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52 minutes agoShareSaveShareSaveGetty ImagesResident doctors in Scotland are balloting for strike action after claiming government ministers went back on an agreement over pay.BMA Scotland said the proposed uplift 4.25% for 2025/26 would have been the lowest in the UK and was less than was recommended by the independent pay review body.But Health Secretary Neil Gray said it was a “fair, affordable, equitable pay offer” and urged members to reject strike action.He said the Scottish government had invested in resident doctors’ pay significantly over the past two years and added that any industrial action would hinder its efforts to reduce waiting times.Scotland’s resident doctors – previously known as junior doctors – were poised to strike in the summer of 2023 but the action was called off after a new pay offer.As part of the last deal, BMA Scotland said the government had pledged to make “credible progress” towards restoring pay to 2008 levels, in each of the following three financial years.Pay for a newly-qualified “foundation year” doctor currently begins at £34,500, rising to £42,792 in their second year, with the resident doctor pay scale starting at £45,503.The strike ballot will be open from Friday until 19 December. In the event of a yes vote, industrial action is likely to take place in the first few weeks of the new year.The ballot opens as resident doctors in England begin a five-day walkout.Dr Chris Smith, chairman of the BMA’s Scottish resident doctor committee, said: “Doctors have been shocked that the Scottish government seem to be intent on throwing away the progress made in restoring our pay over the last two years and are clear they will stand up to protect the deal which was agreed in good faith by both sides.”As always, we are ready to negotiate at any time and any place. But we will not sit idle while the Scottish government attempts to break the deal that they struck with Scottish resident doctors in 2023.”He said 14 November was a “hugely significant day” for both resident doctors in Scotland and south of the border.”I know I speak for all Scottish doctors when I say we stand beside them,” he said. “The Scottish government now has the chance to draw a dividing line between them and Westminster, and all that requires is to revert to the status quo: return to the negotiating room with BMA Scotland, in good faith and with a credible pay offer in line with the promises they made in the deal we signed.”He added: “Until now, Scotland has been the only nation in the UK to avoid industrial action and there is time to avert this action – but only if the Scottish government honours the commitment it made.”Significant pay investmentDr Smith said the Scottish government’s response had been “disappointing” and it had ignored the BMA’s requests for further talks.”I hope that this time the government will take the necessary steps to reverse their decisions which are putting the NHS Scotland on the path to disruptive strike action,” he added.Health Secretary Neil Gray said: “Industrial action would be in no-one’s best interests, least of all the patients who rely on our NHS. I encourage resident doctors to reject this option.”Our fair, affordable, equitable pay offer of 4.25% for 2025/26, with a further 3.75% for 2026/27, is the same offer that nurses and other NHS staff chose to accept earlier this year.”We value the role resident doctors play in delivering care and have invested significantly in their pay over the last two years, agreeing the highest pay awards across the public sector – an uplift of 12.4% for 2023/24 and a cumulative uplift of 11% for 2024/25.”These awards were justified as we began the process of delivering on a 2023 agreement that we are absolutely committed to honouring.”He said the Scottish government had already invested an additional £135.5m to tackle waiting times.”The latest figures show our plan is working with total waiting list size reducing. Any industrial action by resident doctors would hinder our progress on that,” he added.

