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Since 2019, there has been a five-time increase in the number of high-severity injuries occurring at the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Southern San Diego. Trauma physicians at UC San Diego Health attribute the rise in injuries to a height increase of the border wall from a range of eight and 17 feet to 30 feet.
The findings published April 29, 2022 in JAMA Surgery.
“The height increase of the border wall along the San Ysidro and El Centro sectors was touted as making the barrier ‘unclimbable,’ but that has not stopped people from attempting to do so with consequential results,” said first author Amy Liepert, MD, medical director of acute care surgery at UC San Diego Health. “This is an unseen public health crisis happening right now and it has significantly affected major local health care providers in San Diego.”
At UC San Diego Health, there were 67 cases of trauma-related incidents due to falls at the border wall from 2016 to 2019. The number jumped to 375 between 2019 and 2021. Fatalities also increased, zero before 2019 to 16 since then.
The study was conducted retrospectively and calculated border wall fall admissions from January 2016 to December 2021. Data on hospital mortality, overall injury severity, hospital length of stay and inflation-adjusted hospital costs were also collected.
“Additional capacity and associated costs were not accounted for in the federally appropriated funds to reinforce and heighten the border barrier system,” said Liepert. “Hospital costs for border wall-injured immigrants at UC San Diego Health alone are estimated to be approximately $13 million between 2019 and 2021.”
According to the authors, many individuals who fell from the border wall suffered significant brain and facial injuries and complex fractures of their extremities or spine. Many required ICU care and multiple surgical procedures.
Due to lack of health insurance and residency status, many patients were not eligible for rehabilitation facilities or post-discharge physical therapy, leading to prolonged hospital stays and impacted hospital access.
“This is a local public health crisis that has worsened trauma center bed capacity, resulting in staff shortages and has taxed our extremely dedicated health care professionals,” said Jay Doucet, MD, division chief of trauma and surgical critical care at UC San Diego Health. “It is also a humanitarian crisis in which people are being severely injured or dying at the border, and because this is happening it is impacting available access to trauma care for San Diegans as well.”
Liepert said future policy decisions along the U.S.-Mexico border should include assessments of the effects of new barriers, including humanitarian consequences and potential effects on local health care system resources.
UC San Diego Health is senior partner in one of the first County Level Trauma Systems in the country, operating the region’s first Level 1 Trauma Center, which has provided care since 1976. Patients have access to critical, time-sensitive services, such as surgery, blood transfusions, advanced imaging and care from neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons and other specialists.
Co-authors include: Allison E. Berndtson, Linda H. Hill, Jessica L. Weaver, Laura N. Godat and Todd W. Costantini, all at UC San Diego.
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Materials provided by University of California – San Diego. Original written by Jeanna Vazquez. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Women’s elevated anxiety, depression and stress during pregnancy altered key features of the fetal brain, which subsequently decreased their offspring’s cognitive development at 18 months. These changes also increased internalizing and dysregulation behaviors, according to a new study by Children’s National Hospital published in JAMA Network Open. Researchers followed a cohort of 97 pregnant women and their babies. The findings further suggest that persistent psychological distress after the baby is born may influence the parent-child interaction and infant self-regulation.
This is the first study to shed light on an important link between altered in-utero fetal brain development and the long-term cognitive development consequences for fetuses exposed to high levels of toxic stress during pregnancy. While in the womb, the researchers observed changes in the sulcal depth and left hippocampal volume, which could explain the neurodevelopment issues seen after birth. Once they grow into toddlers, these children may experience persistent social-emotional problems and have difficulty establishing positive relationships with others, including their mothers. To further confirm this, future studies with a larger sample size that reflect more regions and populations are needed.
“By identifying the pregnant women with elevated levels of psychological distress, clinicians could recognize those babies who are at risk for later neurodevelopmental impairment and might benefit from early, targeted interventions,” said Catherine Limperopoulos, Ph.D., chief and director of the Developing Brain Institute at Children’s National and senior author of the study.
Regardless of their socioeconomic status, about one of every four pregnant women suffers from stress-related symptoms, the most common pregnancy complication. The relationship between altered fetal brain development, prenatal maternal psychological distress and long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes remain unknown. Studying in utero fetal brain development poses challenges due to fetal and maternal movements, imaging technology, signal-to-noise ratio issues and changes in brain growth.
All pregnant participants were healthy, most had some level of education and were employed. To quantify prenatal maternal stress, anxiety and depression, the researchers used validated self-reported questionnaires. Fetal brain volumes and cortical folding were measured from three-dimensional reconstructed images derived from MRI scans. Fetal brain creatine and choline were quantified using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The 18-month child neurodevelopment was measured using validated scales and assessments.
This study builds upon previous work from the Developing Brain Institute led by Limperopoulos, which discovered that anxiety in pregnant women appears to affect the brain development of their babies. Her team also found that maternal mental health, even for women with high socioeconomic status, alters the structure and biochemistry of the developing fetal brain. The growing evidence underscores the importance of mental health support for pregnant women.
“We’re looking at shifting the health care paradigm and adopting these changes more broadly to better support moms,” said Limperopoulos. “What’s clear is early interventions could help moms reduce their stress, which can positively impact their symptoms and thereby their baby long after birth.”
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Materials provided by Children’s National Hospital. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

