Children who are diagnosed with diabetes before the age of seven develop a more aggressive form of the disease than that seen in teenagers, new research has revealed.
A team led by the University of Exeter Medical School has found for the first time that, while children aged six or under are left with very few insulin-producing beta cells in their pancreas when diagnosed, those with onset of symptomatic type 1 diabetes as teenagers still retain large numbers of these cells. The discovery could lead to new approaches for treatment of the disease.
The spread of a disease that is decimating global bee populations is manmade, and driven by European honeybee populations, new research has concluded.
A study led by the University of Exeter and UC Berkeley and published in the journal Science found that the European honeybee Apis mellifera is overwhelmingly the source of cases of the Deformed Wing Virus infecting hives worldwide. The finding suggests that the pandemic is manmade rather than naturally occurring, with human trade and transportation of bees for crop pollination driving the spread.
Britain’s rocky coastline is being reshaped and eroded by the increasingly common extreme weather, University of Exeter researchers have found.
Rock coasts erode quickly and are more vulnerable to stormy weather than previously thought, a new study shows.
According to the first data collected on how they behaved before, during and after a storm large boulders can shift daily. It is hoped the research will allow erosion risk and sediment supplied from rocky coasts to be more accurately measured in future.
The data also shows that rock coasts have the potential to...
People across the South West are being urged to show their support for World Cancer Day today (February 4) as Cancer Research UK releases new figures revealing that cancer death rates in the region have fallen by 9 per cent over the last 10 years.
The charity is encouraging everyone in the region to wear a Unity Band or make a donation to demonstrate their support for people affected by cancer.
The Unity Band is made of two parts, knotted together, to represent strength in unity. They are available for a suggested donation of £2 from all Cancer Research UK shops and at www....
A leading behavioural ecologist from the University of Exeter has become the 1,000th researcher to receive a national fellowship for her pioneering research contributions in the field of social evolution and animal behaviour.
Dr Lauren Brent has received a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship to support her research on social dynamics and the evolution of cooperation in animal societies.
Her proposed research will examine the exchange of cooperative behaviours between free-living rhesus macaque monkeys with the aim of uncovering the systems that allow the persistence of...
A new clinical imaging method developed in collaboration with a University of Exeter academic may enable doctors to tackle one of the main killers of patients with weakened immune systems sooner and more effectively.
The spores of the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus are tiny, everywhere in the air and breathed in by humans every day.
They do not usually cause a problem for healthy people as their immune systems kill the spores before they can grow and infect the body. But in patients with an immune system weakened by leukaemia or bone marrow transplantation, the fungus faces...
New research has revealed how disease-associated changes in two interlinked networks within the brain may play a key role in the development of the symptoms of dementia.
The University of Exeter Medical School led two studies, each of which moves us a step closer to understanding the onset of dementia, and potentially to paving the way for future therapies. Both studies, part-funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK, are published in the Journal of Neuroscience and involved collaboration with the University of Bristol.
Both studies shed light on how two parts of the brain’s ‘GPS’...
In January, the most depressing month of the year, researchers are urging people to take up free therapy courses in a bid to help them find a definitive answer to what works best in online treatment for depression.
It has long been known that online cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) can be effective in treating depression – but scientists do not know which aspects work best. Now researchers at the University of Exeter are using Blue Monday, which has been labelled the most depressing day of the year, to raise awareness of a trial which will provide free online CBT for people with...
Female burying beetles are more attracted to small partners because they are less likely to get into fights, a study by researchers at the University of Exeter has found.
The research published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology found that while small male beetles were more successful at attracting female mates to the breeding ground of an animal carcass than larger males, they didn’t make better parents.
In the first study of its kind carried out in the wild, researchers tested whether individual male burying beetles -- known for being exceptionally good parents in the...
The University of Exeter and the Centre for the Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences (Cefas) are leading on a £1.97M BBSRC-Newton Fund project to develop and apply new molecular biology techniques to reduce the impact of major diseases in aquaculture for the improvement of the livelihood of small-scale farmers in India, Bangladesh and Malawi.
Aquaculture contributes significantly to global food security and poverty reduction. In Bangladesh and India the shrimp fishing industry sustains the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of poor people. Fish farming too is...
