Publisher Health

In a small study, researchers in an olfaction lab found that people who had an instant personal connection also had similarities in their body odors.Human beings maintain the polite fiction that we’re not constantly smelling one another. Despite our efforts to the contrary, we all have our own odors, pleasant and less so, and if we are like other land mammals, our particular perfume might mean something to our fellow humans.Some of these, like the reek of someone who hasn’t bathed all month, or the distinctive whiff of a toddler who is pretending they didn’t just fill their diaper, are self-explanatory. But scientists who study human olfaction, or your sense of smell, wonder if the molecules wafting off our skin may be registering at some subconscious level in the noses and brains of people around us. Are they bearing messages that we use in decisions without realizing it? Might they even be shaping whom we do and don’t like to spend time around?Indeed, in a small study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers investigating pairs of friends whose friendship “clicked” from the beginning found intriguing evidence that each person’s body odor was closer to their friend’s than expected by chance. And when the researchers got pairs of strangers to play a game together, their body odors predicted whether they felt they had a good connection.There are many factors that shape whom people become friends with, including how, when or where we meet a new person. But perhaps one thing we pick up on, the researchers suggest, is how they smell.Scientists who study friendship have found that friends have more in common than strangers — not just things like age and hobbies, but also genetics, patterns of brain activity and appearance. Inbal Ravreby, a graduate student in the lab of Noam Sobel, an olfaction researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, was curious whether particularly swift friendships, the kind that seem to form in an instant, had an olfactory component — whether people might be picking up on similarities in their smells.The Science of SmellLearn more about our often disregarded, and at times startling, superpower.Perks of Evolution: Genetic changes to our olfactory receptors have altered people’s sensitivities to some odors over time.Lessons From Covid: The loss of smell and parosmia experienced by some have opened new doors to understanding the most neglected sense.The Nasal Ranger: For a half-century, Chuck McGinley has visited society’s stinkiest sites in order to measure, and demystify, smell.The Smell of History: Several scientists, artists and historians are working hard to conserve the smells of our times and revive lost scents.She recruited 20 pairs of so-called click friends, who both characterized their friendship this way. Next she put them through a regimen that’s common in human body odor research: Stop eating foods like onions and garlic, which affect body odor, for a few days. Lay off the after-shave and deodorant. Bathe with an unscented soap provided by the lab. Then put on a fresh, clean, lab-provided T-shirt and sleep in it so it gets good and smelly, before handing it over to the scientists for review.Ms. Ravreby and her colleagues used an electronic nose to assess the volatiles rising from each T-shirt, and they had 25 other volunteers assess the similarity of the smells as well. They were interested to find that, indeed, the friends’ odors were more similar to each other than those of strangers. That could mean that odor was one of the things they picked up on as their relationship began.“It’s very probable that at least some of them were using perfumes when they met,” Ms. Ravreby speculated. “But it did not mask whatever they had in common.”However, there are many reasons friends might smell alike — eating at the same restaurants, having a similar lifestyle and so on — making it difficult to say if the smell or the basis for the relationship came first. To probe this, the researchers had 132 strangers, all of whom stank up a T-shirt first, come into the lab to play a mirroring game. Pairs of subjects stood close to each other and had to mimic the motions of the other as they moved. Afterward, they filled out questionnaires about whether they felt a connection with their partners.The similarities of their odors, strikingly, predicted whether both felt there had been a positive connection 71 percent of the time. That finding implies that sniffing an odor similar to our own generates good feelings. It may be one thing we pick up on when we meet new people, along with things like where they grew up and if they prefer science fiction or sports. But Dr. Sobel cautions that, if this is the case, it is just one factor among many.The Covid pandemic has so far curtailed further research using this design by Ms. Ravreby and colleagues; experiments in which strangers get close enough to smell each other have been difficult to set up.But now, the team is looking into modifying people’s body odor to see whether subjects who’ve been made to smell similarly band together. If scent correlates with their behavior, that’s more evidence that, like other terrestrial mammals, we may be drawing on our sense of smell to help us make decisions.There are many mysteries for them and other researchers to study about how our personal fragrances, in all their complexity, interact with our personal lives. Each puff of air may say more than you know.“If you think of the bouquet that is body odor, it’s 6,000 molecules at least,” Dr. Sobel said. “There are 6,000 that we know of already — it’s probably way more.”

