People recovering from heart failure should consider improving the regularity of their sleep, a study led by Oregon Health & Science University suggests.
The research team found that even moderately irregular sleep doubles the risk of having another clinical event within six months, according to a study published on August 21 in the journal JACC Advances. A clinical event could be another visit to the emergency room, hospitalization or even death.
“Going to bed and waking up at consistent times is important for overall health,” said lead author Brooke Shafer, Ph.D., a research assistant professor in the Sleep, Chronobiology and Health Laboratory in the OHSU School of Nursing. “Our study suggests that consistency in sleep timing may be especially important for adults with heart failure.”
Researchers enrolled 32 patients who had been hospitalized for acutely decompensated heart failure at OHSU Hospital and Hillsboro Medical Center from September 2022 through October 2023. For one week following hospital discharge, participants used sleep diaries to record the time they fell asleep at night, woke up in the morning and the timing of naps they took during the day.
The participants were then categorized as regular sleepers or moderately irregular sleepers, based on their sleep patterns.
The study found: Following discharge from the hospital, 21 participants experienced a clinical event over the course of six months. Of that group, 13 were classified as moderately irregular sleepers compared with eight classified as having a regular sleep schedule. Statistically, the irregular sleepers had more than double the risk of an event across the six-month time span.The increased risk of a clinical event for moderately irregular sleepers remained even when accounting for possible contributing factors like sleep disorders and other underlying medical conditions. The research team says the study is among the first to examine the impact of sleep regularity in the context of heart failure, and the findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting the importance of maintaining a regular sleep schedule.

“Improving sleep regularity may be a low-cost therapeutic approach to mitigate adverse events in adults with heart failure,” the authors conclude.
Shafer said the results strengthen the connection between sleep regularity and cardiovascular health.
“When we’re asleep and in a resting state, our blood pressure and heart rate decrease compared with daytime levels,” she said. “But variability in sleep timing may disrupt mechanisms involved in the regulation of the cardiovascular system. Irregular sleep may contribute to adverse outcomes, especially for people already affected by heart failure.”
The next step would be to scale up the research to a larger cohort of participants and see whether improving sleep regularity lowers the risk of another clinical event, she said.
In addition to Shafer, co-authors include Shirin Hiatt, M.P.H., RN, Sophia Kogan, B.S.N., RN, Nathan Dieckmann, Ph.D., Christopher Chien, M.D., Quin Denfeld, Ph.D., RN, and Andrew McHill, Ph.D., all of OHSU; and Christopher Lee, Ph.D., RN, of Boston College.
The study was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development; and the National Institute of Nursing Research, all of the National Institutes of Health, awards T32HL083808, K12AR084221 and R01NR019054, respectively; and the OHSU School of Nursing. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

Optical microscopy is a key technique for understanding dynamic biological processes in cells, but observing these high-speed cellular dynamics accurately, at high spatial resolution, has long been a formidable task.
Now, in an article published in Light: Science & Applications, researchers from The University of Osaka, together with collaborating institutions, have unveiled a cryo-optical microscopy technique that take a high-resolution, quantitatively accurate snapshot at a precisely selected timepoint in dynamic cellular activity. Capturing fast dynamic cellular events with spatial detail and quantifiability has been a major challenge owing to a fundamental trade-off between temporal resolution and the ‘photon budget’, that is, how much light can be collected for the image. With limited photons and only dim, noisy images, important features in both space and time become lost in the noise.
“Instead of chasing speed in imaging, we decided to freeze the entire scene,” explains one of the lead authors Kosuke Tsuji. “We developed a special sample-freezing chamber to combine the advantages of live-cell and cryo-fixation microscopy. By rapidly freezing live cells under the optical microscope, we could observe a frozen snapshot of the cellular dynamics at high resolutions.”
For instance, the team froze calcium ion wave propagation in live heart-muscle cells. The intricately detailed frozen wave was then observed in three dimensions using a super-resolution technique that cannot normally observe fast cellular dynamics due to its slow imaging acquisition speed.
“This research began with a bold shift in perspective: to arrest dynamic cellular processes during optical imaging rather than struggle to track them in motion. We believe this will serve as a powerful foundational technique, offering new insights across life-science and medical research,” says senior author Katsumasa Fujita. One of the lead authors, Masahito Yamanaka, adds “Our technique preserves both spatial and temporal features of live cells with instantaneous freezing, making it possible to observe their states in detail. While cells are immobilized, we can take the opportunity to perform highly accurate quantitative measurements with a variety of optical microscopy tools.”
The researchers also demonstrated how this technique improves quantification accuracy. By freezing cells labeled with a fluorescent calcium ion probe, they were able to use exposure times 1000 times longer than practical in live-cell imaging, substantially increasing the measurement accuracy.
