By Frank Bruni How many studies do you have to throw at the vaccine hysterics before they quit? How much of a scientific consensus, how many unimpeachable experts and how exquisitely rational an argument must you present? That’s a trick question, of course. There’s no magic number. There’s no number, period. And that’s because the anti-vaccine crowd (or anti-vaxxers) aren’t trafficking in anything as concrete, mundane and quaint as facts. They’re not really engaged in a debate about medicine. They’re immersed in a world of conspiracies, in the dark shadows where no data can be trusted, nothing is what it seems and those who buy the party line are pitiable sheep. And, boy, are they living at the right time, when so much information and misinformation swirl by so quickly that it’s easy to confuse the two and even easier to grab hold and convince yourself of whatever it is you prefer to believe. With Google searches, you find the ostensible proof you seek. On social media, you bask in all the affirmation you could possibly want. The parents who are worried or sure about grave risks from vaccines reflect a broader horror that has flickered or flared in everything from the birther movement to “Pizzagate,” that nonsense about children as Democratic sex slaves in the imagined basement of a Washington pizza joint. Their recklessness and the attendant re-emergence of measles aren’t just a public health crisis. They’re a public sanity one, emblematic of too many people’s willful disregard of evidence, proud suspicion of expertise and estrangement from reason. Again and again, until blue in the face, medical authorities have debunked the renegade assertion that there’s a link between the M.M.R. vaccine, so named because it inoculates against measles, mumps and rubella, and autism. On Tuesday, a group of Danish researchers who looked at more than 650,000 children over 10 years announced that they had found no such association. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 26025 - Posted: 03.11.2019

Alix Spiegel There's a before, and there's an after. In the before, it was a relatively normal night. The kind of night any 14-year-old girl might have. Devyn ate dinner, watched TV and had small, unremarkable interactions with her family. Then, around 10 o'clock, she decided to turn in. "I went to bed as I normally would, and then all of a sudden ... my hips... they just hurt unimaginably!" Devyn says. "I started crying, and I started shaking." It was around midnight, but the pain was so intense she couldn't stop herself — she cried out so loudly she woke her mother, Sheila. Together, they did everything they could to neutralize the pain — stand up, lie down, hot bath, pain medication. But there was no escape, not for Devyn, and so not for Sheila. "You go to cancer first, right? It's like, 'OK, maybe you have cancer, maybe it's a tumor?' " Sheila says. When she was calm enough to reason with herself, Sheila decided cancer was improbable but wondered what was going on? The only thing they could think of was that the hip pain was somehow related to the minor knee surgery Devyn had gotten a few months before — she had broken the tip of her distal femur one day during dance practice. So as usual, Sheila snapped to attention to solve the problem. It was 2016 — surely modern medicine could fix this. (NPR is not using Devyn's or Sheila's last name to protect Devyn's privacy as a minor discussing her medical treatment.) They started by calling Devyn's surgeon, but the surgeon had no explanation for the pain. He renewed Devyn's prescription for Percocet and wrote a new prescription for tramadol. But the pain only got worse, so they lined up more appointments: their pediatrician, a naturopath, a pain specialist, a sports medicine doctor. © 2019 npr

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 26024 - Posted: 03.11.2019

Jacob Stegenga Your grief and guilt overwhelm you. You are so tired you cannot think straight. Your simple joys are lost in an invisible agony. You have pain in your head and back and stomach, real pain. The swamp of your soul suffocates you with despair. All this is your fault, you are worthless, and you might as well die. This is how depression can feel, though people’s experiences of it, including the severity of symptoms, can vary widely. This terrible disease affects about one person in 10 at some point in life and, to treat it, many millions of people have taken antidepressants. Unfortunately, we now have good reasons to think that antidepressants are not effective. To know if antidepressants work we must, of course, pay close attention to the best evidence about these drugs. There have been many empirical trials of antidepressants, and in the past 10 years or so there have been some good meta-analyses of these trials (a meta-analysis pools data from multiple trials into a single analysis). However, there is a problem: experts disagree about the merits and problems of these empirical studies, and about what we should conclude based on them. Philosophy can help. Philosophy of science is the discipline that studies the concepts and methods of science, and offers a lens through which we can understand what scientific evidence shows us about the world. After witnessing the darkness of depression and the struggle by some of my dearest friends and family to treat this disease with drugs, I began to use my training as a philosopher to understand the evidence about antidepressants. Diving into the details of how antidepressant data are generated, analysed and reported tells us that these drugs are barely effective, if at all. © Aeon Media Group Ltd. 2012-2019.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 26023 - Posted: 03.11.2019