People who received at least one influenza vaccine were 40% less likely than their non-vaccinated peers to develop Alzheimer’s disease over the course of four years, according to a new study from UTHealth Houston.
Research led by first author Avram S. Bukhbinder, MD, a recent alumnus of McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, and senior author Paul. E. Schulz, MD, the Rick McCord Professor in Neurology at McGovern Medical School, compared the risk of Alzheimer’s disease incidence between patients with and without prior flu vaccination in a large nationwide sample of U.S. adults aged 65 and older.
An early online version of the paper detailing the findings is available in advance of its publication in the Aug. 2 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
“We found that flu vaccination in older adults reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease for several years. The strength of this protective effect increased with the number of years that a person received an annual flu vaccine — in other words, the rate of developing Alzheimer’s was lowest among those who consistently received the flu vaccine every year,” said Bukhbinder, who is still part of Schulz’s research team while in his first year of residency with the Division of Child Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. “Future research should assess whether flu vaccination is also associated with the rate of symptom progression in patients who already have Alzheimer’s dementia.”
The study — which comes two years after UTHealth Houston researchers found a possible link between the flu vaccine and reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease — analyzed a much larger sample than previous research, including 935,887 flu-vaccinated patients and 935,887 non-vaccinated patients.
During four-year follow-up appointments, about 5.1% of flu-vaccinated patients were found to have developed Alzheimer’s disease. Meanwhile, 8.5% of non-vaccinated patients had developed Alzheimer’s disease during follow-up.
These results underscore the strong protective effect of the flu vaccine against Alzheimer’s disease, according to Bukhbinder and Schulz. However, the underlying mechanisms behind this process require further study.
“Since there is evidence that several vaccines may protect from Alzheimer’s disease, we are thinking that it isn’t a specific effect of the flu vaccine,” said Schulz, who is also the Umphrey Family Professor in Neurodegenerative Diseases and director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Center at McGovern Medical School. “Instead, we believe that the immune system is complex, and some alterations, such as pneumonia, may activate it in a way that makes Alzheimer’s disease worse. But other things that activate the immune system may do so in a different way — one that protects from Alzheimer’s disease. Clearly, we have more to learn about how the immune system worsens or improves outcomes in this disease.”
Alzheimer’s disease affects more than 6 million people living in the U.S., with the number of affected individuals growing due to the nation’s aging population. Past studies have found a decreased risk of dementia associated with prior exposure to various adulthood vaccinations, including those for tetanus, polio, and herpes, in addition to the flu vaccine and others.
Additionally, as more time passes since the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccine and longer follow-up data becomes available, Bukhbinder said it will be worth investigating whether a similar association exists between COVID-19 vaccination and the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Co-authors from McGovern Medical School included Omar Hasan, research coordinator in the Department of Neurology and student at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences; Kamal N. Phelps, fourth-year medical student; Srivathsan Ramesh, PhD, first-year resident in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery; and alumni Albert Amran, MD, and Ryan Coburn, MD. Co-authors from UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Informatics included Yaobin Ling, graduate research assistant; Xiaoqian Jiang, PhD, the Christopher Sarofim Family Professor in Biomedical Informatics and Engineering; and Yejin Kim, PhD, assistant professor. Qian Xiao, PhD, MPH, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Disease Control with UTHealth School of Public Health, also co-authored the study.

Severe “brain bleeds” experienced by some babies in the first year following their birth lead to long-term sight problems, researchers at the University of Bristol have found as part of a ten-year follow-up study.
The study, published in the journal Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology today [23 June], reviewed 32 children who had detailed assessments at 10- to 11-years-old after experiencing Grades 3 or 4 intraventricular haemorrhage (brain bleeds) and ventricular dilation (IVHVD) as part of a study called DRIFT10.
