Publisher Health

A five-year-old boy who has cerebral palsy has learned to walk after a life-changing operation and months of physiotherapy.The part of Joey’s brain that controlled muscle tone and movement was damaged, meaning he couldn’t sit, stand or walk.He underwent a neurosurgical procedure, which destroyed the problematic nerve roots in his spinal cord that were sending abnormal messages to his leg muscles.Joey didn’t meet the criteria to have the procedure on the NHS so his local community in Loughborough, Leicestershire, raised £50,000 to make it possible.His mum Gemma said she had always dreamed of the moment he would walk.”For us it’s just been about giving him the best chance so we can look back and say ‘we did everything we could’,” she said.Video journalists: Emily Anderson and Chris WaringFollow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk.

On Corona Road in Lewisham, south-east London, there’s a story of the pandemic behind every door.The residents represent a cross-section of society who dealt with coronavirus in different ways, but they all tell of a community which came together during tough times.Two years since our lives were changed by the announcement that the UK was going into lockdown, how have those living on the aptly named street coped?Video by Jamie MorelandAdditional filming by Eric Anderson

Letter by painstaking letter, a man in a completely locked-in state was able to formulate words and sentences using only his thoughts.In 2020 Ujwal Chaudhary, a biomedical engineer then at the University of Tübingen and the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva, watched his computer with amazement as an experiment that he had spent years on revealed itself. A 34-year-old paralyzed man lay on his back in the laboratory, his head connected by a cable to a computer. A synthetic voice pronounced letters in German: “E, A, D…”The patient had been diagnosed a few years earlier with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which leads to the progressive degeneration of brain cells involved in motion. The man had lost the ability to move even his eyeballs and was entirely unable to communicate; in medical terms, he was in a completely locked-in state.Or so it seemed. Through Dr. Chaudhary’s experiment, the man had learned to select — not directly with his eyes but by imagining his eyes moving — individual letters from the steady stream that the computer spoke aloud. Letter by painstaking letter, one every minute or so, he formulated words and sentences.“Wegen essen da wird ich erst mal des curry mit kartoffeln haben und dann bologna und dann gefuellte und dann kartoffeln suppe,” he wrote at one point: “For food I want to have curry with potato then Bolognese and potato soup.”Dr. Chaudhary and his colleagues were dumbstruck. “I myself could not believe that this is possible,” recalled Dr. Chaudhary, who is now managing director at ALS Voice gGmbH, a neurobiotechnology company based in Germany, and who no longer works with the patient.The study, published on Tuesday in Nature Communications, provides the first example of a patient in a fully locked-in state communicating at length with the outside world, said Niels Birbaumer, the leader of the study and a former neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen who is now retired.Dr. Chaudhary and Dr. Birbaumer conducted two similar experiments in 2017 and 2019 on patients who were completely locked-in and reported that they were able to communicate. Both studies were retracted after an investigation by the German Research Foundation concluded that the researchers had only partially recorded the examinations of their patients on video, had not appropriately shown details of their analyses and had made false statements. The German Research Foundation, finding that Dr. Birbaumer committed scientific misconduct, imposed some of its most severe sanctions, including a five-year ban on submitting proposals and serving as a reviewer for the foundation.The agency found that Dr. Chaudhary had also committed scientific misconduct and imposed the same sanctions for a three-year period. Both he and Dr. Birbaumer were asked to retract their two papers, and they declined.The investigation came after a whistle-blower, Martin Spüler, a researcher, raised concerns about the two scientists in 2018.Dr. Birbaumer stood by the conclusions and has taken legal action against the German Research Foundation. The results of the lawsuit are expected to be published in the next two weeks, said Marco Finetti, a spokesman for the German Research Foundation. Dr. Chaudhary says his lawyers expect to win the case.The German Research Foundation has no knowledge of the publication of the current study and will investigate it in the coming months, Mr. Finetti said. In an email, a representative for Nature Communications who asked not to be named declined to comment on the details of how the study was vetted but expressed confidence with the process. “We have rigorous policies to safeguard the integrity of the research we publish, including to ensure that research has been conducted to a high ethical standard and is reported transparently,” the representative said.