To capture transient biological events at precisely defined moments, the researcher integrated an electrically triggered cryogen injection system. With UV light stimulation to induce calcium ion waves, this system enabled freezing of the calcium ion waves at a specific time point after the initiation of the event, with 10 ms precision. This allowed the team to arrest transient biological processes with unprecedented temporal accuracy.
Finally, the team tuned their attention to combining different imaging techniques, which are often difficult to align in time. By the near-instantaneous freezing of samples, multiple imaging modalities can now be applied sequentially without worrying about temporal mismatch. In their study, the team combined spontaneous Raman microscopy and super-resolution fluorescence microscopy on the same cryofixed cells. This allowed them to view intricate cellular information from a number of perspectives at the exact same point in time.
This innovation opens new avenues for observing fast, transient cellular events, providing researchers with a powerful tool to explore the mechanisms underlying dynamic biological processes.

Weight-loss interventions, including gastric bypass surgery and drugs that prevent dietary fat absorption, can be invasive or have negative side effects. Now, researchers have developed edible microbeads made from green tea polyphenols, vitamin E and seaweed that, when consumed, bind to fats in the gastrointestinal tract. Preliminary results from tests with rats fed high-fat diets show that this approach to weight loss may be safer and more accessible than surgery or pharmaceuticals.
Yue Wu, a graduate student at Sichuan University, will present her team’s results at the ACS Fall 2025 Digital Meeting, a meeting of the American Chemical Society.
“Losing weight can help some people prevent long-term health issues like diabetes and heart disease,” says Wu. “Our microbeads work directly in the gut to block fat absorption in a noninvasive and gentle way.”
Weight gain is caused by genetic and lifestyle factors, including eating a high-fat diet. A high-fat diet is defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as one where 35% or more of a person’s daily calories come from fat, as opposed to protein or carbohydrates. Some pharmaceuticals, such as orlistat, inhibit certain gastric enzymes from breaking down dietary fats, leading to less fat being absorbed by the body. Orlistat is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved medication and is effective for weight loss. However, for some people it causes serious side effects, including liver and kidney damage.
So, Wu and her colleagues wanted to target the fat absorption process with their weight-loss intervention but do so without negative side effects. “We want to develop something that works with how people normally eat and live,” says Wu.
To get started, the team created tiny plant-based beads that spontaneously form through a series of chemical bonds between the green tea polyphenols and vitamin E. These structures can form chemical tethers to fat droplets and serve as the fat-binding core of the microbeads. The researchers then coated the spheres in a natural polymer derived from seaweed to protect them from the acidic environment of the stomach. Once ingested, the protective polymer coating expands in response to the acidic pH, and the green tea polyphenols and vitamin E compounds bind to and trap partially digested fats in the intestine.
The microbeads are nearly flavorless, and the researchers foresee them being easily integrated into people’s diets. For example, the microbeads could be made into small tapioca- or boba-sized balls and added to desserts and bubble teas.

The researchers assessed the microbeads as a weight-loss treatment in rats. They put the animals into three groups (eight rats per group), those which were fed a high-fat diet (60% fats) either with or without microbeads and those which were fed a normal diet (10% fats) for 30 days. Rats fed the high-fat diet and microbeads: Lost 17% of their total body weight, while rats in the other groups didn’t lose weight. Had reduced adipose tissue and less liver damage compared to rats fed the high-fat and normal diets without microbeads. Excreted more fat in their feces compared to rats not given microbeads. The extra fat in the rats’ feces had no apparent ill effects on the animals’ health.Additionally, the eight rats on high-fat diets that consumed microbeads showed similar intestinal fat excretion, but without the gastrointestinal side effects the researchers observed with a fourth group of rats they treated with orlistat.
Wu and her team have started working with a biotechnology company to manufacture the plant-based beads. “All the ingredients are food grade and FDA-approved, and their production can be easily scaled up,” says Yunxiang He, Sichuan University associate professor and co-author on Wu’s presentation.
They’ve also initiated a human clinical trial in collaboration with the West China Hospital of Sichuan University. “This represents a major step toward clinical translation of our polyphenol-based microbeads, following our foundational results,” says Wu. “We have officially enrolled 26 participants in our investigator-initiated trial, and we anticipate that preliminary data may become available within the next year.”
Title Oral polyphenol-based microbeads with synergistic demulsification and fat locking for obesity treatment
Abstract Excessive fat intake is strongly linked to the growing prevalence of obesity and associated metabolic disorders. Orlistat is the only Food and Drug Administration-approved drug for limiting the absorption of fat; however, the unabsorbed fat in the colon can cause severe side effects. Here, we report a polyphenol-mediated fat-locking (PmFL) microbead made of green tea polyphenol, dietary fiber (alginate), and D-a-tocopherol that efficiently captures and excludes a broad spectrum of dietary fat derivatives in the gut. Mechanistically, PmFL microbeads actively capture emulsified fat droplets through gastrointestinal pH-responsive expansion and facilitate multiple molecular interaction-driven demulsification and fat locking. The high-fat dieted rats orally administered PmFL microbeads showed 17.02% weight loss, accompanied by reduced adipose tissue, alleviated liver damage, and lower blood fat levels. Notably, the rats exhibited direct excretion of fat-containing feces without side effects or blood glucose fluctuations. Our work provides a basis for novel dietary strategies to combat obesity.
