Biology & Medicine News and Discussions

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Ultrafast, on-chip PCR could speed diagnosis during pandemics
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-ultrafast ... emics.html

Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) has been the gold standard for diagnosis during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the PCR portion of the test requires bulky, expensive machines and takes about an hour to complete, making it difficult to quickly diagnose someone at a testing site. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have developed a plasmofluidic chip that can perform PCR in only about eight minutes, which could speed diagnosis during current and future pandemics.

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New technique links lithium distribution in the brain to depression
By Rich Haridy
May 24, 2021

A new technique is allowing researchers to measure endogenous lithium concentrations in the human brain for the very first time. To test the technique researchers compared lithium levels in post-mortem brain tissue between a suicidal subject and a pair of healthy controls, revealing differences that affirmed the link between lithium levels and mental health.

Alongside being a vital component of batteries, lithium is perhaps best known as a treatment for bipolar disorder. Despite lithium’s proven mood-stabilizing benefits it can quickly become toxic if administered in high doses.

Epidemiological studies have previously found local communities with high natural levels of lithium in their water supply tend to report lower rates of suicide, dementia and violent crime. This had led some scientists to suggest adding trace amounts of lithium to water supplies could improve a community’s mental health.

https://newatlas.com/science/depression ... irst-time/

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New biochip technology for pharma research

In pharmaceutical research, small tissue spheres are used as mini-organ models for reproducible tests. TU Wien has found a way to develop a reliable standard for these tissue samples.

Before drugs are tested in clinical trials, they must be tested either by animal experiments or, more recently, artificially produced tissue samples. For this purpose, cells are cultivated, and tiny spheres with a diameter of less than one millimeter are made. However, the problem is that there have been no uniform standards for these tissue samples and no reliable method for producing them with uniform size and shape. Therefore, results from different laboratories are hardly comparable with each other, as the tissue size directly influences the behavior of cells and drugs.

An invention by TU Wien can now solve this problem: A biochip has been developed that can be used to produce tissue beads in precisely the desired sizes and supply them with nutrients or even drugs through a thin channel. A patent application has already been filed for the new biochip technology.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05- ... harma.html

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Time limit on lab-grown human embryos is relaxed by experts

Wed 26 May 2021 16.00 BST

The ban on growing human embryos in the lab beyond 14 days has been relaxed by an international body of experts, paving the way for research that could help to unpick issues ranging from why recurring miscarriages occur to improving IVF.

The decades-old rule is laid down in the law in a number of countries, including the UK and Australia, and was previously stipulated in guidelines from the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR). These guidelines set out standards that are used by scientists, journals and research bodies around the world, and can also influence policymakers.

But the ISSCR has relaxed its stance, saying embryos may be cultured beyond 14 days, provided a robust, specialised review of the proposed experiments is undertaken – with the research deemed scientifically justifiable with no suitable alternatives – and there is broad public support and local regulations permit it. Specialised review is already required for research involving embryos up to 14 days.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... by-experts

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Identifying new, non-opioid based target for treating chronic pain
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05- ... -pain.html
by Medical College of Wisconsin

A non-opioid based target has been found to alleviate chronic touch pain and spontaneous pain in mice. Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) discovered that blocking transient receptor potential canonical 5 (TRPC5) activity reversed touch pain in mouse models of sickle cell disease, migraine, chemotherapy-related pain, and surgical pain.

TRPC5 is a protein that is expressed in both mouse and human neurons that send pain signals to the spinal cord. The findings were published in Science Translational Medicine. The senior and co-first authors of the manuscript, respectively, are MCW researchers Cheryl L. Stucky, Ph.D., professor, and Katelyn Sadler, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow and former MCW postdoctoral fellow Francie Moehring, Ph.D., all of the Department of Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy (CBNA) at MCW. John McCorvy, assistant professor of CBNA, as well as graduate students and staff from the Stucky and McCorvy labs were also involved. Learn more about the research and the researchers here.

