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Category: health – Page 3

Experimental drug reverses severe fatty liver disease by repairing the gut

An experimental drug developed at Michigan Medicine has shown the ability to reverse severe fatty liver disease in animal studies by restoring gut health. The findings, published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, suggest that targeting the connection between the gut and liver could offer a promising new approach for treating metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH).

MASH is a serious form of fatty liver disease that affects about 7% of people worldwide. It can progress to cirrhosis, liver cancer, and liver failure, yet effective treatment options remain limited.

The investigational compound, known as DT-109, is a glycine-based tripeptide. Researchers found that it reversed MASH in animal models by interrupting a harmful biological process linking the gut and liver.

SensorFM: Towards a general intelligence and interface for wearable health data

We present SensorFM, a foundation model for wearable health pre-trained on more than one trillion minutes of sensor data from five million people. By co-scaling model size and data, SensorFM learns a general-purpose representation of human physiology that transfers to 35 health prediction tasks, supports label-efficient adaptation and data infilling, and can serve as a grounding tool for a Personal Health Agent.

Is AI making us stupid?

Not exactly—but how we use it matters.

A new Trends in Cognitive Sciences perspective argues that AI doesn’t inherently erode human intelligence. Instead, it highlights a well-known principle in cognitive psychology: cognitive offloading.

When we let AI perform tasks that require reasoning, writing, memory, or problem-solving, we reduce the amount of mental practice our brains receive. Like physical exercise, cognitive skills strengthen through use and weaken through disuse.

Skills: learned abilities such as writing, mathematical reasoning, diagnosis, or programming. These are most vulnerable if AI consistently replaces the learning process.

Basic cognitive abilities: foundational functions like working memory, attention, and executive control. Current evidence suggests these may be more resistant to decline, although more research is needed.

The key message isn’t that AI makes people “stupid.” Rather: AI can improve immediate performance. Overreliance may reduce long-term learning and skill retention.

AI is most beneficial when it augments human thinking instead of replacing it. This fits with decades of neuroscience showing that practice drives neuroplasticity. The brain adapts to the cognitive demands we place on it. If.

Continue reading “Is AI making us stupid?” | >

New soft wearable device could support at-home sleep monitoring

Good sleep is essential for brain health. During sleep and rest, the glymphatic system, the brain’s waste-clearing process, helps remove metabolic waste that accumulates during waking hours. This activity is linked to memory processing, cognitive function and neural recovery. When sleep quality is poor, metabolic waste may accumulate, potentially disrupting cognitive function and memory formation.

Traditional approaches to brain monitoring are often invasive, costly and limited to clinical settings. New research from Georgia Tech points to a more accessible approach. A study published in Science Advances shows that a soft, wireless wearable device could help enable home-based monitoring of physiological changes associated with sleep and brain health.

The research team, led by W. Hong Yeo, Peterson Endowed Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Wearable Intelligent Systems and Healthcare Center and the Korea KIAT-Georgia Tech Semiconductor Electronics Center, developed a wearable device that uses light-based sensing and wireless communication to support natural sleep monitoring at home.

Genetic mapping identifies new hope for bone diseases

In a global breakthrough published in Nature Genetics, researchers have successfully mapped the cells and genes that regulate bone formation and loss at an unprecedented scale and discovered the critical role that blood vessel cells play in bone health.

By combining genomic sequencing with data from half a million individuals, the research team identified hundreds of previously unknown genes that govern bone health and revealed cells surrounding blood vessels as one of the drivers of bone repair—a role that has been underappreciated until now.

Led by Professor Peter Croucher and Dr. Ryan Chai from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Associate Professor John Kemp from Mater Research, and Professor Graham Williams and Professor Duncan Bassett from Imperial College London, the team’s findings fundamentally enhance our understanding of skeletal disease.

Quantum optics may turn this rare visual phenomenon into an eye test

Modern life depends on quantum physics. It makes technologies such as GPS navigation, MRI scanners and computer chips possible. Now, the same science may also lead to a new way to test the health of our eyes. A University at Buffalo-led team has used a technique from quantum optics to make a little-known visual pattern produced inside the eye easier to see—potentially opening the door to a new way to test retinal health.

Known as Boehm’s brushes, these faint, two-lobed, bowtie-shaped patterns sometimes appear in peripheral vision when polarized light scatters off structures in the retina. Because people with retinal disease may be less likely to perceive them, scientists have long wondered whether they could serve as a biomarker of retinal health.

However, Boehm’s brushes are often too hard to see, even for people with healthy eyes, to be useful in clinical practice.

The silent hormone: How adrenal tumors quietly raise cardiovascular risk over time

A major new study, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, has shown that cortisol levels in patients with adrenal tumors are far less stable than previously assumed. The study also found that those in whom cortisol remains persistently elevated carry a significantly greater risk of worsening high blood pressure and a heavier overall cardiometabolic burden.

Cortisol, often referred to as the “stress hormone,” is a steroid hormone produced by the adrenal glands that acts as a master regulator of metabolism, blood pressure and immune function. When benign tumors form on the adrenal glands (found incidentally in 3%–7% of adults), they can cause the body to produce cortisol independently of normal regulatory controls, a condition known as mild autonomous cortisol secretion (MACS).

Until now, it was unclear how cortisol levels in these patients change over time, and what that means for their long-term health.

Imagination is not escapism, it brings us closer to reality

Einstein called imagination “more important than knowledge,” yet we increasingly treat it as a childhood pastime we outgrow. Philosopher of mind Amy Kind argues that it’s something far more practical: the skill we draw on to make our hardest decisions, read the people around us, and work out who we want to become. Like any skill, it weakens without use — and we’re using it less. Reading for pleasure has nearly halved in two decades, fewer parents play with their children each day, and we increasingly hand our creative work to machines. If we don’t make time to exercise it, we’ll lose the capacity to conceive of things being other than they are, and risk being trapped in the present, unable to imagine a different future, let alone build one.

In recent years, amidst the hustle and bustle of contemporary life, people are devoting considerably less time to imaginative activities. Significantly fewer people are reading for pleasure today compared to 20 years ago, and in just the last decade, significantly fewer parents are making time to play with their children on a daily basis than used to be the case.

This neglect of imagination has been accelerated by the increasing reliance on generative AI tools in both personal contexts and professional contexts. In one recent survey, more than 50% of adults reported interacting with AI tool at least several times a week for personal purposes, often for learning, entertainment, or supporting their children’s education. In another study on business uses of AI, more than half of firms surveyed reported using AI in the creation of new products and services and, more generally, in their at innovation projects. With each passing day, we seem to be increasingly more willing—and perhaps even eager—to outsource our creative and imaginative efforts to machines.

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