Credit: Community Eye Health (Flickr)
Scientists have taken a significant step forward in their search for the origin of a progressive eye condition which causes sight loss and can lead to corneal transplant.
A new study into keratoconus by an international team of researchers, including a University of Leeds group led by Chris Inglehearn, Professor of Molecular Ophthalmology in the School of Medicine, has for the first time detected DNA variations which could provide clues as to how the disease develops.
Keratoconus causes the cornea, which is?the clear outer layer?at the front of the eye, to thin and bulge outwards into a cone shape over time, resulting in blurred vision and sometimes blindness. It usually emerges in young adulthood, often with lifelong consequences, and affects 1 in 375 people on average, though in some populations this figure is much higher.
E-Mail
IMAGE: The spatial organisation of the C. elegans brain is modular. The image shows the different brain regions that process information to direct behaviours such as navigation, avoidance and feeding. The. view more
Credit: University of Leeds
Researchers have mapped the physical organization of the brain of a microscopic soil-living nematode worm called
Caenorhabditis elegans, creating a new model for the architecture of the animal s brain and how it processes information.
In a surprise twist, they found a large degree of variation in the structure of some neural circuits or pathways in individual worms which complemented a core set of neural circuits common to different animals.
E-Mail
Dramatic changes were seen in the delivery of radiotherapy treatments for cancer during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in England.
Much shorter radiotherapy courses were delivered, treatments were delayed where it was safe to do so and some increases were seen in order to compensate for reduced surgical capacity.
Experts believe the changes reflect an impressive adaption of services by the NHS, and that the overall impact on cancer outcomes is likely to be modest.
The new research, led by the University of Leeds, with Public Health England and the Royal College of Radiologists, reveals that there was a decrease in radiotherapy treatment courses of 19.9% in April, 6.2% in May, and 11.6% in June 2020, compared with the same months the previous year.
E-Mail
IMAGE: Time series graph showing daily hospital admissions from sample hospitals in England for patients with heart attack and acute heart failure. The graph also shows key dates in the COVID-19. view more
Credit: University of Leeds
Data analysis is revealing a second sharp drop in the number of people admitted to hospital in England with acute heart failure or a heart attack.
The decline began in October as the numbers of COVID-19 infections began to surge ahead of the second lockdown, which came into force in early November.
The findings, from a research group led by the University of Leeds, have been revealed in a letter to the
E-Mail
IMAGE: Professor Sheena Radford FRS, Director of the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology, University of Leeds view more
Credit: University of Leeds
The UK s leading scientific academy - the Royal Society - has awarded one of its most prestigious research professorships to an academic at the University of Leeds, to develop new ways of seeing the unseen - the way that proteins interact to shape or to destroy memories.
The award will allow Professor Sheena Radford FRS, Director of the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology at Leeds, to focus on one of the big unanswered questions in biology - the role that a protein structure called amyloid plays in both building memories that can last for decades, but also in the devastating memory loss experienced by people with neurodegenerative diseases.