Publisher Health

One way exercise can counter the damage of diabetes is by enabling activation of a natural system we have to grow new blood vessels when existing ones are ravaged by this disease, scientists report.
Angiogenesis is the ability to form new blood vessels, and diabetes not only damages existing blood vessels, it hinders this innate ability to grow new ones in the face of disease and injury, say experts at the Vascular Biology Center at the Medical College of Georgia.
Endothelial cells line our blood vessels and are essential to that new blood vessel growth.
Now the MCG scientists have the first evidence that in the face of diabetes, even one 45-minute session of moderate intensity exercise enables more exosomes, submicroscopic packages filled with biologically active cargo, to deliver directly to those cells more of the protein, ATP7A, which can set angiogenesis in motion, they report in The FASEB Journal.
Not unlike the most sophisticated and efficient delivery services we have all come to rely upon, particularly during the pandemic, what exosomes carry depends on where they come from and where they are headed, says Dr. Tohru Fukai, MCG vascular biologist and cardiologist.
While he and co-corresponding author MCG vascular biologist Dr. Masuko Ushio-Fukai are not yet certain of the origin of these helpful exosomes, it’s clear that one place they deliver is to endothelial cells, Fukai says.

When you live in the driest State in the driest country in the world, bushfires are an unfortunate, and all-too-regular part of life. Learning how to survive such emergencies is important for all people, but especially for our youngest citizens
Now, a new virtual reality (VR) experience developed by the University of South Australia is educating children about bushfires and helping them learn how to be safer in a bushfire incident.
Focusing on children aged 10-12 years, the new VR experience presents a scenario where children are tasked to look after a friend’s dog just before a fire event begins to unfold. They participate in a series of problem-solving activities to help save and protect themselves and the dog.
Published in the Journal of Educational Computing, the research demonstrates how immersive VR experiences can deliver significant positive learning outcomes for primary children, independent of their gender, background knowledge or perceived ability to respond to bushfire hazards.
The findings showed that more than 80 per cent of children agreed or strongly agreed that they felt more confident to calmly evaluate the options and make wise decisions to protect themselves from a bushfire. This is especially significant considering that 91 per cent of participants originally lacked any knowledge of fires, and that 67 per cent had said that they were too young to make safety decisions in a fire.
The project was part of Safa Molan’s PhD project. Her supervisor and fellow researcher, UniSA’s Professor Delene Weber says immersive VR experiences have enormous potential to engage, educate and empower younger generations.

How do we assess the needs of people with severe multiple disabilities? Unable to communicate verbally and physically, this population has nearly no possibility of expressing itself. They are therefore sometimes considered as “untestable” by the scientific and medical community. Thanks to eye-tracking technology, a team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has succeeded in identifying and evaluating certain perceptive and social-emotional abilities in nine children and adolescents with multiple disabilities, opening the way to personalized care. These results can be found in the journal Plos One.
People with multiple disabilities include people with a combination of severe intellectual and motor deficiencies, to which are added various associated medical conditions. The symptoms are expressed in very different ways depending on the individual, but all of them are in a situation of extreme dependence for the execution of the tasks of daily life (washing, dressing, eating). Unable to communicate through language or sensory-motor signs, these people have practically no way to express themselves.
How can their needs and preferences be assessed and personalized assistance provided? Until now, it was often considered that this population was “untestable” and that this type of information could only be collected indirectly through the observations of external evaluators (parents, educators, caregivers). This is generally based on questionnaires measuring certain behaviors in terms of frequency (“never” vs. “always”) or intensity (“not at all” vs. “a lot”).
Making the eyes “speak”
Research led by Edouard Gentaz, a professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, shows the opposite. His team demonstrates that eye-tracking — which allows the recording of eye movements in real time — is a promising tool for the direct evaluation of social-emotional and perceptive abilities in this population. Indeed, the ability to look is one of the only behavioral cues frequently preserved in individuals with multiple disabilities.
“Eye-tracking has been used for many years to assess the early abilities of babies, who are not yet able to speak and do not yet have fine motor skills,” explains Edouard Gentaz, the study’s last author. At the request of the medico-educational institute La Clé des Champs, based in Saint-Cergues (F), the UNIGE scientists tested reapetedly nine single cases with severe multiple disabilities aged 6 to 16, and recorded their eye movements in response to different visual stimuli.
Six abilities assessed
“With eye-tracking, we observed that these children were sensitive to what they saw and that each one of them had his or her own visual preferences,” says Thalia Cavadini, assistant professor in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, first author of the study and grant holder of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).