The research was funded by National Key R&D Program of China; the National Excellent Young Scientists Fund; the National Natural Science Foundation of China; the Talents Program of Sichuan Province; the Double First-Class University Plan of Sichuan University; the State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering; the Tianfu Emei Program of Sichuan Province; the Postdoctoral Special Funding of Sichuan Province; the Postdoctoral Funding of Sichuan University; the Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Leather Chemistry and Engineering; and the National Engineering Research Center of Clean Technology in Leather Industry.

A new study finds that a high-salt diet triggers brain inflammation that drives up blood pressure.
The research, led by McGill University scientist Masha Prager-Khoutorsky in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team at McGill and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, suggests the brain may be a missing link in certain forms of high blood pressure – or hypertension – traditionally attributed to the kidneys.
“This is new evidence that high blood pressure can originate in the brain, opening the door for developing treatments that act on the brain,” said Prager-Khoutorsky, associate professor in McGill’s Department of Physiology.
Hypertension affects two-thirds of people over 60 and contributes to 10 million deaths worldwide each year. Often symptomless, the condition increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and other serious health problems.
About one-third of patients don’t respond to standard medications, which primarily target the blood vessels and kidneys based on the long-standing view that hypertension begins there. The study, published in the journal Neuron, suggests the brain may also be a key driver of the condition, particularly in treatment-resistant cases.
How salt disrupts the brain
To mimic human eating patterns, rats were given water containing two per cent salt, comparable to a daily diet high in fast food and items like bacon, instant noodles and processed cheese.

The high-salt diet activated immune cells in a specific brain region, causing inflammation and a surge in the hormone vasopressin, which raises blood pressure. Researchers tracked these changes using cutting-edge brain imaging and lab techniques that only recently became available.
“The brain’s role in hypertension has largely been overlooked, in part because it’s harder to study,” Prager-Khoutorsky said. “But with new techniques, we’re able to see these changes in action.”
The researchers used rats instead of the more commonly studied mice because rats regulate salt and water more like humans. That makes the findings more likely to apply to people, noted Prager-Khoutorsky.
Next, the scientists plan to study whether similar processes are involved in other forms of hypertension.
“Microglia regulate neuronal activity via structural remodeling of astrocytes” by Ning Gu et al., was published in Neuron and supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Azrieli Foundation.

27 minutes agoShareSaveMitchell LabiakBusiness reporter, BBC NewsShareSaveGetty ImagesAll UK airports should stop charging blue badge holders for being dropped off close to terminals, a disability charity has said.Several people with blue badges got in touch with the BBC following news that more than half of the busiest airports had raised the so-called “kiss-and-fly” fees to as high as £7 in some cases.Many airports already offer discounts or waive the fee for disabled drivers, but blue badge holders say the system is complex and inconsistent.Graham Footer, chief executive of Disabled Motoring UK, said some airports have “allowed greed to cloud their judgement”, and argues people with disabilities should not have to pay the charge at all.”Disabled customers deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and not fleeced as soon as they arrive,” he said.Free drop offsThe BBC contacted the 20 busiest airports in the UK to confirm their policy on drop-off charges for blue badge holders.London City does not charge drop-off fees for any kind of passenger. Gatwick, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Heathrow, Liverpool John Lennon and Manchester all charge a drop-off fee, but blue badge holders do not have to pay it.Luton, Glasgow, Belfast International, Belfast City, East Midlands, Aberdeen, and Southampton all charge blue badge holders the same as other passengers for using the drop-off spaces closest to the airport. But they also all offer separate free drop-off parking specifically for blue badge holders elsewhere.For Glasgow and Aberdeen, this parking is only free if blue badge holders are being dropped off by family or friends – not if they are dropped off by taxi.All airports offer free drop-off options further from the terminals for all passengers – not just blue badge holders – such as “park and ride” facilities where people can leave their car and take a bus to the airport.Bristol, Leeds Bradford, and Bournemouth all charge blue badge holders for drop off but allow them to stay for longer than other passengers at a lower fee.Bristol charges £7 for 40 minutes, Leeds Bradford charges £7 for 60 minutes, and Bournemouth charges £5 for four hours because it said disabled passengers “may require more time”.Only Cardiff, Newcastle, and Stanstead charge the same fee with no discount at all.Cardiff charges £3 for 10 minutes, Newcastle charges £5 for 10 minutes, and Stanstead charges £7 for 15 minutes.Airports UK, which represents the industry, said that the best accessible drop-off for blue badge holders depends on the layout of the airport.”No one option is