CRISPR Gene-Editing Shows Promise As HIV Cure, Research Shows : Shots — Health News Researchers safely used CRISPR gene-editing techniques in a patient with HIV. The research provides evidence the approach may be promising for treating HIV infection.
The fruit flies in Noah Whiteman’s lab may be hazardous to your health.
Whiteman and his University of California, Berkeley, colleagues have turned perfectly palatable fruit flies—palatable, at least, to frogs and birds—into potentially poisonous prey that may cause anything that eats them to puke. In large enough quantities, the flies likely would make a human puke, too, much like the emetic effect of ipecac syrup.
That’s because the team genetically engineered the flies, using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, to be able to eat milkweed without dying and to sequester its toxins, just as America’s most beloved butterfly, the monarch, does to deter predators.
A role for the gut microbiome on the health and functioning of many tissues, including the brain, liver, kidney, and adiposity, has been widely reported in the literature. Interestingly, 2019 might be the year that the role of the gut microbiome on skeletal muscle (i.e. the gut-muscle axis) comes into greater focus.
The influence of the gut microbiome on muscle strength
In April, Nay et al. reported that endurance exercise capacity was reduced in mice that do not contain a microbiome (germ-free mice, GFM) when compared with conventionally raised, microbiome-containing mice. This finding suggests that there are microbes in the gut that positively influence aerobic exercise performance.
The composition of the gut microbiome has been linked to countless areas of health. But could it really protect the gut against damage from radiotherapy treatment? Photo credit: Getty royalty-free.
The trawl found 20,500 articles tackling the topic, but shockingly, less than 1 percent of them were scientifically robust enough to be confident in their claims, say the authors. Of those, only 25 tested their deep learning models on unseen data, and only 14 actually compared performance with health professionals on the same test sample.
Nonetheless, when the researchers pooled the data from the 14 most rigorous studies, they found the deep learning systems correctly detected disease in 87 percent of cases, compared to 86 percent for healthcare professionals. They also did well on the equally important metric of excluding patients who don’t have a particular disease, getting it right 93 percent of the time compared to 91 percent for humans.
Ultimately, then, the results of the review are broadly positive for AI, but damning of the hype that has built up around the technology and the research practices of most of those trying to apply it to medical diagnosis.
Coenzyme Q10, or CoQ10, is a compound that generates energy in your cells and has a wide range of health benefits. Here are 9 benefits of coenzyme Q10.
Every year, 2.6 million people die in middle and low-income countries because of incorrect medical care, according to a recent report published by the World Health Organization (WHO). The health agency is hoping to shed light on the issue by launching a campaign in solidarity with patients on the first-ever World Patient Safety Day on September 17.
“No one should be harmed while receiving health care. And yet globally, at least 5 patients die every minute because of unsafe care,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.
Well, it’s sound weird but in the upcoming future, your toilet will be your mini doctor. A company called Micron is developing a smart artificial intelligence-powered toilet that will reportedly be able to diagnose your state of health and risk of disease by analyzing your bodily waste.
The major goal of this technology is to analyze bowel movements and recognize the signs for health issues or ailments early on. This information will also use to understand early symptoms of certain diseases.