An international group of mathematicians led by Lehigh University statistician Taeho Kim has developed a new way to generate predictions that line up more closely with real-world results. Their method is aimed at improving forecasting across many areas of science, particularly in health research, biology and the social sciences.
The researchers call their technique the Maximum Agreement Linear Predictor, or MALP. Its central goal is to enhance how well predicted values match observed ones. MALP does this by maximizing the Concordance Correlation Coefficient, or CCC. This statistical measure evaluates how pairs of numbers fall along the 45-degree line in a scatter plot, reflecting both precision (how tightly the points cluster) and accuracy (how close they are to that line). Traditional approaches, including the widely used least-squares method, typically try to reduce average error. Although effective in many situations, these methods can miss the mark when the main objective is to ensure strong alignment between predictions and actual values, says Kim, assistant professor of mathematics.
“Sometimes, we don’t just want our predictions to be close — we want them to have the highest agreement with the real values,” Kim explains. “The issue is, how can we define the agreement of two objects in a scientifically meaningful way? One way we can conceptualize this is how close the points are aligned with a 45 degree line on a scatter plot between the predicted value and the actual values. So, if the scatter plot of these shows a strong alignment with this 45 degree line, then we could say there is a good level of agreement between these two.”
Why Agreement Matters More Than Simple Correlation
According to Kim, people often think first of Pearson’s correlation coefficient when they hear the word agreement, since it is introduced early in statistics education and remains a fundamental tool. Pearson’s method measures the strength of a linear relationship between two variables, but it does not specifically check whether the relationship aligns with the 45-degree line. For instance, it can detect strong correlations for lines that tilt at 50 degrees or 75 degrees, as long as the data points lie close to a straight line, Kim says.
“In our case, we are specifically interested in alignment with a 45-degree line. For that, we use a different measure: the concordance correlation coefficient, introduced by Lin in 1989. This metric focuses specifically on how well the data align with a 45-degree line. What we’ve developed is a predictor designed to maximize the concordance correlation between predicted values and actual values.”
Testing MALP With Eye Scans and Body Measurements
To evaluate how well MALP performs, the team ran tests using both simulated data and real measurements, including eye scans and body fat assessments. One study applied MALP to data from an ophthalmology project comparing two types of optical coherence tomography (OCT) devices: the older Stratus OCT and the newer Cirrus OCT. As medical centers move to the Cirrus system, doctors need a dependable way to translate measurements so they can compare results over time. Using high-quality images from 26 left eyes and 30 right eyes, the researchers examined how accurately MALP could predict Stratus OCT readings from Cirrus OCT measurements and compared its performance with the least-squares method. MALP produced predictions that aligned more closely with the true Stratus values, while least squares slightly outperformed MALP in reducing average error, highlighting a tradeoff between agreement and error minimization.

The team also looked at a body fat data set from 252 adults that included weight, abdomen size and other body measurements. Direct measures of body fat percentage, such as underwater weighing, are reliable but expensive, so easier measurements are often substituted. MALP was used to estimate body fat percentage and was evaluated against the least-squares method. The results were similar to the eye scan study: MALP delivered predictions that more closely matched real values, while least squares again had slightly lower average errors. This repeated pattern underscored the ongoing balance between agreement and minimizing error.
Choosing the Right Tool for the Right Task
Kim and his colleagues observed that MALP frequently provided predictions that matched the actual data more effectively than standard techniques. Even so, they note that researchers should choose between MALP and more traditional methods based on their specific priorities. When reducing overall error is the primary goal, established methods still perform well. When the emphasis is on predictions that align as closely as possible with real outcomes, MALP is often the stronger option.
The potential impact of this work reaches into many scientific areas. Improved prediction tools could benefit medicine, public health, economics and engineering. For researchers who rely on forecasting, MALP offers a promising alternative, especially when achieving close agreement with real-world results matters more than simply narrowing the average gap between predicted and observed values.
“We need to investigate further,” Kim says. “Currently, our setting is within the class of linear predictors. This set is large enough to be practically used in various fields, but it is still restricted mathematically speaking. So, we wish to extend this to the general class so that our goal is to remove the linear part and so it becomes the Maximum Agreement Predictor.”