“I would say it is a solid study,” said Natalie Mrachacz-Kersting, a brain-computer interface researcher at the University of Freiburg in Germany. She was not involved in the study and was aware of the previously retracted papers.But Brendan Allison, researcher at the University of California San Diego, expressed reservations. “This work, like other work by Birbaumer, should be taken with a massive mountain of salt given his history,” Dr. Allison said. He noted that in a paper published in 2017, his own team had described being able to communicate with completely locked-in patients with basic “yes” or “no” answers.The results hold potential promise for patients in similarly unresponsive situations, including minimally conscious and comatose states, as well as the rising number of people diagnosed with ALS worldwide every year. That number is projected to reach 300,000 by 2040.“It’s a game-changer,” said Steven Laureys, a neurologist and researcher who leads the Coma Science Group at the University of Liège in Belgium and was not involved in the study. The technology could have ethical ramifications in discussions surrounding euthanasia for patients in locked-in or vegetative states, he added: “It’s really great to see this moving forward, giving patients a voice” in their own decisions.Two microelectrode arrays, each 3.2 mm square, were inserted into the surface of the patient’s motor cortex — the part of the brain responsible for movement.Wyss CenterMyriad methods have been used to communicate with unresponsive patients. Some involve basic pen-and-paper methods devised by family relatives. In others, a caregiver points to or speaks the names of items and looks for microresponses — blinks, finger twitches from the patient.In recent years a new method has taken center stage: brain-computer interface technologies, which aim to translate a person’s brain signals into commands. Research institutes, private companies and entrepreneurial billionaires like Elon Musk have invested heavily in the technology.The results have been mixed but compelling: patients moving prosthetic limbs using only their thoughts, and those with strokes, multiple sclerosis and other conditions communicating once again with loved ones.What scientists have been unable to do until now, however, is communicate extensively with people like the man in the new study who displayed no movements whatsoever.In 2017, before becoming totally locked-in, the patient had used eye movements to communicate with his family. Anticipating that he would soon lose even this ability, the family asked for an alternative communication system and approached Dr. Chaudhary and Dr. Birbaumer, a pioneer in the field of brain-computer interface technology, both of whom worked nearby.With the man’s approval, Dr. Jens Lehmberg, a neurosurgeon and an author on the study, implanted two tiny electrodes in regions of the man’s brain that are involved in controlling movement. Then, for two months, the man was asked to imagine moving his hands, arms and tongue to see if these would generate a clear brain signal. But the effort yielded nothing reliable.Dr. Birbaumer then suggested using auditory neurofeedback, an unusual technique by which patients are trained to actively manipulate their own brain activity. The man was first presented with a note — high or low, corresponding to yes or no. This was his “target tone” — the note he had to match.He was then played a second note, which mapped onto brain activity that the implanted electrodes had detected. By concentrating — and imagining moving his eyes, to effectively dial his brain activity up or down — he was able to change the pitch of the second tone to match the first. As he did so, he gained real-time feedback of how the note changed, allowing him to heighten the pitch when he wanted to say yes or lower it for no.This approach saw immediate results. On the man’s first day trying, he was able to alter the second tone. Twelve days later, he succeeded in matching the second to the first.