Several pairs of images and scenes were presented to these children in order to assess six social-emotional abilities through visual preferences for: biological or non-biological movements, socially salient or non-social scenes, facial area of the eyes or mouth, joy or anger, objects of shared attention or not, pro-social or anti-social behaviors. Researchers compared the amount of time each participant spent looking at each image. They then compared these results with those of a control group of 32 two-year-olds without multiple disabilities.
Developing “Serious games”
“This method enabled us to highlight unsuspected individual skills in each of the nine children tested, such as the ability to orient oneself preferentially towards human and socially salient stimuli or the ability to direct one’s attention towards the object that another person is looking at. This discovery opens the way to personalized stimulation and care devices, as long as the ability to look is preserved, which is not the case for all people with multiple disabilities,” explains Edouard Gentaz.
Thanks to this work, eye-tracking is now a reliable device for assessing certain perceptual and social-emotional abilities of people with multiple disabilities, while taking into account their individual characteristics. On the basis of this research, “serious games” — video games with an educational or communicative purpose — adapted to each child tested are also being developed. The objective, in the long term, would be to establish a more fluid communication with this population.
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The lipid metabolism plays an important role in the development of cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes. However, little is known about the molecular relationships. Using lipidomics, a modern analytical method, the team led by Dr. Fabian Eichelmann from DIfE and DZD identified those lipids that are statistically associated with cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. In addition, the scientists found that a diet with an increased proportion of unsaturated fatty acids (FAs) leads to a reduction in risk-associated lipids and an increase in low-risk lipids. The findings were published in the journal Circulation.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for around 18 million deaths per year. People with type 2 diabetes have a two- to threefold increased risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke. The number of people affected has been rising steadily for decades. More than 8 million people in Germany already live with type 2 diabetes. According to scientific forecasts, these numbers will increase to around 12 million by 2040. Accordingly, there is a great need to identify biomarkers that can indicate the development of disease at an early stage in order to prevent or at least mitigate its onset.
Previous studies have shown that cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes are closely linked to the lipid metabolism. To decipher these relationships at the molecular level, scientists have been using lipidomics analysis for several years. This is a modern analytical method that provides very detailed insights into the fatty acid profiles in blood plasma. Fatty acids occur in the human organism mainly as part of complex molecules, the lipids. Based on their molecular structure, they are classified into numerous different lipid classes and types. The totality of all lipids within an organism is called the lipidome.
69 lipids associated with disease risk
Dr. Fabian Eichelmann, a researcher in the Department of Molecular Epidemiology at DIfE and scientist of the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), and his team evaluated the fatty acid profiles in 2,414 blood samples from the EPIC-Potsdam study. The samples were collected as early as the 1990s and in part came from participants who developed cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes in subsequent years. Using high-throughput lipidomics, the researchers identified a total of 282 different lipids, 69 of which were associated with at least one of the two diseases. “A statistical association with cardiovascular diseases was found for 49 lipids, which mainly belonged to the cholesterol esters and sphingolipids,” said Eichelmann. “Twelve lipids were associated with type 2 diabetes, the majority of which were glycerol and phospholipids. An association with both diseases was seen for 8 lipids, among which several monoacylglycerides stood out.” At the molecular level, the researchers found that higher-risk lipids tended to contain mostly saturated fatty acids, particularly palmitic acid.
Dietary fat modulation shows effect
In the second part of their investigations, the scientists wanted to find out whether the risk-associated lipids could be influenced by changing the fatty acid composition of the diet. A 16-week intervention study conducted by the collaboration partners at the University of Reading in England was designed to provide answers. Julie Lovegrove’s team recruited 113 healthy women and men aged 21 to 60 and randomly divided them into three groups. The first group received a diet with an increased amount of saturated FAs. The second group followed a diet high in monounsaturated FAs. And the third group was given a diet high in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated FAs. The diets were designed in such a way that the total energy intake was the same in all three groups, so that the participants neither gained nor lost weight. At the beginning of the study and four months later, blood samples were taken so that the researchers could determine and compare the fatty acid profiles in the blood plasma of the participants. “We found that the diets with an increased proportion of unsaturated FAs provided a reduction in risk-associated lipids and at the same time an increase in low-risk lipids compared to the diet with an increased proportion of saturated FAs,” said Lovegrove, summarizing the results.