A new study in the journal Cell from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Xuanwu Hospital Capital Medical University explains how exercise helps the body stay youthful. The researchers also highlight betaine — a metabolite produced in the kidney — as an oral compound that can imitate many of the rejuvenating effects normally linked to physical activity.
Betaine is a small molecule found in foods like beets and spinach, but the body also makes it on its own. In this study, it emerged as an important signal that helps coordinate the anti-aging benefits of long-term exercise.
How the Body Responds to Exercise
The research team followed 13 healthy men over six years to observe how the body reacts to both short-term and long-term exercise. Using multiomics tools that track genes, proteins, metabolites, and gut bacteria, the scientists compared the body at rest, after a single 5 km run, and after a 25-day running program.
Their results showed that the kidney plays a central role in managing the body’s response to exercise. During sustained training, the kidney produced large increases in betaine, which helped send protective, anti-aging signals throughout the body.
Solving the Exercise Paradox
The study also helps explain the “exercise paradox,” where a single intense workout causes stress but long-term training improves overall health. A short run triggered temporary inflammation and “metabolic chaos,” while regular training restored balance and strengthened the immune system.

Consistent exercise improved gut bacteria, boosted antioxidant defenses, and reversed age-related changes in T cells by stabilizing DNA and adjusting epigenetic marks such as reducing ETS1 expression. The kidney also increased its production of betaine through activity of the enzyme CHDH. Remarkably, giving betaine alone created many of the same benefits as training, including better metabolism, improved cognitive function, reduced depressive-like behavior in older mice, and lower inflammation across the body.
How Betaine Reduces Inflammation
The researchers found that betaine binds to and blocks TBK1, a kinase that drives inflammation. By suppressing TBK1 and its downstream IRF3/NF-κB pathways, betaine helps silence chronic inflammation, also known as “inflammaging.”
This mechanism ties together the exercise paradox: short-term activity triggers survival pathways (IL-6/corticosterone), while long-term training activates the kidney-betaine-TBK1 system that promotes youthfulness. Because betaine is considered safe and effective, it may be useful for people who cannot exercise regularly. “This redefines ‘exercise as medicine’,” says co-corresponding author Dr. Liu Guang-Hui. “This study gives us a fresh way to turn how our body works into something we can target with chemicals. It opens the door to geroprotective treatments that can tweak how multiple organs work together.”

When ultra-runners prepare for races that span hundreds of miles and last for days, they are not only challenging their determination and physical power. They are also exploring how far human physiology can be pushed. In a study published October 20 in the Cell Press journal Current Biology, researchers reported that even elite endurance athletes cannot consistently exceed an average “metabolic ceiling” equal to 2.5 times their basal metabolic rate (BMR) in daily energy use.
The metabolic ceiling refers to the upper limit of calories a person can burn in a sustained way. Earlier studies suggested that people might reach up to 10 times their BMR, which is the minimum amount of energy needed while resting, but only for short, intense periods.
“Every living thing has a metabolic ceiling, but exactly what that number is, and what constrains it, is the question,” says lead author and anthropologist Andrew Best of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, who is also an endurance athlete.
“To find out, we asked, if we get a group of really competitive ultra-athletes, can they break this proposed metabolic ceiling?”
Tracking Energy Burn in Extreme Athletes
To explore that question, the research team monitored 14 ultra-runners, cyclists, and triathletes during both races and training blocks. Participants consumed water enriched with deuterium and oxygen-18, which are slightly heavier forms of hydrogen and oxygen. By following how quickly these isotopes left the body through urine, the scientists were able to determine how much carbon dioxide the athletes exhaled and, in turn, estimate total calorie expenditure.
In multi-day endurance events, several athletes temporarily reached energy burn levels six to seven times their BMR, which translated to roughly 7,000 to 8,000 calories per day. However, when the researchers averaged the athletes’ caloric output across much longer intervals (30 and 52 weeks), their energy use consistently fell back near the expected ceiling of about 2.4 times their BMR. According to the researchers, this pattern demonstrates that even the most highly trained athletes eventually hit a metabolic limit, and sustaining anything above that boundary is extremely difficult.