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent Patients with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder have shown remarkable improvements after undergoing an experimental procedure in which electrodes are placed inside the brain. The first UK trial of deep brain stimulation for OCD involved six people who were extremely severely affected by the condition. The patients each had four electrodes surgically inserted through the skull into the brain. These are used to electrically stimulate brain circuits with the aim of bringing the illness under control. One of the patients, a woman who is now in her 40s, described how her life was entirely dominated by her illness for a decade before taking part in the trial. Her OCD rituals meant it took up to 14 hours to go to the toilet, several hours to get out of bed and she lived in a psychiatric unit. She was terrified of poisons and contamination and would sob in frustration for hours each day because her situation felt so unbearable. “It was paralysing,” said the woman, who wants to remain anonymous. She said her life had been transformed beyond recognition by the procedure. Six years after having the electrodes permanently placed inside her brain, she lives independently in a flat, is in a relationship and does regular voluntary work. “For me it’s just been a miracle,” she said. “Every day when I wake up, I can’t believe my luck, I can’t get used to it.” © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Link ID: 26022 - Posted: 03.09.2019

John D. Loike, Martin Grumet On February 18, 2019, The Asahi Shimbun reported, “Ministry [of Health, Labor and Welfare in Japan] OKs 1st iPS [induced pluripotent stem] cell therapy for spinal cord injuries.” This announcement disseminated at a press conference has been viewed as an exciting clinical trial on the use of stem cells to treat spinal cord injury. However, caution is warranted here, for at least three reasons: the uncertainty of the stem cell type to be used in their clinical trial, the safety of transplanting stem cells into humans, and the responsibility of scientists and the press to communicate clearly the benefits and risks of the stem cell treatments, especially to desperate patients who would seek such unproven treatments. First, reports of the announcement by the lead scientist Hideyuki Okano of Keio University School of Medicine provide no indication where this trial is described or registered. It is of concern that it is not listed at clinicaltrials.gov or Japanese registries including UMIN Clinical Trials Registry (UMIN-CTR) and the Japan Medical Association Center for Clinical Trials (JMACCT). Second, Okano’s group reported in a study on mice that transplanted human iPSC-derived neural stem/progenitor cells (NSPC) retain unwanted proliferative characteristics, which they attributed to karyotype abnormalities. To protect against these abnormalities, Okano and colleagues have developed a “Fail-Safe System against Potential Tumorigenicity after Transplantation of iPSC Derivatives,” to quote the title of their report. Based on their results, they stated in the study that their technique “may serve as an important countermeasure against post-transplantation adverse events in stem cell transplant therapies.” However, they also caution that “a number of problems . . . need to be resolved, and at present [the Fail-Safe System] is still not suitable for clinical application.” © 1986 - 2019 The Scientist

