Publisher Health

A new class of motorized molecules that kill specific bacteria shows promise to curb the threat of antibiotic resistance to human health.
Rice University scientists led a team developing light-activated hemithioindigo (HTI) molecules that destroy Gram-positive bacteria and the biofilms they form. The molecules do so by enhancing the local generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that chemically attack and destroy drug-resistant cells.
The new molecules differ from, and are complementary to, others created at Rice that are also activated by light but drill into cell membranes to kill them.
Like the drills based on Nobel Prize-winning work by Bernard Feringa, the HTI-based molecules are activated by visible light rather than harmful ultraviolet radiation.
Both are products of Rice chemist James Tour and his colleagues. Rice alumni Ana Santos, a postdoctoral global fellow at the Health Research Institute of the Balearic Islands in Palma, Spain, and Alexis van Venrooy, now a senior scientist at Genesis Therapeutics, San Diego, are co-lead authors of the new study in Advanced Science.
The HTI-based molecular machines consist of two halves: a thioindigo unit linked to a carbocycle via a central carbon double bond. When triggered by visible light, the molecule undergoes a conformational change that results in either a drill-like 360-degree motion or a shift between two conformations, like an “on/off” switch, depending on the molecular design.

In the past decade, scientists have described hundreds of novel viruses with the potential to pass between wildlife and humans. But how can they know which are riskiest for spillover and therefore which to prioritize for further surveillance in people?
Scientists from the University of California, Davis created network-based models to prioritize novel and known viruses for their risk of zoonotic transmission, which is when infectious diseases pass between animals and humans.
Their study, published in the journal Communications Biology, provides further evidence that coronaviruses are riskiest for spillover and should continue to be prioritized for enhanced surveillance and research.
The machine learning models were designed by the EpiCenter for Disease Dynamics at the UC Davis One Health Institute in the School of Veterinary Medicine.
Prioritizing novel viruses
The models found that novel viruses from the coronavirus family are expected to have a larger number of species as hosts. This is consistent with known viruses, indicating this family of viruses should be most highly prioritized for surveillance.

In a trio of papers, published simultaneously in the journal Science, Ron Pinhasi from the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences (HEAS) at the University of Vienna and Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg from the University of Vienna and Harvard University, Iosif Lazaridis and David Reich at Harvard University — together with 202 co-authors — report a massive effort of genome-wide sequencing from 727 distinct ancient individuals with which it was possible to test longstanding archaeological, genetic and linguistic hypotheses. They present a systematic picture of the interlinked histories of peoples across the Southern Arc Region from the origins of agriculture, to late medieval times.
In the first paper the international team investigated the homeland and the spread of Anatolian and Indo-European languages. The genetic results suggest that the homeland of the Indo-Anatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans from the Eurasian steppe. At the first stage, around 7,000-5,000 years ago, people with ancestry from the Caucasus moved west into Anatolia and north into the steppe. Some of these people may have spoken ancestral forms of Anatolian and Indo-European Languages.
All spoken Indo-European languages (e.g., Greek, Armenian and Sanskrit) can be traced back to Yamnaya steppe herders, with Caucasus hunter-gatherer and Eastern hunter-gatherer ancestry, who ~5,000 years ago initiated a chain of migrations across Eurasia. Their southern expansions into the Balkans and Greece and east across the Caucasus into Armenia left a trace in the DNA of the Bronze Age people of the region.
As they expanded, descendants of the Yamnaya herders admixed differentially with the local populations. The emergence of Greek, Paleo-Balkan, and Albanian (Indo-European) languages in Southeastern Europe and the Armenian language in West Asia, formed out of Indo-European speaking migrants from the steppe interacting with local people, and can be traced by different forms of genetic evidence. In Southeastern Europe, the Yamnaya impact was profound and people of practically full Yamnaya ancestry came just after the beginning of the Yamnaya migrations.
Some of the most striking results are found in the core region of the Southern Arc, Anatolia, where the large-scale data paints a rich picture of change — and lack of change — over time. The results show that in contrast to the Balkans and the Caucasus, Anatolia was hardly impacted by the Yamnaya migrations. No link to the steppe can be established for the speakers of Anatolian languages (e.g. Hittite, Luwian) due to the absence of Eastern hunter-gatherer ancestry in Anatolia, contrasting with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken.
