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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,200

Vision impairment in older adults tied to symptoms of depression, anxiety and social isolation: JAMA

USA: A cross-sectional study comprising 2,822 US adults revealed that worse examination-based and self-reported vision impairment is associated with anxiety and depressive symptoms, and worse examination-based vision impairment is linked with severe social isolation.

These findings, published in JAMA Ophthalmology, provide evidence to support prioritizing research aimed at enhancing the health and inclusion of people with vision impairment.

Vision impairment and psychosocial function, including symptoms of anxiety, depression and social isolation, are a major cause of morbidity in the US. However, there is a lack of nationally representative studies evaluating associations between subjective and objective vision impairment with psychosocial function following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Genetics of Epilepsy

Our knowledge of the role of genetics in epilepsy is rapidly expanding, and this is enhancing epilepsy diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. Julie Ziobro, MD, PhD is a pediatric epileptologist and research scientist at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. She and genetic counselor, Mallory Wagner, MS, LCGC, discuss some basic principles of genetics, currently available genetic tests, examples of genetic epilepsies, and how genetic test results can impact treatment decisions and prognosis. They also explore the role of genetics in developing precision therapies for epilepsy.

What You Can Do Now to Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease

Experts from Michigan Medicine answer questions about brain health and how to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Learn more about the Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Center at University of Michigan Health: https://alzheimers.med.umich.edu/

Chapters.

Intro: 00:00:00

Dementia vs. Alzheimer’s: 00:02:50

How does dementia differ from general memory concerns? 00:04:50.

Continue reading “What You Can Do Now to Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease” | >

Chemotherapy method uses patient’s own cells as trojan horse to direct cancer-killing drugs to tumors

Lung cancer is not the most common form of cancer, but it is by far among the deadliest. Despite treatments such as surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, only about a quarter of all people with the disease will live more than five years after diagnosis, and lung cancer kills more than 1.8 million people worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organization.

To improve the odds for patients with lung cancer, researchers from The University of Texas at Arlington and UT Southwestern Medical Center have pioneered a novel approach to deliver cancer-killing drugs directly into cancer cells.

“Our method uses the patient’s own cellular material as a to transport a targeted drug payload directly to the cells,” said Kytai T. Nguyen, lead author of a new study on the technique in the journal Bioactive Materials and the Alfred R. and Janet H. Potvin Distinguished Professor in Bioengineering at UTA.

Exceptional Nuclease Resistance of DNA and RNA with the Addition of Small-Molecule Nucleobase Mimics

Nucleases present a formidable barrier to the application of nucleic acids in biology, significantly reducing the lifetime of nucleic acid-based drugs. Here, we develop a novel methodology to protect DNA and RNA from nucleases by reconfiguring their supramolecular structure through the addition of a nucleobase mimic, cyanuric acid. In the presence of cyanuric acid, polyadenine strands assemble into triple helical fibers known as the polyA/CA motif. We report that this motif is exceptionally resistant to nucleases, with the constituent strands surviving for up to 1 month in the presence of serum. The conferred stability extends to adjacent non-polyA sequences, albeit with diminishing returns relative to their polyA sections due to hypothesized steric clashes. We introduce a strategy to regenerate stability through the introduction of free polyA strands or positively charged amino side chains, enhancing the stability of sequences of varied lengths. The proposed protection mechanism involves enzyme failure to recognize the unnatural polyA/CA motif, coupled with the motif’s propensity to form long, bundling supramolecular fibers. The methodology provides a fundamentally new mechanism to protect nucleic acids from degradation using a supramolecular approach and increases lifetime in serum to days, weeks, or months.

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