The findings support the common recommendation that replacing saturated fatty acids with unsaturated fatty acids in the diet is a potential tool for preventing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. “The lipids identified could serve as biomarkers of increased risk. Future risk prediction models could be based on them,” said Professor Matthias Schulze, head of the Department of Molecular Epidemiology and principal investigator of the EPIC-Potsdam study at DIfE. In the next step, the researchers want to identify a lipidomics fingerprint in the blood that depicts the effects of a test diet and check whether it is associated with long-term risk of cardiovascular disease.
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In recent years, messenger RNA, DNA’s close cousin in life’s complex process of going from a string of genetic blueprints to fully functioning organism, has received intense scrutiny in the scientific and medical community for the role it can play in creating next-generation vaccines, cancer treatments, and stem cell therapies addressing a myriad of previously incurable diseases. The previously obscure topic of mRNA became a nearly universal household utterance following the rush to discover a type of vaccine that could prevent COVID-19 related fatalities. The scientific community’s herculean effort did result in Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, and products with similar mechanisms of action closely follow from other U.S. and global pharmaceutical companies.
An international research team led by Professor Katsura Asano of Hiroshima University’s Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Life in Japan, and also of Kansas State University in the U.S., set out to find new ways to artificially induce mRNA to respond in ways that could eventually lead to therapeutic outcomes, expanding on the success of the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines and opening up new possibilities across a host of possible genetic therapies.
Asano and his research team paid attention to a biochemical process termed chemical modification that adds a chemical mark to RNA bases, corresponding to a genetic letter of life’s blueprint, and identified such chemical marks that both speed up and slow down action in the beginnings of the chemical zippers involved in generating gene-specified proteins. They published their findings on April 8, 2022 in Science Advances.
In animals, including humans, mRNA is called to action in the protein production process with a signal called the AUG Start Codon, a universal code for the genetic “zipper” of RNA. The compound that AUG makes up is an amino acid called methionine, one of the twenty building blocks of protein molecules. Other RNA codons such as GUG (amino acid Valine), UUG (amino acid Leucine), and CUG (also Leucine) are generally considered “non-start” codons, meaning they’re less likely to represent the beginning of a gene translation. Instead, they appear in the middle of protein coding region that is meant to unzip the genetic blueprint and produce a given protein.
Few other codons than AUG are known to be able to activate mRNA in the way AUG does. But in setting out to change that, Asano and his team set out to test common RNA chemical modifications, evaluating their effects on different types of rare start codons initiating the translation process. To do so, they used their previous discovery that GUG, UUG, and CUG codons that are different by one letter from AUG, are converted to a reasonably strong start codon specifying methionine through attaching the optimum RNA sequence for initiating their translation event in animals. Their study design pitted a dozen RNA sequences, derived from these sequences, for expressing green fluorescent proteins through various non-AUG start codons at various efficiencies. To accurately evaluate GFP expression, they used a technique called flow cytometry to measure fluorescence from ~10,000 cells per attached RNA sequence and start codon. In this way, they compared translation efficiencies between natural RNA and chemically modified RNA.
They found common trends in altering translation efficiencies when a certain non-AUG start codon received a certain chemical mark. A remarkable discovery, they reported, was the ability of U-to-Psi (pseudouridine) conversion to dramatically increase initiation potentials of CUG, GUG and UUG start codons (and more satisfyingly no affect on AUG). “Chemical modification of non-AUG start codons can greatly alter initiation frequencies from these codons,” Asano said. “Computer simulation played a key role in understanding the mechanism leading to these effects. mRNA translation from non-AUG start codons is an old but new concept. These start codons were used in prokaryotes [bacteria] but our research takes the concept a big step further by highlighting the possibilities of doing so in eukaryotes, including humans.”
Asano hopes the medical industry will take note of this new body of data and continue to conduct further research into how to use chemical modified RNA for generating synthetic expression switches — in such a way to stimulate translation activity in a highly targeted way in humans and animals. “I am hoping that the companies making mRNA vaccines will use our findings,” he said. “For example, they could use UUG start codon and chemically modify mRNA by 1m Psi, as Pfizer did with their COVID-19 vaccine. They will allow strong expression of the antigen from the start codon and yet avoid protein expression from cDNA made and integrated into genome by chance.”
Asano explained further that so far, no significant risks related to long-term use of various mRNA vaccines have been identified. “But there is a small chance that vaccines against retroviruses make vaccine cDNA when the patient encounters these viruses during immunization. If this integrates into the patient’s genome, the antigen may be expressed in a way that attenuates vaccine production for boosting,” he said. “But beyond that, the concept is so easy and adds no extra cost. So we hope these techniques are adopted.”