The first year of medical training after medical school brings intense stress, long work hours, irregular sleep schedules, and a risk of new or worsened symptoms of depression.
But two new studies identify two groups of first-year residents, also called interns, who may be especially at risk of developing mental health concerns: those who are training to be surgeons, and those who are members of sexual minorities.
The studies, both published this week by teams from the University of Michigan, add to the growing body of knowledge not just about mental health concerns in medical training, but also about the impacts of intense stress on mental health in general.
The data in both papers comes from the Intern Health Study, based at the Michigan Neuroscience Institute and led by the director of the Frances and Kenneth Eisenberg and Family Depression Center.
Every spring, the study recruits physicians who are about to start their first year of residency to volunteer to track their mood, activity, sleep and other measures over the next 12 months through a wearable device and smartphone app. Their medical and life history, and DNA samples, are also collected and analyzed.
Surgical interns and depression
A new paper published in JAMA Surgery by a team led by U-M Department of Surgery assistant professor Tasha Hughes, M.D., M.P.H., shows for the first time how surgical residents’ mental health changes over time during their first year of training, and how it compares with non-surgical residents’ experience. The study looked at data from 12,400 interns, including 2,793 surgeons-in-training, between 2016 and 2020.

Even half a century after a drug comes on the market, scientists can still learn new things about how it works. New research from University of Pittsburgh neuroscientists provides a rare look at how Ritalin affects activity in the brains of animals, providing a deeper understanding of how groups of brain cells govern attention and pointing to new possible uses for the stimulant.
Around one in 11 children in the U.S. are prescribed stimulants like methylphenidate (also known by its brand name Ritalin) to improve attention and focus in people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Many more adults, an estimated 1 in 5 according to surveys, also use the drugs off-label. And while the safety and efficacy of these drugs is well understood, there’s still plenty left to learn about how they work.
“We really know very little about what these drugs do to the activity of groups of neurons,” said senior study author Marlene Cohen, a professor of neuroscience in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. “But basic scientists like us have been investigating what groups of neurons can tell us about behavior and cognition, and so understanding what these drugs do to groups of neurons can maybe give us hints about other things that they would be useful for.”
Previous work led by Pitt postdoctoral researcher Amy Ni showed a link between how well animals did on a visual task and a particular measurement of neurons in the visual cortex — specifically, how likely they are to fire off independent of one another, as opposed to being synched up.
In the current work, they found that animals that had taken methylphenidate performed better on a visual task of attention, and that the improvement happened exactly when that same metric of neuron activity shifted. The team, led by Ni, published their research in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on April 25.
Some of the study results were expected from what’s already known about the drug. The three animals took methylphenidate or a placebo on alternating days for two weeks of tests. On days when they took the drug, they spent longer on the task and performed better at it, but only when the required task occurred in a spot they were already paying attention to.