In contrast to Anatolia’s surprising impermeability to steppe migrations, the southern Caucasus was affected multiple times including prior to the Yamnaya migrations. “I did not expect to find out that the Areni 1 Chalcolithic individuals, who were recovered 15 years ago in the excavation I co-led, would derive ancestry from gene flow from the north to parts of the southern Caucasus more than 1,000 years prior to the expansion of the Yamnaya, and that this northern influence would disappear in the region before reappearing a couple of millennia later. This shows that there is a lot more to be discovered through new excavations and fieldwork in the eastern parts of Western Asia” says Ron Pinhasi.

A new universal flu vaccine protects against diverse variants of both influenza A and B viruses in mice, according to a new study by researchers in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.
The researchers designed a single, universal influenza vaccine candidate with key cross-protective, less variable parts of the influenza A and B viruses: multi-neuraminidase protein subtypes known to be major antiviral drug targets and the universally conserved M2 ectodomain protein.
The findings, published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, report that mice vaccinated with an immune stimulating virus-like particle displaying multiple neuraminidase subtypes and conserved M2 portions of antigens (foreign proteins that induce immune responses) were protected against influenza A seasonal variants and pandemic potential viruses (H1N1, H5N1, H3N2, H9N2 and H7N9) and influenza B (Yamagata and Victoria lineage) viruses containing substantial antigenic variations.
Viral variants occur when flu pathogens change their major surface hemagglutinin protein that binds to host receptor molecules. Continuous mutational changes in the flu hemagglutinin proteins cause the emergence of variants that have escaped the host immune system, leading to severe flu disease.
Current influenza vaccines are based on strain-specific immunity to hemagglutinin, a highly variable target of immune protection. Annual influenza vaccination is recommended, but the effectiveness of the seasonal vaccine is unpredictable and could be below 20 percent because of continuous changes in hemagglutinin proteins. Therefore, influenza remains a high risk to human health worldwide.
“We developed a single, universal vaccine entity that induced immunity to conserved M2 ectodomain and multi subtype neuraminidase proteins and was found to be effective in conferring broad cross protection against antigenically diverse influenza A and B viruses in young and aged mice,” said Dr. Sang-Moo Kang, senior author of the study and a professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State. “This study provides impactful insight into developing a universal influenza vaccine inducing broad immunity against both flu A and B variants in young and aged populations.”
This study supports a novel strategy for creating a universal vaccine against influenza A and B viruses. A single construct displaying multiple cross protective proteins has the capacity to induce immunity to M2 and multi-subtype neuraminidase proteins of influenza A and B viruses, as well as offer broad cross protection against sickness and mortality under lethal flu virus challenges in mice, according to the study.
Vaccinating mice with this universal vaccine candidate induced broad neuraminidase inhibition, M2 ectodomain specific antibodies and T cell immune responses. Comparable cross protection was induced in aged mice.
The study warrants further testing of this unique, universal vaccine candidate in ferrets, which have similar respiratory tracts to humans.
Co-authors of the study include Ki-Hye Kim (co-first author), Zhuo Li (co-first author), Noopur Bhatnagar, Jeeva Subbiah, Bo Ryoung Park, Chong Hyun Shin, Bao-Zhong Wang and Sang-Moo Kang of the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State; and Peter Pushko of Medigen Inc.
The study is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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Materials provided by Georgia State University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Every meal you sit-down-to makes an impression, with foods filed away as something delicious to be sought out again, or to be avoided in disgust if we associate the flavor with gut malaise.
How this decision is made turns out to be so fundamental to our wellbeing — determining what foods to seek and avoid — that the signals are coordinated within the most primitive parts of our brains, the brain stem or hindbrain. This brain region also helps us decide when we are “full” and should stop eating.
To date, scientists interested in how and why people gain weight and the diseases that can result from overeating and obesity have focused on a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, following discoveries of two intertwined systems that play important roles in controlling energy balance, the leptin and melanocortin systems.