The DRIFT10 study was set up to investigate a ‘brain washing’ technique for brain bleeds called DRIFT (Drainage, Irrigation and Fibrinolytic Therapy). DRIFT, pioneered by Bristol researchers, is the first and only treatment to objectively benefit infants with serious brain haemorrhage by washing out the ventricles in the brain to remove toxic fluid and reduce pressure.
The research team reviewed 32 children aged 10- to 11-years-old. They investigated whether the Grade of IVHVD experienced as babies affected their visual outcome at the end of their primary school years and explored associations between visual outcomes with cognitive outcomes and with extra support at school.
The visual examinations were part of a ten-year follow-up study for children in the original DRIFT randomised trial. Testers followed a protocol, and it was unknown to them whether the child had experienced Grade 3 or Grade 4 IVHVD and all other data.
The study found all 32 children assessed had at least one visual impairment. The average number of impairments per child was six for children who experienced a Grade 4 IVHVD compared to three for children who experienced a Grade 3 IVHVD. Each extra vision impairment for each child was associated with increased educational support at school, after adjustment for developmental age equivalence.
These sight problems affecting the children ten years later were often due to damage to the visual areas in the brain. These included problems with moving the eyes accurately, with detecting objects in the space around them or with visually matching shapes or orientations of lines.
The children’s parents were unaware of these problems and mostly reported their children had normal vision as long as any glasses they had were being worn.
However, the researchers found that for each additional sight problem a child had, they were more likely to be getting extra support with their learning. This suggests the sight problems may have contributed to the difficulties with learning experienced by this group of children.
Cathy Williams, the study’s lead author and Professor of Paediatric Ophthalmology at Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences and Consultant Paediatric Ophthalmologist at University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust (UHBW),explained: “Our research suggests that all children who experience brain bleeds or similar problems as babies should haveeye tests to identify brain-related vision problems as they grow up, so that appropriate support can be offered to see if it is helpful for them.
“Researchers in the future should be aware that parents who report normal vision may miss sight problems that are important for their children’s learning and development.”
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In a new study sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers provide additional evidence that COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy helps protect babies younger than 6 months from being hospitalized due to COVID-19. The risk of COVID-19 hospitalization among babies was reduced by about 80 percent during the Delta wave (July 1-December 18, 2021) and 40 percent during the Omicron wave (December 19-March 8, 2022).
“Our results reinforce the importance of COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy to protect both the women and their babies from COVID-19,” said co-author Bria Coates, MD, Critical Care physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Although protection was lower during the Omicron period, compared to the Delta period, even a moderate reduction in risk is important, because COVID-19 vaccines are not likely to be available for babies younger than 6 months old in the foreseeable future.”
The study included infants younger than 6 months of age who were admitted to 30 pediatric hospitals in 22 states from July 1, 2021, to March 8, 2022.
Dr. Coates and colleagues found that most infants (90 percent) who needed intensive care due to COVID-19 infection were born to mothers who were not vaccinated during pregnancy.
Infants aged younger than 6 months old are at high risk for complications of COVID-19, including severe respiratory failure or death and account for a disproportionately high percentage of hospitalizations among those aged 0-4 years. This study included data on 537 babies who were hospitalized with COVID-19. Of those, 21 percent were admitted to the intensive care unit and 12 percent required mechanical ventilation, or extra help getting enough oxygen to the body, or vasoactive infusions. Two babies died because of COVID-19 and two required advanced life support that helps the body get enough oxygen; mothers of these babies were not vaccinated.
Researchers also found that effectiveness of maternal COVID-19 vaccination against COVID-19 hospitalization for babies was higher among women vaccinated after 20 weeks of pregnancy, versus early in pregnancy.
“While protection for the baby is important, it is critical to remember that COVID-19 vaccines protect women against severe illness during pregnancy and reduce complications from COVID-19,” said Dr. Coates, who also is the Crown Family Research Scholar in Developmental Biology.
