SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage source, Getty ImagesShanti Devi, a government community health worker in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh, died from Covid in May. Her daughter Malti Gangwar said that in the days following her death, the family received several calls from the health department offering condolences. Her late mother’s colleagues even urged her to apply for the same job. “There was talk about insurance money and they all seemed very co-operative. They asked me to fill in a form to apply for the job, which I did. But I don’t know what happened after that.” Four months on, the Gangwars are still waiting. Neither the compensation nor the job have materialised yet. In March 2020, India’s federal government promised 5m rupees ($68,000; £50,000) to the family of every health worker who died fighting Covid. But a BBC investigation, based in part on Right to Information requests, shows that a lack of data, bureaucratic hurdles and a discriminatory policy have left many of these families traumatised.The BBC spoke to several families who said they felt let down by a government that had promised to stand by them. Only a handful of them agreed to be interviewed. Others feared that speaking out could hurt their chances of being compensated. The government did not respond to our questions. ‘Gods in white uniform’In July, when the government was asked in parliament how many healthcare workers had died from Covid, the junior health minister said they did not maintain occupation-wise data on cases and deaths. The Indian Medical Association (IMA) told the BBC that Covid-19 killed nearly 1,600 doctors, and the Trained Nurses’ Association of India has reported 128 deaths so far. The government said more than 100 Ashas (female community health workers) died while performing Covid duties – and this was before the devastating second wave in April and May this year. That amounts to at least 1,800 deaths among health workers. There are no numbers available for how many ward boys – assistants – and other contract workers in hospitals have died. But the fact that the government had no centralised data was a stunning revelation, given that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had personally cheered healthcare workers and their families at the start of the pandemic. He encouraged ordinary citizens to light lamps, and the Indian air force showered flower petals from helicopters on hospitals in various cities. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had called doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers “Gods in white uniform” while announcing the compensation package. Shanti Devi’s family said the delay in compensation was especially hurtful and demeaning because it was people like her that the policy sought to honour – a community health worker involved in the “direct care of Covid patients”. “The family’s financial condition is not very good. Anything we receive will be helpful,” her brother said. The family said they had reached out to the administration but were yet to hear back.Shanti Devi and hundreds of thousands of other Asha workers are at the bottom of India’s public healthcare system – at the village or neighbourhood level – and essential for any public health programme, from creating awareness to monitoring impact. The Covid-19 heroes nobody talks about’To India our lives are worth less than $1’Shanti Devi, who was in her early 50s, had done the job for nearly 25 years with little in terms of remuneration, her family said. And with Covid, the risk of going door-to-door was especially huge. A ‘humiliating’ experienceThe government said it received 1,342 compensation claims between 30 March 2020 and 16 July 2021 and they have settled 921 claims so far. The remaining 421 are still being processed or have been rejected. One of the rejected claims belonged to 56-year-old Sujata Bhave, who lost her husband to Covid in June 2020.Dr Chittaranjan Bhave was a private doctor – an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) specialist – in Mumbai. “Initially he was seeing patients online but he never felt satisfied because it was difficult to examine ear, nose and throat on video calls,” Ms Bhave said. Soon after he began examining patients in person, he caught the virus and was admitted to hospital. Ms Bhave never saw him again. Her husband’s speciality, she said, meant that many of his patients had symptoms similar to Covid-19 – throat infections or coughs. But her claim for compensation was denied because “her husband had not been working in a government-designated Covid ward when he got infected”. It was “humiliating”, she said. “It is definitely not the case that only public doctors faced the virus and private practitioners did not. This was unfair.” The government’s policy, which insists on compensating only government doctors, has been criticised by the medical community, especially since government hospitals could not manage the burden alone. The trauma and pain of being a Covid doctorCovid-19 doctors: Notes on hope, fear and longingIn fact, the same policy explicitly says that “private hospital staff/ retired/ volunteer/ can also be drafted for Covid-19 related responsibilities” and that they will “be covered subject to numbers indicated by ministry of health and family welfare”. In some instances, private practitioners were forced by the government to work. Dr Nilima Vaidya Bhamare, who lives in Mumbai, said that last year the local municipality notified private doctors that they would lose their licence if their clinics did not remain open through the pandemic. “This happened because the government realised it did not have the infrastructure,” she said. “Despite all this [they] are not willing to honour claims or extend facilities to us. We will have to go to court because the government is unwilling to listen.” image source, Getty ImagesK Sujatha Rao, India’s former health secretary, said the policy was “very restrictive”. “It should be expanded. The people who ought to be given absolutely high priority are our health workers. The government ought to be much more large-hearted, and whether they are private sector or public sector, I really wouldn’t make that distinction at this point.”In November 2020 a parliamentary report, which noted a large number of vacancies in public hospitals, recommended “adequate remuneration and financial incentives along with insurance coverage” for all healthcare workers. “The doctors, who have laid down their lives in the fight against the pandemic must be acknowledged as martyrs and their families be adequately compensated,” it said. But several health workers and their families told the BBC this was not their experience. “I’m feeling very sad,” said Dr Jayesh Lele, IMA secretary general. “The PM gave doctors a lot of respect but what is the effect of it all?”

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage source, Getty ImagesPresident Biden is asking world leaders to pledge to vaccinate 70% of the global population by September next year. But research shows rich countries are still holding surpluses of vaccines, many of which could soon be thrown out.Boarding a plane to Iran this summer, Bahar was excited to see her father for the first time in four years. She had no idea coronavirus was about to rip through the country – and her family – in a deadly second wave. First it was a friend of the family, who was preparing for her son’s wedding when she got sick. She died soon after. Then it was her father’s uncle, then an elderly aunt. Bahar worried desperately about her grandmother who had only had one vaccine dose and was still waiting for her second.Bahar is 20 and lives in the US where she got vaccinated in April. Though she knew she was somewhat protected, she spent the final days of her trip cloistered in her father’s house worried about who the virus would attack next. Few members of her family have been vaccinated in a country where supplies are low. Soon after she returned to the US, she found out her father was sick. She was far away and paralysed with fear. “It’s like survivor’s guilt,” she says. “I left Iran totally fine, completely healthy just because I had two shots of the Pfizer vaccine.” Her father recovered but many older relatives did not. “I felt pretty guilty knowing that.” image source, SubmittedThis imbalance of the vaccine supply makes for stark statistics. Just over half of the world has yet to receive even one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. According to Human Rights Watch, 75% of Covid vaccines have gone to 10 countries. The Economist Intelligence Unit have calculated that half of all of the vaccines made so far have gone to 15% of the world’s population, the world’s richest countries administering 100 times as many shots as the poorest. In June, members of the G7 – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States – pledged to donate one billion doses to poor countries over the next year. “I smiled when I saw that,” says Agathe Demarais, lead author of a recent report on global vaccines supply at the Economist Intelligence Unit and a former diplomat. “I used to see this a lot. You know it’s never going to happen.” Covid vaccine tracker: How’s my country doing?The UK promised 100m of that pledge, so far it has donated just under nine million. President Biden pledged 580m of which the US has delivered 140m so far. And the EU bloc promised 250m doses by the end of the year – it has sent about 8% of those. Like many middle-income countries, Iran bought vaccines from Covax, the global scheme supported by the WHO to get doses where they’re needed most. Covax purchases and then sells vaccines at low-cost to middle income countries and donates to poor countries. image source, Getty ImagesBut Covax has faced a major supply problem. It planned to distribute two billion doses in 2021 with most of them coming from a facility in India but when a second wave of infections crippled India in May, the government issued an export ban.Since then Covax has relied on doses donated by rich countries. And supply has been slow, some of the receiving countries have yet to vaccinate 2% of their population. “Currently doses tend to get shared in low volumes, at short notice, and with shorter than ideal expiry dates – making it a huge