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When holding a right hand in front of a mirror, one can see a reflected image of a left hand and vice versa. In 1848, Louis Pasteur discovered that organic molecules are much like our hands: they come in mirror-image pairs of left- and right-handed variants. Nowadays, we know that this handedness or chirality (from the Greek word for “hand”) is a hallmark of organic molecules.
Organic molecules are rich in carbon atoms, which form bonds to create either a right or a left “nano-hand.” Yet, puzzlingly, life almost always selects to exclusively use one of the two mirror-image twins — a phenomenon called homochirality. For example, terrestrial life is based on left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars.
While many explanations were suggested, how and why homochirality emerged remains an enigma. Chiral symmetry breaking, which is a phenomenon where a 50-50 ratio mixture of left and right-handed molecules departs to favor one over the other, is of great research interest in biochemistry. Understanding the origin of homochirality is highly important for investigating the origin of life, as well as more practical applications such as the synthesis of chiral drug molecules. A model proposes a novel explanation for the emergence of homochirality in life — a longstanding puzzle about the origin of life on Earth.It is widely believed that life originated in habitats rich in energy sources — such as hydrothermal vents in the depths of primordial oceans. Considering possible primordial Earth scenarios, Prof. Tsvi Tlusty and Dr. William Piñeros from the Center for Soft and Living Matter within the Institute for Basic Science, South Korea, envisioned a complex network of chemical reactions that exchange energy with the environment. When the team used a mathematical model and system simulation to emulate a well-stirred solution of different chemical elements in a container, they surprisingly found out that such systems naturally tend to break the molecular mirror symmetry. Homochirality emerges spontaneously in prebiotic chemical networks that adapt to optimize energy harvesting from the environment.Previously it was believed that chiral symmetry breaking requires multiple loops of auto-catalysis, which increasingly produces one enantiomer of a molecule while inhibiting the formation of the other. However, the IBS team’s results showed that the underlying mechanism of symmetry breaking is very general, as it can occur in large reaction systems with many random molecules and does not require sophisticated network architectures. It was found that this sharp transition to homochirality stems from the self-configuration of the reaction network in order to achieve more efficient harvesting of energy from the environment.
The model developed by Piñeros and Tlusty showed that highly-dissipating systems and large energy differences are more prone to inducing chiral symmetry breaking. Furthermore, the calculations revealed that such transitions are almost inevitable, so it is reasonable to believe they may generically occur in random chemical reaction systems. Thus, the energy harvesting optimization-based model demonstrated by the group explains how homochirality could have spontaneously arisen from the harsh, energy-rich environment of the early planet Earth. The proposed mechanism of symmetry breaking is a general one and can apply to other transitions in living matter that lead to increased complexity.Moreover, the model proposes a general mechanism that explains how the complexity of a system can grow as it better adapts to exploit a varying environment. This suggests that chiral symmetry breaking is an inherent hallmark of any complex system (such as life) that is capable of configuring itself to adapt to an environment. These findings may furthermore explain spontaneous symmetry breakings in much more complex biological processes, such as cell differentiation and the emergence of new genes.
This study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
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People who learn they are autistic when they are younger may have a heightened quality of life and sense of well-being in adulthood.
That’s the finding of a new study, which also found that those who learned of their autism as adults reported more positive emotions (especially relief) about autism when first learning they were autistic.
Findings suggest that telling a child that they are autistic at a younger age empowers them by providing access to support and a foundation for self-understanding that helps them thrive later in life.
For the first time, researchers directly investigated whether learning if one is autistic at a younger age is associated with better adult outcomes. Many autistic people — particularly females, ethnic/racial minorities and people with limited resources — are diagnosed years after the characteristics are first noticed. In many cases, autistic people do not receive their diagnosis until adulthood.
The study was carried out by a team of autistic and non-autistic students and academic researchers. Seventy-eight autistic university students were surveyed, sharing how they found out they were autistic and how they felt about their diagnosis. Respondents also revealed how they felt about their lives and being autistic now.
One of the co-authors, Dr Steven Kapp, Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Portsmouth, was diagnosed with and informed of his autism aged 13. He said: “Students who learned they were autistic when they were younger felt happier about their lives than people who were diagnosed at an older age. Our study shows that it is probably best to tell people they are autistic as soon as possible in a balanced, personal, and developmentally appropriate way. Learning one is autistic can be empowering because it helps people understand themselves and also helps them connect with other people like them.”