Keyword: Stem Cells; Regeneration
Link ID: 26021 - Posted: 03.09.2019

Hadley Freeman Like everyone else at this point, I have many questions about Brexit, starting with “why” and going from there. For example: are concerns about how Britain is going to cope merely “project fear”, as some Brexity folk still have it? Is it going to be like the blitz, as other Brexity people have promised enthusiastically? Such people include someone called Ant Middleton from Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, who said last year in a tweet (since deleted): “A ‘no deal’ for our country would actually be a blessing in disguise. It would force us into hardship and suffering which would unite & bring us together, bringing back British values of loyalty and a sense of community!” Truly, there are few things as touching as a grown man playing soldiers by waxing nostalgic for a time he didn’t live through. And by “touching” I mean “nauseating”. I try to avoid writing about Brexit for the same reason I avoid eating my hair: you just end up choking on the pointlessness of it all. But one question has become too pressing to ignore: just how self-centred do you have to be to think the risk of making it harder for people to get necessary medications is an irrelevant niggle while you achieve your masturbatory fantasy of “sovereignty”? Sure, talk of insulin supplies, say, is a bummer when you are entertaining dreams of sailing victoriously back from Brussels beneath a St George’s flag, like George Washington crossing the Delaware in Emanuel Leutze’s painting, only less American (although, given that our supermarkets may soon be stuffed with chlorinated chicken from the US, maybe not). But for those who have long been dependent on certain drugs, these niggly questions make a no-deal Brexit less of a blessing in disguise. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 26020 - Posted: 03.09.2019

Catherine Offord One of the functions of sleep may be to repair DNA damage that has built up in the brain during waking hours, according to a study published yesterday (March 5) in Nature Communications. By using time-lapse imaging to observe the brains of zebrafish, researchers in Israel found that chromosome dynamics associated with DNA repair increased in neurons during sleep, and that sleep deprivation prevented this repair from happening efficiently. Study coauthor Lior Appelbaum of Bar-Ilan University notes in a statement that sleep is found across the animal kingdom and that this repair role might be one of the reasons “sleep has evolved and is so conserved.” To study what is going on in individual neurons during sleep, Appelbaum and colleagues genetically engineered zebrafish larvae to have fluorescent chromosomes in their neurons. They then used a high-resolution microscope to monitor the movements of those chromosomes when the transparent fish were awake and asleep. The researchers found that when the fish were awake, chromosomes were relatively static and accumulated double-strand breaks. But once the zebrafish went to sleep, the chromosomes became more dynamic, and the DNA damage began dissipating. Further experiments showed that manipulating zebrafish sleep could influence the repair process. For example, keeping the fish awake by tapping on their tank promoted the accumulation of more double-strand breaks, while inducing sleep with a drug pumped through the tank allowed the cells to repair their DNA. © 1986 - 2019 The Scientist

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26019 - Posted: 03.09.2019

By Nicholas Bakalar Eating a heart-healthy diet beginning in your 20s may provide brain benefits in middle age, new research suggests. The study, in Neurology, ranked 2,621 people on their degree of adherence to three different diets considered to be good for the heart. All emphasize vegetables, fruits and whole grains and minimize saturated fat consumption: the Mediterranean diet, which involves mainly plant-based foods and moderate alcohol intake; a research-based diet plan that rates food groups as favorable or not; and the DASH diet, which stresses low-sodium foods. Researchers tracked their diet compliance at ages 25, 32 and 45, and tested mental acuity at 50 and then again at 55. Those who adhered most strictly to the Mediterranean or the food group diet scored higher than those who did not, especially on tests of executive function, which involves organizing and planning. After adjusting for many health and behavioral factors, people with the strictest adherence to these diets had a 46 to 52 percent lower risk of poor cognitive function. But adherence to the DASH diet, which does not consider alcohol consumption, was not associated with cognitive test scores. Which diet is best? “We can say at this point that a heart-healthy diet like the Mediterranean diet is a good option,” said the lead author, Claire T. McEvoy, a dietitian and epidemiologist at Queen’s University Belfast. “It’s palatable and adaptable, and in that respect it’s a pretty good dietary pattern.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 26018 - Posted: 03.09.2019

