Lifeboat Foundation

Nature asked researchers and other stakeholders what hurdles remain before heritable gene editing could become acceptable as a clinical tool. Although some scientific challenges are probably surmountable, approval on a grand scale is likely to require changes to how clinical trials are run, as well as a broader consensus about the technology.

Efforts to make heritable changes to the human genome are fraught with uncertainty. Here’s what it would take to make the technique safe and acceptable.

CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Clinic has joined other top hospitals in North America and can now offer in utero surgery. The hospital announced Wednesday that after more than a year of preparations they have successfully completed Northern Ohio’s first ever surgery on a fetus inside the uterus to repair spina bifida.

“The operation on the fetus in the uterus, I’m directing and in charge of, and the guidance of where we should open the uterus, the exposure of the baby,” said Dr. Darrell Cass, Director of Fetal Surgery in the Cleveland Clinic’s Fetal Center.

Cass and a team of more than a dozen other specialists including pediatric neurosurgeons, a fetal cardiologist and pediatric anesthesiologists performed the surgery on a nearly 23-week fetus with the birth defect spina bifida in February.

I had a little more invested in BCI.

Brain-machine interface—once the stuff of science fiction novels—is coming to a computer near you. The only question is: How soon? While the technology is in its infancy, it is already helping people with spinal cord injuries. Our authors examine its potential to be the ultimate game changer for any number of neurodegenerative diseases, as well as behavior, learning, and memory.

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16112028 The aim of this study was to identify risk factors, individually and in combination, and their impact on reaching up to 90 years of age. The 738 oldest men who participated in the first survey of the population-based Tromsø Study (Tromsø 1) in Norway in 1974 have now had the chance to reach the age of 90 years. The men were also invited to subsequent surveys (Tromsø 2–7, 1979–2016) and have been followed up for all-cause deaths. This study sought to investigate what could be learned from how these men have fared. The men were born in 1925–1928 and similar health-related data from questionnaires, physical examination, and blood samples are available for all surveys. Survival curves over various variable strata were applied to evaluate the impact of individual risk factors and combinations of risk factors on all-cause deaths. At the end of 2018, 118 (16.0%) of the men had reached 90 years of age. Smoking in 1974 was the strongest single risk factor associated with survival, with observed percentages of men reaching 90 years being 26.3, 25.7, and 10.8 for never, former, and current smokers, respectively. Significant effects on survival were also found for physical inactivity, low income, being unmarried, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. For men with 0–4 of these risk factors, the percentages reaching 90 years were 33.3, 24.9, 12.4, 14.4, and 1.5, respectively. Quitting smoking and increasing physical activity before 55 years of age improved survival significantly. Men should refrain from smoking and increase their physical activity, especially those with low income, those who are unmarried, and those with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. A limitation is that data on women not were collected; Quitting smoking and increasing physical activity before 55 years of age improved survival significantly.

I’m Dr Janni Lloyd. My interest in health formally began in 1973 when I commenced my medical degree at the University of Western Australia. I spent many years in General Practice with a special interest in the psychological and emotional aspects of health maintenance and disease creation. In 1994 I moved into Holistic / Alternative / Complementary health. In 1992 I began studying Healthy Longevity / Indefinite Life Extension and the philosophy of Physical Immortality from many different perspectives – spirituality/theology, holistic health, psychology, medical science and quantum physics.

The following essay/article combines many of these different viewpoints.

HEALTHY LIFE EXTENSION / PHYSICAL IMMORTALITY – THE MASS POSSIBILITY

In a new study, Yale researchers offer insight into leptin, a hormone that plays a key role in appetite, overeating, and obesity. Their findings advance knowledge about leptin and weight gain, and also suggest a potential strategy for developing future weight-loss treatments, they said.

The study, led by investigators at Yale and Harvard, was published the week of June 17, 2019, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Leptin, which is secreted by fat cells, informs the brain when fuel stored in body fat and in the liver is becoming depleted. It has not been well understood how low leptin concentrations in plasma — the largest component of blood — increase appetite. The researchers studied the biology of leptin in rodents. They also investigated the influence of nerve cells in the brain known as AgRP neurons, which regulate eating behavior.

Collaborate toward positive futures: https://www.existentialhope.com/

What causes the immune system, designed to protect us, to turn on the body and attack healthy cells? Common bacteria that reside in the human gut may be partly to blame, say Yale researchers, who studied the origins of a serious autoimmune disease that frequently affects young women.

For their study, the research team focused on cells from patients with antiphospholipid syndrome, an immune system disorder that raises the risk of blood clots. This chronic condition can lead to lung clots, strokes, heart attacks, and in pregnant women, miscarriages or still births.

Using patient immune cells and antibodies, as well as animal models of the disease, the investigators did several experiments to explore the phenomenon. They found that a common gut bacterium, Roseburia intestinalis, can trigger the disease in individuals who have a genetic predisposition. In those patients, the immune system’s defender T and B cells react to a blood protein involved in clotting, and also to the bacteria, in certain amino acids found in the bacteria. Over time, this ongoing “cross-reactive” response leads to tissue damage and chronic disease.