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Mayo Clinic researchers have identified a new set of molecular markers in blood plasma. This discovery could lead to the development of improved diagnostic tests for Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting 6.2 million people in the U.S.
The Mayo Clinic study, published in eBioMedicine, is the first study to focus on RNA molecules in plasma as biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease in African Americans — the population at greatest risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease. This approach enabled researchers to pinpoint specific molecules in plasma that could serve as biomarkers to confirm a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in this population.
The study builds on previous research that identified genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and established that RNA molecules in blood plasma could potentially be used as biomarkers.
In the study, researchers examined blood plasma messenger RNA molecules in 151 African Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and 269 African Americans diagnosed as cognitively unimpaired with Clinical Dementia Rating scale scores of zero. The researchers found that when the plasma levels of six messenger RNA molecules — encoded by genes CLU, APP, CD14, ABCA7, AKAP9 and APOE — were accounted for in their statistical models, they improved their ability to accurately identify participants with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis by 8%. Researchers explain this is an improvement, compared to statistical models that account for only the presence of known risk factors, such as age and sex, and whether the person is a carrier of the APOE-e4 allele — a gene known to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
The researchers predict this discovery could lead to more accurate Alzheimer’s disease screening for everyone, particularly for the people and communities at greatest risk.
“Having a comprehensive panel of biomarkers for use in screening will help with early detection of Alzheimer’s disease, and it will also contribute to intervention strategies that can delay and mitigate the onset of the disease,” says Joseph Reddy, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic quantitative health sciences researcher and first author. “This could be especially relevant for African Americans — a population underrepresented in Alzheimer’s disease research — who were the focus of this study.”
The researchers predict that this discovery could contribute to the development of more accessible, minimally invasive screening options, enabling improved disease management.
“Many screening tests for Alzheimer’s disease may not be accessible to all patients due to cost or lack of availability at health care facilities in their area,” says Minerva Carrasquillo, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic neurogeneticist and senior author. “Some tests rely on complex imaging techniques, or on obtaining a sample of cerebrospinal fluid from the patient. Obtaining a plasma sample only requires a blood draw, which is a routine procedure in most clinical settings.”
The researchers indicate that future research will focus on identifying additional genetic biomarkers in blood plasma that may improve the accuracy of Alzheimer’s disease diagnostic tests.
All study participants who consented to participate in this research are part of the Florida Consortium for African American Alzheimer’s Disease Studies. This consortium, which was established in 2015 by Nilüfer Ertekin-Taner, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic neuroscientist and behavioral neurologist, focuses on improving health equity in Alzheimer’s disease through genomic research. Dr. Ertekin-Taner, who is director of the Mayo Clinic Genetics of Alzheimer’s Disease and Endophenotypes Lab, is an author on the paper.
This research was funded by grants from the National Institute on Aging and the Florida Department of Health Ed and Ethel Moore Alzheimer’s Disease Research Program. This research also was supported by the Mayo Clinic’s Memory Disorders Center, Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, and Center for Health Equity and Community Engagement Research.
The researchers declare no conflicts of interest.
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Materials provided by Mayo Clinic. Original written by Caitlin Doran. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

In individuals with a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease, the immune cells of the brain — the “microglia” — start exerting a protective effect up to two decades before the first symptoms appear. A team from Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE) and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München draws this conclusion based on a study of more than 200 volunteers, which they report in the journal The Lancet Neurology. In light of their study data, the scientists consider modulating the activity of microglia to be a promising therapeutic approach. To this end, they aim to develop drugs that target a cellular receptor called TREM2.
About one percent of all people with Alzheimer’s develop the disease as a result of gene mutations that can be passed on from generation to generation. As part of the international DIAN (Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network) observational study, DZNE and LMU München are participating in research into this genetic form of Alzheimer’s disease. The DIAN study cohort includes adults who carry gene mutations that cause Alzheimer’s as well as their close relatives without mutations.
Measurements Over Several Years
For the current research, the team led by molecular biologist Prof. Christian Haass and neurologist Dr. Estrella Morenas-Rodríguez analyzed how signatures of microglial activation were related to the development of certain biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease. To this end, cerebrospinal fluid and cognition were assessed over a period of several years in 248 participants of the DIAN study comprising the different stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The volunteers were also examined by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) to visualize brain shrinkage and amyloid pathology — both are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.