Philip Ball Some problems in science are so hard, we don’t really know what meaningful questions to ask about them — or whether they are even truly solvable by science. Consciousness is one of those: Some researchers think it is an illusion; others say it pervades everything. Some hope to see it reduced to the underlying biology of neurons firing; others say that it is an irreducibly holistic phenomenon. The question of what kinds of physical systems are conscious “is one of the deepest, most fascinating problems in all of science,” wrote the computer scientist Scott Aaronson of the University of Texas at Austin. “I don’t know of any philosophical reason why [it] should be inherently unsolvable” — but “humans seem nowhere close to solving it.” Now a new project currently under review hopes to close in on some answers. It proposes to draw up a suite of experiments that will expose theories of consciousness to a merciless spotlight, in the hope of ruling out at least some of them. If all is approved and goes according to plan, the experiments could start this autumn. The initial aim is for the advocates of two leading theories to agree on a protocol that would put predictions of their ideas to the test. Similar scrutiny of other theories will then follow. Whether or not this project, funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, narrows the options for how consciousness arises, it hopes to establish a new way to do science for difficult, contentious problems. Instead of each camp championing its own view and demolishing others, researchers will collaborate and agree to publish in advance how discriminating experiments might be conducted — and then respect the outcomes. © 2019 Quanta Magazine

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 26017 - Posted: 03.07.2019

By Jan Hoffman and Abby Goodnough Three years ago this month, as alarms about the over-prescription of opioid painkillers were sounding across the country, the federal government issued course-correcting guidelines for primary care doctors. Prescriptions have fallen notably since then, and the Trump administration is pushing for them to drop by another third by 2021. But in a letter to be sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday, more than 300 medical experts, including three former White House drug czars, contend that the guidelines are harming one group of vulnerable patients: those with severe chronic pain, who may have been taking high doses of opioids for years without becoming addicted. They say the guidelines are being used as cover by insurers to deny reimbursement and by doctors to turn patients away. As a result, they say, patients who could benefit from the medications are being thrown into withdrawal and suffering renewed pain and a diminished quality of life, even to the point of suicide. The letter writers form an uneasy alliance spanning differing positions on opioids — professors of addiction medicine as well as pain specialists, some patient representatives who have taken money from the pharmaceutical industry, and the former drug czars, from the Obama, Clinton and Nixon administrations. Michael Botticelli, who served as the drug czar under President Obama and now leads the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center, said he signed the letter because “there has been enough anecdotal evidence to raise the alarm bells” about the misuse of the guidelines leading to pain patients losing effective treatment. “The C.D.C. really does need a rigorous evaluation of this because we don’t know how big the problem is,” he said. “Minimally, we need some level of clarification on appropriate use of the guidelines.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26016 - Posted: 03.07.2019

GPs are urging women not to be alarmed by research linking long-term hormone replacement therapy (HRT) use with a small increased risk of Alzheimer's. They say HRT is an effective and safe treatment for most women with menopause symptoms and the risk is "extremely low". The BMJ research looked at data on 170,000 women in Finland over 14 years. It found a 9%-17% increased risk for Alzheimer's, particularly in women taking HRT for more than 10 years. This equates to between nine and 18 extra cases of the disease per year in every 10,000 women aged between 70 and 80, the researchers said. But the study was observational and, as a result, it cannot be said for certain that other factors had not affected the results. Other studies have found that HRT actually improves brain function. The Royal College of GPs said the research does not prove that HRT causes Alzheimer's disease, and women currently taking it should continue to do so. Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairwoman of the College, said: "Hormone replacement therapy can be of greatest benefit to many women who are suffering from some of the unpleasant side-effects of the menopause, such as hot flushes and night sweats - and there is a large body of evidence that shows it is an effective and safe treatment for most women. "We would urge patients not to be alarmed by this research - as the researchers state, any risk is extremely low - and if they are currently taking HRT, to continue doing so as prescribed by their doctor. " However, she said there were risks with any medication and it was important that women were aware of them. "To minimise any risk, best practice for most women is to prescribe the lowest possible dose of hormones for the shortest possible time in order to achieve satisfactory relief of symptoms," Prof Stokes-Lampard said. © 2019 BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 26015 - Posted: 03.07.2019

