Biotech/medical – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Mar 18
2019

A Restorative Skin Cream May Reduce Inflammaging

The skin is our first line of defense against invading pathogens, and scientists at UC San Francisco and the San Francisco Veterans Administration (VA) Health Care System believe that it may be a cause of inflammaging, the age-related chronic inflammation that encourages a number of age-related diseases to develop.

As we age, we generally experience a rise in this low-grade chronic inflammation, thus increasing our risk for developing a variety of age-related diseases. There are a number of proposed sources of inflammaging, including senescent cell accumulation, cell debris, immunosenescence, and increasing bacterial burden.

In a previous article, we talked about the potential role of bacterial burden in relation to the microbiota of the gut and the age-related failure of the gut membrane, which allows bacterial contamination to invade the body and increase bacterial burden and inflammation. The gut microbiota has been proposed to be an origin point of inflammaging, and researchers suggest that the skin could be another.

Mar 18
2019

Our brains may ripple before remembering

As many labs have established, Dr. Zaghloul’s team knew that our episodic memories are controlled by neurons in at least two different parts of the brain, but they did not know exactly how the cells worked together to retrieve memories. Based on a growing of body of evidence, they suspected that the short, high frequency electrical waves seen in ripples may somehow be involved. For instance, two earlier patient studies suggested that ripples may be important for solidifying memories during sleep.

A sound, a smell, a word can all flood our minds with memories of past experiences. In a study of epilepsy patients, researchers at the National Institutes of Health found that split seconds before we recall these events tiny electrical waves, called ripples, may flow through key parts of our brains that help store our memories, setting the stage for successful retrieval.

“We showed for the first time that ripples may be the neural substrates through which the human brain successfully recalls memories,” said Kareem Zaghloul, M.D., Ph.D., a neurosurgeon-researcher at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and senior author of the study published in Science. “These results help us understand how the brain processes the details of our past waking experiences or episodic memories.”

The study was led by Alex P. Vaz, B.S., an M.D., Ph.D. student at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, who was completing his dissertation work with Dr. Zaghloul. For years, Dr. Zaghloul’s team has been using grids of surgically implanted electrodes to record the electrical brain activity of drug resistant epilepsy patients enrolled in a trial at the NIH’s Clinical Center. The recordings have helped identify the source of a patient’s epileptic seizures as well as provide an opportunity to study how the brain encodes memories.

Mar 18
2019

Humans could regrow limbs as scientists uncover a ‘DNA switch’

It is decades away but a team in Germany did use a regenerative method on an amputees finger stumps with positive results in 2003.

Scientists from Harvard University in Massachusetts have discovered a ‘DNA switch’ that we could use to grow back parts of our bodies like animals who can regenerate, like jellyfish.

Mar 17
2019

Amazon removes books that promoted an autism ‘cure’

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon has removed books from its website that promoted “cures” for autism, the latest major company to try to limit the amount of misinformation related to autism and the bogus notion that it’s caused by vaccines.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention says there is no cure for autism spectrum disorder, only medications that can help some function better. It also says there is no link between vaccines and autism.

An Amazon.com Inc. spokeswoman confirmed the books were no longer available, but did not answer any additional questions.

Mar 17
2019

Spaceflight found to reactivate dormant viruses in astronauts

There are certainly a whole host of technological hurdles to overcome before humans successfully travel to Mars, or beyond, but research is also pointing to a growing assortment of fundamental health challenges that astronauts may face from long stretches of time in space. A recent NASA-funded study has found dormant viruses can reactivate in the human body during spaceflight, presenting yet another physiological problem for scientists to solve before we journey out into deep space.

Mar 16
2019

Germline gene-editing research needs rules

In the wake of CRISPR babies, there is an urgent need to better regulate and debate whether, when and how related research should be done.

Mar 16
2019

Ebola Epidemic in Congo Could Last Another Year, C.D.C. Director Warns

Returning from a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the agency chief also worried that vaccine supplies could run out.

Mar 16
2019

Study highlights danger of vitamin B12 deficiency

Using roundworms, one of Earth’s simplest animals, Rice University bioscientists have found the first direct link between a diet with too little vitamin B12 and an increased risk of infection by two potentially deadly pathogens.

Despite their simplicity, 1-millimeter-long nematodes called Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) share an important limitation with humans: They cannot make B12 and must get all they need from their diet. In a study published today in PLOS Genetics, researchers from the lab of Rice biochemist and cancer researcher Natasha Kirienko describe how a B12-deficient diet harms C. elegans’ health at a cellular level, reducing the worms’ ability to metabolize branched-chain amino acids (BCAA). The research showed that the reduced ability to break down BCAAs led to a toxic buildup of partially metabolized BCAA byproducts that damaged mitochondrial health.

Researchers studied the health of two populations of worms, one with a diet sufficient in B12 and another that got too little B12 from its diet. Like the second population of worms, at least 10 percent of U.S. adults get too little B12 in their diet, a risk that increases with age.

Mar 16
2019

Pancreatic cancer: Two-hit treatment approach shows promise

Autophagy inhibitors could be more potent against pancreatic cancer by first applying a drug that makes the cancer cells dependent on autophagy for energy.

Mar 16
2019

Paralyzed Patients Can Now Control Android Tablets With Their Minds

Signals from the electrical cacophony within groups of neurons inside the motor cortex were passed on to a computer running custom software for decoding.