logistical lift to allocate and deliver these to countries able to absorb them,” says Aurélia Nguyen, managing director of the Covax facility.How many vaccines are rich countries sharing?It’s not a global supply problem. Rich countries have been building up surpluses of vaccines, according to Airfinity, a science analytics company researching global supply. Vaccine manufacturers are now making 1.5bn doses every month, 11bn will have produced by the end of the year. “They’re producing a huge number of doses. It has scaled up immensely over the last three or four months,” says Dr Matt Linley, lead researcher at Airfinity.The world’s richest countries could have 1.2bn doses that they don’t need – even if they start administering boosters.A fifth of those doses – 241 million vaccines – could be at risk of going to waste if they are not donated very soon, says Dr Linley. It’s likely that poorer countries won’t be able to accept vaccines unless they have at least two months left before they expire. “I don’t think it was necessarily rich countries being greedy, it’s more that they didn’t know which vaccines would work,” says Dr Linley. “So they had to purchase several of them.”With its latest research Airfinity hopes to show governments that there is a healthy supply of vaccines and that they don’t need to keep surpluses. Instead they can donate what they don’t need now and be confident that more doses will be produced in the coming months. “They don’t want to be caught off guard,” says Agathe Demarais. “It’s also about domestic political pressure because part of the electorate would probably be very unhappy to see vaccines being donated, if there is a feeling that they’re still needed at home.” The UK government says it does not have a stockpile of vaccines and has made an agreement with Australia to share four million doses which will be returned from Australia’s own allocation at the end of the year.”Vaccine supply and deliveries have been carefully managed in the UK to offer all those who are eligible the opportunity to be vaccinated as soon as possible,” says a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care. Covid map: Where are cases the highest? Aurélia Nguyen at Covax says it’s not just governments that need to act. “We also need manufacturers to meet their public commitments to Covax and prioritise us over bilateral deals to nations that already have enough doses.” If global vaccine manufacturers are now producing 1.5 billion doses every month, she says, the question is why are so few reaching poor countries. “Where Covax’s need is greatest, governments should swap their place in the queue so we can get the doses we have ordered sooner.”For Bahar and her family, these doses aren’t just numbers they are real lives, friends and family. Every few days, she hears another story of someone who has died. When friends at university said they don’t want to get vaccinated she used to try to argue with them but she can’t do it anymore, it’s too upsetting. “I just try to let it go but it’s definitely hard seeing people not use the privilege that they have.”

Dr. Nkengasong will be the first person of African origin to oversee the U.S. government program combating H.I.V., which has ravaged the continent.The Biden administration plans to nominate John Nkengasong, a virologist and director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to lead the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, according to several sources familiar with the matter.President Biden is expected to make the announcement in the coming days.PEPFAR is a $7 billion operation that funds and sets goals for AIDS care in many nations, most of them in Africa. Dr. Nkengasong, who was born in Cameroon, is the first person of African origin to head the program, which is housed in the Department of State.“This is a huge leap forward for the U.S. government to name someone from the region where much of the PEPFAR work is,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, a nonprofit organization promoting H.I.V. treatment worldwide. “It shows a commitment to truly listening to and learning from the people PEPFAR is meant to serve.”Dr. Nkengasong could not immediately be reached for comment.The AIDS program was last led by Dr. Deborah Birx, who left in February 2020 to join the White House coronavirus task force. The Biden administration has come under severe criticism for leaving the program leaderless, especially at a time when the pandemic is setting back years of progress against H.I.V.In July, more than 50 advocacy organizations sent a letter to Mr. Biden calling the delay “unacceptable.”Compared with 2019, the number of people in 2020 who sought testing for H.I.V. decreased by 22 percent, and the number who opted for H.I.V. prevention services fell by 12 percent, according to a report published earlier this month.