Difficulty swallowing (dysphagia) affects your quality of life and your health. The ability to safely swallow is vital for adequate nutrition and hydration, and it prevents foods and liquids from entering your lungs, where they can cause pneumonia.
Category: health – Page 148
Stanford Medicine researchers take part in HuBMAP, showing what healthy human tissue looks like
More often than not, studies of human biology are conducted when the body is under duress from infection or disease. Now, as part of a larger effort to delineate what “healthy” looks like, two Stanford Medicine teams have unfurled detailed molecular maps of healthy human intestinal and placental tissues. The maps, which capture cell types, cell quantity and other cellular nuances, are just two of a collection of maps that will establish a cellular baseline for the majority of the human body, including where cells in certain tissues congregate, how tissues develop during pregnancy and how cell-to-cell interactions drive human biology.
The studies, which published in Nature on July 19, are part of a larger effort spearheaded by the Human Biomolecular Atlas Program — called HuBMAP — funded by the National Institutes of Health. It aims to fill gaps in our knowledge of how the human body works when it’s in tip-top shape. Dozens of teams from the United States and Europe contribute to the HuBMAP consortium.
“In research, we have a habit of studying things that are abnormal without really understanding what normal looks like,” said Michael Angelo, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of pathology who is also the co-chair of the HuBMAP steering committee. “That’s created a big gap in our knowledge. HuBMAP is the only effort that is systematically focusing on the spatial architecture of these tissues.”
Study explains link to increased cardiovascular risks for people with obstructive sleep apnea
Researchers have found that people with obstructive sleep apnea have an increased cardiovascular risk due to reduced blood oxygen levels, largely explained by interrupted breathing. Obstructive sleep apnea has long been associated with increased risk of cardiovascular issues, including heart attack, stroke, and death, but the findings from this study, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, show the mechanism mostly responsible for the link.
“These findings will help better characterize high-risk versions of obstructive sleep apnea,” said Ali Azarbarzin, Ph.D., a study author and director of the Sleep Apnea Health Outcomes Research Group at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston. “We think that including a higher-risk version of obstructive sleep apnea in a randomized clinical trial would hopefully show that treating sleep apnea could help prevent future cardiovascular outcomes.”
Researchers reviewed data from more than 4,500 middle-aged and older adults who participated in the Osteoporotic Fractures in Men Study (MrOS) and the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), and sought to identify features of obstructive sleep apnea that could explain why some people were more likely than others to develop cardiovascular disease or related death.
NIH-funded study explains link to increased cardiovascular risks for people with obstructive sleep apnea
Reduction in blood oxygen levels, largely attributed to blocked airways, emerges as a leading factor.
Researchers have found that people with obstructive sleep apnea have an increased cardiovascular risk due to reduced blood oxygen levels, largely explained by interrupted breathing. Obstructive sleep apnea has long been associated with increased risk of cardiovascular issues, including heart attack, stroke, and death, but the findings from this study, partially supported by the National Institutes of Health and published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, show the mechanism mostly responsible for the link.
“These findings will help better characterize high-risk versions of obstructive sleep apnea,” said Ali Azarbarzin, Ph.D., a study author and director of the Sleep Apnea Health Outcomes Research Group at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston. “We think that including a higher-risk version of obstructive sleep apnea in a randomized clinical trial would hopefully show that treating sleep apnea could help prevent future cardiovascular outcomes.”
Research team develops a washable, transparent, and flexible OLED with MXene nanotechnology
Transparent and flexible displays, which have received a lot of attention in various fields including automobile displays, bio–health care, military, and fashion, are in fact known to break easily when experiencing small deformations. To solve this problem, active research is being conducted on many transparent and flexible conductive materials such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, silver nanowires, and conductive polymers.
A joint research team led by Professor Kyung Cheol Choi from the KAIST School of Electrical Engineering and Dr. Yonghee Lee from the National Nano Fab Center (NNFC) announced the successful development of a water-resistant, transparent, and flexible OLED using MXene nanotechnology. The material can emit and transmit light even when exposed to water.
This research was published as a front cover story of ACS Nano under the title “Highly Air-Stable, Flexible, and Water-Resistive 2D Titanium Carbide MXene-Based RGB Organic Light-Emitting Diode Displays for Transparent Free-Form Electronics.”
A fusion rocket designed to travel 500,000 mph is under construction
A British aerospace startup is working on a fusion rocket it says will slash the amount of time it takes astronauts to travel to Mars and beyond — allowing humans to explore places that are currently far out of reach.
The challenge: Long-term exposure to microgravity and cosmic radiation can cause serious health issues for astronauts. That means NASA needs to keep its future Mars missions short enough that astronauts come home healthy — less than 4 years should work.
Using our current rocket propulsion technology, though, it’s going to take seven months just to get astronauts to Mars. Factor in the amount of time to get back to Earth, and nearly a third of a Mars astronaut’s mission is just going to be dedicated to the commute.
A Common Probiotic Could Boost Brain Health in Older Adults
It’s said the way to one’s heart is through the stomach, but it looks like the way to a healthy brain is by dropping a deuce regularly. According to new research presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Amsterdam this week, chronic constipation appears to be linked to worsening cognitive abilities, likely due to an imbalance of gut bacteria causing inflammation.
While the study has yet to be peer-reviewed, it emphasizes a link between cognition and the microbiome — microorganisms like bacteria, viruses, and fungi living rent-free in and on our bodies — that hasn’t gone unnoticed. There’s still a whole lot we don’t know about the microbiome, but what we do know suggests these microscopic houseguests can be manipulated to improve our own health.
To offset cognitive decline, it could be as simple as a daily probiotic, says Mashael Aljumaah, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and North Carolina State University. In findings presented Monday at the American Society for Nutrition in Boston, Aljumaah and her colleagues at UNC and Kent State University in Ohio found that for older adults, a daily probiotic containing gut-friendly Lactobacillus rhamnosus helped improve mild cognitive impairment by resetting the imbalance in gut bacteria.
Social genetic effects: Study suggests your romantic partner’s DNA can influence your own health behaviors
New research provides evidence that an individual’s health behaviors and outcomes are influenced by the genetic makeup of their romantic partner. The findings, published in Behavior Genetics, indicate that your partner’s genetic tendencies can lead to changes in your own weight, smoking habits, or alcohol consumption over time.
The researchers conducted this study to investigate how a person’s partner can affect their health. They aimed to explore the concept of social genetic effects, which refers to the impact of genetic factors in one person’s environment, such as their partner’s genotype, on their own phenotype (observable characteristics or traits).
“I was mainly interested in exploring the combination of social science and genetics,” explained study author Kasper Otten of Utrecht University. “It is evident that behavior is partly genetically influenced, but much of the social sciences does not deal with this biological fact.