“That was when everything became consistent, and he could reproduce those patterns,” said Jonas Zimmermann, a neuroscientist at the Wyss Center and an author on the study. When the patient was asked what he was imagining to alter his own brain activity, he replied: “Eye movement.”Over the next year, the man applied this skill to generate words and sentences. The scientists borrowed a communication strategy that the patient had used with his family when he could still move his eyes.They grouped letters into sets of five colors. A computerized voice first listed the colors, and the man replied “yes” or “no,” depending on whether the letter he wanted to select was in that set. The voice then listed out each letter, which he selected in similar fashion. He repeated these steps set by set, letter by letter, to articulate full sentences.On the second day of his spelling endeavor he wrote: “First I would like to thank Niels and his birbaumer.”Some of his sentences involved instructions: “Mom head massage” and “everyone must use gel on my eyes more often.” Others described cravings: “Goulash soup and sweet pea soup.”Of the 107 days that the man spent spelling, 44 resulted in intelligible sentences. And while there was great variability in speed, he wrote at about one character per minute.“Wow, it blew my mind,” said Dr. Mrachacz-Kersting. She speculated that locked-in patients who can keep their minds stimulated could experience longer, healthier lives.Dr. Mrachacz-Kersting emphasized, however, that the study was based on one patient and would need to be tested on many others.Other researchers also expressed caution in embracing the findings.Neil Thakur, chief mission officer of the ALS Association, said, “This approach is experimental, so there’s still a lot we need to learn.”At this stage the technology is also far too complex for patients and families to operate. Making it more user-friendly and speeding up communication speed will be crucial, Dr. Chaudhary said. Until then, he said, a patient’s relatives will probably be satisfied.“You have two options: no communication or communication at one character per minute,” he said. “What do you choose?”Perhaps the biggest concern is time. Three years have passed since the implants were first inserted in the patient’s brain. Since then, his answers have become significantly slower, less reliable and often impossible to discern, said Dr. Zimmermann, who is now caring for the patient at the Wyss Center.The cause of this decline is unclear, but Dr. Zimmermann thought it probably stemmed from technical issues. For instance, the electrodes are nearing the end of their life expectancy. Replacing them now, however, would be unwise. “It’s a risky procedure,” he said. “All of a sudden you’re exposed to new kinds of bacteria in the hospital.”Dr. Zimmermann and others at the Wyss Center are developing wireless microelectrodes that are safer to use. The team is also exploring other noninvasive techniques that have proved fruitful in previous studies on patients who are not locked-in. “As much as we want to help people, I think it’s also very dangerous to create false hope,” Dr. Zimmermann said.At the same time, Dr. Laureys of the Coma Science Group said there would be no value in fostering a sense of “false despair” when viable innovations were appearing on the horizon.“I’m extremely excited as a caregiver, as a clinician,” he said. “I think it is wonderful that we offer these new scientific insights and technology to very vulnerable and dramatic conditions.”

The dominant form of heart failure worldwide appears to be caused by a strong, bidirectional interaction between the body’s response to metabolic stress and the immune system, according to a review article written by UT Southwestern researchers and colleagues. The article, published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, argues for more research into this root cause to develop truly effective treatments.
“Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction affects millions of people around the globe, but we currently have little to offer these patients because the mechanisms behind it have been unknown. It’s been called the single greatest unmet need in cardiovascular medicine,” said the article’s senior author Joseph Hill, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Biology and Chief of Cardiology at UT Southwestern. “We now have insight into this condition that we didn’t have even five years ago, observations that could lead to viable clinical targets.”
Dr. Hill explained that heart failure — the heart’s inability to effectively pump blood — comes in two broad types: heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), in which the amount of blood that leaves the heart with each beat declines, and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), in which the heart is unable to fill with blood to capacity. While HFrEF has long been the most common form, HFpEF — which is associated with obesity, diabetes, and other components of metabolic syndrome — has grown in prevalence over the last several decades and overtaken HFrEF as the most common form.
Numerous treatments exist for various types of HFrEF, but these interventions have no discernible effect on HFpEF. This is because the two conditions are caused by different underlying mechanisms, said Dr. Hill, a topic that his lab has studied for years. Although HFpEF can be improved through weight loss, losing weight is something that many individuals struggle with, he added, prompting the need for treatments.