The starting point for the research team was a protein called TREM2. “This is a receptor on the surface of microglia, but parts of it can detach and are then detectable in the cerebrospinal fluid. It is known from laboratory studies, particularly in mice but also from our earlier human studies, that levels of TREM2 in the cerebrospinal fluid are a good indicator of microglial activity. TREM2 is a kind of activity switch. As TREM2 levels increase, so do microglial protective activities,” explains Christian Haass, research group leader at DZNE and professor of biochemistry at LMU München. “For a long time, it was assumed that microglia mainly cause damage in the course of Alzheimer’s disease, as they can fuel chronic inflammatory processes. However, there is growing evidence from my laboratory and many others that microglia have a protective effect at least at the beginning of the disease. This hypothesis is supported by our current data.”
Estrella Morenas-Rodríguez, postdoctoral researcher in the Haass team at the time of the investigation and now junior group leader at Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre in Madrid, Spain adds: “One of the determinant points which allowed us to make our observations, and that was also a challenge, was to be able to study for the first time the increase of the TREM2 marker longitudinally. That is, we measured the marker in several samples taken from the same individuals every one or two years. With that we could better capture the development of the different processes occurring in Alzheimer´s disease than studying samples at just one time point.”
Conspicuous Long in Advance
People with a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s usually develop the disease at a similar age as their relatives with the same mutation who already experience symptoms of dementia. Based on this experience, the researchers were able to estimate the time until the onset of symptoms for all study participants individually. In doing so, they came across early signs of the disease. “We found that TREM2 levels in the cerebrospinal fluid rise as early as 21 years before the estimated onset of the disease,” Haass says. “We also observed that the faster TREM2 increases over the years, the slower pathological events progress in the brain that are typical of Alzheimer’s. We can infer this from biomarkers for so-called amyloid proteins and tau proteins.”
The brain examinations using MRI and PET pointed in a similar direction: In study participants in whom TREM2 levels rose rapidly, deposits of amyloid proteins that are characteristic of Alzheimer’s developed more slowly and brain volume declined more slowly. “Besides the relationship with a slower pathological process, one of our most important and promising findings was to see how strikingly the faster TREM2 increase correlated with a slower cognitive decline in an early stage of Alzheimer´s disease. This has important implications for treatment,” Morenas-Rodríguez notes.
“We see our findings as evidence that TREM2-mediated microglial activity has a protective effect,” Haass says. “In our view, microglia become active as soon as the first amyloid proteins are deposited in the brain, a process, which we call seeding. In other words, at a very early stage of Alzheimer’s and that is what we and our colleagues at the DZNE-Tübingen also observe in animal models.”
Approach for New Therapies
For some time now, Haass and his team have been researching drugs that specifically reinforce the protective effect of microglia. Their target is the TREM2 receptor anchored on the cell surface. “We are still in the laboratory phase. However, the current results in humans show that modulating TREM2 is a promising strategy to develop new options against Alzheimer’s. Although in this particular case we studied the genetic form of the disease, we consider that our findings also apply to the so-called sporadic variant of the disease, which is far more common. Certainly, it is crucial that treatment starts as early as possible. Today’s therapies all come far too late to be really effective,” says Haass.

New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes [EASD]), suggests a possible association between mild COVID-19 cases and subsequently diagnosing type 2 diabetes.
The analysis of health records from 1,171 general and internal medicine practices across Germany conducted by Professor Wolfgang Rathmann and Professor Oliver Kussfrom the German Diabetes Center at Heinrich Heine University, Dusseldorf, Germany, and Professor Karel Kostev (IQVIA, Frankfurt, Germany) found that adults who recover from mostly mild COVID-19 appear to have a significantly higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes than a matched control group who had other types of respiratory infections, which are also frequently caused by viruses.
If confirmed, these results indicate that diabetes screening in individuals after recovery from mild forms of COVID-19 should be recommended, researchers say. This potential link between COVID-19 and diabetes is also being investigated in various ongoing studies, including on the CoviDiab registry and other studies connected to so called ‘long COVID’.