When considering the timing of COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy, the CDC and professional medical organizations, like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, recommend COVID-19 vaccination as soon as eligible and at any point in pregnancy. The CDC recommends that women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, trying to get pregnant, or might become pregnant in the future get vaccinated and stay up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines.
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A new deep learning (DL) model that can identify disease-related features from images of eyes has been unveiled by a group of Tohoku University researchers. This ‘lightweight’ DL model can be trained with a small number of images, even ones with a high-degree of noise, and is resource-efficient, meaning it is deployable on mobile devices.
Details were published in the journal Scientific Reports on May 20, 2022.
With many societies aging and limited medical personnel, DL model reliant self-monitory and tele-screening of diseases are becoming more routine. Yet, deep learning algorithms are generally task specific, and identify or detect general objects such as humans, animals, or road signs.
Identifying diseases, on the other hand, demands precise measurement of tumors, tissue volume, or other sorts of abnormalities. To do so requires a model to look at separate images and mark boundaries in a process known as segmentation. But accurate prediction takes greater computational output, rendering them difficult to deploy on mobile devices.
“There is always a trade-off between accuracy, speed and computational resources when it comes to DL models,” says Toru Nakazawa, co-author of the study and professor at Tohoku University’s Department of Ophthalmology. “Our developed model has better segmentation accuracy and enhanced model training reproducibility, even with fewer parameters — making it efficient and more lightweight when compared to other commercial softwares.”
Professor Nakazawa, Associate Professor Parmanand Sharma, Dr Takahiro Ninomiya, and students from the Department of Ophthalmology worked with professor Takayuki Okatani from Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Information Sciences to produce the model.
Using low resource devices, they obtained measurements of the foveal avascular zone, a region with the fovea centralis at the center of the retina, to enhance screening for glaucoma.
“Our model is also capable of detecting/segmenting optic discs and hemorrhages in fundus images with high precision,” added Nakazawa.
In the future, the group is hopeful of deploying the lightweight model to screen for other common eye disorders and other diseases.
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Scientists have identified a new genetic disease, which causes some children’s brains to develop abnormally, resulting in delayed intellectual development.
The majority of patients with the condition, that is so new it doesn’t have a name yet, have severe learning difficulties which affect their quality of life.
An international team of researchers from the universities of Portsmouth, Southampton and Copenhagen found that changes in a protein coding gene called Glutamate Ionotropic Receptor AMPA Type Subunit 1 (GRIA1) caused this rare genetic disease.
Now the variant has been identified, it will help clinicians come up with targeted interventions to help patients and their families, also opening the door to screening and prenatal diagnosis.
The GRIA1 gene helps to move electrical signals around the brain. However, if this process is interrupted or made less efficient, it can cause a reduction in the brain’s capacity to retain information.
The research team, made up of frog geneticists, biochemists and clinical geneticists, used tadpoles in which the human gene variants were mimicked using gene editing to show that GRIA1 changes are the underlying cause of the behaviour-altering disease. The biochemical analysis of the variants was also performed in frog oocytes.

Older adults with untreated sight conditions may be at increased risk of dementia, according to a new systematic review and meta-analysis of 16 studies involving 76,373 participants.
The results of the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Aging and Mental Health, highlight a need for further research to examine the impact of correcting sight problems in older adults — for example, with glasses or cataract surgery — to prevent cognitive problems and dementia.
“This study is among the first to evaluate the association between sight problems and cognitive outcomes in older adults through a comprehensive examination of all available population-based studies in English. Our findings add to the growing evidence that fading eyesight is a risk factor for developing dementia,” said lead author, Associate Professor Beibei Xu, from the Medical Informatics Center, at Peking University. “Although the reasons behind this remain unclear, it suggests that diagnosing and treating eye conditions may be beneficial — both to improve a person’s quality of life and also to potentially slow down or stop memory loss.”
