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Category: health – Page 9

Common Sweetener May Damage Critical Brain Barrier, Risking Stroke

Found in everything from protein bars to energy drinks, erythritol has long been considered a safe alternative to sugar.

But research suggests this widely used sweetener may be quietly undermining one of the body’s most crucial protective barriers – with potentially serious consequences for heart health and stroke risk.

A study from the University of Colorado suggests erythritol may damage cells in the blood-brain barrier, the brain’s security system that keeps out harmful substances while letting in nutrients.

A “dormant” brain protein turns out to be a powerful switch

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine report that they have uncovered a promising drug target that could allow scientists to increase or decrease the activity of specific brain proteins. The discovery may lead to new treatments for psychiatric conditions such as anxiety and schizophrenia, as well as a neurological disorder that affects movement and balance. The work was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health.

The proteins at the center of the research are known as delta-type ionotropic glutamate receptors, or GluDs. These proteins are known to play an important role in how neurons communicate with each other. According to the researchers, mutations in GluDs have been linked to psychiatric disorders, including anxiety and schizophrenia. Despite this connection, scientists have struggled for years to understand exactly how these proteins work, making it difficult to design treatments that could regulate their activity.

“This class of protein has long been thought to be sitting dormant in the brain,” says Edward Twomey, Ph.D., assistant professor of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Our findings indicate they are very much active and offer a potential channel to develop new therapies.”

Microsoft 365 outage takes down admin center in North America

Microsoft is investigating an outage that blocks some administrators with business or enterprise subscriptions from accessing the Microsoft 365 admin center.

While the company has yet to disclose which regions are affected by this ongoing service degradation, it is tracking it on its official service health status page to provide impacted organizations with up-to-date information.

“Some users in the North America region may be unable to access the Microsoft 365 admin center. We’re reviewing service monitoring telemetry to isolate the root cause and develop a remediation plan,” Microsoft said when it acknowledged the issue.

The ‘Miracle Mineral Solution’—amazing cure or toxic illusion?

Miracle Mineral Solution, also known as MMS, has been marketed for years as a purported miracle cure for various conditions, including cancer, autism, and COVID-19. MMS is the marketing name for sodium chlorite (NaClO₂), a powerful disinfectant used, among other things, for water treatment. When sodium chlorite is acidified, chlorine dioxide (ClO₂) is formed. Its consumption can be hazardous to health.

A team of scientists from Wroclaw Medical University decided to investigate this.

In a study published in Scientific Reports, they analyzed the effects of acidified sodium chlorite (ASC), from which ClO₂ is produced.

Abstract: In a cohort of over 1,000 patients with BreastCancer

Emilio Hirsch & team identify SH3BP5L as the most highly expressed guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) for RAB11A, and its inhibition lowers lung metastasis and cell spreading in triple negative breast cancer models (TNBC):

The figure shows immunohistochemical assessment of SH3BP5L expression in tissue from patients with breast cancer.

@unito.it @fondazioneumbertoveronesi

1Department of Molecular Biotechnology and Health Sciences, Molecular Biotechnology Center “G. Tarone,” University of Torino, Torino, Italy.

2IEO, European Institute of Oncology IRCCS, Milan, Italy.

3Department of Oncology and Hemato-Oncology, University of Milano, Milano, Italy.

Continue reading “Abstract: In a cohort of over 1,000 patients with BreastCancer” | >

Can medical AI lie? Large study maps how LLMs handle health misinformation

Medical artificial intelligence (AI) is often described as a way to make patient care safer by helping clinicians manage information. A new study by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and collaborators confronts a critical vulnerability: when a medical lie enters the system, can AI pass it on as if it were true?

Analyzing more than a million prompts across nine leading language models, the researchers found that these systems can repeat false medical claims when they appear in realistic hospital notes or social-media health discussions.

The findings, published in The Lancet Digital Health, suggest that current safeguards do not reliably distinguish fact from fabrication once a claim is wrapped in familiar clinical or social-media language. The paper is titled “Mapping LLM Susceptibility to Medical Misinformation Across Clinical Notes and Social Media.”

Predicting Return Home After Moderate-to-Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

Background and ObjectivesDays alive and at home (DAH) is a validated outcome measure that captures health care transitions between time spent at home vs various nonhome care settings, offering a more nuanced patient-centered understanding of recovery. We…

What to watch as fungal infections rise: Species that can quickly ‘translate’ fat-use proteins

A new study by researchers at Kiel University and MPI-EvolBio describes how more efficient protein production drives the adaptation of fungi to the human body, potentially turning previously harmless species into emerging pathogens. In the wake of global change and the associated rise in temperatures, fungal infections are on the increase worldwide, threatening crops, wildlife and, also, human health. Many fungal species are completely harmless and fulfill important ecological functions, such as decomposing organic matter and releasing nutrients into the soil.

As symbionts of multicellular organisms, they perform useful functions for their host. On the other hand, some species are so-called opportunistic human pathogens: particularly in a weakened immune system, such fungi can colonize the body and cause serious and even life-threatening infections.

While fungi are often studied as pathogens of crops at institutions such as Kiel University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön (MPI-EvolBio), researchers are increasingly turning their attention to their harmful effects on humans. A research team led by Professor Eva Stukenbrock, head of the Environmental Genomics group at Kiel University and MPI-EvolBio, has conducted a new study to investigate why certain fungi might become human pathogens in the course of global change. To this end, the researchers analyzed various fungal species of the order Trichosporonales, which includes both harmless and dangerous species for humans.

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