Previous studies have noted that inflammation caused by SARS-CoV?2 may damage insulin-producing beta cells, causing them to die or change how they work, resulting in acute hyperglycaemia (high blood glucose). Tissues becoming less reactive to insulin due to inflammation in the body is also thought to be a possible cause. Sedentary lifestyles brought on by lockdowns could also be playing a role. This may explain why new-onset hyperglycaemia and insulin resistance have been reported in COVID-19 patients with no prior history of diabetes.
However, it is unclear whether these metabolic changes are temporary or whether individuals with COVID-19 may be at increased risk of developing chronic diabetes. Furthermore, there is a lack of studies investigating the incidence of diabetes after recovery from COVID-19 in mild cases.
To provide more evidence, the researchers analysed electronic health records from the Disease Analyzer database, which included information on 8.8 million adults who visited 1,171 general and internal medicine practices across Germany between March 2020 and January 2021. This included 35,865 patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19. The incidence of diabetes after COVID-19 was compared with a cohort of individuals (average age 43 years; 46% women) who were diagnosed with an acute upper respiratory tract infection (AURI) (but not COVID-19) within the same timeframe, matched for sex, age, health insurance coverage, index month of COVID-19 or AURI diagnoses and comorbidities (obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attack, stroke). Regression models were used to calculate incidence rate ratios (IRRs) for type 2 diabetes and other forms of diabetes.
Individuals with a history of COVID-19 or diabetes, and those using corticosteroids within 30 days after the index dates were excluded. During an average follow-up of 119 days for COVID-19 and 161 days for AURI, the numbers of hospitalisations were similar in both groups (COVID-19: 3.2% vs controls: 3.1%; median number of hospital stays: 1 in both cohorts).
The researchers found that new cases of type 2 diabetes were more common in patients who tested positive for COVID-19 than those with an AURI (15.8 vs 12.3 per 1000 people per year) giving an incidence rate ratio (IRR) of 1.28. In simple terms, this means that the relative risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the COVID group was 28% higher than in the AURI group. The IRR for the COVID group was not increased in other unspecified forms of diabetes.
“COVID-19 infection may lead to diabetes by upregulation of the immune system after remission, which may induce pancreatic beta cell dysfunction and insulin resistance, or patients may have been at risk for developing diabetes due to having obesity or prediabetes, and the stress COVID-19 put on their bodies speeded it up,” says lead author Professor Wolfgang Rathmann. “The risk of abnormally high blood sugar in individuals with COVID-19 is most likely a continuum, depending on risk factors such as injury to beta cells, an exaggerated inflammatory response, and changes in pandemic-related weight gain and decreased physical activity,” adds co-author Professor Oliver Kuss.
Prof Rathmann adds: “Since the COVID-19 patients were only followed for about three months, further follow-up is needed to understand whether type 2 diabetes after mild COVID-19 is just temporary and can be reversed after they have fully recovered, or whether it leads to a chronic condition.”
Although type 2 diabetes is not likely to be a problem for the vast majority of people who have mild COVID-19, the authors recommend that anyone who has recovered from COVID-19 be aware of the warning signs and symptoms such as fatigue, frequent urination, and increased thirst, and seek treatment right away.
The authors note some limitations to their study, including that limited information on hospitalisations and individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 outside of general practice (e.g. in hospitals or at COVID-19 test centres) may limit the accuracy of the results. Similarly, they were unable to control for body mass index because the data were not available and the incidence of type 1 diabetes was not investigated due to the small number of cases. Finally, they note that their findings might not be generalisable to other populations.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing the COVID-19 infection, can be transmitted from mother to baby before, during and after childbirth — but such occurrences are rare, a new study reveals.
Overall, fewer than two per cent of babies born to mothers with SARS-CoV-2 infection also test positive for the virus, but they are more likely to test positive when the women have severe COVID-19 or were diagnosed after childbirth.
Experts also discovered that vaginal births and breast feeding do not increase the likelihood of babies testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 when their mothers have the infection.