A paper in the journal Nature Metabolism looks outside this brain region and reviews the various brain pathways that meet in the brain stem to control feeding behavior, using a technique that offers an unbiased look at the neurons involved.
“Everything the hypothalamus does ends up converging in the brainstem. The brain stem is super important in the control of feeding because it takes all sorts of information from your gut, including whether the stomach is distended and whether nutrients have been ingested, and integrates this with information from the hypothalamus about nutritional needs before passing it all on to the rhythmic pattern generators that control food intake,” said Martin Myers, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., professor of internal medicine and Molecular & Integrative Physiology and director of the Elizabeth Weiser Caswell Diabetes Institute.
The recent review builds on recent findings in mice from the Myers lab that revealed the existence of two different food intake-suppressing brain stem circuits- one that causes nausea and disgust, and one that does not, as well as from collaborations with colleague Tune Pers, Ph.D., of the University of Copenhagen. Pers and his group used single cell mapping of brain cells within the dorsal vagal complex, a region in the brain stem that mediates a host of unconscious processes, including feelings of satiety (or sickness) after eating.
The new review paper, from first author Wenwen Cheng, Ph.D., Myers, Pers, and their colleagues, integrates these findings with other recent discoveries to build a new model of brainstem neuronal circuits and how they control food intake and nausea.
“Taking all of this information together allows us to predict which set of neurons control this or that function,” said Myers.
He notes that many of these cell populations are targets for new and effective anti-obesity drugs — for example, a class of drugs for diabetes called GLP1 receptor agonists that can lower blood sugar and help you eat less.
“There is a population of GLP1 neurons in the brain stem which, if you turn them on, will stop food intake but cause violent illness, but there may be another population of neurons that stops eating without making you feel badly.”
Having a detailed map of these neurons and understanding the effects of modifying these cell targets, Myers explains, can assist in making drugs with fewer negative side effects.

New research from Cornell offers insights into a line of CRISPR systems, which could lead to promising antiviral and tissue engineering tools in animal and plants.
The research by Ailong Ke, the Robert J. Appel Professor of molecular biology and genetics in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Stan J.J. Brouns at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, focuses on a newly discovered CRISPR RNA-guided Caspase system, otherwise known as Craspase.
CRISPR-Cas systems are RNA-guided nucleases in bacteria that cleave viral DNA or RNA targets in precise locations to enable powerful genome editing applications. Caspases are a family of proteases that control programmed cell death in animals, including humans. A recent finding that caspase-like proteins could associate with CRISPR-Cas electrified the scientific community. Such CRISPR-guided caspases were given a new name, Craspase.
“On one hand, this association was totally unexpected and points to novel modes of antiviral action in bacteria,” Ke said. “On the other hand, we could use a system like this to develop many biotech and therapeutic applications, if we understand all the gizmos inside this machinery.”
The researchers’ paper on the topic, “Craspase is a CRISPR RNA-guided, RNA-activated protease,” was published Aug. 24 in Science. For this paper, researchers used cryo-electron microscopy snapshots of Craspase systems to explain how they cleave to target RNA and activate protease enzymes, which can break down protein.
“These snapshots lead to a high-definition molecular movie,” Ke said. “By watching it back and forth, we know precisely how Craspase identifies an RNA target, how this in turn activates the protease, how long the activity persists, and what eventually shuts the protease activity off. Ideas start to pour in, about how to draw power from this platform.”
Co-first author Chunyi Hu, a postdoctoral associate in Ke’s lab, said there was tremendous interest in the Craspase system. “Lots of competition. We and our Netherlands collaborators pooled our strength together and worked day and night to solve the puzzle,” Hu said. “The process holds exciting potential because the output of Craspase is protein rather than DNA degradation.”

In Alzheimer’s Disease and other neurodegenerative dementias, proteins that normally play a role in healthy brain tissue turn bad, clumping together to form insoluble plaques and tangles as neurons wither and die. Exactly how these proteins are connected to disease — and whether they can be targeted in some way to slow, stop or reverse its progression — remains a challenging problem. New research from the University of California, Davis reveals a novel role for how one of these proteins, tau, functions in healthy nerve cells, bringing us closer to understanding how it could be involved in pathology. The work was published Aug. 22 in Nature Chemical Biology.