By Elizabeth Pennisi Cowbirds are the quintessential deadbeat parents. They, and about 90 other bird species, abandon their eggs in other birds’ nests, leaving the burden of chick care to others. An arms race is the result: Cuckolded foster parents keep evolving ways to fight back, and deadbeats evolve countermeasures. Now, researchers have discovered how spots on an egg play a crucial role in a parent’s decision to keep an egg—or boot it from the nest. One of the shiny cowbird’s (Molothrus bonariensis) most common victims is the chalk-browed mockingbird (Mimus saturninus). The mockingbird’s eggs are blue-green and spotted, whereas the cowbird’s eggs vary from pure white to brown and spotted. Researchers had assumed mockingbirds reject cowbird eggs that don't look like their own, in pattern and color. But the new study finds it’s not that simple. To get a better sense of how mockingbirds decide which eggs to boot, evolutionary ecologist Daniel Hanley at Long Island University in Brookville, New York, and colleagues painted 70 3D-printed eggs a range of colors and put spots on half of them. They distributed these eggs among 85 mockingbird nests and checked several days later to see which eggs were still there. Spots tended to make the mockingbirds hedge their bets and keep an egg, even if the color wasn’t “right,” Hanley and his colleagues report in the April issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. For example, the mockingbirds removed unspotted brown eggs—a “wrong” color and pattern—90% of the time. But the birds were less sure when the egg had spots. They removed brown eggs with spots just 60% of the time, for example. In general, mockingbirds were more accepting of very blue eggs, even those that were much bluer than their own eggs. And when these blue eggs had spots, parents kept them more than 90% of the time. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 26014 - Posted: 03.07.2019

By Carolyn Y. Johnson and Laurie McGinley The Food and Drug Administration approved a novel antidepressant late Tuesday for people with depression that does not respond to other treatments — the first in decades to work in a completely new way in the brain. The drug, a nasal spray called esketamine, has been eagerly anticipated by psychiatrists and patient groups as a powerful new tool to fight intractable depression. The spray acts within hours, rather than weeks or months as is typical for current antidepressants, and could offer a lifeline to about 5 million people in the United States with major depressive disorder who haven’t been helped by current treatments. That accounts for about one in three people with depression. “This is undeniably a major advance,” said Jeffrey Lieberman, a Columbia University psychiatrist. But he cautioned much is still unknown about the drug, particularly regarding its long-term use. “Doctors will have to be very judicious and feel their way along,” he said. The label for the drug will carry a black box warning – the most serious safety warning issued by the FDA. It will caution users they could experience sedation and problems with attention, judgment and thinking, and that there’s potential for abuse and suicidal thoughts. People who take esketamine will have to be monitored for at least two hours after receiving a dose to guard against some of these side effects. The medicine has a complex legacy because it is a component of ketamine, which was approved years ago as an anesthetic and was once popular as a party drug called Special K. Esketamine must be administered under medical supervision and can only be used in a certified doctor’s office or clinic, according to the conditions of the FDA approval. It is to be taken with an oral antidepressant. © 1996-2019 The Washington Post

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26013 - Posted: 03.06.2019

By Benedict Carey Thousands, perhaps millions, of people who try to quit antidepressant drugs experience stinging withdrawal symptoms that last for months to years: insomnia, surges of anxiety, even so-called brain zaps, sensations of electric shock in the brain. But doctors have dismissed or downplayed such symptoms, often attributing them to the recurrence of underlying mood problems. The striking contrast between the patients’ experience and their doctors’ judgment has stirred heated debate in Britain, where last year the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists publicly denied claims of lasting withdrawal in “the vast majority of patients.” Patient-advocacy groups demanded a public retraction; psychiatrists, in the United States and abroad, came to the defense of the Royal College. Now, a pair of prominent British psychiatrists has broken ranks, calling the establishment’s position badly mistaken and the standard advice on withdrawal woefully inadequate. In a paper published Tuesday in the Lancet, the authors argued that any responsible withdrawal regimen should have the patient tapering off medication over months or even years, depending on the individual, and not over four weeks, the boilerplate advice. The paper is by far the strongest research-backed denunciation of standard tapering practice by members of the profession. “I know people who stop suddenly and get no side effects,” said Dr. Mark Horowitz, a clinical research fellow at Britain’s National Health Service and King’s College London, and one of the paper’s authors. But many people, he said, “have to pull apart their capsules and reduce the dosage bead by bead. We provided the science to back up what they’re already doing.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 26012 - Posted: 03.06.2019

