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Category: biotech/medical – Page 277

What connection does nicotine and cannabis use have on mental health stressors, including anxiety, depression, and discrimination, for young adults? This is what a recent study published in Addictive Behaviors hopes to address as a team of researchers led by Indiana University investigated how increased use of nicotine and cannabis in young adults also comes at a time when mental health stressors are also on the rise with them, as well. This study holds the potential to help researchers, medical professionals, and the public better understand the link between nicotine and cannabis use and mental health, especially with the legalization of recreational cannabis becoming more prevalent across the United States.

For the study, the researchers conducted a survey between 2019 and 2021 consisting of 2,478 young adults from Los Angeles between 18 to 29 years old with the following demographics: 57 percent Hispanic, 19 percent Asian, 15 percent White, 4 percent Black, and 3 percent as Multiracial. The participants were instructed to provide their mental health symptoms status (anxiety and depressions) and social stressors (discrimination), along with how much they use cannabis or nicotine, including vaping.

In the end, the researchers found a correlation between nicotine and cannabis use, along with some dual use, with higher rates of depression and anxiety with Hispanic young adults, with both Hispanic and Asian young adults having increased use of nicotine and cannabis correlating with higher rates of discrimination. For Black young adults, the researchers found increased use of nicotine products with higher anxiety while finding the opposite occurred for higher rates of depression and discrimination.

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Playing through the greenery and litter of a mini forest’s undergrowth for just one month may be enough to change a child’s immune system, according to an experiment in Finland.

When daycare workers rolled out a lawn, planted forest undergrowth (such as dwarf heather and blueberries), and allowed children to care for crops in planter boxes, the diversity of microbes in the guts and on the skin of the young kids appeared healthier in a very short space of time.

Compared to other city kids who play in standard urban daycares with yards of pavement, tile, and gravel, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds at these greened-up daycare centers in Finland showed increased T-cells and other important immune markers in their blood within 28 days.

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MIT researchers have developed an alternative approach that uses ultrasound instead of electricity to perform deep brain stimulation, delivered by a fiber about the thickness of a human hair.

Deep brain stimulation, by implanted electrodes that deliver electrical pulses to the brain, is often used to treat Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders. However, the electrodes used for this treatment can eventually corrode and accumulate scar tissue, requiring them to be removed.

MIT researchers have now developed an alternative approach that uses ultrasound instead of electricity to perform deep brain stimulation, delivered by a fiber about the thickness of a human hair. In a study of mice, they showed that this stimulation can trigger neurons to release dopamine, in a part of the brain that is often targeted in patients with Parkinson’s disease.

“By using ultrasonography, we can create a new way of stimulating neurons to fire in the deep brain,” says Canan Dagdeviren, an associate professor in the MIT Media Lab and the senior author of the new study. “This device is thinner than a hair fiber, so there will be negligible tissue damage, and it is easy for us to navigate this device in the deep brain.”

Continue reading “Ultrasound offers a new way to perform deep brain stimulation” | >

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed an executive order to make cutting-edge gene and cell therapies more affordable and accessible. The order’s primary focus is on treatments for sickle cell disease, a condition that disproportionately affects Black Americans.

Addressing Cost Barriers to Innovation

The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) will spearhead efforts to develop new payment models for these transformative but expensive treatments. A newly formed Advisory Council will recommend creating sustainable financing structures, emphasizing models that reward positive health outcomes.

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In a study appearing in Nature, an international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, reconstructed the evolutionary history and global spread of malaria over the past 5,500 years, identifying trade, warfare, and colonialism as major catalysts for its dispersal.

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The CRISPR-Cas9 system has revolutionised gene-editing, but cutting DNA isn’t all it can do. From turning gene expression on and off to fluorescently tagging particular sequences, this animation explores some of the exciting possibilities of CRISPR.

Download a poster on ‘The expanding CRISPR toolbox’ here: https://www.nature.com/posters/crispr…

Produced with support from Dharmacon: https://www.dharmacon.com.

Nature has full responsibility for all editorial content, including Nature Video content. This content is editorially independent of sponsors.

Continue reading “CRISPR: Gene editing and beyond” | >

Diagnosing dementia early gives us more time to put precautions in place and to study exactly how the condition progresses – and a new method for predicting conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease is promising up to nine years of advance warning.

The method, developed by a team from the Queen Mary University of London in the UK and Monash University in Australia, involves a neurobiological model that analyzes brain scans captured by functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI.

In tests, the model was more than 80 percent accurate at predicting the development of dementia. That has huge potential in terms of early diagnosis, and it also addresses another challenge: the large number of people with dementia who don’t get diagnosed at all.

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