Lifeboat Foundation

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals announced Thursday that it’s started the first clinical trial of its experimental coronavirus antibody drug.

The antibody cocktail is being tested in four human populations. Two groups of people will receive the drug to test its effectiveness as a treatment for Covid-19; the other two will receive it as a possible prevention.

“We’ll be hopefully to quickly test the safety and then start understanding the efficacy for four major different settings of this virus challenge,” Regeneron’s chief scientific officer, Dr. George Yancopoulos, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” Yancopoulos said he thinks that, “if all goes well,” the company could have “definitive data” within a few months on the effectiveness of the antibody cocktail.

Continue reading “Regeneron sees ‘a lot of reason for hope’ as human testing of its coronavirus drug begins” »

Recent therapeutic trials of “classical” psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin (from magic mushrooms) or LSD, have reported benefits to wellbeing, depression and anxiety. These effects seem to be linked to a sense of “ego dissolution” — a dissolving of the subjective boundaries between the self and the wider world. However, the neurochemistry behind this effect has been unclear. Now a new paper, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, suggests that changes in brain levels of the neurotransmitter glutamate are key to understanding reports of ego dissolution — and perhaps the therapeutic effects of psychedelics.

Natasha Mason at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, and colleagues recruited 60 participants for their study. All had taken a psychedelic drug before, but not in the three months prior to the study. Half received a placebo and the other half were given a low to moderate dose of psilocybin (0.17 mg/kg of body weight).

The team then used a technique called proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to look at concentrations of glutamate (as well as other neurochemicals) in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the hippocampus — two regions that have been implicated as key to the psychedelic drug experience. The team also looked at patterns of “functional connectivity” within networks of brain regions, a measure of how closely correlated brain activity is across those regions. Six hours after taking the drug or placebo, the participants reported on their subjective experiences using two surveys: The 5 Dimensions of Altered States of Consciousness and the Ego Dissolution Inventory.

Continue reading “Psilocybin Alters Brain Levels Of The Neurotransmitter Glutamate — And This Could Explain Why Users Experience ‘Ego Dissolution’” »

“ “The monitoring of human health and well-being with the use of wearables is considered critical in the next generation of biomedical devices,” write the authors. “[But] most existing paper-based devices are designed for one-time use only, functioning under relatively intense capillary flow into the paper, which ceases upon saturation… [Our approach] can function as a key part of a platform for long-term sweat sampling and biomarker monitoring.””

Researchers have designed a paper-based wearable device that can monitor your sweat for 10-days at a time to detect important information about your health.

WASHINGTON — SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft is performing well enough on orbit to give NASA confidence that the mission can last until August, an agency official said June 9.

Ken Bowersox, the acting associate administrator for human exploration and operations at NASA, told an online meeting of two National Academies committees that NASA had been monitoring the health of the Crew Dragon spacecraft since its launch May 30 on the Demo-2 mission, carrying NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station.

NASA, he noted, had not set a length for the mission, saying they wanted to see how the Dragon performed in space. “The Dragon is doing very well, so we think it’s reasonable for the crew to stay up there a month or two,” he told members of the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and Space Studies Board.

Posted with permission by Eric Klien.

Hello everyone, as some of you may be aware about 6 years ago I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and I published about it on Lifeboat Foundation’s blog. I was in remission but relapsed about a year ago. Going through radiation therapy as well as chemotherapy has taken its toll on my health and with the recent outbreak of Covid-19 has really put a lot of us in the high risk category. In order to stay safe i have avoided working for 3 months. Because of these unfortunate circumstances I am kindly requesting that anyone who is willing to help me get back on my feet to please help donate to my GoFund me page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-for-nicholi…

I sincerely appreciate any and all help available. Thank you! I will post a link to my journey with cancer published on Lifeboat Foundation’s blog.

Continue reading “Help for Nicholi” »

I remember questioning this data, as it was not even research on animals, it was observation of people’s medical files.

Three unlikely collaborators are at the heart of the fast-moving COVID-19 research scandal, which led to retractions last week by The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), and the withdrawal of an online preprint, after the trove of patient data they all relied on was challenged. The three physician-scientists never were at the same institution nor had they ever before written together, but they are the only authors in common on the disputed papers, and the other co-authors all have ties to at least one of them. Their partnership, which seized a high-impact role during a global public health crisis, has now ended disastrously.

The first author for both retracted papers was cardiac surgeon Mandeep Mehra, an eminent Harvard University professor who works at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and is known internationally for cardiovascular medicine and heart transplants. He provided the kind of gravitas that can fast-track papers to leading journals. In a statement provided by BWH, Mehra said he had met another of the trio, cardiac surgeon Amit Patel, in “academic and medical circles,” and that Patel had introduced him to Sapan Desai, a vascular surgeon and founder of Surgisphere, the tiny company that supplied the data. Journal disclosures, however, also indicate Mehra received compensation from Triple-Gene, a gene therapy company Patel co-founded to develop cardiovascular treatments.

Continue reading “Who’s to blame? These three scientists are at the heart of the Surgisphere COVID-19 scandal” »

Another link on diet/healthspan.

Studies by Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI), have provided a new understanding into the roles two essential amino acids play in metabolic health, which may help scientists in the fight against obesity.

Led by Dr. Adam Rose, the recent finding, published in Nature Communications, shows that by reducing the amount of two amino acids —threonine and tryptophan—in young healthy mice, they were able to burn more calories than they consumed, without calorie reduction, keeping them lean and healthy and without the side-effect of lower muscle mass. A low-threonine diet even protected mice that were morbidly obese and prone to developing type 2 diabetes.

Continue reading “Essential components of dietary restriction revealed” »

Guessing things are about to get dicey.

Texas reported a record-breaking number of COVID-19 hospitalizations Monday as the governor plans to reopen more businesses and double capacity.

Texas Department of State Health Services figures show 1,935 people were admitted as hospital patients for coronavirus-related treatment. That is up from a previous record of 1,888 on May 5.

Continue reading “Texas Reports Record-Breaking COVID-19 Hospitalizations As State Reopens” »

Has glucose monitor: 3.

With a new Always-On Retina display, Apple Watch Series 5 is always there for you. To monitor your health, help you stay fit, and keep you connected.