ideal at all airports, so to optimise access at each airport the offer will necessarily be different,” it said.It advised passengers to check the airport’s website before travelling to identify the best drop-off location.’You have to jump through hoops’Most of the airports that waive drop-off fees do so if a disabled driver shows their blue badge at the airport on the day.However, for Heathrow and Liverpool, the exemption needs to be claimed online or on the phone either before or after travelling. Heathrow says its online process for confirming blue badges can take five days to complete, though it told the BBC it usually takes 48 hours.James Williams, 67, from London finds these services difficult to use.”I am a blue badge holder and I have to pay because I am not computer literate,” he says, arguing that “you have to jump through hoops to get this discount”.James WilliamsJonathan Cassar, 51, from London says the complex nature of online registration means that “disabled people who need to be dropped at terminal cannot be spontaneous as others can”.Heathrow said it had tried to make the blue badge registration process “as simple as possible” and advised anyone who needs registration urgently to get it approved over the phone.Liverpool said it had introduced online confirmation “to minimise abuse of the blue badge system”.’Not against principle’Not all blue badge holders feel being charged for airport drop off is unfair.Gordon Richardson, chair of the British Polio Fellowship Board, is a blue badge holder but says he is “not against the principle” of disabled people paying the same as non-disabled people.He says what is most important is that the space is accessible and easy to use.He urges blue badge holders to contact airports before travelling so that the airports can have the staff ready to help them and ensure they get their discount or free parking.Many of the airports the BBC contacted said their blue badge policies had been drafted in consultation with disability groups and with special consideration for their needs.

15 minutes agoShareSaveJoe McFaddenShareSaveHandoutOne morning before school, Rex, aged nine, ate a hot cross bun. Minutes later, he was struggling to breathe and went into anaphylactic shock.Rex is allergic is to peas and lentils – ingredients you would not commonly expect to find in a hot cross bun. However, when Rex’s mum looked at the packaging, it turned out the glazing used on the bun contained pea protein – causing Rex’s allergic reaction.Pea is not one of the 14 allergens required by law to be listed on food labels but earlier this week, experts said it – among others – should be.Rex’s father, Tom, says it “feels like a lot of these things are booby-trapped”.”We couldn’t understand why,” he says. “It wasn’t a vegan recipe. What is pea protein doing in a hot cross bun?”After he went into anaphylactic shock, Rex was quickly given his EpiPen and taken to hospital. He made a full recovery but hot cross buns aren’t the only unassuming product he’s been tripped up by.During June’s heatwave, Rex bought an ice cream after school from a corner shop. As he’d eaten this particular brand before, he didn’t check the packaging but, unbeknownst to him, the ice cream now contained pea protein and caused another allergic reaction.Tom says Rex is now “terrified” of accidentally eating pea and having an allergic reaction.He agrees with experts that the list of 14 allergens should be expanded to include pea and feels “frustrated” it is being increasingly added to foods.’Game of roulette’ Under current regulations, food packaging in the UK and EU already lists the most common allergens for people to be aware of, such as egg, peanuts and sesame. They must be clearly emphasised, usually in bold, on labels while restaurants will either list allergens on menus or inform customers verbally.Rex isn’t the only child being caught out by pea protein in products.In 2023, Becky gave her son an ice lolly he’d eaten before with no issues. However, the now-five year-old quickly began coughing while his throat became irritated. The lolly contained pea protein – which her son, like Rex, is severely allergic too.For Becky and her husband, expanding the allergens list to include clear warnings for peas would be “life-changing” and a “massive weight” off their minds.”It’s getting harder and harder to say ‘well, it probably doesn’t contain pea’ because pea is in things that you would never think it would be,” she added.”It’s like playing a game of roulette.”HandoutAlthough it’s becoming more common, people with a pea allergy are finding it’s not taken as seriously as other allergies.Charlotte, 25, is allergic to all pulses – including peas, chickpeas and lentils. She would welcome expanding the allergen list as it would make people more aware of her allergies as she’s frequently told it’s “not a real allergy”.”I think because it’s kind of like a joke that people don’t like peas, people think that I’m just being fussy,” she says.”People just don’t consider it a real allergy or even understand what it is.”Charlotte says this can make eating out quite hard. Two weeks ago she went out for dinner in London and had an allergic reaction but staff insisted her food wasn’t contaminated.”I ended up apologising that I was having allergic reaction because I felt so embarrassed I was making an inconvenience for them.”Becky also says her son has had similar experiences.He’s allergic to egg, peanuts, nuts, sesame, chickpeas, peas and lentils but his reaction to pea is seen very differently – even though it’s as severe, if not worse than his reaction to peanuts.HandoutIt’s not just pea allergies that are becoming more common. Experts also suggested