Nearly one million people are estimated to be living with dementia in the UK — and that number is set to increase over the next few decades as the population ages. By 2050, it is predicted that this figure will have jumped to 1.6 million. The cost of dementia is expected to almost double in the same timeframe, from £25bn today to £47bn in 2050. The disease has a devastating impact on people’s lives. As their disease progresses, they will experience greater memory loss and changes to their personality and behaviour. Ultimately, they will become completely dependent on others for their care.
The researchers included 16 studies including 76,373 participants, with five cross-sectional studies and 11 longitudinal studies published before April 2020. From these studies, the authors examined the relationship between visual impairment and cognitive outcomes in older adults. They found that: People with a sight problem had an increased risk of cognitive impairment and dementia, regardless of whether their visual impairment was self-reported or diagnosed using objective measures. The likelihood of having a cognitive impairment was 137% higher among people who had a sight problem compared to those who did not. People who had a sight problem at baseline had a 41% increased risk of developing cognitive impairment and a 44% increased risk of dementia, compared with those who did not.”Finding ways to prevent or delay the onset of dementia could help reduce its devastating impact on the lives of affected individuals and their families, especially in light of the growing burden of the disease. Identifying modifiable risk factors is the first critical step for developing effective interventions to achieve this goal,” says Beibei Xu. “Our new results highlight the importance of regular eye examinations for older adults — enabling any potential problems with their vision to be spotted and treated early. They also suggest that any self-reported changes to a person’s eyesight should not be ignored.”
The authors (Gui-Ying Cao, Zi-Shuo Chen, Shan-Shan Yao, Kaipeng Wang, Zi-Ting Huang, He-Xuan Su, Yan Luo, Carson M De Fries, Yong-Hua Hu, and Beibei Xu) recommend future research is now warranted to examine the effectiveness of treating sight problems in older people to prevent cognitive impairment and dementia.
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Among the many reasons men may have for envying women — at least when it comes to bad skin inflammation — human females have a significantly lower incidence of severe psoriasis. However, the underlying reason for the sex differences has remained unclear.
Now a team of researchers has found that the female hormone estradiol suppresses psoriasis, and the protective role of the hormone has provided a basis for its therapeutic potential.
“Our results have not only revealed the molecular mechanisms of sex differences in psoriasis but also shed new light on our understanding of the physiological role of estradiol,” says Hamamatsu University School of Medicine’s Tetsuya Honda, formerly of Kyoto University.
The team tested conditional knockout mice, or cko mice, with ovaries removed but supplemented with estradiol pellets or a placebo. In contrast to wild-type mice, the cko mice without the natural ovarian hormones estradiol showed symptoms of severe skin inflammation.
Once these mice were given estradiol, the production of IL-17A and IL-1β cytokines in neutrophil and macrophage immune cells was reversed, reducing the inflammation. This effect was also observed in human neutrophils in vitro.
What intrigued the researchers was how the lack of estrogen receptors in immune cells made estradiol ineffective against the cytokines.
“These results indicate that estradiol suppresses psoriatic inflammation by regulating neutrophil and macrophage cells,” concludes the author.
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Researchers created a special ultrathin sensor, spun from gold, that can be attached directly to the skin without irritation or discomfort. The sensor can measure different biomarkers or substances to perform on-body chemical analysis. It works using a technique called Raman spectroscopy, where laser light aimed at the sensor is changed slightly depending on whatever chemicals are present on the skin at that point. The sensor can be finely tuned to be extremely sensitive, and is robust enough for practical use.
Wearable technology is nothing new. Perhaps you or someone you know wears a smartwatch. Many of these can monitor certain health matters such as heart rate, but at present they cannot measure chemical signatures which could be useful for medical diagnosis. Smartwatches or more specialized medical monitors are also relatively bulky and often quite costly. Prompted by such shortfalls, a team comprising researchers from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Tokyo sought a new way to sense various health conditions and environmental matters in a noninvasive and cost-effective manner.