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Obsessive compulsive disorder linked to increased ischemic stroke risk later in life

Thursday, May 27, 2021

Adults who have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were more than three times as likely to have an ischemic stroke later in life compared to adults who do not have OCD, according to new research published today in Stroke, a journal of the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association.

“The results of our study should encourage people with OCD to maintain a healthy lifestyle, such as quitting or not smoking, getting regular physical activity and managing a healthy weight to avoid stroke-related risk factors,” said study senior author Ya-Mei Bai, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the department of psychiatry at Taipei Veterans General Hospital and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University College of Medicine, both in Taiwan.

Worldwide, stroke is the second-leading cause of death after heart disease. Stroke is a medical emergency that occurs when blood and oxygen flow to the brain are interrupted, usually by a blood clot (ischemic stroke). Less common is stroke from a burst blood vessel that causes bleeding in the brain (hemorrhagic stroke). In both types of stroke, immediate treatment is critical to prevent brain damage, disability or death. The abbreviation F.A.S.T. can help people remember the warning signs and what to do: F-face drooping, A-arm weakness, S-speech difficulty, T-time to call 9-1-1.

OCD is a common, sometimes debilitating, mental health condition characterized by intrusive, unwanted thoughts, ideas or sensations (obsessions) that make a person feel driven to do something repetitively (compulsions). The repetitive behaviors characteristic of OCD, such as hand washing, checking on things or continuously cleaning, can significantly interfere with a person’s daily activities and social interactions. Previous research found that OCD often occurs after stroke or other brain injury. What remained unclear was whether the reverse is true: can OCD increase stroke risk?

https://newsroom.heart.org/news/obsessi ... er-in-life

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153 years after discovery of the immune system's dendritic cells, scientists uncover a new subset
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05- ... cells.html
by Delthia Ricks , Medical Xpress

Artistic rendering of the surface of a human dendritic cell illustrating sheet-like processes that fold back onto the membrane surface. Credit: National Institutes of Health (NIH)

When pathogens invade or tumor cells emerge, the immune system is alerted by danger signals that summon a key battalion of first responders, the unsung heroes of the immune system—a population of starfish-shaped sentinels called dendritic cells.

Without them, coordination of the immune response would be slower and less-well organized. Yet even in the face of such an indispensable role, it has taken until now to discover how a sub-population of these cells doesn't perish after completing their primary job in the immune system.

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Experimental treatment offers new hope against lupus
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05- ... lupus.html
by Amy Norton Healthday Reporter

An experimental antibody therapy may help ease skin symptoms from the autoimmune disease lupus, a small preliminary trial suggests.

Researchers found that a higher-dose version of the drug spurred a "clinically meaningful" symptom improvement for 87% of patients after one month.

But they also stressed that the findings are based on a small "phase 1" trial—a type of study designed primarily to gauge a treatment's safety.

The safety findings were "encouraging," and there were "some hints of clinical benefit," said lead researcher Jodi Karnell, a senior director of research at Horizon Therapeutics, the company developing the drug.

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Biologists construct a 'periodic table' for cell nuclei
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-biologist ... uclei.html
by Baylor College of Medicine

In a paper published in Science, biologists at Baylor College of Medicine, the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Rice University studying the tree of life unveil a new classification system for cell nuclei and the discovery of a method for transmuting one type of cell nucleus into another. This illustration shows the menagerie of chromosome contact patterns in the nuclei of various animals and plants. Credit: Adam Fotos, Olga Dudchenko, Benjamin Rowland and Erez Lieberman Aiden/Baylor College of Medicine

One hundred fifty years ago, Dmitri Mendeleev created the periodic table, a system for classifying atoms based on the properties of their nuclei. This week, a team of biologists studying the tree of life has unveiled a new classification system for cell nuclei and discovered a method for transmuting one type of cell nucleus into another.

The study, which appears this week in the journal Science, emerged from several once-separate efforts. One of these centered on the DNA Zoo, an international consortium spanning dozens of institutions including Baylor College of Medicine, the National Science Foundation-supported Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) at Rice University, the University of Western Australia and SeaWorld.