Carbon monoxide is an odorless and colorless gas made when fossil fuels burn incompletely. It’s also a silent killer.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 400 deaths and 20,000 emergency room visits can be attributed to carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning every year. While CO detectors and making sure your fireplace and heaters work correctly can help prevent exposure, treatment options are limited for those suffering from CO poisoning.
That’s why Tim Johnstone, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz, has been working to develop an easy-to-administer antidote.
“If you are exposed to carbon monoxide, the primary treatment right now is fresh air,” said Johnstone. “It is a question of time. In fresh air, you need four to six hours for the level of CO in your blood to be cut in half. With 100 percent oxygen or hyperbaric oxygen, the half-life shortens further. Even then, the high blood levels of CO can persist long enough to lead to long-term deficits and neurological problems.”
Johnstone has been studying the chemistry of carbon monoxide, which is made of one oxygen atom and one carbon atom joined by a triple bond. In a biological context, CO binds to metal centers like the iron in hemoglobin, which then prevents this protein from functioning as it normally would, transporting oxygen from the lungs to tissues in the rest of the body.
To mitigate this, Johnstone has designed small molecules that possess many of the features of the active site of hemoglobin but can bind CO much more tightly than the protein. In a recent paper published in Chemical Communications, his group described the ability of one such molecule to bind CO, sequester CO that is already bonded to hemoglobin, and rescue red blood cells exposed to CO, all promising signs for a future antidote.
Johnstone says these are early results, but the hope is to create a point-of-care treatment that can be administered quickly. The most common carbon monoxide poisoning symptoms are headache, dizziness, weakness, upset stomach, vomiting, chest pain, and confusion. Because it mimics the flu, people may experience symptoms without realizing the danger and delay seeking treatment.
Graduate student Daniel Droege has been the point person on this project and is first author of the paper.
In addition to the research on carbon monoxide poisoning, Johnstone’s Lab is also working on antimony-containing drugs used to treat the neglected tropical disease Leishmaniasis, developing novel arsenic-based anticancer agents, and discovering new main-group bonding motifs. His work has been supported by the Hellman Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the University of California Cancer Research Coordinating Committee.
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Materials provided by University of California – Santa Cruz. Original written by Elisa Smith. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a smartphone app that could allow people to screen for Alzheimer’s disease, ADHD and other neurological diseases and disorders — by recording closeups of their eye.
The app uses a near-infrared camera, which is built into newer smartphones for facial recognition, along with a regular selfie camera to track how a person’s pupil changes in size. These pupil measurements could be used to assess a person’s cognitive condition.
The technology is described in a paper that will be presented at the ACM Computer Human Interaction Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2022), which will take place from April 30 to May 5 in New Orleans as a hybrid-onsite event.
“While there is still a lot of work to be done, I am excited about the potential for using this technology to bring neurological screening out of clinical lab settings and into homes,” said Colin Barry, an electrical and computer engineering Ph.D. student at UC San Diego and the first author of the paper, which received an Honorable Mention for Best Paper award. “We hope that this opens the door to novel explorations of using smartphones to detect and monitor potential health problems earlier on.”
Pupil size can provide information about a person’s neurological functions, recent research has shown. For example, pupil size increases when a person performs a difficult cognitive task or hears an unexpected sound.
Measuring the changes in pupil diameter is done by performing what’s called a pupil response test. The test could offer a simple and easy way to diagnose and monitor various neurological diseases and disorders. However, it currently requires specialized and costly equipment, making it impractical to perform outside the lab or clinic.

A novel therapy developed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham ameliorates obesity and Type 2 diabetes in mice fed a high-fat diet. The therapy acts through sustained release of nitric oxide, a gaseous signaling chemical whose most important function in the body is relaxing the inner muscles of blood vessels.
“Because reduced bioavailability of nitric oxide is the hallmark of cardiometabolic syndrome, supplying exogenous nitric oxide at a sustained level may be an efficient way of treating the cardiometabolic syndrome,” said Jeonga Kim, Ph.D., leader of the UAB study. “The strategy of reducing body weight by the local delivery of nitric oxide may be a novel, efficient and safe way to prevent and treat multiple metabolic diseases.”
This study, published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, used an ingenious self-assembling, nanomatrix gel capable of releasing a burst of nitric oxide in the first 24 hours, followed by sustained nitric oxide release for four weeks. The gel was developed by UAB researchers Ho-Wook Jun, Ph.D., and Brigitta Brott, M.D., and it is licensed through the UAB Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship by their UAB spinoff company, Endomimetics LLC.
The gel was injected subcutaneously into 8-week-old mice every two weeks for 12 weeks. Gel-injected mice and control mice were fed a high-fat diet, known to induce obesity and insulin resistance.
At the end of 12 weeks, the nitric oxide-mice had gained 17 percent less body weight, compared to controls, and that weight difference was due mainly to decreased fat, not lean mass or water content. The researchers saw increased phosphorylation of the enzyme hormone-sensitive lipase and a reduction in the size of fat cells in epididymal white adipose tissue, or eWAT. Increased lipolysis may explain the reduced body weight, Kim says.
The nitric oxide-mice also showed improved glucose tolerance, and decreases in fasting serum insulin and leptin levels.