“A few years ago, I came across a fascinating method for producing robust stretchable electronic components from another research group at the University of Tokyo,” said Limei Liu, a visiting scholar at the time of the study and currently a lecturer at Yangzhou University in China. “These devices are spun from ultrafine threads coated with gold, so can be attached to the skin without issue as gold does not react with or irritate the skin in any way. As sensors, they were limited to detecting motion however, and we were looking for something that could sense chemical signatures, biomarkers and drugs. So we built upon this idea and created a noninvasive sensor that exceeded our expectations and inspired us to explore ways to improve its functionality even further.”
The main component of the sensor is the fine gold mesh, as gold is unreactive, meaning that when it comes into contact with a substance the team wishes to measure — for example a potential disease biomarker present in sweat — it does not chemically alter that substance. But instead, as the gold mesh is so fine, it can provide a surprisingly large surface for that biomarker to bind to, and this is where the other components of the sensor come in. As a low-power laser is pointed at the gold mesh, some of the laser light is absorbed and some is reflected. Of the light reflected, most has the same energy as the incoming light. However, some incoming light loses energy to the biomarker or other measurable substance, and the discrepancy in energy between reflected and incident light is unique to the substance in question. A sensor called a spectrometer can use this unique energy fingerprint to identify the substance. This method of chemical identification is known as Raman spectroscopy.
“Currently, our sensors need to be finely tuned to detect specific substances, and we wish to push both the sensitivity and specificity even further in future,” said Assistant Professor Tinghui Xiao. “With this, we think applications like glucose monitoring, ideal for sufferers of diabetes, or even virus detection, might be possible.”
“There is also potential for the sensor to work with other methods of chemical analysis besides Raman spectroscopy, such as electrochemical analysis, but all these ideas require a lot more investigation,” said Professor Keisuke Goda. “In any case, I hope this research can lead to a new generation of low-cost biosensors that can revolutionize health monitoring and reduce the financial burden of health care.”
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Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have developed a mathematical model of motor learning that reflects the motor learning process in the human brain. Their findings suggest that motor exploration — that is, increased variability in movements — is important when learning a new task. These results may lead to improved motor rehabilitation in patients after injury or disease.
Even seemingly simple movements are very complex to perform, and the way we learn how to perform new movements remains unclear. Researchers from Japan have recently proposed a new model of motor learning that combines a number of different theories. A study published this month in Neural Networks revealed that their model can simulate motor learning in humans surprisingly well, paving the way for a greater understanding of how our brains work.
For even a relatively simple task, such as to reach out and pick up an object, there are a huge number of potential combinations of angles between your body and the different joints that are involved. The same goes for each of your muscles — there is an almost endless combination of muscles and forces that can be used together to perform an action. With all of these possible combinations of joints and muscles — not to mention the underlying neuronal activity — how do we ever learn to make any movements at all? Researchers at the University of Tsukuba aimed to address this question.
The research team first created a mathematical model to imitate the learning process that occurs for new motor tasks. They designed the model to reflect many of the processes that are thought to occur in the brain when a new skill is learned. The researchers then tested their model by attempting to simulate the results of three recent studies that were conducted in humans, in which individuals were asked to perform completely new motor tasks.
“We were surprised at how well our simulations managed to reproduce many of the results of previous studies in humans,” says Professor Jun Izawa, senior author of the study. “With our model, we were able to bridge the gap between a number of different proposed mechanisms of motor learning, such as motor exploration, redundancy solving, and error-based learning.”
In their model, larger amounts of motor exploration — that is, variability in movements — were found to help with the learning of sensitivity derivatives, which measure how commands from the brain affect motor error. In this way, errors were transformed into motor corrections.
“Our success at simulating real results from human studies was encouraging,” explains first author Lucas Rebelo Dal’Bello. “It suggests that our proposed learning mechanism might accurately reflect what occurs in the brain during motor learning.”
The findings of this study, which indicate the importance of motor exploration in motor learning, provide insights into how motor learning might occur in the human brain. They also suggest that motor exploration should be encouraged when a new motor task is being learned; this may be helpful for motor rehabilitation after injury or disease.
This work was supported by KAKENHI (Scientific Research on Innovative Areas 19H04977 and 19H05729). LD was supported by a Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho: MEXT) Scholarship.
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