Microbes across Earth’s coldest regions are becoming more active as glaciers, permafrost and sea ice thaw, accelerating carbon release and potentially amplifying climate change, according to a new international review from McGill University. 

Lithium, a widely used treatment for bipolar disorder and other mood disorders, has shown early promise in suppressing HIV, McGill University researchers report.

A new study published in iScience found lithium can prevent infected cells from reactivating, and that it does so through an unexpected biological mechanism.

The findings point toward future treatments designed to mimic lithium’s beneficial effects while avoiding its broader impacts on the body.

An interdisciplinary team including researchers at McGill University has found a range of unexpected chemical contaminants in human milk samples from Canada and South Africa. The chemicals include traces of pesticides, antimicrobials and additives used in plastics and personal-care products. The findings were published across five papers.

Gamma irradiation, an industry-standard sterilization method for medicinal and recreational cannabis, does not fully eliminate toxic fungi or their chemical residues, a McGill University study has found. Current testing practices may also miss contamination, raising concerns about health risks for vulnerable users, particularly those with weakened immune systems. 

Researchers who examined Canadian child welfare data found that Black children were not only investigated at a higher rate than their white peers but were also more likely to be taken from their homes, even when the only difference between cases was the child’s race.

A McGill University research team has developed a painless, automated way to deliver in vitro fertilization (IVF) hormones using a light-activated microneedle patch, an innovation that could ease one of the most stressful parts of fertility treatment and open new possibilities for other diseases that require frequent, time-sensitive injections.

IVF patients must inject themselves with hormones daily at specific times in the weeks leading up to egg retrieval, a process that can be physically and emotionally taxing.

Researchers in McGill’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and at Drexel University have developed an innovative manufacturing technique that makes female mosquito proboscides, or feeding tubes, into high-resolution 3D-printing nozzles. With its unique geometry, structure and mechanics, the proboscis enables printed line widths as fine as 20 microns, or a little smaller than a white blood cell. This is roughly twice as fine as what commercially available print