that allergic reaction warning labels should be added to foods containing pine nuts, buckwheat and sheep and goat’s milk.Annabel, 20, has just completed a degree at the University of Cambridge. She’s allergic to pine nuts and believes adding them to the list of allergens could potentially be “life saving” for her.Like Charlotte, Annabel finds communicating her allergies to restaurant staff can be very hit or miss.”I often feel like my allergy is not taken seriously,” she says. “When I state an allergy to pine nuts, the vast majority of the time they reply ‘peanuts?'”She says staff often tells her there’s no nuts in her food but thinks they just mean the nuts which are recognised as part of the 14 allergens. She’s had three anaphylactic reactions, including when she was informed by restaurants that her meal didn’t contain pine nuts.Annabel says adding it to the list would make her feel “so much more confident” when eating out.”A lot of my family like to eat out quite a lot and I often don’t want to go, or when I’m with my friends I’m always telling everyone around me ‘this is where my EpiPens are, this is what to do if something happens’, [so] to have that safety and to not worry would be such a big difference to me.”The Food Standards Agency said earlier it recognised there were a significant number of foods that could cause allergies or intolerances.While Allergy UK said it was calling for full ingredient labelling on all food products while keeping an eye on worrying trends.More Weekend Picks

14 minutes agoShareSaveRuth CleggHealth and wellbeing reporterShareSavesydney brownIt was Sydney Brown’s mother who first noticed her frown line. A couple of years ago, the pair were video calling when her mum pointed out a crease between her daughter’s eyebrows.They decided it was the right time for Sydney, then 23, to start having anti-wrinkle injections.Now 25, Sydney has had both botox and lip filler. She is happy with her decision, and says she and her friends will do “whatever it takes” to feel more confident and “look their best”. If that comes in the shape of cosmetic surgery – so be it.Sydney’s mum, Dr Hayley Brown, an award-winning plastic surgeon based in Las Vegas, regularly injects small amounts of botox into her daughter’s forehead.She says her daughter looks less tired, feels more confident and, Dr Brown believes, won’t need more invasive surgery to smooth out deeper lines later in life.Using anti-wrinkle injections in the way Sydney does is known as “preventative botox”. Botox users in their 20s and early 30s hope to prevent lines forming in the first place, or to target a crease before it becomes a wrinkle.The ageing process is inevitable, but are preventative cosmetic treatments a savvy way of holding on to our youth? Or are we just injecting thousands of pounds into an industry that’s profiting from our insecurities?I have spoken to both users and experts in the hope of finding an answer.Dr Hayley BrownThe less you contract your muscle, the less your skin creases, reducing the appearance of wrinkles. But what was once reserved for the ageing wealthy, or the elusive world of celebrities, has now reached the foreheads of 20-somethings across the UK.Around 900,000 botox injections are carried out in the UK every year. Worldwide, the percentage of 18 to 34-year-olds opting for cosmetic tweaks is growing, making up nearly a quarter of the clientele. In a brightly lit clinic in Prestwich, north Manchester, Dr Javed Hussain, a doctor and medical director of his company, Neo Derm, is preparing to treat his next client, 26-year-old Ven Grecu, who has been coming for botox for the past two years.He listens intently as Ven explains where he wants his treatment. When his client lifts his eyebrows up, his skin creases as he points at various areas.Poised with the needle, Dr Hussain warns: “You will feel a short, sharp scratch…. there we go, over in seconds.”Ven barely flinches.With a slightly reddened forehead, Ven turns his head to speak to me. “I know I’m young,” he says, “But it’s not an age factor. I’m having this as a way of preventing wrinkles.”Not having them makes me feel so confident, it helps me in my job, and I want to age gracefully.”Ruth clegg/BBCSo far, Ven, a business development manager, has spent thousands of pounds on treatment, but “it’s an investment in my confidence and it’s worth every penny”, he says.But if a wrinkle isn’t yet there, then how does having botulinum toxin injected into your face impede the ageing process?”It doesn’t stop you from ageing,” Dr Hussain explains, “but it does slow down its progress”.Dr Hussain says that, by targeting the dynamic wrinkles – the temporary creases we create when we make a facial expression – static lines are reduced in the long run.”By relaxing the muscles that contract, we are reducing the number of times the skin wrinkles.”That, in turn, prevents the lines from getting so deep.”The practitioner says he is seeing an increase in the number of 18 and 19-year-olds coming in for treatment and, despite it being legal to inject anyone over the age of 18, he does turn them away.”I’ve had some girls come in asking for botox and lip fillers – some asking for 3 or 4ml in their lips, which is a lot, especially if they haven’t had any treatment before.”Ruth Clegg/BBCNot everyone agrees with Dr Hussain that preventative botox is an effective way of preventing signs of ageing.Nora Nugent, consultant plastic surgeon and President of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), does not recommend getting botox at such a young age, and says starting too early is a waste of money.”You can’t treat something that isn’t there. Having it in your early 20s, with