Tau protein is implicated in a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases, said Kassandra Ori-McKenney, associate professor in the UC Davis Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and a corresponding author on the paper. The brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease contain tangles of tau protein and plaques of another protein, beta amyloid. However, tau protein tangles also occur in a variety of diseases, collectively referred to as “tauopathies,” and other neurodegenerative conditions, including following traumatic brain injury.
It was thought that “healthy” tau exists as single protein molecules, and that tau causes disease when it clumps together with other tau proteins, forming the insoluble tau tangles. But in 2019, Ori-McKenney and Richard McKenney, associate professor in the same department, showed that healthy tau could self-associate and come apart again, revealing that self-association of tau molecules may not necessarily always lead to pathology.
“In its natural form tau can self-assemble and disassemble, so what is the tipping point that produces a form where it can’t disassemble and forms a tangle?” Ori-McKenney said.
Tau associated with microtubules
Tau is one of a group of proteins found in all kinds of cells, from single cell amoebas to insects to people, that associate with microtubules, large protein filaments that fill the inside of cells. Microtubules provide a framework within the cell that provides structure and organization, as well as allowing items to move around within the cell and for the cell itself to move. For these things to happen, microtubules have to interact with many other proteins.
Their 2019 paper showed that healthy tau molecules could assemble with each other, forming an “envelope” around microtubules, a novel behavior that the authors showed could play a regulatory role by making it harder, or easier, for certain other proteins to attach to the microtubule.
In the new paper, Ori-McKenney, McKenney and collaborators in the Czech Republic carried out a series of experiments with tau proteins and isolated microtubules. They found that not only can tau self-assemble to form an envelope around microtubules, but that when it does so it squeezes the microtubule into a more compact form. It can do this because microtubules are made up of pairs (dimers) of individual tubulin proteins, and there is a little bit of squishiness — about two angstroms — between dimers.
This means that tau protein can change the compaction along a length of microtubule, which in turn affects how other proteins attach to it. For example, kinesin-1, a motor protein that can move along microtubules, will only attach to an expanded microtubule.
The team also looked at other proteins that are evolutionarily related to tau, microtubule associated proteins (MAP) 2 and 4. MAP2, they found, behaves like tau and can compact microtubules but MAP4 does not. These results suggest that tau and MAP2 might have evolved the ability to compact microtubules for specific functions within cells. Interestingly, both proteins are largely found only in the nervous system, while MAP4 is found in most tissues in the body, suggesting the roles of tau and MAP2 in microtubule compaction may be very important in neurons.
Neither MAP2 or MAP4 are known to be associated with disease states. In future work, the researchers hope to figure out the steps between healthy tau self-assembly and pathological irreversible tangles and the roles of these proteins in different organisms.
Additional authors on the paper are: at UC Davis, Ruensern Tan, Tracy Tan and Mariah Dacy; Valerie Siahaan, Marcus Braun and Zdenek Lansky, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague; Tereza Humhalova and Lenka Libusova, Charles University, Prague; and Samuel Lacey, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, U.K. The work was partly supported by funds from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Czech Science Foundation, Czech Academy of Sciences and Charles University.

Health Secretary Stephen Barclay was doing an interview outside Moorfields Hospital in London when a passing woman accused him of not doing enough about ambulance delays and services.The Department of Health & Social Care later said: “The delivery on ambulances is an absolute priority for the government and NHS England.”

