Biology & Medicine News and Discussions

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More than 1 million dropped from Medicaid as states start post-pandemic purge of rolls
Source: ABC News/AP

More than 1 million people have been dropped from Medicaid in the past couple months as some states moved swiftly to halt health care coverage following the end of the coronavirus pandemic. Most got dropped for not filling out paperwork.

Though the eligibility review is required by the federal government, President’s Joe Biden’s administration isn’t too pleased at how efficiently some other states are accomplishing the task. “Pushing through things and rushing it will lead to eligible people — kids and families — losing coverage for some period of time,” Daniel Tsai, a top federal Medicaid official recently told reporters.

Already, about 1.5 million people have been removed from Medicaid in more than two dozen states that started the process in April or May, according to publicly available reports and data obtained by The Associated Press.

Florida has dropped several hundred thousand people, by far the most among states. The drop rate also has been particularly high in other states. For people whose cases were decided in May, around half or more got dropped in Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia. By its own count, Arkansas has dropped more than 140,000 people from Medicaid.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory ... -100186720

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Study reports drug that significantly reduces bacteria's ability to develop antibiotic resistance
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-06- ... iotic.html
by Baylor College of Medicine

A team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine is gaining ground in their search for solutions to the global problem of bacterial antibiotic resistance, which was responsible for nearly 1.3 million deaths in 2019.

The team reports in the journal Science Advances a drug that, in laboratory cultures and animal models, significantly reduces the ability of bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance, which might prolong antibiotic effectiveness. The drug, called dequalinium chloride (DEQ), is a proof-of-concept for evolution-slowing drugs.

"Most people with bacterial infections get better after completing antibiotic treatment, but there are also many cases in which people decline because the bacteria develop resistance to the antibiotic, which then can no longer kill the bacteria," said corresponding author Dr. Susan M. Rosenberg, Ben F. Love Chair in Cancer Research and professor of molecular and human genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor. She also is a program leader in Baylor's Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center (DLDCCC).

In this study, Rosenberg and her colleagues looked for drugs that could prevent or slow down E. coli bacteria from developing resistance to two antibiotics when exposed to a third antibiotic, ciprofloxacin (cipro), the second most prescribed antibiotic in the U.S. and one associated with high bacterial resistance rates.

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Crocodiles are protected against fungal infections

Over the millions of years crocodiles and their relatives have roamed our planet, they have evolved robust immune systems to help combat the potentially harmful microbes in the swamps and waterways they call home.

Our study, recently published in Nature Communications, takes a closer look at antimicrobial proteins called defensins, found in saltwater crocodiles. These proteins play a key role in the reptiles’ first line of defence against infectious disease.

As the threat of antibiotic-resistant microbes grows, so does our need for new and effective treatments. Could the defensins of these beasts hold the answers to help create a new wave of life-saving therapeutics?

Defensins are small proteins produced by all plants and animals. In plants, defensins are usually made in the flowers and leaves, whereas animal defensins are made by white blood cells and in mucous membranes (for example in the lungs and intestines). Their role is to protect the host by killing infectious organisms.

Research into the defensins of different plant and animal species has found they can target a broad range of disease-causing pathogens. These include bacteria, fungi, viruses and even cancer cells.

https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/article ... infections

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Scientists Just Developed Artificial Cells That Evolve Faster Than Natural Ones
by Miriam Fauzia
July 5, 2023

Introduction:

(Inverse) The Book of Life — a.k.a. the genome — is pretty darn long. Whether we’re talking about bacteria like Escherichia coli with 4.6 million base pairs or the Australian lungfish punching in at a cool 43 billion base pairs (14 times larger than the human genome), the number of genetic instructions determines the characteristics and function of a living organism.

But do genomes have to be so long? Nature is known to program redundancy to help an organism cope with environmental stress or to offset harmful mutations. What if you stripped down a genome to its barest essential genes — what would happen? Turns out, life would still find a way to survive and thrive, even evolve despite being dealt less than a full hand of genetic cards.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, an Indiana University and J. Craig Venter Institute-led team created a “minimal cell” from a bacterium called Mycoplasma mycoides, containing only about 493 genes, the smallest genome of any known free-living organism. These minimal cells were able to evolve and grow in number, regaining genetic fitness lost when downsizing their genomes.