An international research team, led by the University of Birmingham’s WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Women’s Health, published its findings today in BMJ after examining data from around the globe relating to more than 14,000 babies born to mothers with COVID-19.
Overall, 1.8% of the 14,271 babies born to mothers with SARS-CoV-2 infection tested positive for the virus using PCR tests.
Study lead Shakila Thangaratinam, Professor of Maternal and Perinatal Health at the University of Birmingham, commented: “Ours is the first study to use the World Health Organization’s stringent methods to show that it is possible for the virus to be spread from the mother to baby while in the womb, during childbirth, and after delivery.
“However, parents and healthcare professionals can be reassured that only a very small proportion of babies born to mothers with SARS-CoV-2 test positive. This implies that the risks of infection to such babies are rare.
“Mothers should also be reassured about the low risk of viral transmission through vaginal birth, skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding — all of which should be encouraged.”
Professor Thangaratinam added that healthcare professionals and policy makers need to be aware of the expected burden of SARS-CoV-2 positivity in babies, and that they can be infected at any time during pregnancy and delivery — highlights the need for appropriate measures to reduce risk of viral transmission in the postnatal period.
The research team recommends that, since babies born to mothers with severe SARS-CoV-2 are more likely to test positive, they will need to be tested after birth and monitored closely. Vaccination in pregnancy should be further encouraged to prevent infection and severe disease in mothers.
The team will analyse new studies as further evidence becomes available and also explore the effects that SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and vaccination have on newborns.
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Materials provided by University of Birmingham. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Among young and middle-aged adults with high blood pressure, a substantial rise in blood pressure upon standing may identify those with a higher risk of serious cardiovascular events, such as heart attack and stroke, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association’s peer-reviewed journal Hypertension.
“This finding may warrant starting blood-pressure-lowering treatment including medicines earlier in patients with exaggerated blood pressure response to standing,” said Paolo Palatini, M.D., lead author of the study and a professor of internal medicine at the University of Padova in Padova, Italy.
Nearly half of Americans and about 40% of people worldwide have high blood pressure, considered to be the world’s leading preventable cause of death. According to the American Heart Association’s 2022 heart disease statistics, people with hypertension in mid-life are five times more likely to have impaired cognitive function and twice as likely to experience reduced executive function, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Typically, systolic (top number) blood pressure falls slightly upon standing up. In this study, researchers assessed whether the opposite response — a significant rise in systolic blood pressure upon standing — is a risk factor for heart attack and other serious cardiovascular events.
The investigators evaluated 1,207 people who were part of the HARVEST study, a prospective study that began in Italy in 1990 and included adults ages 18-45 years old with untreated stage 1 hypertension. Stage 1 hypertension was defined as systolic blood pressure of 140-159 mm Hg and/or diastolic BP 90-100 mm Hg. None had taken blood pressure-lowering medication prior to the study, and all were initially estimated at low risk for major cardiovascular events based on their lifestyle and medical history (no diabetes, renal impairment or other cardiovascular diseases). At enrollment, participants were an average age of 33 years, 72% were men, and all were white.
At enrollment, six blood pressure measurements for each participant were taken in various physical positions, including when lying down and after standing up. The 120 participants with the highest rise (top 10%) in blood pressure upon standing averaged an 11.4 mm Hg increase; all increases in this group were greater than 6.5 mm Hg. The remaining participants averaged a 3.8 mm Hg fall in systolic blood pressure upon standing.

