Author:  Dana Lowry

A recent study from Stanford University suggests that defective mitochondrial clearance may provide the crucial link between genetically and sporadically caused Parkinson’s cases. The researchers have shown that mutations in different genes related to mitochondrial clearance among individuals may cause different ‘types’ of Parkinson’s disease. According to Xinna Wang and her colleagues at Stanford, the Miro protein connects these outlying cases.

Author:  Joshua Smith-Sreen

The recent Ebola epidemic killed more than 11,000 people and infected more than 28,000 between 2014 and 2016. The outbreak began in the early spring of 2014, when a new variant of the Ebola virus emerged in Guinea and rapidly spread throughout West Africa. This crisis prompted an immediate response from the scientific community to try to develop an effective therapy for the diversity of symptoms, from fever and weakness to bleeding from the eyes, which characterize the viral disease.  Fortunately, a drug was recently found to have the potential to treat the Ebola Virus Disease, according to findings from the clinical trial PREVAIL II in the New England Journal of Medicine on October 13.