In the review article, Hill and his colleagues outline findings made over the past several years that point to joint metabolic and immune dysfunction as the root cause of HFpEF. For example, fat tissue secretes inflammatory molecules that migrate to the heart, recruiting immune cells evident in heart biopsy samples from individuals with HFpEF. At the same time, heart toxicity caused by overuse of fatty acids as fuel in individuals with metabolic syndrome appears to stimulate an immune response, leading to a vicious cycle.
Crosstalk between fat tissue, the immune system, and the heart appears to amplify both immune and metabolic stress, ultimately causing the heart to fail over time. But how this crosstalk occurs, the effects it produces, and how to block them remain unclear, Dr. Hill said. Research into this new field of immunometabolism is shedding some light on these questions, but more research will be necessary to produce effective interventions for HFpEF patients, he added.
“Research from our lab and others is raising possibilities of therapeutic targets that need to be investigated,” Dr. Hill said. “There’s a reasonable chance that we could have therapies available for this intractable condition within the next decade.”
U.S. News and World Report ranks UT Southwestern as the No.1 hospital in Texas for Cardiology and Heart Surgery and No.11 in the nation.
Dr. Hill holds the James T. Willerson, M.D., Distinguished Chair in Cardiovascular Diseases and the Frank M. Ryburn Jr. Chair in Heart Research.
Thomas G. Gillette, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern, contributed to the review article.
This work was supported by grants from the DZHK (German Centre for Cardiovascular Research); the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, SFB-1470-A02), IMI2-CARDIATEAM (no. 821508); the Netherlands Cardiovascular Research Initiative, Dutch Cardiovascular Alliance CVON2016-Early HFPEF, 2015-10, CVON She-PREDICTS, no. 2017-21; National Institutes of Health (HL144477, HL122309, HL126012, HL128215, HL120732, HL147933 and HL155765), and the American Heart Association (19TPA34910006).

Should mask rules on planes be lifted? Several British airlines have just suspended the requirement, but in the United States, the mandate, to be reviewed next month, remains. Here’s a look at where things stand.Air travel has been one of the last holdouts for strict pandemic mask requirements. In the United States, for example, the mask mandate — which was recently extended to April 18, when it comes up for review again — is still enforced. Over the last year, 922 of those who didn’t wear masks received fines from the Transportation Security Administration, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.But there are hints that the tide may be turning: Within the past few weeks, Danish airports and London’s Heathrow Airport have lifted their mask requirements, as have several major British airlines.Some airline employees in England rejoiced at their reclaimed freedom from enforcing mask rules at 30,000 feet. “First flight done without a mask and it was an absolute dream,” a woman, who identified herself as a flight attendant from Yorkshire, England, on her social media accounts, recently wrote on Twitter, alongside a photo of her fully visible smile. In the United States, the International Air Transport Association, which represents nearly 300 airlines, and the U.S. Travel Association, an industry group, have been lobbying the White House not to extend the mandate further, saying it’s difficult to rationalize mask rules in the sky, given that authorities have already lifted them in other indoor locations. Republican lawmakers, who recently sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to end the mask mandate for air travel, call the rule “arbitrary.” But some travel health experts and passengers say airplane cabins and airports should take a more careful approach.“It was very unsettling,” said Rebecca Kift, 37, a clinical biochemist from Leeds, England, who had no idea that the British airline TUI Airways Limited had lifted its mask requirement until she boarded her flight to Manchester from Spain’s Gran Canaria island last Monday. Because her mother is being treated for cancer, she has spent months avoiding crowded indoor situations. But there she was with four hours ahead of her in a cabin full of unmasked flight attendants and mostly unmasked passengers. “I don’t think it’s fair,” she said.Here is a look at the confusing state of mask wear in the sky.What just happened in England?Unlike the United States, England never instituted a governmental mask mandate for air travel. Nonetheless, most British airlines and airports began requiring masks in June 2020, when Britain started mandating masks on other forms of transport.Over the past couple of weeks, as parts of Britain have lifted other types of travel and mask requirements, some airports and airlines have suspended their mask rules, among them, London’s Heathrow Airport, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. Both airlines said wearing