The choice of Dr. Jha, an outspoken public health expert, is a sign that the White House believes the country is entering a new phase of the pandemic.WASHINGTON — Jeffrey D. Zients, an entrepreneur and management consultant who steered President Biden’s coronavirus response through successive pandemic waves and the largest vaccination campaign in American history, plans to leave the White House in April to return to private life, President Biden said in a statement.Mr. Biden called Mr. Zients “a man of service” and praised his work to “build the infrastructure we needed to deliver vaccines, tests, treatment and masks to hundreds of millions of Americans.”Mr. Zients will be replaced as the White House Covid coordinator by Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and a practicing internist who has urged an aggressive approach to the pandemic in frequent television appearances.Dr. Jha, who is also a health policy researcher with expertise in pandemic preparedness and response, will coordinate the government’s Covid response from inside the White House, officials said.But the selection of a veteran public health expert signaled that Mr. Biden believes the country has moved into a new phase of the fight against the virus.With much of the country vaccinated, officials said the federal response would become more of a long-term public health effort and less of a moment-by-moment crisis requiring rapid government action. If new variants of the virus spread, they said, Dr. Jha will be able to draw upon the tools his predecessor put in place during the past 14 months.In his statement, Mr. Biden said that “Americans are safely moving back to more normal routines, using the effective new tools we have to enable us to reduce severe Covid cases and make workplaces and schools safer.”But he added that “our work in combating Covid is far from done” and called Dr. Jha the “perfect person” to fight the virus “as we enter a new moment in the pandemic.”Officials said his background as a medical doctor makes him the right choice as the virus becomes more an endemic part of the country’s health challenges. In 2014, Dr. Jha was a co-chair of an international commission on the global response to the Ebola outbreak. And he has argued that agencies like the World Health Organization are critical in dealing with diseases like Ebola and Zika.Mr. Zients, 55, became one of the unlikely faces of the Biden administration’s response to the deadly virus, a somber-sounding businessman presiding over weekly updates with public health officials that were streamed live on the White House website. He had committed to working in the West Wing for a limited time as Mr. Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, and extended his stay several times at the president’s request, officials said.Mr. Zients’s deputy, Natalie Quillian, will also depart in April.Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, called Mr. Zients a “once-in-a-generation managerial talent” and a “warmhearted friend.” He praised Mr. Zients for his work on getting Americans access to vaccines and tests.“Today, over 215 million Americans are fully vaccinated, Americans have received over one billion at-home tests, 98 percent of schools are open and our economy is recovering,” Mr. Klain said in a statement. “Through the ups and downs of this past year, Jeff met every challenge with a level head and laser-focused execution. Because of that, lives have been saved here at home and in countless other countries.”Mr. Zients’s decision comes as the United States is easing out of pandemic crisis mode for now, but is still not out of danger. While cases are on a downward trajectory in much of the country, they are rising in parts of Europe and Asia. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the president’s top medical adviser for the pandemic, said in an interview on Wednesday that they are likely to eventually rise here as well.Addressing them will now be Dr. Jha’s responsibility.Jeffrey Zients’s decision comes as the United States is easing out of pandemic crisis mode for now, but is still not out of danger.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesAt the weekly briefings, Mr. Zients was joined by Dr. Fauci; Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and sometimes Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, the surgeon general.But behind the scenes, he is a logistics man who manages a vast operation that has cost taxpayers trillions of dollars. He has spent much of his time in sometimes intense meetings with drug and insurance company executives, governors, and state and local health officials.Recently, he helped orchestrate the delivery of nearly 400 million N95 masks to Americans, free of charge. And officials said his discussions with Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant, helped shave months off the development of the company’s antiviral pill; the government has committed to buying 20 million doses.When transportation became a barrier to vaccination, Mr. Zients persuaded the chief executives of Uber and Lyft to offer free rides, said Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, who advised the White House on racial equity issues. When lack of child care and vacation leave became obstacles, he persuaded day care centers to offer free care and companies to offer free time off.