barely anything to treat, is spending a lot of money before you reap any benefit.”She prefers to see clients when they already have faint lines – by then, she can see the nuances of how a face is ageing so she can adapt her treatment.”There’s nothing wrong with caring about your appearance or having aesthetic procedures, but it’s important to have them for the right reason.”It can almost become peer pressure – aesthetics is about choice and doing things that make you feel better about yourself rather than being pressured into doing it.”It’s this pressure that worries specialists such as Jen Tomei, a nutritional and eating disorder therapist, who gives talks in schools about body image.”As a society, we are obsessed with anti-ageing. There is an increased awareness of procedures like botox and fillers among teenage students.”She says she is worried about their mental health in the long run, and as part of her lessons she tries to get them to focus on other positive things about themselves, rather than just their appearance.”They shouldn’t be thinking about wrinkles now.””Build up a tolerance”Ashton Collins, director of Save Face, an organisation which campaigns for better regulation of the cosmetic industry, says she has seen patients as young as 18 with botox related complications after being treated by “unscrupulous practitioners”.”I’m very concerned about how preventative botox is being marketed, particularly posts on social media that target and pressure young women into treatments they do not need.”She also warns that by having botox too early, and, if it’s not carried out carefully, inappropriate treatment over a long period of time can cause altered expressions, an asymmetrical face and in some cases longer term muscle atrophy which can take years to recover from.She says that having botulinum toxin injected at such an early age risks building up a tolerance to it. She started when she was 26 and, now 37, needs it more frequently than ever as it wears off so quickly.There are a range of views when it comes to the preventative power of botox, but all the experts are in agreement that cleansing, moisturising and daily use of sunscreen can help prevent our skin from ageing prematurely. And if you are going to use treatments like botox – find a practitioner who is accredited with a medical background.Dr Hayley BrownAs for what happens if you use botox regularly across a whole lifetime, we still don’t have good research.Finding a cohort of people to study over the course of several decades is tricky. The healthiness of skin is multi factorial – lifestyle, environment, stress levels, diet and exercise regime all play into how our skin ages. And, given that botox only lasts three to six months, any longitudinal study would have to ensure participants are going for regular top-ups.And that’s the crux, fighting the wrinkle is a war of attrition. Once you’ve had one treatment, because it wears off after just a few months, you have to keep going back for more.Sydney will continue to have anti-wrinkle injections. She completely trusts her mum to keep her looking young and, most importantly, natural.She says her mum will stop her from having too much and failing to recognise her own face changing by going “botox blind” or “filler blind”.”I only have a little bit, I will definitely continue. It’s super easy to get it, my mum knows what she is doing and I feel so much more confident having it.”More weekend stories

Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital demonstrated for the first time that the protein midkine plays a preventative role against Alzheimer’s disease. Midkine is known to accumulate in Alzheimer’s disease patients. Now, researchers have connected it with amyloid beta, a protein that accumulates in the brain, causing assemblies that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s.
In work published on August 21 in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, the researchers revealed that midkine prevents amyloid beta from sticking together, and, consequently, Alzheimer’s disease models lacking midkine show more amyloid beta accumulation. The findings lay the groundwork to better understand the disease-preventing mechanism of midkine and subsequent drug discovery pathways.
Midkine blocks Alzheimer’s amyloid assembly growth
Midkine is a small, multifunctional growth factor protein found abundantly during embryonic development but also involved in normal cell growth. Its role in cell growth means that midkine is often overexpressed in cancer, making it a valuable biomarker. However, beyond some preliminary studies showing its increase in Alzheimer’s, midkine’s link to the neurodegenerative disease has been poorly understood.
Corresponding author Junmin Peng, PhD, Departments of Structural Biology and Developmental Neurobiology, and his team utilized fluorescence assays, circular dichroism, electron microscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance with disease models that replicate amyloid beta accumulation to investigate the role of midkine in Alzheimer’s thoroughly. They found that midkine and amyloid beta have a similar pattern at the protein level.
“We know that correlation is not causative, so we wanted to demonstrate convincingly that real interactions are occurring between the two proteins,” Peng explained.
The researchers used a fluorescent sensor for amyloid beta assemblies, called thioflavin T, to show that the assemblies were broken up in the presence of midkine. Modeling of those data revealed that midkine inhibits amyloid beta elongation and secondary nucleation, two specific phases during assembly formation. Nuclear magnetic resonance confirmed this finding.