“Deep inequities in access to science, justice and human rights are fueling the H.I.V. pandemic,” said Maureen Milanga, a director of policy at the advocacy group Health GAP in Nairobi, Kenya. Dr. Nkengasong “must put the U.S. global AIDS response back on the front burner.”Dr. Nkengasong has been the director of the Africa C.D.C. since 2016, when the organization was established. He has decades of experience in global health, with long stints at the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The W.H.O. appointed him as its special envoy for Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic.Several public health experts and activists called Dr. Nkengasong an unexpected but inspired choice.“He’s a very strong public health leader with many years of experience, and would bring great connectivity to African leaders and community partners,” said Dr. Chris Beyrer, a professor of public health and human rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. (Dr. Beyrer was on a short list of candidates for the position.)PEPFAR, the largest public health program in the United States, was started in 2003 by President George W. Bush. Since its launch, the U.S. government has invested more than $85 billion in more than 50 countries, saving an estimated 20 million lives.Funds distributed by the scheme are used to support prevention programs, testing and antiretroviral therapy for H.I.V. Some directors have been heavy-handed in setting priorities for African nations, so a leader like Dr. Nkengasong who knows and is trusted by Africans is a welcome change, experts said.“To have somebody who’s a known figure both in the U.S. and around the world, and in Africa, is a sign that they’re taking this seriously — that they understand that raising up African leadership is really important,” said Gregg Gonsalves, a longtime H.I.V. activist and an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health.Cameroon, Dr. Nkengasong’s country of birth, has a high prevalence of H.I.V. and tuberculosis. And he has been vocal in his support of training local scientists and doctors to lead public health and research in the continent. In 2011, he helped establish the African Society for Laboratory Medicine.Dr. Nkengasong was knighted in November 2018 by the government of Cameroon for his contributions to public health. He serves as an adviser to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, among others. For his leadership in the Covid-19 pandemic, he was included in Time magazine’s 2021 list of the 100 most influential people.The only downside to Dr. Nkengasong leading PEPFAR is that he is also needed to combat other infectious disease efforts in Africa, Mr. Gonsalves said: “It’s a loss for Africa C.D.C.”

Aging takes a toll on the body and on the mind. For example, the tissue of aging human brains sometimes develops abnormal clumps of proteins that are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. How can you protect your brain from these effects?
Researchers at Rush University Medical Center have found that older adults may benefit from a specific diet called the MIND diet even when they develop these protein deposits, known as amyloid plaques and tangles. Plaques and tangles are a pathology found in the brain that build up in between nerve cells and typically interfere with thinking and problem-solving skills.
Developed by the late Martha Clare Morris, ScD, who was a Rush nutritional epidemiologist, and her colleagues, the MIND diet is a hybrid of the Mediterranean and DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diets. Previous research studies have found that the MIND diet may reduce a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease dementia.
Now a study has shown that participants in the study who followed the MIND diet moderately later in life did not have cognition problems, according to a paper published on Sept. 14 in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
“Some people have enough plaques and tangles in their brains to have a postmortem diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, but they do not develop clinical dementia in their lifetime,” said Klodian Dhana, MD, PhD, lead author of the paper and an assistant professor in the Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at Rush Medical College .
“Some have the ability to maintain cognitive function despite the accumulation of these pathologies in the brain, and our study suggests that the MIND diet is associated with better cognitive functions independently of brain pathologies related to Alzheimer’s disease.

Scientists have developed a method using machine learning to better analyze data from a powerful scientific tool: nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). One way NMR data can be used is to understand proteins and chemical reactions in the human body. NMR is closely related to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for medical diagnosis.
NMR spectrometers allow scientists to characterize the structure of molecules, such as proteins, but it can take highly skilled human experts a significant amount of time to analyze that data. This new machine learning method can analyze the data much more quickly and just as accurately.
In a study recently published in Nature Communications, the scientists described their process, which essentially teaches computers to untangle complex data about atomic-scale properties of proteins, parsing them into individual, readable images.