By Max Evans BBC News A stranger once waved at Boo James on a bus. She did not think any more of it - until it later emerged it was her mother. She has a relatively rare condition called face blindness, which means she cannot recognise the faces of her family, friends, or even herself. Scientists have now launched a study they hope could help train people like Boo to recognise people better. Boo said for many years she thought she was "from another planet". "It is immensely stressful and very emotionally upsetting to sit and dwell upon so I try not to do that," she said. "It's very hard work. It can be physically and emotionally exhausting to spend a day out in public constantly wondering whether you should have spoken to someone." For most of her life, she didn't know she had the condition - also known as prosopagnosia - and blamed herself for the "social awkwardness" caused when she failed to recognise people. "I had to try and find a way to explain that. I really couldn't very well, except to think that I was just the one to blame for not being bothered to remember who people were. "[Like it was] some sort of laziness: I didn't want to know them, obviously I wasn't interested enough to remember them, so that was some kind of deficiency, perhaps, in me." But the penny dropped in her early 40s when she saw a news item about the condition on television. "I then knew that the only reason I wasn't recognising that person was because my brain physically wasn't able to do it," she said. "I could immediately engage more self-understanding and forgive myself and try to approach things from a different angle." Image caption Boo has developed techniques to try to help her cope, including remembering what people wear She said her childhood was punctuated by "traumatic experiences" with fellow children, childminders and teachers she could not recognise. © 2019 BBC

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 26011 - Posted: 03.06.2019

Carolyn Wilke Over the course of human evolution, our brains expanded massively. One of the areas that ballooned over the past few million years is the cerebral cortex, the wrinkly outer layer of the brain. It processes sensory information, coordinates our motion, and is in charge of our higher order functions, such as language processing and problem solving. Scientists are scrutinizing the structure of the cortex for clues about its development throughout our lives and our evolution as a species and to understand where heredity intersects with intelligence. A new study of hundreds of developing brains reveals a trifecta of overlap in regions of the cortical surface that develop from childhood to adulthood, expanded during evolution, and are connected to genetics. The scientists also found genetically mediated links between IQ test scores and surface area in regions related to intelligence, they report today (March 4) in the Journal of Neuroscience. “I think it’s a very, very strong work,” says Rachel Brouwer, a neuroscientist at University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands who was not part of the study. The authors pick up which regions of the brain where variability is most explained by genes, but by looking for connections with evolutionary expansion and neurodevelopment, “it is an attempt to link [heritability] to what it actually means in a broader picture,” she says. © 1986 - 2019 The Scientist

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 26010 - Posted: 03.06.2019

Rob Stein There's strong new evidence that a common childhood vaccine is safe. A large study released Monday finds no evidence that the vaccine that protects against measles, mumps and rubella increases the risk of autism. The study of children born in Denmark is one of the largest ever of the MMR vaccine. "The study strongly supports that MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism," the authors write in the Annals of Internal Medicine. "We believe our results offer reassurance and provide reliable data." The study's first author, epidemiologist Anders Hviid of the Staten Serum Institute in Copenhagen, added in an email: "MMR does not cause autism." In the study, researchers analyzed data collected from all children born in Denmark to Danish-born mothers between 1999 and 2010. Among the 657,461 children included in the analysis, 6,517 were diagnosed with autism over the next decade. But there was no overall increased risk for the developmental disorder among those who received the MMR vaccine when compared with those who had not gotten the vaccine, the researchers found. The researchers also found no increased risk among subgroups of children who might be unusually susceptible to autism, such as those with a brother or sister with the disorder. © 2019 npr

