified to carry the same mutation, UCL researchers funded by the MRC and Wellcome Trust have now discovered the recipe for painlessness.

A new study from UCL and King's College London has revealed that 7.5 per cent of adults in a South London sample could be diagnosed as having an eating disorder. The clinical criteria surrounding eating disorders recently changed with the introduction of the fifth and latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5), the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals across the world.

Drinking caffeinated drinks and using social media 30 minutes before bedtime is significantly reducing sleep quantity in teenagers and negatively affecting their school performance, according to new research from UCL Institute of Education (IOE)'s Lifespan Learning and Sleep Laboratory. The role of environmental factors on sleep patterns and school performance in adolescents  written by Dr Dagmara Dimitriou, Dr Frances Le Cornu Knight and Patrick Milton shows that the total sleep and bedtimes of teenagers on weekdays are strongly associated with poorer academic achievement at school.

Dementia patients from more affluent areas in England are 27% more likely to be prescribed anti-dementia drugs than patients from poorer areas, finds a new UCL study of 77,045 dementia patients across the UK. This inequality was not seen in Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales. The new research, published in Age and Ageing , also found that compared to English practices, anti-dementia drugs were prescribed more often in Northern Ireland and Scotland but less often in Wales.

Researchers at UCL have revealed that a change in sense of humour could be an early sign of dementia. The findings could help improve dementia diagnosis, by highlighting changes not commonly thought to be linked to the condition. The research team was particularly interested in how sense of humour can change in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer's disease.