Scientists on the DNA Zoo team had been working together to classify how chromosomes, which can be several meters long, fold up to fit inside the nuclei of different species from across the tree of life.

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Switching off heart protein could protect against heart failure
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05- ... ilure.html
by University of Cambridge

Switching off a heart muscle protein could provide a new way for drugs to combat heart failure in people who've had a heart attack, according to research led by the University of Cambridge and published in the journal Nature.

There is an unmet need to find drugs that can successfully improve the heart's ability to pump blood efficiently after it's been damaged following a heart attack. However, many drugs that make failing heart muscle contract more strongly have been deemed unsafe, leaving a huge gap in heart attack and heart failure treatment. Scientists now believe that they might have identified a new drug target—a protein called MARK4.

In research funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), Cambridge scientists found levels of MARK4 were elevated in mouse hearts after a heart attack. When they compared mice with and without MARK4 in the heart, they found hearts without the protein were 57 percent better at pumping blood. This protective effect was seen 24 hours after a heart attack and lasted for the entire follow-up period of four weeks.

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Massive genomic study uncovers trove of variants linked to depression
By Rich Haridy
May 27, 2021

https://newatlas.com/science/global-gen ... sion-yale/
Researchers have catalogued 178 gene variants associated with major depression in one of the biggest genome-wide association studies ever conducted. The study looked at health records from several million people in the hope of developing a genetic test to detect those most at risk of depressive disorders.

Depression is a highly complex disorder with no single cause. A broad array of factors can contribute to depression from social, environmental, and psychological conditions to genetic or physiological factors.

Most recently a 2019 meta-analysis homed in on around 100 genetic variants associated with depression. It was estimated up to 40 percent of a person’s risk for major depression could be attributed to heritable genetic variants.

Now a study led by a team from Yale University has expanded that genetic library of risk factors. Health records were analyzed from 1.2 million subjects, including individuals from the US, UK and Africa. The research reports 178 genetic variants associated with major depressive disorder (MDD).

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Blood oxygen levels could explain why memory loss is an early symptom of Alzheimer's

by University of Sussex
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05- ... early.html

In a world first, scientists from the University of Sussex have recorded blood oxygen levels in the hippocampus and provided experimental proof for why the area, commonly referred to as 'the brain's memory center," is vulnerable to damage and degeneration, a precursor to Alzheimer's disease.

To understand why this region is so sensitive, the University of Sussex researchers, headed up by Dr. Catherine Hall from the School of Psychology and Sussex Neuroscience, studied brain activity and blood flow in the hippocampus of mice. The researchers then used simulations to predict that the amount of oxygen supplied to hippocampal neurons furthest from blood vessels is only just enough for the cells to keep working normally.

Dr. Catherine Hall, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Sussex says:

"These findings are an important step in the search for preventative measures and treatments for Alzheimer's, because they suggest that increasing blood flow in the hippocampus might be really effective at preventing damage from happening.

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'Good' bacteria show promise for clinical treatment of Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05- ... crohn.html
by University of North Carolina Health Care

A new study published in Nature Communications demonstrates that a consortium of bacteria designed to complement missing or underrepresented functions in the imbalanced microbiome of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients, prevented and treated chronic immune-mediated colitis in humanized mouse models. The study's senior author, Balfour Sartor, MD, Midget Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, Co-Director of the UNC Multidisciplinary IBD Center, said the results are encouraging for future use treating Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis patients.

"The idea with this treatment is to restore the normal function of the protective bacteria in the gut, targeting the source of IBD, instead of treating its symptoms with traditional immunosuppressants that can cause side effects like infections or tumors," Sartor said.

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Scientists discover a new genetic form of ALS in children
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05- ... ldren.html
by National Institutes of Health

In a study of 11 medical-mystery patients, an international team of researchers led by scientists at the National Institutes of Health and the Uniformed Services University (USU) discovered a new and unique form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Unlike most cases of ALS, the disease began attacking these patients during childhood, worsened more slowly than usual, and was linked to a gene, called SPTLC1, that is part of the body's fat production system. Preliminary results suggested that genetically silencing SPTLC1 activity would be an effective strategy for combating this type of ALS.