Researchers said the results offered promise to the millions of Americans with alcohol use disorder.A small study on the therapeutic effects of using psychedelics to treat alcohol use disorder found that just two doses of psilocybin magic mushrooms paired with psychotherapy led to an 83 percent decline in heavy drinking among the participants. Those given a placebo reduced their alcohol intake by 51 percent.By the end of the eight-month trial, nearly half of those who received psilocybin had stopped drinking entirely compared with about a quarter of those given the placebo, according to the researchers.The study, published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, is the latest in a cascade of new research exploring the benefits of mind-altering compounds to treat a range of mental health problems, from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder to the existential dread experienced by the terminally ill.Although most psychedelics remain illegal under federal law, the Food and Drug Administration is weighing potential therapeutic uses for compounds like psilocybin, LSD and MDMA, the drug better known as Ecstasy.Dr. Michael Bogenschutz, director at NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine and the study’s lead investigator, said the findings offered hope for the nearly 15 million Americans who struggle with excessive drinking — roughly 5 percent of all adults. Excessive alcohol use kills an estimated 140,000 people each year.“These are exciting results,” Dr. Bogenschutz said. “Alcohol use disorder is a serious public health problem, and the effects of currently available treatments and medications tend to be small.”The double-blind randomized trial followed 93 participants for 32 weeks and divided them into two groups: One received psilocybin and the other a placebo in the form of antihistamine pills. The participants, all of whom struggled with excessive drinking, also took part in 12 therapy sessions that began several weeks before they received their first doses and continued for a month after the final dose. The psilocybin dosage was determined according to participants’ weight, and their heart rate and blood pressure were monitored during the eight-hour sessions.Although none of the participants who received psilocybin reported serious adverse effects, the study had one notable limitation: After each session, nearly all the study subjects were able to successfully guess whether they had received psilocybin or the placebo. “Biased expectancies could have influenced results,” the authors wrote, “so this issue remains a challenge for clinical research on psychedelics.”Mary Beth Orr of Burien, Wash., used to have five or six drinks every evening and more on the weekends before enrolling in the psilocybin study.Ted S. Warren/Associated PressMary Beth Orr, one of the study participants who received psilocybin, said the treatments helped alter her destructive relationship with alcohol. Although she never blacked out and described herself as a “classy drinker,” her life was nonetheless diminished by nightly boozing that left her feeling miserable in the morning.“I spent a lot of time every day thinking about not drinking in the evening,” said Ms. Orr, 69, a retired museum art technician who lives near Seattle. “I wanted to stop but couldn’t.”The psilocybin sessions, she said, were at times unnerving but ultimately illuminating. The mystical, dreamlike journeys included vivid splashes of color, fantastical creatures and an emotional encounter with her deceased father. “It was like a gorgeous show, with jewels and the sense of rushing through a tunnel with deity figures looking down at me from niches in the walls,” she said. Two therapists served as her guides as she lay on a sofa, her eyes masked while soothing music was piped into her headphones.Though less colorful and exhilarating, the second session was anchored by a pivotal, underwater conversation with a family member who she said had caused her immense pain over the years. At the end, she wished the relative well, and they parted with a kiss.The takeaway message, she said, was one of forgiveness, understanding and love, both for others and herself. “I’m no longer afraid of feelings, and I’m living a deeper life,” she said.More than three years after her last session, Ms. Orr said that she seldom drinks but allows herself the occasional glass of wine. “It’s not that I monitor my drinking, it’s just that I don’t think about it, which is the glorious part for me.”Scientists do not fully understand how psilocybin and other psychedelics work on the mind, but the drugs are thought to promote neuroplasticity, or a rewiring of the brain, enabling those with psychiatric problems to find new ways to address their illness and self-destructive behaviors.Dr. Matthew W. Johnson, a psychedelic researcher at Johns Hopkins Medicine who was not involved with the JAMA study, said he was encouraged by the results, in part because of the study’s comparatively large size and double-blind design. A previous, promising trial on psilocybin and alcoholic use disorder, he noted, had just 10 participants.“This really moves the field forward,” said Dr. Johnson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences who is conducting a federally funded study on the use of psilocybin for smoking cessation.He said the promise of psychedelics was especially exciting, given the current crop of anti-addiction therapies, most of which take aim at the cravings, withdrawal or drug-mediated reward receptors in the brain. Psilocybin and other psychedelic compounds, by contrast, appear to affect the psychological underpinnings of addiction, Dr. Johnson said.“This study adds to the literature suggesting that psychedelics may have general anti-addiction efficacy, which is really an odd thing because it’s rare for a potential medication to be effective for multiple forms of addiction,” he said.Dr. Bogenschutz, the study’s lead author, said a subsequent trial would include more than 200 participants and test the efficacy of a single dose of psilocybin. The trial will also use a different placebo, the vitamin niacin.On Monday, the F.D.A. approved the trial, which will be the largest to study the use of psilocybin-paired therapy for the treatment of alcohol use disorder.