“If you go over the ceiling for short periods, that’s fine. You can make up for it later,” says Best. “But long term, it’s unsustainable because your body will start to break down its tissue, and you’ll shrink.”
How the Body Reallocates Energy Under Stress
The study also highlighted how the human body balances competing energy demands during extreme endurance efforts. As athletes directed more energy toward running, swimming, and cycling, they naturally reduced energy use in other areas without realizing it.
“Your brain has a really powerful influence on how much you fidget, how much you want to move, and how encouraged you are to take a nap,” says Best. “All these fatigues we feel save calories.”
The researchers noted that their findings reflect the physiology of the athletes who took part in the study. It is possible that unusually high-performing individuals who could exceed the identified ceiling were not included. While the results are important for understanding athletic performance, they also raise broader questions about how this metabolic cap might affect other biological processes.
A Limit Most People Will Never Reach
“For most of us, we’re never going to reach this metabolic ceiling,” says Best. “It takes running about 11 miles on average a day for a year to achieve 2.5 times BMR. Most people, including me, would get injured before any sort of energetic limit comes into play.”
This work was supported by funding from Duke University and a Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts Faculty Incentive Award.

7 hours agoShareSaveEmily HoltShareSaveRebecca MiddletonWhen Rebecca Middleton became pregnant, she had no idea that she would end up in a wheelchair for the final three months before she gave birth. Rebecca had had a difficult first trimester dealing with nausea and sickness, and began to develop pelvic pain four months into her pregnancy. “I could hardly walk, I’d always had some problems with lower back pain in my life. But nothing that significant and it escalated quite quickly,” she says. After complaining about the pain, she was referred to an NHS physio, and eventually diagnosed with an extreme case of pelvic girdle pain (PGP), also known as symphysis pubic dysfunction.Problems with your pelvic joints are a common symptom of pregnancy, affecting one in five expectant mothers to some degree.”I was terrified, would I ever walk again? How would I have my baby, how would I care for it?”Rebecca MiddletonAfter giving birth, Rebecca was in less pain, but she still struggled with basic things like walking, lifting her son or pushing a pram. “I was disabled for seven months and had to have someone helping me all the time,” she says. “I just couldn’t do the things that you should be able to do in looking after a baby, it was a really challenging time.”Prior to becoming pregnant, it was an issue Rebecca was unaware of and since her experience she volunteers for The Pelvic Partnership, a charity which helps raise awareness and support women with this condition.It says the condition is treatable with the right action. As soon as your symptoms start, the charity advises you get hands-on individualised treatment, including manual therapy, and ask for a referral for NHS physiotherapy from your GP or midwife.If you aren’t offered this support initially, the charity suggests going back to your GP or midwife and asking for a second opinion.They can also refer you to maternal mental health support to help you manage the emotional impacts of living with PGP.Dr Nighat Arif, a women’s health specialist, says higher awareness and early assessment could prevent patients like Rebecca needing wheelchairs or crutches.”Without that early identification based on a really good understanding of the female body, we leave some of these women with negative effects for life,” she says.Gynaecologist Dr Christine Ekechi says the lack of research around the condition means it is less likely to be identified and suitably treated, particularly post birth.”We don’t necessarily see them unless they then come back into a gynaecology clinic presenting with pain.”So we don’t have a great understanding as to the proportion of women that have persisting pain that has started off during pregnancy.”Victoria RobertonVictoria Roberton, co-ordinator at the Pelvic Partnership, is an example of how awareness can help. Like Rebecca, she didn’t know what PGP was when she began experiencing the condition during her first pregnancy. She tried to stay as active as possible as advised and was referred to NHS physio sessions online and by phone, but found the pain worsening as her pregnancy progressed. “They gave us exercises, stretches to do. By this point I couldn’t do any of them. It was too painful,” she says. It got to the point where even sitting became uncomfortable for Victoria, and she was largely homebound until her baby was born. The pain lessened after the birth of her daughter, but she began experiencing the same problem when she became pregnant with her second child. It’s not an option for many mothers, but Victoria said given her medical history she decided to pay for a private physio as the NHS wait for referral was long.The physio gave her a full assessment and hands-on treatment including joint mobilisation, and taught her different ways to move her body to not aggravate her hip joints, which helped ease the pain. Victoria still struggles with a degree of PGP today, four years on, but her second pregnancy was much easier to manage because she understood her condition and how to handle it. Rebecca’s second pregnancy has been similarly a much more positive experience. This time round she knew she was at risk of PGP and was able to have it treated throughout her pregnancy before it became debilitating.She has made a full recovery from PGP, just two months post birth compared to two years for her first child. “I’m probably in better shape now than I was before either of my children because I now know what caused that pelvic girdle pain, and have had it fully treated and resolved with manual therapy,” she says. “It was five years of hell because of the pain I was in because of a lack of knowledge and understanding about the subject.” Other stories you may enjoy

