Lifeboat Foundation

Year 2020 face_with_colon_three

Ah, Memories! They can be some of our best assets or our most painful tormentors. Good memories give us a sensation of warmth and hope for better times, but bad memories can cause serious trauma.

In this study we aimed to detect epigenetic and genetic loci associated with PTSD in a homogeneous cohort of traumatized police officers. Both a genome-wide and hypothesis-driven replication approach did not result in DMPs between PTSD patients and trauma-exposed controls. GSE analysis on the top 100 DMPs showed, however, a plausible association of the dopaminergic neurogenesis pathway with PTSD. Furthermore, we observed one DMR located at the PAX8 gene suggesting consistent hypermethylation in PTSD patients. Genetic analyses yielded three CpG-SNPs significantly associated with PTSD. Of these, one CpG-SNP, located at the CACNA1C locus, was also significantly associated with PTSD in an independent replication sample of trauma-exposed children. Notably, this result shows that the Illumina 450K array is not restricted to epigenetic surveys but can provide informative genetic data as well.

Although our sample was small, it was highly homogenous as all participants were former or current police officers, and cases and controls were matched for sex, age, education, and years of police service. All participants reported multiple prior traumatic events, without significant group differences in reported types of traumatic experiences. PTSD patients fulfilled current diagnostic criteria for PTSD, while our trauma-exposed controls had minimal PTSD symptoms and did not report lifetime PTSD or other trauma-related psychiatric disorders. Thus our controls were apparently resilient to adverse mental health outcome of trauma. This study design, including extreme phenotypes following similar trauma load, was considered to favor detection of PTSD-associated loci, as also suggested by others [22]. Nevertheless, our genome-wide survey clearly remains limited in statistical power.

Men with high-grade prostate cancer and low prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels have a poor prognosis. The question remains as to whether the chemotherapy drug docetaxel, which increases survival in metastatic prostate cancer, can improve the cure rate in these patients.

In a new study by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a meta-analysis of five prospective randomized clinical trials (RCTs) found that adding docetaxel to standard-of-care (SOC) treatment was associated with a 70% reduction in death from prostate cancer-specific mortality (PCSM). The study was published today in JAMA Network Open.

Investigators performed a meta-analysis of the RCTs evaluating SOC treatment with radiotherapy and androgen deprivation therapy or with radical prostatectomy versus SOC plus docetaxel. The final study cohort of 2,184 patients included 145 eligible patients (6.6%) across four eligible RCTs.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive tumor with a very poor prognosis and limited therapeutic targets. Now, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions have discovered in diverse TNBC animal models that targeting the protein elF4A with the small molecule drug Zotatifin suppressed tumor cell proliferation and remodeled the tumor immune microenvironment. The findings may lead to clinical trials to assess the potential patient benefits of this novel approach.

The team published their findings in The Journal of Clinical Investigation in an article titled, “Targeting EIF4A triggers an interferon response to synergize with chemotherapy and suppress triple-negative breast cancer.”

“Protein synthesis is frequently dysregulated in cancer and selective inhibition of mRNA translation represents an attractive cancer therapy,” wrote the researchers. “Here, we show that therapeutically targeting the RNA helicase eIF4A by Zotatifin, the first-in-class eIF4A inhibitor, exerts pleiotropic effects on both tumor cells and the tumor immune microenvironment in a diverse cohort of syngeneic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) mouse models.”

Summary: Researchers devised a machine learning model that gauges a country’s peace level by analyzing word frequency in its news media.

By studying over 723,000 articles from 18 countries, the team identified distinct linguistic patterns corresponding to varying peace levels.

While high-peace countries often used terms related to optimism and daily life, lower-peace nations favored words tied to governance and control.

The U.S. Space Force assigned 21 rocket launches to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, worth about $2.5 billion in total, the military branch told CNBC.

Space Force’s Space Systems Command on Tuesday announced the mission assignments, which represent the last round of orders under a multiyear program called National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2.

The final batch of assignments were split almost evenly, according to Col. Doug Pentecost, the deputy program executive officer of the Space Force’s Space Systems Command. ULA received 11 missions, valued at $1.3 billion, and SpaceX received 10 missions, valued at $1.23 billion.

Emmett Short discusses these comments on this episode of Lifespan News.

But first, the mad scientist David Sinclair, this time with Peter Diamandis at Abundance 360, giving more details into human trials for the genetic engineering side of the technology versus the chemical and pill side of the technology. Which would you want more? We’ll also hear David’s thoughts on how AI will affect the advancement of this tech. Spoiler: A lot. I’m going to play the best parts and add my commentary along the way.

Indian start-up Green Robot Machinery (GRoboMac) has developed a cotton picker with autonomous robotic arms, mounted on a semi-autonomous electric farm vehicle.

The robotic arms of the battery-operated machine are each capable of picking about 50 kgs cotton per day. That means that four arms, mounted on the vehicle, can pick about 200 kgs per day. High yielding farms can use additional arms, the company says.

A novel type of deep brain stimulation known as responsive deep brain stimulation helped improve symptoms in a woman with severe OCD, according to a new study.