“To be able to use these data, we need to separate them into features from different parts of the molecule and quantify their specific properties,” said Rafael Brüschweiler, senior author of the study, Ohio Research Scholar and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University. “And before this, it was very difficult to use computers to identify these individual features when they overlapped.”
The process, developed by Dawei Li, lead author of the study and a research scientist at Ohio State’s Campus Chemical Instrument Center, teaches computers to scan images from NMR spectrometers. Those images, known as spectra, appear as hundreds and thousands of peaks and valleys, which, for example, can show changes to proteins or complex metabolite mixtures in a biological sample, such as blood or urine, at the atomic level. The NMR data give important information about a protein’s function and important clues about what is happening in a person’s body.
But deconstructing the spectra into readable peaks can be difficult because often, the peaks overlap. The effect is almost like a mountain range, where closer, larger peaks obscure smaller ones that may also carry important information.

At more than 2 meters long, the human DNA molecule uses intricate folding patterns to fit into cells while locally unfolding to express genes. Such phenomena, however, are difficult to measure in experiments, and theoretical frameworks explaining them continue to be at odds with one another.
Researchers in Italy, Japan, and Poland seek to point a way toward a unified theory for how DNA changes shape when expressing genes. Presenting their work in Biophysics Reviews, published by AIP Publishing, the scientists use an approach called statistical mechanics to explore the phenomenon of so-called expression waves of gene regulation.
The group hopes to reconcile a long-standing gulf between the two scientific fields most involved in the topic.
“Many scholars at the crossroad between physics and biology are now approaching what is probably the most crucial puzzle of biology,” said co-author Alessandro Giuliani. “How is it possible that, starting from the same genetic background in the fertilized egg, around 400 highly differentiated cell types can arise, each endowed with a specific physiological role?”
Biology-based theories often center on regulator proteins, called transcription factors, that biochemically conduct a symphony of genes to be expressed together. By contrast, many physicists have focused on expression waves, the rhythmic changes in expression levels across the genome, driven by relaxation and condensing of the DNA molecule itself.
“It is something like the so-called hola, common in soccer and in other sport events, in which the spectators stand up simultaneously giving rise to a ‘wave’ spreading all over the stadium,” Giuliani said.
To get at the heart of the issue, the group focuses on a specific type of cell found in breast cancer with a proven track record of consistently behaving the same way to stimuli.
They used statistical mechanics to make sense of how DNA molecules fold by assessing the collective behavior of a huge number of microscopic players in terms of ensemble properties, unlike classical top-down perspectives, like Newton’s laws.
Ultimately, the researchers landed in favor of expression waves, acknowledging that while transcription factors play a vital role, they are second fiddle to the changing shape of DNA.
To unify these two perspectives, the authors present their conclusion using concepts common to biology and physics, limiting the use of mathematics to intuitive approaches such as recurrence quantification analysis and the classical statistical method of principal component analysis.
Next, they look to apply the same approach to identify ecological tipping points based on the makeup of species in particular habitats.
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Materials provided by American Institute of Physics. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Research on human embryos is vital to understanding the earliest stages of human development. Currently, this research is conducted on surplus embryos willingly donated by individuals who have undergone in vitrofertilization. Nevertheless, this research is limited by the availability of embryos and strict international ethical time limits on how long an embryo is allowed to develop in the laboratory (14 days maximum).
Now, Caltech researchers have created embryo-like structures out of human stem cells. In contrast to natural embryos that are formed by a combination of sperm and egg, these structures are formed by combining so-called pluripotent stem cells, which have the ability to develop into specialized types of cells. Though these embryo-like structures have some key differences from real embryos, the technology to create them will be critical in answering open questions about human development without the need for donated embryos.
The research was conducted in the laboratory of Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech, and is described in a paper appearing in the journal Nature Communications on September 21.