Published12 hours agoSharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty Images Anna*, 23, knew that she could not have another child.She also knew that she wouldn’t get an abortion in Texas, where she lives, as the state has one of the strictest abortion laws in the United States.So the mother of a four-month-old turned to social media to search for solutions. She found a number online, and sent a desperate text on WhatsApp: “I need an abortion”.Across the border in Monterrey, Mexico, Sandra Cardona received the message. Six years ago, Ms Cardona, 54, founded the Red Necesito Abortar (I Need an Abortion Network) to help Mexican women get access to abortion pills, because terminating an abortion was severely restricted in the country at the time.She chose the name so that women who needed an abortion could find it easily online. The group sends misoprostol, a medication that induces abortion, to women who ask for it, and helps house some of them when undergoing the procedure at their headquarters in the northern state of Nuevo Leon.Some come to Ms Cardona to get the medicines “and we explain (the procedure) to them,” she said. “And some want to stay and we ‘accompany’ them,” – meaning to sit with them and take them through a protocol established by the World Health Organization that lays out how to use the pill when there is not a doctor present. While in the past, they have largely helped women in Monterrey and migrants heading north, the number of Americans has steadily increased over the past year. “A year or so ago I attended to the first woman,” Ms Cardona told BBC. “I do not speak English, but with the help of Google we understood each other.” Anna arrived in Monterrey one afternoon in October. That night, she had her abortion and left the next morning. She has not been the only one, Ms Cardona said. “The demand from Texas has grown a lot” – a reflection of the divergent paths Mexico and its northern neighbour have taken on abortion.Image source, Getty ImagesIn September 2021, a historic ruling was handed down in Mexico, when the country’s Supreme Court of Justice unanimously struck down a law punishing abortion in the northern state of Coahuila, effectively decriminalising it across the country.That same month, the US state of Texas just across the border put into effect what was one of the most restrictive abortion bills in the US at the time. Texas Senate Bill 8 (SB8) prohibited abortions after the sixth week of conception, a point at which many women still do not know that they are pregnant.The law permits citizens – whether they be in the state or not – to file a lawsuit against anyone who helps a woman get an abortion past that date. The world reacts to US abortion rulingAnti-abortion Gen Z-ers see cause as social justiceAnd with the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade – which had guaranteed women’s right to abortion nationwide for almost 50 years – abortion access is becoming even more restricted. On 25 August, a law further limiting abortions triggered by the overthrow of Roe goes into effect in Texas. But even before the Roe decision, the number of registered abortions in Texas was falling. According to government figures, there were about half as many abortions in Texas during the six months ending in February 2022, compared to the same time period the previous year. “If you want to know how post-Roe America will look like, (Texas) is a good testing ground for it,” Jackie Dilworth, an activist for Whole Women’s Health, one of the state’s largest abortion providers, told BBC.Fewer abortions registered in Texas does not necessarily mean that fewer abortions are being carried out. Many are being done in states with less restrictive abortion laws, or across the southern US border, in Mexico.Image source, Getty ImagesMs Cardona said she has received so many messages from women in the US, she is turning her second-floor study into a place for them to stay. “Earlier, we were letting them borrow our bedroom but we saw the need to open up more space,” she said. “It will be called the ‘aborteria’ (the abortion house)”.And Red Necesito Abortar are not the only ones preparing to expand their work. There is an entire network of groups and activists along the US-Mexico border who also offer services, said Mariela Castro, who works for Marea Verde (Green Tide) Chihuahua, another Mexican organisation that helps women access abortions.According to Ms Castro, women also go to Mexico because the states they live in do not have enough reproductive health services or financing. Some women buy pills on their own at Mexican pharmacies. Others are put in contact with people who can go with them to the chemist.Image source, Getty ImagesThe service these networks offer operates in a grey area.In the US, abortion pills are supposed to be prescribed by healthcare providers to a patient in jurisdictions where the procedure is allowed by law. The US government-approved procedure for medically induced abortions combines two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol. The first works by blocking progesterone. Without that hormone, the uterine lining will thin and an embryo will not stay attached.The second drug, misoprostol, is taken 24 to 48 hours later. Originally developed in the 