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Enhanced autophagy could help treat diabetes
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05- ... betes.html
by Will Doss, Northwestern University

When activated, the autophagy protein Beclin 1/Becn1 (red) is localized to adiponectin vesicles (green) in fat cells to facilitate their secretion. Credit: Northwestern University

Enhancing autophagy—the cellular process that breaks down and removes unneeded components—in fat tissue could help treat diabetes, according to a Northwestern Medicine study published in Cell Reports.

Beclin 1/Becn1, an autophagy-promoting protein, sensitized cells to insulin through a pathway involving the hormone adiponectin. Congcong He, Ph.D., assistant professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and senior author of the study, said that while certain aspects of the process require further study, this mechanism could be exploited to treat insulin resistance in diabetes.

"If there's something that mimics or enhances the function of adiponectin, that might be therapeutically effective against diabetes," said He, who is also a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.

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Vaccine protects against more HPV variants than previously known
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05- ... ously.html
by Karolinska Institutet

The human papillomavirus (HPV) can cause cancer and many countries run national vaccination programs to minimize the risk. Studies involving researchers at German Cancer Research Center, Karolinska Institutet and Tampere University now report on the longitudinal effect of common HPV vaccines. The results, which are published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases and Lancet Infectious Diseases, show lasting protection against more HPV variants than the vaccines were developed for.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a common and highly infectious sexually transmitted disease. While in most cases, the HPV infection heals on its own, it can become chronic and cause various kinds of cancer.

The HPV group comprises over 200 types of virus, thirteen of which are classified as high-risk causes of cancer. For example, HPV types 16 and 18 cause around 70 percent of all cases of cervical cancer; HPV types 6 and 11 cause benign genital warts.

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Being born preterm or low birthweight associated with lower IQ in adulthood
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05- ... thood.html
by Alice Scott, University of Warwick

The average IQ of adults who were born very preterm (VP) or at a very low birth weight (VLBW) has been compared to adults born full term by researchers from the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick. Researchers have found VP/VLBW children may require special support in their education to boost their learning throughout childhood.

Birth before 32 weeks of gestation is classed as very preterm (VP) and those born weighing less than 1500g are classed as very low birthweight (VLBW).

Research has previously found that those who were born VP or VLBW had lower cognitive performance in childhood.

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Scientists develop new method for ultra-high-throughput RNA sequencing in single cells
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-scientist ... ncing.html
by CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

RNA sequencing is a powerful technology for studying cells and diseases. In particular, single-cell RNA sequencing helps uncover the heterogeneity and diversity of our body. This is the central technology of the "Human Cell Atlas" in its quest to map all human cells. However, single-cell RNA sequencing reaches its limits in very large projects, as it is time-consuming and very expensive. To address these challenges, scientists from the research group of Christoph Bock, principal investigator at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and professor at the Medical University of Vienna, developed a new method for sequencing huge numbers of single cells in an efficient manner. The study has now been published in Nature Methods.

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Nano-encapsulation for efficient delivery in Parkinson's treatment
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-nano-enca ... tment.html
by Autonomous University of Barcelona

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder caused by the death of dopaminergic neurons in a part of the brain (known as substantia nigra pars compacta), which leads to a deficit of dopamine (DA), one of the main neurotransmitters active in the central nervous system. Symptomatic treatment focuses on increasing the concentration of dopamine into the brain.

However, dopamine is not directly administered, because it is unable to cross the so called blood-brain barrier, which prevents some of the substances circulating in the blood to penetrate into the nervous system. Thus, DA precursor levodopa (L-DOPA) –an amino-acid which participates in the synthesis of dopamine– is used, due to its better ability to cross such barrier. Nevertheless, long-term and intermittent administration of this drug is associated with important disabling complications, such as motor disorders and involuntary muscle movements.