Biology & Medicine News and Discussions

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As flu rages, U.S. releases medicine from national stockpile
Source: CNBC/AP

The Biden administration said Wednesday it will release doses of prescription flu medicine from the Strategic National Stockpile to states as flu-sickened patients continue to flock to hospitals and doctors’ offices around the country. This year’s flu season has hit hard and early. Some people are even noticing bare shelves at pharmacies and grocery stores when they make a run for over-the-counter medicines as cases have spiked.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the flu has resulted in 150,000 hospitalizations and 9,300 deaths so far this season. “Jurisdictions will be able to get the support they need to keep Americans healthy as flu cases rise this winter,” Dawn O’Connell, an assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the CDC, said in a statement.

States will be able to request doses of the prescription flu medication Tamiflu kept in the Strategic National Stockpile from HHS. The administration is not releasing how many doses will be made available. Last week, HHS also announced it would allow states to dip into statewide stockpiles for Tamiflu, making millions of treatment courses available. Tamiflu can be prescribed to treat flu in people over the age of 2 weeks old.

This flu season is coming on the heels of a nasty spike of RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, cases in children and just as Covid-19 cases are climbing — again. Spot shortages of over-the-counter pain relievers and medicines have been reported at stores around the country, particularly for children.
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/21/as-flu- ... kpile.html
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Ultrafast and ultra-sensitive protein detection method allows for early disease diagnoses
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-ultrafast ... early.html
by Osaka Metropolitan University

Protein detection based on antigen–antibody reactions is vital in early diagnosis of a wide range of diseases. How to effectively detect proteins, however, has frequently bedeviled researchers. Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have discovered a new principle underlying light-induced acceleration of the antigen–antibody reaction, allowing for simple, ultrafast, and highly sensitive detection of proteins. Their findings were published in Communications Biology.

"The antigen–antibody reaction is a biochemical reaction that plays a crucial role in immunity, the body's defense function," explained lead researcher Professor Takuya Iida, Director of the Research Institute for Light-induced Acceleration System at Osaka Metropolitan University. Methods to analyze trace amounts of proteins based on the antigen–antibody reaction enable diagnosis at an early stage of many diseases, including cancer, dementia, and microbial infections. However, such methods either have limited sensitivity or require complex and time-consuming processing to allow antigen–antibody reactions to occur.

Aiming to accelerate antigen–antibody reactions, the researchers introduced target proteins and probe particles, with modified antibodies that selectively bind to the target proteins, into a channel that is as narrow as a human hair or artery and then applied irradiation with infrared laser light for 3 minutes, making it possible to carry out detection at a sensitivity approximately 100 times higher than that of conventional protein testing.

The researchers achieved, for the first time, the rapid measurement of trace amounts of target proteins on the order of tens of attograms (ag = 10-18 g; one quintillionth of a gram) after only 3 minutes of laser irradiation.

The study results demonstrate that rapid and highly sensitive detection can be achieved by condensing proteins through the simple operation of confining them in a small space and irradiating them with a laser to accelerate the reaction. These findings will facilitate the detection of disease-related substances from a small amount of body fluids, such as a single drop of blood, and will assist in the discovery of novel disease markers, potentially leading to breakthroughs in the development of systems for ultra-early diagnosis of various diseases.
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Immunologists uncover obesity-linked trigger to severe form of liver disease
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12- ... evere.html
by UT Southwestern Medical Center
UT Southwestern immunologists have uncovered a key pathogenic event prompted by obesity that can trigger severe forms of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and potential liver failure. The finding, published in Immunity, could pave the way for developing therapies to treat nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

The team led by Zhenyu Zhong, Ph.D., and Shuang Liang, Ph.D., Assistant Professors of Immunology, revealed that persistent obesity can damage a macrophage receptor, called TREM2, thereby disabling a critical function that otherwise keeps liver inflammation in check. The imbalance then fuels chronic liver inflammation to enable NASH development.

NASH is an aggressive form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)—a spectrum of chronic liver disorders that start out as benign fatty liver but can progress into more advanced disease stages including NASH, cirrhosis and even hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the dominant form of primary liver cancer. The underlying molecular mechanisms that cause fatty liver disease to progress to NASH and beyond have eluded researchers, creating significant hurdles to developing effective therapies.

Bridging this knowledge gap, Drs. Zhong and Liang discovered that dietary obesity upregulates TREM2 expression in the liver-infiltrating macrophages—a critical population of immune cells responsible for removing lipid-damaged hepatocytes.

"The clearance of these damaged cells by macrophages (a process also referred to as efferocytosis) is key to maintaining liver immune silence in the fatty liver to prevent chronic inflammation and NASH," Dr. Liang said.
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Hepatitis C to be eliminated by 2025 thanks to new drugs and national campaign, NHS says
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/1 ... -campaign/
‘Find and treat’ campaign and cheaper drugs has UK on target to be one of first to eradicate the liver disease
By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor 28 December 2022 • 6:00am

Hepatitis C will be eradicated in England by 2025, the NHS believes, following the successful roll-out of antiviral drugs, and programmes to find those unknowingly infected.

