UCL School of Life and Medical Sciences

Recent research led by UCL has identified a second major cause of ‘Startle disease’, which causes seizures in babies in response to loud noises and unexpected movements. Read: BBC News

A working party chaired by Professor Bryan Williams (UCL Cardiovascular Science) says there should be a national system for recognising very sick patients whose condition is deteriorating and who need more intensive medical or nursing care.

The first child stem cell-supported trachea transplant is functioning well two years on, according to a paper published in The Lancet today.

Practitioners of female genital cosmetic surgery should be more aware of the wide variation in appearance of female genitalia and be wary of performing surgery on women whose genital dimensions are normal, says a new review co-authored by Dr Sarah Creighton from the UCL Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health.

A paper highlighting early results from the International Carotid Stenting Study (ICSS), a UCL-led multi-centre clinical trial which compared two treatments for carotid narrowing was recently listed in the Lancet as one of their ten most cited papers in 2010-2011. Narrowing of one of the carotid arteries in the neck (stenosis), which supply blood to the brain, is one of the major causes of stroke and is usually caused by deposits of fat in the wall of the artery, known as atherosclerosis.

Researchers from UCL and Imperial College London are carrying out a neuroscience study to examine for the first time how the resting brain responds to MDMA, the pure form of the Class A drug ecstasy. The study is funded by Channel 4, and recorded footage of it will be shown on two new science programmes this autumn, ‘Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial’, alongside a live studio debate to explore issues linked with MDMA.

Dr Rumana Chowdhury, research fellow at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience writes about her experience presenting her PhD research at last month’s Human Brain Mapping Conference in Beijing, China.

 “This new evidence points the way to a completely new way of treating depression and could help explain why this disorder is often associated with a sudden change in body weight," says Dr Clare Stanford (UCL Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology). Read: PA

Founded just over 10 years ago by Professor Semir Zeki (UCL Cell & Developmental Biology), the idea of neuroaesthetics was to bring scientific objectivity to the study of art, in an attempt to find neurological bases for the techniques that artists have perfected over the years. Read: New Scientist

Drug-resistant HIV has been increasing in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa since the roll-out of antiretroviral therapy (ART) nearly a decade ago according to new research led by UCL and the World Health Organization (WHO).