a mask was a “personal choice,” and clarified that the shift only applies while flying to or from destinations where there are no mask requirements, such as England and Barbados.They are not the first airlines to permit bare faces. Two additional British airlines, Jet2 and TUI Airway, had previously dropped their mask requirements, and passengers began flying without face coverings throughout Scandinavia last October.What determines if you have to wear a mask on a particular route?If the departure and destination countries have different restrictions, the country with the stricter rule sets the policy in the sky. Individuals flying between England and Northern Ireland on TUI Airways, for example, would not have to wear a mask, but individuals flying between England and the United States on that same airline would have to wear one.Beyond England, Northern Ireland, Norway and Barbados, destinations that do not currently have mask requirements in the air include Mexico, St. Lucia, the Bahamas and Jamaica. The United States, Scotland, Italy and China are among the many countries that continue to require masks on planes.Airport rules may be stricter than plane rules on a given route, meaning a traveler might have to put on a mask upon arrival. Airports in Norway, Denmark and England have been outliers in lifting mask requirements, according to the Airports Council International, a trade organization representing nearly 2,000 airports.When can I stop flying with a mask in the United States?Maybe on April 19, if — and that’s a big if — the White House does not extend the federal mask mandate further. Even flight attendants are divided on whether the mandate should be extended again, with some saying that the mask rule is not worth it, given the problems enforcing it, while others argue that the rule is critical to keeping medically vulnerable travelers safe.Should Covid case counts affect mask mandates?It depends on whom you ask.Across the world, case count numbers vary. In recent weeks, case numbers have dipped to their lowest level since June in the United States. Canada is also down to its lowest number of cases since December. But in many other places, cases are rising. As England moved away from airport and airline mask mandates on March 16, case counts hit their highest point in nearly a month. Meanwhile, a highly transmissible subvariant known as BA.2 is pummeling some parts of Asia and Europe. And on Sunday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden Administration’s top adviser on the pandemic, predicted that the United States would eventually see a similar “uptick” of BA.2 cases.“Covid is not over,” said Leonard Marcus, the director of Harvard’s Aviation Public Health Initiative, which produced a report that some airline executives have used to rationalize ending mask requirements. Dr. Marcus said that it’s too soon for him to have an opinion on whether BA.2 merits an extension of the federal mask mandate. But once lifted, he said, a mask mandate will be difficult to reinstate.Some proponents of ending mask mandates argue that so long as vaccines are preventing serious disease, case counts are irrelevant, because most international travelers are vaccinated.In a statement announcing the end of its mask requirement last week, Heathrow Airport embodied this line of thinking, mentioning “the strong protection provided by vaccination programs around the world” and an embrace of a “move towards learning to live with Covid longer term.”But proponents of mask mandates also point out that not everyone on a plane can count on vaccines protecting them and the people they live with from severe Covid infections.Don’t advanced air filtration systems on airplanes provide enough protection?The advanced filtration systems on many planes refresh the air every two to three minutes. Therefore the risk of being infected should be lower than in other packed indoor settings, many of which no longer require masks, airlines have argued. (It should also be lower than in the airport or on crowded bridges to a plane, where you cannot count on great ventilation systems, according to Dr. David Freedman, the president-elect of the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene.)Travel testing requirements have also made an already low-risk environment for transmission safer.But if you’re sitting close to a contagious person, you could still end up breathing in recently emitted virus before it makes it into the air filtration system, some researchers have pointed out. “There is some evidence that passengers within two rows of an index case are at higher risk,” said Patricia Schlagenhauf, a professor of travel medicine at the University of Zürich.Is masking on airplanes really effective?Yes, travel experts say. While the consensus among researchers who focus on this area has been that air travel is quite safe, there are examples of coronavirus transmission on planes; most occurred before mandatory mask policies arrived, said Dr. Aisha Khatib, the chair of a group focused on responsible travel for the International Society of Travel Medicine.