In 2019, NHS England signed a five-year contract with pharmaceutical companies to supply cheaper drugs to thousands, and ‘find and treat’ lost patients, such as homeless people and those with mental health problems.

It also launched an NHS screening programme in September to search health records and identify people at risk, such as those who had historic blood transfusions or those with HIV.

Since the launch of the scheme, deaths from Hepatitis C - including liver disease and cancer - have fallen by 35 per cent, while 70,000 people who were unaware they had the virus, have been found and cured.

The number of people seeking liver transplants due to the virus is also down by two-thirds and the number of annual registrations for a liver transplant has reduced from over 140 per year to less than 50 per year in 2020.
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Lab-grown retinal eye cells make successful connections, open door for clinical trials to treat blindness
January 4, 2023 By Chris Barncard
David Gamm’s laboratory developed a way to grow organoids that resemble the retina. UW–Madison

Retinal cells grown from stem cells can reach out and connect with neighbors, according to a new study, completing a “handshake” that may show the cells are ready for trials in humans with degenerative eye disorders.

Over a decade ago, researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison developed a way to grow organized clusters of cells, called organoids, that resemble the retina, the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. They coaxed human skin cells reprogrammed to act as stem cells to develop into layers of several types of retinal cells that sense light and ultimately transmit what we see to the brain.

“We wanted to use the cells from those organoids as replacement parts for the same types of cells that have been lost in the course of retinal diseases,” says David Gamm, the UW–Madison ophthalmology professor and director of the McPherson Eye Research Institute whose lab developed the organoids. “But after being grown in a laboratory dish for months as compact clusters, the question remained — will the cells behave appropriately after we tease them apart? Because that is key to introducing them into a patient’s eye.”
https://phys.org/news/2023-01-smallpox- ... ptian.html
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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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raklian wrote: Sun Jan 22, 2023 6:04 am

[The Last of Us - spoiler warning]
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Head injury is associated with doubled mortality rate long-term, Penn study finds

23 Jan 2023

Adults who suffered any head injury during a 30-year study period had two times the rate of mortality than those who did not have any head injury, and mortality rates among those with moderate or severe head injuries were nearly three times higher, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, published today in JAMA Neurology.

In the United States, over 23 million adults age 40 or older report a history of head injury with loss of consciousness. Head injury can be attributed to a number of causes, from motor vehicle crashes, unintentional falls, or sports injuries. What’s more, head injury has been linked with a number of long-term health conditions, including disability, late-onset epilepsy, dementia, and stroke.

Studies have previously shown increased short-term mortality associated with head injuries primarily among hospitalized patients. This longitudinal study evaluated 30 years of data from over 13,000 community-dwelling participants (those not hospitalized or living in nursing home facilities) to determine if head injury has an impact on mortality rates in adults over the long term. Investigators found that 18.4 percent of the participants reported one or more head injuries during the study period, and of those who suffered a head injury, 12.4 percent were recorded as moderate or severe. The median period of time between a head injury and death was 4.7 years.

Death from all causes was recorded in 64.6 percent of those individuals who suffered a head injury, and in 54.6 percent of those without any head injury. Accounting for participant characteristics, investigators found that the mortality rate from all-causes among participants with a head injury was 2.21 times the mortality rate among those with no head injury. Further, the mortality rate among those with more severe head injuries was 2.87 times the mortality rate among those with no head injury.

“Our data reveals that head injury is associated with increased mortality rates even long-term. This is particularly the case for individuals with multiple or severe head injuries,” explained the study’s lead author, Holly Elser, MD, PhD, MPH a Neurology resident at Penn. “This highlights the importance of safety measures, like wearing helmets and seatbelts, to prevent head injuries.”

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/977437
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FDA to ease blood donation ban on gay men, allow monogamous to give
Source: Washington Post
Gay and bisexual men in monogamous relationships will no longer be forced to abstain from sex to donate blood under federal guidelines to be proposed in coming days, ending a vestige of the earliest days of the AIDS crisis.

The planned relaxation of restrictions by the Food and Drug Administration follows years of pressure by blood banks, the American Medical Association and LGBT rights organizations to abandon rules some experts say are outdated, homophobic and ineffective at keeping the nation’s blood supply safe.

The new approach eliminates rules that target men who have sex with men and instead focuses on sexual behaviors by people, regardless of gender, that pose a higher risk of contracting and transmitting HIV, according to an official with direct knowledge of the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment. The FDA is expected to adopt the proposal after a period of public comment. Other countries including Canada and the United Kingdom have made similar changes in recent years.

For decades, gay men said they were made to feel like pariahs as they were barred from performing a widely lauded act of community service, sidelined from joining friends and family giving blood after national disasters. The rigidity of the FDA rules — making no exceptions for those who are in monogamous relationships — made some feel as though they could not be trusted or are viewed as disease vectors, no matter what steps they take to protect their health.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... ation-ban/
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