Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

New Breakthrough to Restore Aging Joints Could Help Treat Osteoarthritis

A study in mice by researchers from Stanford University has traced the loss of cartilage that comes with aging to a single protein, pointing to treatments that may one day restore mobility and ease discomfort in seniors.

The protein 15-PGDH has previously been extensively linked to aging: it becomes more abundant as we get older, and interferes with the molecules that repair tissue and reduce inflammation.

That led scientists to consider whether 15-PGDH might be involved in osteoarthritis, where stress on joints leads to the breakdown of collagen in cartilage, causing inflammation and pain.

Your genes determine how fast your DNA mutates with age, study shows

An analysis of genetic data from over 900,000 people shows that certain stretches of DNA, made up of short sequences repeated over and over, become longer and more unstable as we age. The study found that common genetic variants can speed up or slow down this process by up to four-fold, and that certain expanded sequences are linked to serious diseases including kidney failure and liver disease.

More than 60 inherited disorders are caused by expanded DNA repeats: repetitive genetic sequences that grow longer over time. These include devastating conditions like Huntington’s disease, myotonic dystrophy, and certain forms of ALS.

Most people carry DNA repeats that gradually expand throughout their lives, but this instability and what genetic factors control it hadn’t been fully analyzed within large biobanks.

Cochlear Implant User Affect and Reported Quality of Life

In adults receiving cochlear implants, gains in positive affect and reductions in negative affect corresponded with improvements in quality-of-life scores across listening, communication, and participation domains. Strongest statistical associations were observed in social and emotional CIQOL areas, but effect sizes were small.

Importance The use of patient-reported outcome measures to assess outcomes in adults who use cochlear implants has increased, as highlighted by the inclusion of the Cochlear Implant Quality of Life (CIQOL) instruments in the Minimal Speech Testing Battery, version 3. However, the self-reported nature of these instruments raises questions regarding how psychosocial characteristics impact responses.

Objective To assess whether affect and CIQOL domain scores change over time and whether affect is associated with CIQOL domain scores.

Design, Setting, and Participants Prospective longitudinal cohort study in adult cochlear implant candidates (aged 18–89 years) meeting indications for cochlear implantation based on bilateral moderate to profound hearing loss with aided sentence recognition scores 60% or less between September 19, 2019, and October 8, 2021, in a single tertiary otolaryngology referral center. Patients receiving a second cochlear implant and those without Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores were excluded. Follow-up duration was 1 year. Data analysis was performed between October 15, 2023, and August 5, 2025.

Discrimination of normal from slow-aging mice by plasma metabolomic and proteomic features

Tests that can predict whether a drug is likely to extend mouse lifespan could speed up the search for anti-aging drugs. We have applied a machine learning algorithm, XGBoost regression, to seek sets of plasma metabolites (n = 12,000) and peptides (n = 17,000) that can discriminate control mice from mice treated with one of five anti-aging interventions (n = 278 mice). When the model is trained on any four of these five interventions, it predicts significantly higher lifespan extension in mice exposed to the intervention which was not included in the training set. Plasma peptide data sets also succeed at this task. Models trained on drug-treated normal mice also discriminate long-lived mutant mice from their respective controls, and models trained on males can discriminate drug-treated from control females.

Abstract: Merlin’s Disappearing Act: NF2 loss conjures pancreatic cancer survival in the hostile tumor microenvironment:

Sofia Ferreira & Laura D. Attardi comment on Yi Xu et al.: https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI194395

1Division of Radiation and Cancer Biology, Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.

2Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.

Address correspondence to: Laura D. Attardi, Stanford University School of Medicine, 269 Campus Drive, CCSR-South, Room 1,255, Stanford, California, 94,305, USA. Phone: 650.725.8424; Email: [email protected].

Sweet Deception: How Mycobacteria Exploit Immune Receptors to Survive

A new study reveals that Mycobacterium tuberculosis can dodge the host’s immune defenses by targeting an innate pattern recognition receptor on macrophages.

This interaction helps promote the mycobacteria’s ability to survive within the host cells.

Read more.

A sugar on mycobacteria binds to the immune receptor dectin-1 on host macrophages, helping the bacteria survive and driving susceptibility to infection.

Prospective Audit and Feedback to Reduce Antibiotic Overuse at Hospital Discharge

Cluster RCT: A discharge-focused prospective audit and feedback intervention did not reduce overall antibiotic use at hospital discharge but improved optimal discharge prescribing for common infections; broader approaches are needed.

Question Does a discharge-focused prospective audit and feedback process decrease antibiotic overuse at hospital discharge?

Findings In this stepped-wedge cluster-randomized clinical trial across participating units at 10 hospitals with 21 842 admissions, the frequency and duration of antibiotic prescribing at hospital discharge did not decrease after implementing a prospective audit and feedback process. However, in selected patients with uncomplicated infections, optimal antibiotic-prescribing increased once the intervention went into effect.

Meaning Discharge-focused prospective audit and feedback was not effective in reducing general antibiotic overuse at hospital discharge, but it did improve antibiotic prescribing in a subset of patients, suggesting that other strategies are needed to prevent unnecessary antibiotic use at this transition of care.

/* */