Victims of gunshots and stabbings are significantly less likely to die if they’re taken to the trauma center by a private vehicle than ground emergency medical services (EMS), according to results of a new analysis.

Opening up a new pathway to fight cancer, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found a way to target an enzyme that is crucial to tumor growth while also blocking the mechanism that has made past attempts to target that enzyme resistant to treatment. Researchers were able to use this finding to develop a drug that successfully inhibits tumor growth of melanoma as well as pancreatic and colorectal cancer in mice. The journal Cancer Discovery published the findings online this month.

People who handle paper receipts regularly may be at increased risk for exposure to a chemical linked to breast and prostate cancers, according to new UAlberta research.

“We found that people who handled receipts printed on thermal paper containing the chemical had it lingering in their body for a week or more,” said Jiaying Liu, a PhD candidate in UAlberta’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology.

Teenagers who try e-cigarettes double their risk for smoking tobacco cigarettes, according to a new study.

The study — from the University of Waterloo and the Wake Forest School of Medicine — found that students in grades seven to 12 who had tried an e-cigarette are 2.16 times more likely to be susceptible to cigarette smoking.

Workers who were likely exposed to dispersants while cleaning up the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill experienced a range of health symptoms including cough and wheeze, and skin and eye irritation, according to scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The study appeared online Sept. 15 in Environmental Health Perspectives and is the first research to examine dispersant-related health symptoms in humans.

Children exposed to high indoor levels of pet or pest allergens during infancy have a lower risk of developing asthma by 7 years of age, new research supported by the National Institutes of Health reveals. The findings, published September 19 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, may provide clues for the design of strategies to prevent asthma from developing.

Scientists have uncovered two related cytokines and associated genetic markers that may explain why some people develop progressive multiple sclerosis, or MS. The study, led by researchers at OHSU in Portland, Oregon, and Yale University, point the way toward developing the first-ever treatment to prevent progressive forms of the disease.

Scientists have helped provide a way to better understand how to enable drugs to enter the brain and how cancer cells make it past the blood brain barrier.

Mountain climbers and endurance athletes are not the only ones to benefit from altitude training – that is, learning to perform well under low-oxygen conditions. It turns out that cancer-fighting cells of the immune system can also improve their performance through a cellular version of such a regimen. In a study published in Cell Reports, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have shown that immune system’s killer T cells destroy cancerous tumors much more effectively after being starved for oxygen.

Tapping into the public’s passion for the ocean environment could be the key to reducing the threats posed to it by plastic pollution, a new report suggests.