“It may be argued that the most effective mitigation measure to date has been mandatory masking in-flight,” said Dr. Khatib.Dr. Freedman echoed this point. Once the mandate goes, he said, “I’m still going to wear my N95 the whole flight.”Some airlines and airports that have lifted mask mandates have also emphasized masks’ value. Emma Gilthorpe, Heathrow’s chief operating officer, said that even without the requirement she still would “recommend wearing them.”Should I wear one if I’m sniffling or tested positive?The C.D.C. continues to advise people to quarantine for five days if they test positive, regardless of symptoms. But, inevitably, some people who test positive will still get on a plane. To reduce the risk of transmission, they should wear a good mask.In East Asia, long before the pandemic, wearing a mask in public if a person had a cold or flu was standard etiquette, noted Emma Teng, a professor of Asian Civilization at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who had studied the history of masks.Dr. Teng believes that the pandemic could have a lasting effect on how Americans approach masks. “I think it’s been relatively normalized for people to wear masks in public settings if they are feeling under the weather,” she said.What about babies and toddlers?Parents of children under 5 have expressed mixed feelings about the mask mandate in the United States. The coronavirus vaccine is currently only available to children over 5, giving many parents anxiety about placing their little one, who may be too young to wear a mask, amid so many unmasked travelers. On the flip side, many parents consider the current rule, which requires children as young as 2 to wear a mask, unreasonable.“Under 3 is absolutely unrealistic to do the entire time,” said Amanda Pendarvis Lacy, 31, who got kicked off a plane with her then 2-year-old son in September after he repeatedly pulled down his mask. She’s not sure where she stands on a mask mandate for adults, but “I’d be relieved if he didn’t have to wear it,” she said.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places list for 2022.

Virginia’s workplace safety board voted on Monday to withdraw the state’s emergency rules for protecting workers from Covid-19, leaving employers to follow looser guidelines to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the workplace.Virginia, which has its own workplace safety agency, was the first state in the country to put in place emergency standards to protect workers from the virus. Under those standards, which were enacted in July 2020 under Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, employers had to require indoor masking in higher-risk areas, as well as report Covid outbreaks to the state’s Department of Health.The current governor, Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, instructed the state health board to re-evaluate the standards earlier this year, arguing that they presented a burden to businesses.“The Virginia Covid-19 permanent standard became out of step with current C.D.C. guidance as well as what a lot of other states were doing to address the current state of the pandemic,” said Nathaniel M. Glasser, a lawyer at Epstein Becker & Green, who specializes in Covid-19 and employment law, adding that nothing prevents employers from going above and beyond the state guidelines.The rules will be replaced by guidelines for employers recommending that they promote vaccination, encourage employees with symptoms to stay home and require those infected with coronavirus not to come to work.Governor Youngkin said in a statement that “it is undeniable that Virginia is open for business.” The president of the Virginia A.F.L.-C.I.O., Doris Crouse-Mays, said the state had “opted to abandon safety protections for working people” and that “the Covid-19 crisis is still a pandemic.”States with their own workplace safety agencies must have rules that are at least as effective as those set by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA, under President Biden, tried to enact a sweeping rule requiring Covid vaccines or regular testing for some 84 million American workers. But the rule was withdrawn in January after being blocked by the Supreme Court, leaving workers and their employers across the country to confront a patchwork of state and local regulations.

Invading armies need a steady supply of fuel and armaments. That’s just as true when the invaders are cells, such as when tumor cells break away from their neighbors and spread to other parts of the body in a process called metastasis — the most deadly part of cancer.
Now, a Duke University-led study in the tiny worm C. elegans provides new insight into how invading cells amass and deploy fuel to the front lines of invasion to power their cellular break-through machinery.
In a study in the journal Developmental Cell, Duke biology professor David Sherwood and colleagues have identified two glucose transporters that, when deactivated, disrupt the energy supply to invading worm cells and even stop some of them in their tracks.