“It appears there’s something about life that’s really robust,” Jay T. Lennon, the paper’s senior author and a professor of biology at Indiana University Bloomington, said in a press release. “We can simplify it down to just the bare essentials, but that doesn’t stop evolution from going to work.”

Mycoplasma mycoides is a bacterium behind contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, or “lung sickness,” that lives in the guts of ruminants like cows and goats. In 2016, J. Craig Venter Institute researchers pared down M. mycoides’s genome from 901 genes to 493 genes, creating a new synthetic strain of the bacterium dubbed JCVI-syn3B.

Read more of the Inverse article here: https://www.inverse.com/science/cells- ... -evolvve

For the rather technical presentation of study results as published in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06288-x

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US maternal deaths more than doubled over two decades, study estimates

The number of people in the US dying of pregnancy-related causes more than doubled over two decades, with Black, Native American, and Alaska Native people facing the highest risks, according to a new study in JAMA.

The US has the highest rate of maternal deaths compared to other high-income countries, despite spending far more on health care—both on a per-person and share of gross domestic product basis. And, while US maternal deaths have long been high, they've only gotten higher while other high-income countries have seen declines.

Still, digging into US maternal mortality data to understand the trend is difficult. States define maternal deaths differently, some have been slow to add a standard pregnancy-related question on death certificates, and some delay the release of their data.

In the new JAMA study, researchers tried to make up for those differences by modeling state-level trends in maternal mortality using national data, looking specifically at death rates by race and ethnicity for each year between 1999 and 2019. The research was led by Gregory Roth at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/07/ ... estimates/

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A breakthrough on treating PTSD

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... al-health/

All around the conference room in Atlanta last fall, jaws were dropping. Michael Roy, a physician from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, had just revealed to the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies the preliminary results of a study comparing two treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder: Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy, long regarded as the “gold standard,” and a novel approach called Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories or RTM.

In such a study, effectiveness is indicated by a complete remission of symptoms, a loss of diagnosis. Roy’s trial was ongoing and still double-blinded, so he could report only the outcomes of the two treatments combined. But the success rate was a stunning 60 percent. Every expert present knew that PE’s known remission rate hovers at 30 to 40 percent, so the 60 percent combined figure could only mean only one thing: The new RTM treatment was tracking dramatically higher.

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FDA has approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill,

WASHINGTON (AP) — FDA has approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill, a long-awaited milestone that will expand access for U.S. women and girls.

The US Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the birth control pill Opill to be available over-the-counter — the first nonprescription birth control pill in the United States.

“Today’s approval marks the first time a nonprescription daily oral contraceptive will be an available option for millions of people in the United States,” said Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, the director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in a statement. “When used as directed, daily oral contraception is safe and is expected to be more effective than currently available nonprescription contraceptive methods in preventing unintended pregnancy.”

Opill is a “mini-pill” that uses only the hormone progestin.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/health/f ... the%20Unit

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New target for antibiotics promises treatment for multi-drug resistant superbugs
https://phys.org/news/2023-07-antibioti ... rbugs.html
by University of Groningen

The World Health Organization lists bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics as one of the top 10 global health threats. Therefore, researchers are looking for new antibiotics to counter this resistance. Adéla Melcrová, biophysicist at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), and her colleagues have discovered that the relatively new antibiotic AMC-109 affects the cell membrane of bacteria by disordering its organization. This differs from most other antibiotics and could open up new directions for future treatment and drug development. The team's results were published in Nature Communications on 7 July.

AMC-109, developed at the UiT Arctic University of Norway, has shown promising results in the lab as well as in clinical trials against the notoriously difficult-to-treat methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). It will be tested on humans soon (phase 3 of clinical trials). However, it was not known exactly how AMC-109 works on bacteria.

"I found it surprising that no one knew exactly how it worked," says Melcrová. "So, I decided to have a look at it."