“I could call him any time of the day or night and say, ‘This is a problem, we’ve got to solve for this,’” she said. “Jeff’s job all day was solving for this.”Critics have said Mr. Zients, who made a fortune building two consultancies and taking them public, was an odd pick to run the pandemic response given his lack of experience in public health. But his past work touched on health care, both as the chief executive of the Advisory Board Company, a health care consultancy, and in the Obama administration, where he ran the effort to fix the healthcare.gov website.During the surge of cases — and deaths — this winter, some blamed Mr. Zients for failing to do enough to prevent them, particularly when the highly transmissible Omicron variant caught the administration unprepared. Some supporters of Mr. Biden — particularly those on the Democratic left — were openly disdainful of both Mr. Zients and Mr. Klain.“We wanted this to be run as a scientific operation; it’s being run as a management consultancy,” Gregg Gonsalves, a longtime AIDS activist and epidemiologist at Yale University, said in an interview in January. “Ron Klain and Jeff Zients are the wrong people to be where the buck stops on this.”In January, The American Prospect, a liberal website, published an article titled “Fire Jeff Zients” that said he had “proven himself not up to the task, and Biden should relieve him of his duties.”Mr. Zients was not always able to see around corners. In June, he declared that the nation was “entering a summer of joy, a summer of freedom,” not long after the Delta variant hammered India, and as it hit Britain. When it took hold in the United States over the summer, cases and deaths skyrocketed.Critics pointed to the White House’s failure to ensure enough supply to meet the huge demand for mass rapid testing in the weeks before and after Christmas, a logistics problem that lingered well into January, as the Omicron surge began receding.Dr. Fauci, though, defended Mr. Zients, saying his predictions last summer were based on the assumptions — incorrect, as it turned out — that 70 percent of the adult population would be vaccinated by July 4, and that the coronavirus could not spread among vaccinated people.Dr. Fauci said Mr. Zients was always calm in a crisis, likening him to a hockey player who “always looked at where the puck is going to be, as opposed to where the puck is.” At the moment, Mr. Zients is trying to persuade Congress to appropriate $22.5 billion in coronavirus relief funds that the administration says it desperately needs to purchase more tests, drugs and vaccines.In an interview on Tuesday, he expressed confidence that lawmakers would approve the funds without strings attached, despite demands from Republicans for the White House to come up with a plan to pay for the aid package by diverting existing money from other programs.Congress was poised to pass the package last week, but it fell apart after governors, and House Democrats, objected to paying for it in part by taking $7 billion in federal money that had been allocated to the states. The White House said on Tuesday that it had already scaled back plans to buy monoclonal antibody treatments because the government was out of cash.“We’ve got to get it done,” Mr. Zients said. “Because there are major consequences to not getting it done.”The decision to replace Mr. Zients with Dr. Jha reflects Mr. Biden’s desire to keep management of the pandemic close at hand.Previous public health crises have been managed by officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the C.D.C. and the Food and Drug Administration. But that has not been the case during the coronavirus pandemic, either under Mr. Biden or his predecessor, President Donald J. Trump.Both presidents chose to anchor their response to the virus in the West Wing. Biden administration officials say that because the fight against Covid-19 requires a “whole of government” response, involving multiple agencies, it makes sense to keep it centered in the White House.A native of India who immigrated first to Canada and then to the United States, Dr. Jha is a general internist who has practiced in Massachusetts and Providence, R.I. Before taking the position at Brown in the fall of 2020, he directed a global health institute at Harvard University’s School of Public Health.He has been a strong advocate for expanding global access to Covid-19 vaccines, and pushed the nascent Biden administration to take an aggressive stance in a February 2021 article in Foreign Affairs.“What that led to is a call with a couple of people on the Biden team who asked, ‘Do you think we’re not being aggressive enough?’” he said in an interview at the time. He told them that while the administration’s efforts looked “heroic” compared with those of Mr. Trump, they were indeed inadequate for the crisis at hand.

All her life she had perfect vision — until it suddenly started going haywire.

For 12 years, Tara Doherty’s endometriosis went undiagnosed.The 26-year-old, from Thornaby, started her periods when she was 10 years old and was put on the contraceptive pill by the age of 12.After years of fatigue, trips to A&E, a chemically-induced menopause and multiple disciplinaries from work due to poor attendance, she was finally diagnosed with endometriosis in 2019.The chronic illness affects one in 10 women in the UK and can cause debilitating pain, heavy periods and infertility – with an average wait of eight years for a diagnosis.In March 2021, she started an Instagram account to share her experiences with the condition in the hope of helping other young women suffering to know “there is a light at the end of the tunnel”.She shared her story as part of Endometriosis Awareness Month.Follow BBC North East & Cumbria on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to northeastandcumbria@bbc.co.uk.

