Fully functional pancreatic cells have been cultured by scientists from human skin cells, potentially meaning the end of daily insulin injections for sufferers of the disease.

The lab-made cells were tested in mice and they successfully prevented the mice from developing diabetes.

The new study also presents significant advancements in cellular reprogramming technology, which will allow scientists to efficiently scale up pancreatic cell production and manufacture trillions of the target cells in a step-wise, controlled manner.

This accomplishment opens the door for disease modeling and drug screening and brings personalized cell therapy a step closer for patients with diabetes.

In the study, the scientists first used pharmaceutical and genetic molecules to reprogram skin cells into endoderm progenitor cells--early developmental cells that have already been designated to mature into one of a number of different types of organs.

The study has been published in Nature Communication.

While doctors have known for some time that psychological therapy can reduce the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome -- a gastrointestinal disorder -- in the short term, a new study has found that the benefits can extend up to one year after the completion of the therapy.

The beneficial effects of psychological therapy for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) appear to last at least six to 12 months after the therapy has concluded, the study said.

"Our study is the first one that has looked at long-term effects," said senior author Lynn Walker, professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee, US.

The study analysed the results of 41 clinical trials involving more than 2,200 patients from a number of different countries.

"We found that the moderate benefit that psychological therapies confer in the short term continue over the long term. This is significant because IBS is a chronic, intermittent condition for which there is no good medical treatment," Walker noted.

Characterised by chronic abdominal pain, discomfort, bloating, diarrhoea or constipation, IBS is classified as a disorder of the "brain-gut axis."

Although no cure is known, there are treatments to relieve symptoms including dietary adjustments, medication and psychological interventions.

"Western medicine often conceptualizes the mind as separate from the body, but IBS is a perfect example of how the two are connected," first author Kelsey Laird, doctoral student at University, pointed out.

"Gastrointestinal symptoms can increase stress and anxiety, which can increase the severity of the symptoms. This is a vicious cycle that psychological treatment can help break," Laird explained.

The studies that the researchers analysed included a number of different types of psychological therapies, including cognitive therapies, relaxation and hypnosis.

The findings showed no significant difference in the effectiveness of different types of psychotherapy.

The study was published in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

If you are suffering from a multiple sclerosis, then you must consume vitamin D3, as it can boost up your immune system.

The research undertaken by researchers of Johns Hopkins Medicine have found that taking a high dose of vitamin D3 is safe for people with multiple sclerosis as it may help regulate the body's hyperactive immune response.

Lead researcher Prof Peter Calabresi, M.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Multiple Sclerosis Center and professor neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said that the vitamin D has the potential to be an inexpensive, safe and convenient treatment for people with multiple sclerosis (MS).

He added that the Low levels of vitamin D in the blood are tied to an increased risk of developing MS. People who have MS and low levels of vitamin D are more likely to have greater disability and more disease activity.

The research concluded that the side effects from the vitamin supplements were minor and were not different between the people taking the high dose and the people taking the low dose.

The study is published in the Journal of Neurology.

In a recent study, it has been found that chronic overeating and stress are tied to an increased risk of depression and anxiety.

The researchers from Yale University report that the anesthetic ketamine reverses depression-like symptoms in rats which are fed a high-fat diet in a similar way it combats depression and synaptic damage of chronic stress in people.

Senior author Ronald Duman said that the effects of a high-fat diet overlap with those of chronic stress and could also be a contributing factor in depression as well as metabolic disorders such as Type 2 diabetes.

In the research scientists have shown that ketamine, also known as Special K and abused as a recreational drug, can quickly and dramatically reduce symptoms of chronic depression in patients, who are resistant to typical antidepressant agents.

They also found that a single low dose of ketamine reversed those symptoms quickly, and reversed the disruption of mTORC signaling pathways.

The research is published in the Journal, 'Neuropharmacology.'

Scientists have developed a new mathematical model that could predict the spread of dengue fever in urban areas and may help contain the deadly disease.

The model created by Lucas M Stolerman and Stefanella Boatto from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro offers a simplified approach to studying the spread of the dengue fever in urban areas, specifically breaking down the epidemic dynamics across a city and its varying neighbourhoods and populations.

The model is important for studying how varying neighbourhood conditions affect the spread of dengue fever and how to contain it. For example, some neighbourhoods have standing water allowing large mosquito populations to develop. Since mosquitoes fly only a few hundred metres from their birthplace, a human infected with the disease who commutes long distances could spread the disease.

The model uses a Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) approach to disease spread and the network consists of the city's neighbourhoods where local populations are assumed to be well-mixed. "The SIR-Network model can be used to predict whether local interventions - like cleaning up standing water in containers - in one or two neighbourhoods could affect the prevalence of dengue across the city," said coauthor Daniel Coombs, professor at the University of British Colombia in Canada.

"We give formulae that describe whether an epidemic is possible, in terms of human travel patterns among neighbourhoods, mosquito populations and biting rates in each neighbourhood," Coombs said. The fraction of people travelling from residential neighbourhoods to active ones are represented by directed edges in the network.

The study also presents fundamental properties of the basic reproduction number (Ro) for their specific model. Ro is the expected number of secondary cases due to a single infection.

The researchers applied the SIR-Network model to dengue fever data, which had been updated several times, including as recent as 2014, from the epidemic outbreak of 2007-2008 in various neighbourhoods of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and soon discovered several interesting features of the epidemic.

First, they needed to include a transmission rate that varied over the months of the dengue season to match the available data. The researchers predict that the transmission rate peaks 6 to 8 weeks before the peak incidence of dengue.

Secondly, they predict that the city centre, where large populations from various neighbourhoods go to work each day, is the most important neighbourhood to spreading the fever.

Ultimately, the researchers found that results were improved most when a time-infection parameter was introduced to model seasonal climate changes.

The study was published in the SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics.