Biotech/medical – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Apr 20
2025

There is just one secret to living beyond 100 years, says 101-year-old doc, and no, it is not food or managing stress

The world is full of tips and tricks on how to live longer—some say it’s about eating clean, others swear by cutting stress. But when someone who has crossed the 100-year mark speaks, the world listens. Dr John Scharffenberg, a preventive medicine specialist who lived a rich and active life into his 100s, offered a perspective that turns many popular beliefs on their head.

His message was simple, sincere, and backed by years of real-life observation. The secret, he said, isn’t food or relaxation—it’s something far more practical and often overlooked.

Apr 20
2025

Scientists Discover Previously Unknown Anatomical Structure in the Brain

The newly discovered SLYM membrane segregates clean and dirty CSF, supporting the brain’s immune defenses and glymphatic system, paving the way for targeted treatments and deeper understanding of brain diseases. The human brain, with its intricacies ranging from neural networks to fundamental bio

Apr 20
2025

Researchers Discover New Mnemomic Networks in the Brain

High-precision brain mapping reveals new memory networks, shedding light on evolution and Alzheimer’s disease. The medial temporal lobe (MTL) houses the human memory system. Broadly, it contains the hippocampus, parahippocampal cortex, perirhinal cortex, and entorhinal cortex. One big challen

Apr 20
2025

Stimulating the Entorhinal Cortex of the Brain Boosts Memory

A team of neuroscientists at the School of Medicine at UCLA have demonstrated that they can strengthen memory in human patients by stimulating the entorhinal cortex. While studying patients with electrodes implanted in their brains, the researchers used a video game to test whether deep-brain stimul

Apr 20
2025

New drug for Parkinson’s shown to be effective in clinical trials: ‘Very encouraged’

A new pill, tavapadon, has shown potential in easing Parkinson’s symptoms while limiting side effects. In patients taking at least 400 mg of levodopa daily, tavapadon helped reduce motor fluctuations.

Apr 20
2025

Listening to Music May Speed Up Recovery from Surgery

Music may have a calming effect on patients recovering from surgery – reducing anxiety, perceived pain, and heart rate.

Apr 20
2025

Does the memory of body cells influence health and weight loss?

Kidney and nerve tissue cells can form memories much like brain cells, one new study has found. Another recent study says that memories of obesity stored in fat tissue may be partly responsible for the yo-yo weight loss effect.

Apr 20
2025

Highly accurate blood test diagnoses Alzheimer’s disease, measures extent of dementia

Could help determine which patients are likely to benefit from new Alzheimer’s drugs. A newly developed blood test for Alzheimer’s disease not only aids in the diagnosis of the neurodegenerative condition but also indicates how far it has progressed, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Lund University in Sweden.

Several blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease are already clinically available, including two based on technology licensed from WashU. Such tests help doctors diagnose the disease in people with cognitive symptoms, but do not indicate the clinical stage of the disease symptoms — that is, the degree of impairment in thinking or memory due to Alzheimer’s dementia. Current Alzheimer’s therapies are most effective in early stages of the disease, so having a relatively easy and reliable way to gauge how far the disease has progressed could help doctors determine which patients are likely to benefit from drug treatment and to what extent. The new test can also provide insight on whether a person’s symptoms are likely due to Alzheimer’s versus some other cause.

The study is published March 31 in Nature Medicine.

Apr 20
2025

Vertebrobasilar Dolichoectasia Presenting With Multiple Cranial Nerve Involvement

A 70-year-old man presented to the emergency department with a painful exacerbation of right trigeminal neuralgia, managed for 5 years with carbamazepine. Clinical examination revealed binocular diplopia due to an abduction deficit in the right eye and hypoesthesia in all divisions of the right trigeminal nerve (V1, V2, V3), without clinical signs of right VII or VIII cranial nerve involvement. High-resolution 3D T2-weighted steady-state MRI (Figure) revealed vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia (VD) with deviation of the right fifth cranial nerve root, complete atrophy of the right sixth cranial nerve, and deviation of the right acoustic-facial nerve bundle.

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Although VD mainly causes ischemic stroke or brainstem compression, cranial nerve involvement is rare. Abducens nerve compression is exceptional, with 11 cases reported up to 2020,¹ and combined fifth and sixth nerve involvement even rarer (2 cases).².