The findings could eventually lead to new ways to cut the supply lines that allow cancer cells to metastasize in humans.
“This is a big deal because it gives us a new aspect of invasive cells to target therapeutically,” Sherwood said.
Metastatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat. Most cancer drugs work by destroying tumor cells or slowing their growth. But very few of the more than 200 anti-cancer drugs that have been approved for clinical use actually prevent cancer from breaking off from the original tumor and spreading to other organs — the culprit behind the vast majority of cancer-related deaths.

A human immune system is a lot like the board game Mouse Trap: it’s a Rube Goldberg system of interacting parts. Only instead of a falling ball causing a tiny diver to leap into a tub — which, in turn, springs a trap on some plastic mice — proteins trigger other proteins to activate immune cells and direct them toward germs. But if those proteins mistakenly direct immune cells toward healthy tissue, autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis — which attacks neurons — can arise.
A new study led by Kelly Monaghan — a researcher with the West Virginia University School of Medicine — suggests that part of the “Rube Goldberg” immune system shows promise as a potential target for MS therapies.
“Anytime you have any kind of central nervous system issues, you have to go through a series of steps to have cells get into the brain or spinal cord,” said Monaghan, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cell Biology. “Gaining a better understanding of those immune mechanisms associated with MS can help to inform novel therapies.”
Her findings appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Her study — funded by the National Institutes of Health — focused on STAT5, one of the many proteins circulating in the body that can metaphorically turn genes on or off.
“STAT5 is a transcription factor,” Monaghan said. “It is a member of the STAT protein family, and it has a lot of different roles in cell proliferation and inflammation. Importantly, STAT5 proteins must form dimers to regulate gene expression. The interaction of two dimers results in the formation of tetramers, which regulate an independent set of target genes.”
Monaghan and her colleagues wanted to know if STAT5 tetramers played a role in signaling white blood cells to interact and move through the meninges. If they did play such a role, the researchers wanted to learn more about it.

What are the most important factors to consider for developing effective drug use prevention programs? Many current programs for adolescents focus on elements including peer and family relationships, school connection, and youth’s self-confidence and self-assertion. However, a new study from the University of Illinois suggests another factor may be equally — or even more — influential: whether the youth believes drug use is wrong.
“Inherent to the success of drug use prevention programs is ensuring activities are targeting those risks and protective factors that are most influential and salient for youth substance use,” says Allen Barton, assistant professor and Extension specialist in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at U of I and lead author on the study.
“As we aim to develop more effective drug use prevention programming, we have to ask whether any pertinent factors have been overlooked.”
Barton and his colleagues found individual beliefs that drug use is wrong had twice the magnitude of impact compared to other risk and protective factors examined in the study. Thus, influencing adolescents’ beliefs about drug use may be an important, but relatively underemphasized, key to modifying their behavior.
The researchers based their work on cognitive dissonance theory, which has not been used commonly to inform drug prevention efforts.
“The basic idea of cognitive dissonance theory is that individuals strive for harmony or agreement between their beliefs and their behavior. When there’s a disconnect or dissonance, they try to reconcile either by changing their behavior to match their beliefs, or by changing their beliefs to allow for their behavior,” Barton explains.

Investigators at the Brigham and the Broad Institute have created specialized, tissue-like structures in the laboratory to model barrier tissues, such as the intestines, to identify new targets for treatment. Barrier tissues are exposed to substances from the outside world but serve as a layer of protection. Over the years, researchers have developed more sophisticated, three-dimensional models of epithelial barrier tissues, such as the intestine. These models are known as intestinal organoids. In a new study, investigators discovered a tissue-modifying molecule that can target intestinal stem cells and signal them to create Paneth cells, a rare but important cell type that can alter the gut microbiota. Previous studies have shown that Paneth cells are depleted in diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease and graft-versus-host disease. Replenishing these rare cells could represent a new therapeutic pathway. The team’s approach could also be used to identify molecules that could target other intestinal cell types.

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