The structures are made from a type of pluripotent stem cell that gives rise to distinct types of cells that then self-assemble into a structure with morphology clearly reminiscent of that of an embryo, which has distinct embryonic and extra-embryonic tissues. The pluripotent stem cells were initially isolated from a real human embryo by other researchers and have since been maintained in a laboratory environment. Remarkably, the cells can still “remember” how to assemble into an embryo when supported by the right environmental conditions.
“The ability to assemble the basic structure of the embryo seems to be a built-in property of these earliest embryonic cells that they are simply unable to ‘forget,'” says Zernicka-Goetz. “Nevertheless, either their memory is not absolutely precise or we don’t yet have the best method of helping the cells recover their memories. We still have further work to do before we can get human stem cells to achieve the developmental accuracy that is possible with their equivalent mouse stem cell counterparts.”
The ability to generate embryo-like structures from stem cells means that additional donated embryos are not needed; in addition, the structures can be created in large quantities. Thus, this model system may lead to breakthroughs in the understanding of early embryonic development that are not constrained by the limited availability of human embryos. For example, it will be possible to perturb particular genes and study the resulting impact on the developmental process. Additionally, this system can be used to understand how different cellular components coordinate their development at very early stages and the impact of this cellular cross-talk upon later developmental stages.
The paper is titled “Reconstructing aspects of human embryogenesis with pluripotent stem cells.” Former Caltech postdoctoral scholar Berna Sozen, now at Yale University, and Caltech graduate student Victoria Jorgensen are the study’s first authors. In addition to Zernicka-Goetz, additional co-authors are Bailey Weatherbee and Meng Zhu, both members of Zernicka-Goetz’s former laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and Caltech senior research scientist Sisi Chen. Funding was provided by the Wellcome Trust, the Open Philanthropy/Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the Weston Havens Foundation, and the Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation. Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz is an affiliated faculty member with the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech.
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Materials provided by California Institute of Technology. Original written by Lori Dajose. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

In a new study supported by the National Institutes of Health, researchers used exosomes, tiny nanoparticles capable of being taken up by cells, to deliver novel protein into the cells of mice infected with HIV. The protein attached to HIVs’ genetic material and prevented it from replicating, resulting in reduced levels of HIV in the bone marrow, spleen, and brain. The study, funded by NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and published in Nature Communications, paves the way for the development of novel delivery systems for suppressing HIV.
“These results demonstrate the potential of exosome engineering for delivering epigenetics-based therapeutics capable of silencing HIV gene expression into brain tissues — an area where HIV has traditionally been able to hide from HIV treatments,” said Jeymohan Joseph, Ph.D., chief of the HIV Neuropathogenesis, Genetics, and Therapeutics Branch within NIMH’s Division of AIDS Research.
HIV attacks the immune system by infecting a type of white blood cell in the body that is vital to fighting off infection. Without treatment, HIV can destroy these white blood cells, reducing the body’s ability to mount an immune response — eventually resulting in AIDS. Although researchers have been working to develop new therapies to treat and cure HIV and AIDS, this quest is challenging for many reasons. One reason is that HIV can enter a dormant-like state, hiding in the body and evading treatments, only to reactivate at a later date. HIV hiding in the brain is particularly difficult to access, as the blood-brain barrier often prevents treatments from entering into those tissues.
One avenue researchers have been pursuing in their efforts to try to cure HIV is what is sometimes called a “block and lock” approach, particularly for targeting HIV in the brain. This method attempts to block the virus’ ability to replicate itself and lock it in its dormant state.
Kevin Morris, Ph.D., of City of Hope and the Menzies Health Institute Queensland at Griffith University, Australia, led an investigation into a new approach for blocking and locking HIV in mice. The researchers use exosomes, tiny nanoparticles capable of being taken up by cells, to deliver a novel recombinant anti-HIV protein, called ZPAMt, into cells infected with HIV. The ZPAMt protein was designed by researchers to attach to a region of the virus called LTR that is critical for virus replication. The protein has an epigenetic marker in it that changes the way HIVs’ genetic information is expressed, suppressing it, and making the virus unable to divide and multiply. The exosomes are able to cross the blood brain barrier and enter into the brain making this treatment capable of targeting this hard-to-reach organ.