However, being given a diagnosis as an adult can often also be empowering.
Dr Kapp said: “Learning about autism at an older age is associated with more positive emotions about a diagnosis — especially relief. This finding makes sense, although emotional reactions are often very complex and unique to each person — there has been a lot of emerging research showing that relief is a common response to an autism diagnosis in adulthood.”
The study suggests that parents should not wait for children to become adults to tell them they are autistic. No participants recommended doing so, although most highlighted factors to consider when informing a child of their autism, including developmental level, support needs, curiosity, and personality. Findings also suggest that parents should tell their children they are autistic in ways that help them understand and feel good about who they are. One participant said: “I would tell my child that autism is a different way of thinking, that it can be challenging and beautiful and powerful and exhausting and impactful, that autistic people deserve to be themselves, to be proud of their identity, and have supports that help them meet their needs.”
Bella Kofner, co-lead author (24), who was diagnosed with autism at the age of 3 and informed of her autism at the age of 10, said: “This is the first study, to our knowledge, to demonstrate that learning at a young age that one is autistic may have positive impacts on emotional health among autistic university students. Hopefully, this finding may begin to address concerns parents have about when to talk to their child about autism. ‘When’ the conversation begins is particularly important. Our findings suggest that learning at a younger age that one is autistic can help autistic people develop self-understanding and access support, providing the foundations for well-being in adulthood.”
The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Autism, suggest that many aspects of identity, besides age, may contribute to how people respond to learning they are autistic. For example, more exploratory findings suggested that women and non-binary people responded more positively to first learning they were autistic than men did. The authors hope that future research will examine autistic identity development in autistic people who have often been overlooked, such as non-speaking autistic people and autistic people who are multiply marginalized.
This paper was a collaboration between the following people: Tomisin Oredipe (the manuscript was adapted from her honors thesis), Bella Kofner, Dr Ariana Riccio (study data was collected for her dissertation), and Dr Kristen Gillespie-Lynch, College of Staten Island &/or The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, USA Dr Eilidh Cage, University of Stirling, UK Dr Jonathan Vincent, York St John University, UK Dr Steven Kapp, University of Portsmouth, UK Patrick Dwyer, University of California, Davis, USA

A study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), published by Elsevier, reports that children with ADHD and emotional regulation randomized to take a micronutrient formula were three times more likely to show symptomatic improvement on blinded clinician ratings, compared to those in the placebo group (54% versus 18%). The micronutrient formula, consisting of all known vitamins and essential minerals, was administered for eight weeks.
“Supplementing with all known vitamins and essential minerals, at doses between Recommended Daily Allowance and Upper Tolerable Limit, may improve mood and concentration in children with ADHD and emotional dysregulation,” said lead author Jeanette Johnstone, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Oregon Health & Science University and Helfgott Research Institute, National University of Natural Medicine.
“These findings, replicating results of a previous randomized trial of micronutrients in children with ADHD conducted in New Zealand, confirm that supplementation with a broad range of nutrients may benefit some children. These findings may offer guidance to doctors and families seeking integrative treatments for their children with ADHD and related emotional dysregulation,” Dr. Johnstone noted.
The triple-blinded study enrolled 135 medication-free children and their parents at three sites (Portland, Oregon; Columbus, Ohio; Alberta, Canada) and randomized participants to either micronutrient or placebo capsules for eight weeks. Three-quarters of the participants were adherent to the study protocol. The intervention was well-tolerated, with no significant differences in adverse events between the micronutrient and placebo groups, or safety concerns based on blood and urine tests. Parents, children and clinicians were blinded to treatment allocation and were not able to guess assignment better than chance.
In addition to behavioral and emotional benefits, children taking micronutrients grew 6mm more in height than those taking placebo after adjusting for baseline height. “The growth finding, also a replication from the previous child micronutrient study, is particularly encouraging, as height suppression is a concern with first-line ADHD medication,” Dr. Johnstone added.
In contrast to clinician ratings, parents, who were also blinded to their child’s treatment allocation, reported significantly improved behavior that was equal in both the micronutrient and placebo groups, with no significant between-group differences, highlighting the importance of blinded clinician ratings.