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Melanotan sellerInfluencers promoting ‘dangerous’ tanning productsDozens of social-media influencers are promoting banned tanning products to millions of followers, a BBC News investigation has found.It is illegal in the UK to sell nasal sprays or injectables made with “melanotan-2”, an artificial hormone that can accelerate tanning.The unlicensed drug is dangerous, dermatologists say, and users should stop immediately.And there is evidence the untested products may be linked to skin cancer. The Advertising Standards Agency says all influencers must act responsibly, including ensuring products and the companies they link to are not acting illegally.’I knew something wasn’t right’Liv and Elaina both long for a tan like the models on their social-media feeds.When influencers and friends started sporting golden-brown skin, they wanted to know their secret. Soon, Liv was ordering tanning injections from a UK-based website. Elaina opted for a nasal spray, which she bought on social media. For two months, Liv, from Leeds, jabbed her stomach and then went on a sunbed, which she had been told would “activate” the drug. It gave her headaches but she felt it was worth it – until, eight months later, she found a strangely shaped mole on her thigh.”It was dark and raised, about the size of a pea,” she says. “I’m not a ‘moley’ person, so I knew something wasn’t right.”Doctors agreed with Liv. But shortly after the mole was removed, she was diagnosed with stage-one melanoma, a skin cancer that can be life-threatening.Liv needed surgery to remove the cancerous tissue around the area where the mole had been and her dermatologist told her the injections were the likely cause.”A cancer diagnosis is terrifying, never mind when you’re 27 years old,” she says. Within minutes of her first nasal spray, Elaina’s face “burned up” and turned bright red.”I was told my body just needed to get used to it,” she says. “A week later, my throat started to close up – I literally couldn’t breathe.” The 19-year-old, from Stockton-on-Tees, Durham, needed hospital treatment and was diagnosed with a serious throat and sinus infection.Doctors told her inhaling the tanning product was the cause and they had seen other patients develop similar symptoms after using it.BBC News has spoken to 20 people who have experienced complications, including lesions, fungal infections and abscesses.’Unnaturally orange and unusual moles’Melanotan-2 can increase the production of melanin, the pigment that darkens skin, but it has never had rigorous safety testing.Social-media sites have propelled the drug, previously sold in some gyms and salons, into the mainstream, with the trend mainly driven by young, white women.The recent introduction of a nasal spray can also make it seem more appealing.The British Association of Dermatologists is now on the alert for patients with warning signs of “unusual orange tans” and “disordered moles”.Some sellers claim their products are safe – but Dr Catherine Borysiewicz, from the association, says the only safe tan is fake tan.”We have evidence these products are potentially dangerous and can potentially lead to cancer,” she says. “We have cases which have shown melanoma developing after trying them. “I talk about skin risks – but who knows what else it might be doing?”‘I didn’t realise the damage it could do’

Despite their reputation as illicit drugs, psychedelics may find new, legitimate roles in treatment for anxiety, depression, stress disorders, addiction, and other mental and behavioral health problems. But ensuring they do requires developing rigorous, standardized methods to study and apply the results, according to a new report.
In a perspective published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, researchers from UCLA Health and Harvard Medical School coin the term “behavioral psychedelics” — “the study of psychedelics to foster intentional changes in habits and behaviors to improve health and resilience.”
“Changing human behavior may sound simple but is exceedingly difficult, especially for behaviors that arise from years of thinking and acting in relatively rigid, routinized ways,” write the authors, George Slavich, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at UCLA and research scientist at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and Edmund Neuhaus, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Harvard. “One emerging strategy for accomplishing behavior change involves using psychedelic compounds to make the mind more malleable and open.”
According to the authors, “psychedelics-assisted psychotherapy” may provide many health benefits and even cost savings, but the current therapeutic approach is poorly targeted.
“Looking forward, we believe that further refinement is needed to operationalize and test [the] components to establish a best-practice standard of care for treating psychiatric, addiction, somatic, and behavioral health problems,” they said.
The authors say their behavioral psychedelics concept is intended to develop “targeted approaches for therapeutic change that help people achieve enduring functional improvements in self-care, social connection, and family, school, and community responsibilities to help them live the life they desire.”
“Psychedelic compounds have the potential to turbocharge the process of transforming the mind, and the race to realize their benefits is in full swing. To maximize these benefits, we believe this work should include behavior as a treatment target with measurable treatment metrics to establish best practices and guidelines,” Slavich and Neuhaus write.
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Materials provided by University of California – Los Angeles Health Sciences. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.