When researchers administered this exosome-based treatment to mice infected with HIV, they found that the exosome-delivered protein was capable of silencing the HIV-infected cells and that the HIV-infected mice showed suppression of HIV expression in the bone marrow, spleen, and brain.
“This exciting body of work demonstrates we can deliver therapeutic payloads to HIV-infected cells systemically using exosomes. This is an innovative technology that could be a future delivery method for use not only in HIV but also for treating various other diseases of the brain such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and addiction,” said Dr. Morris.
These findings demonstrate that exosomes can be used to deliver proteins into HIV-infected cells in the body — including the hard-to-reach brain — to silence replication of HIV. In the future, the researchers hope to continue their work by using exosomes to deliver gene-excision machinery capable of cutting the HIV out of the genome of infected people. In addition, they plan to study the use of exosomes to deliver treatments that can assist anti-HIV CAR T-cells in killing HIV-infected cells. Ultimately, the researchers hope to expand the use of exosomes beyond HIV — for instance, to target and control factors associated with drug addiction.
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Materials provided by NIH/National Institute of Mental Health. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Whether it’s an exclusive appetite for ‘white’ foods or an all-out refusal on veggies, when you have a fussy eater on your hands, mealtime can be more than a challenge.
While picky eating is all part of the norm for developing toddlers, when it extends into school years, it takes a toll on all involved, children and parents alike.
Now, new research from USC, the University of South Australia, and the University of Queensland is providing a better understanding of what influences fussy eaters, and what is more likely to increase or decrease picky eating in children under 10.
Reviewing 80 health industry studies, the research found that a range of factors contributed to a child’s likelihood of being a fussy eater.
The study found that pressuring a child to eat, offering rewards for eating, very strict parenting all negatively influenced fussy eaters. Conversely, a more relaxed parenting style, eating together as a family, and involving a child in the preparation if food all reduced the likelihood of fussy eating.
Lead researcher and USC PhD student Laine Chilman says the research hopes to help parents and carers better understand fussy eating in children.

Potential new treatments for Parkinson’s disease developed by researchers at Rush University Medical Center have shown success in slowing progression of the disease in mice.
In a study published in Nature Communications, Rush researchers found that two different peptides (chains of amino acids) helped slow the spread of alpha-synuclein, a protein that occurs in abnormal protein deposits called Lewy bodies in the brain. Lewy bodies are hallmarks of Parkinson’s disease, the most common movement disorder affecting about 1.2 million people in the United States and Canada.
“Currently, there are no treatments that slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease — they only treat the symptoms,” says Kalipada Pahan, PhD, the Floyd A. Davis Professor of Neurology at Rush University Medical Center and a research career scientist at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, who led the study.
Lewy bodies are also associated with the development of Lewy body dementia and a rare neurological disorder called multiple system atrophy (MSA). “At present, there is also no effective treatment for dementia with Lewy bodies and multiple system atrophy,” Pahan says. “Understanding how these diseases work is important to developing effective drugs that inhibit alpha-synuclein pathology, protect the brain, and stop the progression of Lewy body diseases.”
The lab-developed peptides tested in the study are known as TLR2-interacting domain of Myd88 (TIDM) and NEMO-binding domain (NBD). The drugs, which were delivered through the nose, were found to slow inflammation in the brain and stop the spread of alpha-synuclein in mice with Parkinson’s disease. The treatments also improved the mice’s gait, balance, and other motor functions.
“If these results can be replicated in patients, it would be a remarkable advance in the treatment of devastating neurological disorders,” Pahan says.
The research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health. Other authors of the article are Debashis Dutta, PhD; Malabendu Jana, PhD; Moumita Majumder, PhD; Susanta Mondal, PhD; and Avik Roy, PhD, all from Rush University Medical Center.
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Materials provided by Rush University Medical Center. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.