“No treatment is 100% effective for all with ADHD,” commented L. Eugene Arnold, MD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry & Behavioral Health at Ohio State University and one of the senior co-authors. “For example, about 2/3 respond to the first stimulant drug tried, which is an established first-line ADHD treatment despite emotional, appetite, and growth side effects. So, it’s encouraging that a good half of the children responded to this relatively safe treatment.”
“Future studies will focus on the micronutrients’ mechanisms of action and subgroup responses to understand for whom and why this intervention works. Mechanistic hypotheses to be tested include changes in the gut microbiome and its metabolome, reductions in inflammatory markers (e.g. cytokines), replenishment of minerals, and optimization of neurotransmission. In order to increase parent sensitivity to child behavior changes, we plan to utilize real-time data reporting methods such as ‘ecological momentary assessment’ using a phone or other device to capture behaviors when they occur,” added Dr. Johnstone.
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A team led by the Institut de Neurociències at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (INc-UAB) managed to reduce chronic inflammation associated with multiple sclerosis in mice thanks to the administration of a type of lipid that mediates inflammation. The team found that these types of mediator substances, responsible for resolving the inflammatory process when it is no longer beneficial, are minimized in people with multiple sclerosis as well as in animal models of the disease. The use of these mediators could become a good strategy for the treatment of this autoimmune disease.
Acute inflammation is a protective response to infection that promotes tissue regeneration after injury. Once its function has been performed, a series of mechanisms regulated by lipids acting as mediators are responsible for resolving it. An error in the resolution response results in uncontrolled inflammation that is detrimental for the tissues. In multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disorder in which the body’s defense cells attack the lining of the tail of neurons (myelin), the inflammation is persistent and plays a key role in the development of the disease.
A research team led by Rubén López-Vales, Professor of Physiology at the UAB and researcher at the Neuroplasticity and Regeneration Group, INC-UAB, has managed to reduce the chronic inflammation associated with multiple sclerosis in a mice model of the disease, by administering one of the resolving lipid mediators of inflammation, Maresin-1. The substance exerted a therapeutic effect on mice, drastically reducing the amount of proteins promoting inflammation (cytokines), as well as the number of cells in the immune system in both the spinal cord and the blood. A continuous administration of the lipid over time also protected neurons from demyelination and improved the effects of neurological deterioration caused by the disease.
In the study, published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation, researchers looked at samples from patients with multiple sclerosis and from mice models, and found that there was insufficient production of Maresin-1 and other lipid mediators that end inflammation. The levels of these immunosuppressive substances, which were almost undetectable, prevented the inflammatory process from stopping.
“Our results suggest that one of the body’s mechanisms for resolving inflammation is not working properly in patients with multiple sclerosis, which could partly explain the episodes of autoimmunity they experience,” says Dr. López-Vales.
The study, conducted in collaboration with the University of Montreal and the Universidad de La República in Uruguay, points to therapy with inflammatory-resolving mediators as an innovative and promising strategy for the treatment of multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases needing further research.
Finally, López-Vales explains that the next steps will be a series of tests and experiments to demonstrate the safety of the administration of this lipid, which could allow them to address possible efficacy studies in humans.
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Finding out the sex of a baby during pregnancy could lead to better life chances, a new Cambridge study has discovered.
Male baby pregnancies are more likely to result in complications, possibly because they grow faster in the womb and require more nutrients and oxygen than supplied by the mother through the placenta — the temporary organ that attaches to the wall of the uterus during pregnancy to help the fetus grow and develop.
Now scientists have discovered the sex of a fetus can affect how well the placenta actually functions along with factors such as diet-induced maternal obesity and stress, after studying pregnancies in lab mice.
Around one in 10 women are affected by pregnancy disorders, such as fetal growth restriction and pre-eclampsia — a life-threatening high blood pressure condition for both mother and child — but these can be difficult to predict and treat.
The new research suggests that designing individual treatment plans and encouraging pregnant women to make lifestyle changes based upon the sex of their unborn babies could have lifelong health benefits for their children — and spell the end of the tradition of waiting until the baby is born to find out whether it is a boy or a girl.
“Often parents don’t want to know the baby’s sex because they want it to be a surprise. But actually knowing the sex would help to identify whether a pregnancy may be at greater risk than another because we know that some conditions of pregnancy such as pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction can be more prevalent in women that carry male babies than females,” said Dr Amanda Sferruzzi-Perri, a Fellow of St John’s College, who carried out the research with her team from the University of Cambridge Department of Physiology Development and Neuroscience at the Centre for Trophoblast Research.