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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,576

Alzheimer’s: Excessive alcohol consumption may accelerate progression

Nima Majlesi, director of Medical Toxicology at Staten Island University Hospital, also not part of the research, said the new study is “fascinating, and the more research that can be done on neurodegenerative diseases such as [Alzheimer’s disease], the more answers that can then be obtained for the betterment of everyone’s health.”

“There has never been any doubt that excessive alcohol use and recurrent intoxication [are] unhealthy in the medical community. There has occasionally been some doubt on whether a small amount of alcohol use daily can have health benefits. Even in patients not at risk for [Alzheimer’s disease], excessive alcohol use and recurrent intoxication [have] many detrimental effects on human health.” — Dr. Nima Majlesi

However, Dr. Majlesi cautioned that “in this study, they exposed mice to ethanol vapors, which is not the typical route for human consumption.”

New Research Shows HIV Can Lie Dormant in the Brain

Scientists from the HIV Cure Center at the UNC School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, Emory University, and University of Pennsylvania have been searching for where exactly these latent cells are hiding in the body. New research published in the Journal of Clinical Investigations confirms that microglial cells – which are specialized immune cells with a decade-long lifespan in the brain – can serve as a stable viral reservoir for latent HIV.

Yuyang Tang, PhD, and Guochun Jiang, PhD, in the UNC School of Medicine extracted living brain tissue to conclude that specialized immune cells in the brain can harbor latent but replication-competent HIV.

As a part of its life cycle, the human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV) inserts a copy of its DNA into human immune cells. Some of these newly infected immune cells can then transition into a dormant, latent state for a long period of time, which is referred to as HIV latency.

Although current therapies, such current antiretroviral therapy (ART), can successfully block the virus from replicating further, it cannot eradicate latent HIV. If treatment is ever discontinued, the virus can rebound from latency and reignite the progression of HIV infection to AIDS.

Robot-assisted deep brain stimulation surgery could treat epilepsy

Three of these procedures have thus far been undertaken in Canada.

A neurosurgeon in Canada has become the first in the nation to perform robot-assisted deep brain stimulation surgery on a patient suffering from epilepsy with success.

This is according to a report by CTV News published on Wednesday.

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Smart drugs fall short as cognitive function enhancers

Background

Many everyday tasks can fall under the mathematical class of “hard” problems. Typically, these problems belong to the complexity class of nondeterministic polynomial (NP) hard. These tasks require systematic approaches (algorithms) for optimal outcomes. In the case of significant complex problems (e.g., the number of ways to fix a product or the number of stops to be made on a delivery trip), more computations are required, which rapidly outgrows cognitive capacities.

A recent Science Advances study investigated the effectiveness of three popular smart drugs, namely, modafinil (MOD), methylphenidate (MPH), and dextroamphetamine (DEX), against the difficulty of real-life daily tasks, i.e., the 0–1 knapsack optimization problem (“knapsack task”). A knapsack task is basically a combinatorial optimization task, the class of NP-time challenging problems.

Scientists create human embryos without egg or sperm

This week, during The Global Stem Cell Event in Boston, Mass., scientists revealed that they have created a synthetic human embryo without an egg or sperm.

It isn’t clear yet whether these embryos could eventually mature into living, breathing, humans. However, their mere existence is “groundbreaking,” according to The Guardian, the first outlet to report on the discovery.

Details of this research has not yet been published.

Machine learning algorithm identifies 3 natural anti-aging chemicals

Researchers have used a machine learning model to identify three compounds that could combat aging. They say their approach could be an effective way of identifying new drugs, especially for complex diseases.

Cell division is necessary for our body to grow and for tissues to renew themselves. Cellular senescence describes the phenomenon where cells permanently stop dividing but remain in the body, causing tissue damage and aging across body organs and systems.

Ordinarily, senescent cells are cleared from the body by our immune system. But, as we age, our immune system is less effective at clearing out these cells and their number increases. An increase in senescent cells has been associated with diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and the hallmarks of aging such as worsening eyesight and reduced mobility. Given the potentially deleterious effects on the body, there has been a push to develop effective senolytics, compounds that clear out senescent cells.

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