“Once the amyloid beta assemblies grow, the signal becomes weaker and broader until it disappears because the technique can only analyze small molecules,” said Peng. “But when we add in midkine, the signal returns, showing that it inhibits the large assemblies.”
Additionally, the researchers used Alzheimer’s disease mouse models that have increased amyloid beta and demonstrated that removing the midkine gene resulted in even higher levels of amyloid beta assemblies. These results point to the protective role the protein has against Alzheimer’s disease.
The researchers have opened a potential avenue for drug discovery by identifying the apparent protective role of midkine. “We want to continue to understand how this protein binds to amyloid beta so we can design small molecules to do the same thing,” said Peng. “With this work, we hope to provide strategies for future treatment.”
Authors and funding
The study’s other co-corresponding authors are Yang Yang, Van Andel Institute, and Ping-Chung Chen, St. Jude. The study’s first authors are Masihuz Zaman, Shu Yang and Ya Huang, St. Jude. The study’s other authors are Geidy Serrano and Thomas Beach, Banner Sun Health Research Institute; Gang Yu, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; and Jay Yarbro, Yanhong Hao, Zhen Wang, Danting Liu, Kiara Harper, Hadeer Soliman, Alex Helphill, Sarah Harvey, Shondra Pruett-Miller, Valerie Stewart, Ajay Singh Tanwar, Ravi Kalathur, Christy Grace, Martin Turk, Sagar Chittori, Yun Jiao, Zhiping Wu, Anthony High, and Xusheng Wang, St. Jude.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01AG053987, RF1AG064909, RF1AG068581, U19AG069701, P30CA021765, U24NS072026, P30AG019610, P30AG072980), the Arizona Department of Health Services, the Arizona Biomedical Research Commission, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC), the fundraising and awareness organization of St. Jude.

Serena Williams, one of the most successful athletes of all time, has spoken out about using weight loss drugs – she says, to lift the “stigma” around using such medication.Will her outspoken comments instil a new sense of confidence in those using the drugs? And could her honesty quieten the critics?The 43-year-old tennis star, who broke records and won 23 grand slam titles through her career, was the embodiment of fitness and athletic prowess. But, after having kids, even she, like so many of us, has admitted to struggling to shift those extra pounds.In the end, Williams told the Today Show on TV in the US, that she had to look at her extra weight as “an opponent”. Despite “training five hours a day” and “running, walking, biking, stair climbing,” she couldn’t pulverise this adversary like she did to her opponents on the tennis court – so in the end, she says, she had no other choice but to “try something different”.Many of her friends were using GLP-1 – the group of medications which help with weight loss, so she decided to try it.Williams is adamant that the medication route – she won’t say which brand she is taking – wasn’t easy, and certainly not a shortcut to her losing 31lb (14kg) over the past eight months.There is scepticism about the timing of the tennis star’s recent transparency – she has just become a spokesperson for Ro, a company which sells GLP-1 brands like Wegovy and Zepbound (known as Mounjaro in the UK) through its weight-loss programme, and her husband is also an investor.Despite this and the potential side effects of taking the medication, her honesty will hit a nerve for many – she says she is speaking out to take away the shame that so many women feel when it comes to using drugs to help them lose weight.Caleb Luna, assistant professor of feminist studies at the University of California, says having someone like Serena Williams speaking out is “a breakthrough”.They say it helps silence the critics of how “weight loss is achieved” who say that “people are taking the easy way out” by using weight loss drugs.”It gets rid of the stereotype that these drugs are for fat people who are being lazy and incompetent.”In that respect it’s maybe a good thing.”But Caleb also says the revelation about her need to resort to using GLP-1 medication is slightly “terrifying” and makes them feel “a little bit sad”. They worry that all it does is belittle hard work and dedication, instead, focussing on appearance and the pressure to look a certain way.”She has achieved things that so few people, in our time and throughout history have achieved.”But now it just shows how all those accomplishments can be undermined by body size.”Scarily, weight loss seems to outshine all those record-breaking achievements.”Williams’ weight and her looks have been scrutinised throughout her life. The burden, the pressure to fit in with society’s expectations does not diminish no matter how much sporting success an athlete has in their career.And while she may be the most high profile sports star who openly uses weight loss medication, there are many others in the public eye who have spoken out.Oprah Winfrey says she uses GLP-1 as a tool, along with exercise and healthy eating, to stop herself “yo-yoing” with her weight.Actress Whoopi Goldberg says she lost the weight of “two people” after taking the drug, and singer Kelly Clarkson, who says she was “chased” by her “doctor for two years” before she agreed to take it, are among the dozens of stars who have been open about taking the medication. Williams left the world of tennis behind back in 2022, when she played the final match of her career in the US Open, but she is still a powerhouse of strength and has wanted to reach what she describes as her “healthy weight” since the birth of her second child, Adina.In her interview with the Today Show, says she felt like her “body was missing something” and she wasn’t able to get down to what she felt comfortable with – despite intense training.Dr Claire Madigan, a senior research associate in behavioural medicine at