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 26009 - Posted: 03.06.2019

Robin McKie Matt Ellison was seven when his father was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. The condition – which is progressive, incurable and invariably fatal – took 15 years to kill John Ellison. The impact on Matt’s life was profound. His father, who had inherited the disease from his mother, found he could no longer concentrate enough to hold down his job as an engineer at Jaguar. Later he began to lose the power of movement and, eventually, lost his ability to speak. At his local school Matt was mocked because of his father’s odd, uncoordinated gait. The taunting got so bad that Matt stopped attending. “I stayed at home and helped Mum look after Dad,” he recalls. Then in 2007, when Matt reached 18, he decided to find out whether he faced a similar fate. He was tested and told: yes, he had the Huntington’s gene. A few years later his father died, aged 55. “I had had time to prepare myself, but it still hits you hard when you are told you are positive,” says Matt. “I had wanted to be negative as much for my mum, who had gone through enough pain.” For Matt, and thousands of others who have been told they have inherited this affliction, the future would appear bleak, a prospect of inexor able physical and mental decline. The Huntington’s gene is remorseless in its impact. But recently this dark outlook has brightened. Scientists believe they are closing in on a treatment to control Huntington’s worst effects. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 26008 - Posted: 03.05.2019

By Karen Weintraub For decades researchers have focused their attacks against Alzheimer’s on two proteins, amyloid beta and tau. Their buildup in the brain often serves as a defining indicator of the disease. Get rid of the amyloid and tau, and patients should do better, the thinking goes. But drug trial after drug trial has failed to improve patients’ memory, agitation and anxiety. One trial of a drug that removes amyloid even seemed to make some patients worse. The failures suggest researchers were missing something. A series of observations and recently published research findings have hinted at a somewhat different path for progression of Alzheimer’s, offering new ways to attack a disease that robs memories and devastates the lives of 5.7 million Americans and their families. One clue hinting at the need to look further afield was a close inspection of the 1918 worldwide flu pandemic, which left survivors with a higher chance of later developing Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. A second inkling came from the discovery that the amyloid of Alzheimer’s and the alpha-synuclein protein that characterizes Parkinson’s are antimicrobials, which help the immune system fight off invaders. The third piece of evidence was the finding in recent years, as more genes involved in Alzheimer’s have been identified, that traces nearly all of them to the immune system. Finally, neuroscientists have paid attention to cells that had been seen as ancillary—“helper” or “nursemaid” cells. They have come to recognize these brain cells, called microglia and astrocytes, play a central role in brain function—and one intimately related to the immune system. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Alzheimers; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 26007 - Posted: 03.05.2019

By Andrew Jacobs CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — There’s a new war raging in health care, with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake and thousands of lives in the balance. The battle, pitting drug companies against doctors and patient advocates, is being fought over the unlikeliest of substances: human excrement. The clash is over the future of fecal microbiota transplants, or F.M.T., a revolutionary treatment that has proved remarkably effective in treating Clostridioides difficile, a debilitating bacterial infection that strikes 500,000 Americans a year and kills 30,000. The therapy transfers fecal matter from healthy donors into the bowels of ailing patients, restoring the beneficial works of the community of gut microbes that have been decimated by antibiotics. Scientists see potential for using these organisms to treat diseases from diabetes to cancer. At the heart of the controversy is a question of classification: Are the fecal microbiota that cure C. diff a drug, or are they more akin to organs, tissues and blood products that are transferred from the healthy to treat the sick? The answer will determine how the Food and Drug Administration regulates the procedure, how much it costs and who gets to profit. In 2013, the F.D.A. announced a draft decision to regulate the therapy as a new drug but said it would continue to study the matter before reaching a final decision — which is expected to happen soon. Critics say that approach is based on outdated science and could lead to increased costs for patients, most of whom currently rely on a nonprofit stool bank in Cambridge. At stake, some researchers say, is the future of pioneering therapies that harness the human microbiome — the trillions of organisms that colonize the body and are increasingly seen as critical for healthy brain development and immune function. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 26006 - Posted: 03.05.2019