Biologists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and their collaborators have discovered an aberrant protein that’s deadly to bacteria. In a paper just published in the journal PLOS ONE, the scientists describe how this erroneously built protein mimics the action of aminoglycosides, a class of antibiotics. The newly discovered protein could serve as a model to help scientists unravel details of those drugs’ lethal effects on bacteria — and potentially point the way to future antibiotics.
“Identifying new targets in bacteria and alternative strategies to control bacterial growth is going to become increasingly important,” said Brookhaven biologist Paul Freimuth, who led the research. Bacteria have been developing resistance to many commonly used drugs, and many scientists and doctors have been concerned about the potential for large-scale outbreaks triggered by these antibiotic-resistant bacteria, he explained.
“What we’ve discovered is a long way from becoming a drug, but the first step is to understand the mechanism,” Freimuth said. “We’ve identified a single protein that mimics the effect of a complex mixture of aberrant proteins made when bacteria are treated with aminoglycosides. That gives us a way to study the mechanism that kills the bacterial cells. Then maybe a new family of inhibitors could be developed to do the same thing.”
Following an interesting branch
The Brookhaven scientists, who normally focus on energy-related research, weren’t thinking about human health when they began this project. They were using E. coli bacteria to study genes involved in building plant cell walls. That research could help scientists learn how to convert plant matter (biomass) into biofuels more efficiently.
But when they turned on expression of one particular plant gene, enabling the bacteria to make the protein, the cells stopped growing immediately.

Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia belong to a family of neurodegenerative disorders called synucleinopathies because they are caused by the pathological accumulation of protein alpha-synuclein into structures called Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites in the brain.
In a healthy brain, alpha-synuclein is found in synapses as distinct proteins called monomers. But various mutations of the gene that encodes alpha-synuclein can cause the protein to clump together and form larger oligomers and even larger fibrils.
Scientists have identified and mapped out a lot of mutations of the alpha-synuclein gene that lead to synucleinopathies, with many studies, including work from the Lashuel lab, showing the mutations may also act through distinct mechanisms, leading to the same pathology. Although rare, studying these mutations has led to important insights and helped unmask different mechanisms that contribute to neurodegeneration and the development of Parkinson’s disease.
A novel mutation
But in 2020, a study reported a new mutation of the alpha-synuclein gene in a patient with Lewy body dementia and an atypical degeneration of the frontal and temporal lobes. The mutation substitutes the amino acid glutamate (E) with a glutamine (Q) at the 83rd position of the protein’s amino acid sequence — which is why the mutation is called E83Q. What distinguishes this mutation from all previously identified mutations is that it lies in the middle of the domain that regulates alpha-synuclein normal functions (interaction with membranes) and drives aggregation and pathology formation initiation.
Exploring a new path
“I was intrigued by the unique position of this mutation and the fact that the E83Q mutation carrier showed severe Lewy body pathology in the cortical and hippocampal regions of the brain than the usual substantia nigra which tends to be majorly affected in Parkinson’s disease,” says Hilal Lashuel at EPFL’s School of Life Sciences.

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesCharities are working to deliver emergency contraception into Ukrainian hospitals as reports of rape rise.Nearly 3,000 packets of morning-after pills have been sent to areas of the country most affected by the Russian invasion.The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) has provided the pills, which volunteers are delivering. Caroline Hickson, from the group, says timing is really important for when they are distributed. “You have a window of five days in which [the morning-after pill] is effective in preventing pregnancy,” she told the BBC.”So if you have been a victim of gender-based violence it’s important you can take it as soon as possible, because being pregnant as a result of rape is incredibly traumatic.” The organisation has also been sending medical abortion pills, which can be used up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. Ms Hickson said the pills are there to help women in many different situations, including those who are having consensual sex but feel it is the wrong time to have a baby.”Before the war it was possible to obtain emergency contraception in Ukraine, but supply chains have been disrupted and for women generally it’s really important they can access this,” she said. Image source, Getty ImagesMany people are displaced across Ukraine, so it’s hard for aid workers to know how many supplies are needed in which areas.Last week, Ukrainian troops made a plea for food and medicine for the city of Mariupol, which has been blocked off from humanitarian aid by Russian soldiers. The IPPF has been working with the United Nations Population Fund and International Medical Corps to bring supplies of the tablets into Ukraine. Ms Hickson said: “The UN agencies, civil society organisations and the Ministry of Health have come together to identify the needs and they’re transmitted to all of us working in support.”We’re then told which areas or hospitals need post-rape kits.” The UN includes emergency contraception in kits sent to women and girls involved in conflicts across the world.They’ve done the same in Ukraine, along with sending supplies for family planning and delivering babies.The BBC has uncovered evidence of Ukrainian women being raped by invading soldiers during the war in villages a few miles from Kyiv. Other media outlets have reported similar stories from the city of Bucha, north-west of Kyiv.More on this story’Russian soldiers raped me and killed my husband’Ukrainian deportees accuse Russia of tortureMariupol refugees on trauma of Russian detention camps