the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University, says elite athletes can find it hard to lose weight.”They are used to consuming a lot of calories and when they leave the sport they can find it difficult – it needs a change in behaviour.”Dr Madigan said it was good to see that Williams mentioned her weight loss was not just down to the drug – “she did have to focus on the diet and physical activity”.She added: “It’s great she is talking about how difficult it is to lose weight after having a baby.”But she wonders if Williams’s message might be lost and even demotivate some women. “The drugs are quite expensive and the average person may think here is an elite athlete, she’s got access to the gym, she’s got time, she has a nutritionist… and she’s had to use GLP-1s”.Dr Madigan also expressed concern that the potential side effects of taking the drugs – which can include gastrointestinal problems like vomiting and diarrhoea, and in rare cases, gallbladder and kidney problems – may not have been widely discussed in the publicity surrounding Williams’s announcement.Williams says she did not experience any side effects, and told Women’s Health magazine that she is finally seeing the benefits of all her hard work at the gym.”My joints are a lot better,” she says, “I just had my check-up, and the doctor said everything – including my blood sugar levels – looked great.”And, even though, she’s no longer breaking new ground on the tennis courts, she is still smashing her own records, with the help, she says of weight loss drugs. She’s currently training for a half marathon.”I am running farther than I ever have,” she says proudly.Additional reporting by Alex Kleiderman

Omega fatty acids could protect against Alzheimer’s disease in women, new research has found.
Analysis of lipids – fat molecules that perform many essential functions in the body – in the blood found there was a noticeable loss of unsaturated fats, such as those that contain omega fatty acids, in the blood of women with Alzheimer’s disease compared to healthy women.
Scientists found no significant difference in the same lipid molecule composition in men with Alzheimer’s disease compared to healthy men, which suggests that those lipids have a different role in the disease according to sex. Fats perform important roles in maintaining a healthy brain, so this study could indicate why more women are diagnosed with the disease.
The study, published on August 20 in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association by scientists from King’s College London and Queen Mary University London, is the first to reveal the important role lipids could have in the risk for Alzheimer’s between the sexes.
Senior author Dr Cristina Legido-Quigley, from King’s College London, said: “Women are disproportionately impacted by Alzheimer’s Disease and are more often diagnosed with the disease than men after the age of 80. One of the most surprising things we saw when looking at the different sexes was that there was no difference in these lipids in healthy and cognitively impaired men, but for women this picture was completely different. The study reveals that Alzheimer’s lipid biology is different between the sexes, opening new avenues for research.”
The scientists took plasma samples from 841 participants who had Alzheimer’s Disease, mild cognitive impairment and cognitively health controls and and were measured for brain inflammation and damage.
They used mass spectrometry to analyze the 700 individual lipids in the blood. Lipids are a group of many molecules. Saturated lipids are generally considered as ‘unhealthy’ or ‘bad’ lipids, while unsaturated lipid, which sometime contains omega fatty acids, are generally considered ‘healthy’.

Scientists saw a steep increase in lipids with saturation – the ‘unhealthy lipids’ – in women with Alzheimer’s compared to the healthy group. The lipids with attached omega fatty acids were the most decreased in the Alzheimer’s group.
Now, the scientists say there is a statistical indication that there is a causal link between Alzheimer’s Disease and fatty acids. But a clinical trial is necessary to confirm the link.
Dr Legido-Quigley added: “Our study suggests that women should make sure they are getting omega fatty acids in their diet – through fatty fish or via supplements. However, we need clinical trials to determine if shifting the lipid composition can influence the biological trajectory of Alzheimer’s Disease.”
Dr Asger Wretlind, first author of the study from King’s College London, said: “Scientists have known for some time that more women than men are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Although this still warrants further research, we were able to detect biological differences in lipids between the sexes in a large cohort, and show the importance of lipids containing omegas in the blood, which has not been done before. The results are very striking and now we are looking at how early in life this change occurs in women.”
Dr Julia Dudley, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK says: “In the UK, two in three people living with dementia are women. This could be linked to living longer, or other risk factors like social isolation, education, or hormonal changes from the menopause being at play.
“While this study shows that women with Alzheimer’s had lower levels of some unsaturated fats compared with men, further work is needed. This includes understanding the mechanisms behind this difference and finding out if lifestyle changes, including diet could have a role. Future research should also be carried out in a more ethnically diverse population to see if the same effect is seen.
“Understanding how the disease works differently in women could help doctors tailor future treatments and health advice. Alzheimer’s Research UK is proud to be funding this work that will bring us a step closer to a cure.”
The research was supported by funding from LundbeckFonden and Alzheimer’s Research UK.