1970s primarily to treat stomach ulcers, it was quickly discovered to also induce abortion and has been accepted for that use by the World Health Organization (WHO). Within hours of ingestion, the drug causes the uterus to contract and expel the embryo. The process causes pain and bleeding, however, and in very rare cases, serious complications like sepsis and uterine damage.The two-pill regime is approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy in the US, and is now the most common method for abortion in the country.Mexican abortion networks like Red Necesito Abortar only send misoprostol, because mifepristone is not readily available. The WHO says misoprostol-only abortions are acceptable when mifepristone cannot be obtained, but it is not the method approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.Moreover, sending the pills to places where medication abortion is restricted or banned “could potentially be considered a crime,” said Grace Howard, Assistant Professor of Justice Studies at San Jose State University, California.Even before the Supreme Court Roe reversal, in the first five months of 2022, lawmakers proposed 117 restrictions across 22 states specifically on medication abortion, including outright bans. In recent days, abortion – including medication abortion – has been prohibited in at least 10 states, and nearly a dozen more are expected to follow. “Generally speaking, the law is going to be applied in the location where the pills are delivered to and where the person takes them,” said Prof Howard. “But they’re unlikely to extradite people from Mexico.” The limits of their responsibilities are also unclear. Ms Castro says that Marea Verde’s role ends when “the person who requested the service is totally satisfied” and that the group trains its volunteers on first aid and emotional support, and consults doctors if complications occur.But anti-abortion activists argue that these semi-clandestine networks put women at risk because they don’t provide medical services like health screening. They also say these medicines are dangerous.”Mailing drugs that can cause injury, infertility, and even death in women when there are no health and safety standards applied is reckless and deadly policy,” Kristi Hamrick, Students For Life’s spokesperson – one of the largest anti-abortion organisations in the US – told BBC.Her group is looking into how to stop access to abortion pills from abroad, she said.Medical experts point out that women who seek help from foreign activists to access abortion pills do so out of desperation, and reject the claim that abortion pills are medically unsafe. “However, it is important that people taking medications at home have access to safe, non-judgmental, and supportive care within the formal medical system if they need it at any point,” said Dr Nisha Verma, a specialist in Obstetrics/Gynaecology in Atlanta and member of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.Image source, Getty ImagesJane*, a 22-year-old artist from San Antonio, Texas, ended a pregnancy early with tablets from Mexico. It was her second abortion.To help her in the process, the group that she had contacted assigned her a “caseworker”. “She FaceTime, Skype or Zoom me and we would talk,” she told BBC. “She walked me through all my options, and when I decided to do the self-managed abortion, she called me and told everything that going to happen to me, like if I bled more than two Maxi [sanitation] pads in an hour, then that’s a dangerous amount of blood and I should go to the hospital,” she said.”I had her phone number and I was texting her all day (the day of the abortion). (She acted) like a caseworker should do, just helping me feel safe and making sure I had everything I needed,” Jane explained.A self-managed abortion with pills “is very painful: it causes nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting,” she said. “It’s very hard on your body”.But Jane turned to the Mexican network for reasons of cost – the same medication from the US is much more expensive than getting misoprostol from across the border, she said. She has helped other women seeking abortions by putting them in contact with the organisation that helped her, Jane said. “I think there’s a lot of women who wish that they could talk but are unfortunately scared and being silenced by everything that’s going on in Texas right now,” she said.Mexico-based pro-choice activists say they want to do more to help get abortion pills to Americans who want them.Veronica Cruz, of Las Libres, a pioneer in the defence of medication abortion in Mexico, said Mexican abortion networks are working with US-based counterparts to distribute the pills to women on the US side of the border.”It is a crazy thing. We always saw the United States like an example country on this matter,” said Ms Cruz, of Las Libres. “Now the world is in reverse.” *Some names of women who received abortions have been changed to protect their privacy.More on this storyCould US abortion bans affect miscarriage treatment?25 JulyAnti-abortion Gen Z-ers see cause as social justice8 AugustThe woman who helped to end Roe v Wade21 JuneTop US court ends constitutional right to abortion24 June’Our fight for abortion rights is just beginning’23 October 2021