Anxiety disorders affect roughly one in five people in the United States, making them among the most widespread mental health challenges. Although common, scientists still have many questions about how anxiety begins and is controlled within the brain. New research from the University of Utah has now pinpointed two unexpected groups of brain cells in mice that behave like “accelerators” and “brakes” for anxious behavior.
The team discovered that the cells responsible for adjusting anxiety levels are not neurons, which typically relay long-distance electrical signals and form circuits throughout the body. Instead, a specific class of immune cells known as microglia appears to play a central role in determining whether mice show anxious behavior. One subset of microglia increases anxiety responses, while another reduces them.
“This is a paradigm shift,” says Donn Van Deren, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania who carried out the work while at University of Utah Health. “It shows that when the brain’s immune system has a defect and is not healthy, it can result in very specific neuropsychiatric disorders.”
The findings are reported in Molecular Psychiatry.
Microglia Show a More Complex Role Than Expected
Earlier experiments had already suggested that microglia influence anxiety, but researchers initially believed that all microglia functioned in the same way. When they interfered with a particular subset known as Hoxb8 microglia, the mice began behaving as though they were anxious. However, when researchers blocked the activity of all microglia at once, including both Hoxb8 and non-Hoxb8 groups, the mice behaved normally.
These confusing results led the team to suspect that the two types of microglia might work in opposite directions. Hoxb8 microglia might help prevent anxiety, while non-Hoxb8 microglia might encourage it. To test this idea, they needed to examine each type of microglia on its own.

Testing the Brain’s Internal Anxiety Accelerator and Brake
To isolate each group, the researchers designed an unusual experiment that involved transplanting different types of microglia into mice that lacked microglia entirely.
Their tests showed that non-Hoxb8 microglia function like a gas pedal for anxiety. When the team transplanted only non-Hoxb8 microglia into the microglia-free mice, the animals displayed strong signs of anxiety. They groomed themselves repeatedly and avoided open spaces, behaviors that typically indicate heightened anxiety in mice. Without Hoxb8 microglia present, the anxiety “accelerator” remained active without any natural balancing force.
In contrast, Hoxb8 microglia acted like the braking system. Mice given only Hoxb8 microglia did not behave anxiously. Importantly, mice that received both microglial types also showed no signs of anxiety. Even though non-Hoxb8 cells encouraged anxious behavior, the presence of Hoxb8 cells neutralized those effects.
“These two populations of microglia have opposite roles,” says Mario Capecchi, PhD, distinguished professor of human genetics at University of Utah Health and senior author of the study. “Together, they set just the right levels of anxiety in response to what is happening in the mouse’s environment.”
Implications for Future Anxiety Treatments
According to the researchers, these results could reshape how scientists think about the biological roots of anxiety disorders and how they might be treated in the future. “Humans also have two populations of microglia that function similarly,” Capecchi explains. Despite this, nearly all current psychiatric medications target neurons rather than microglia.

Understanding how these immune cells influence anxiety could lead to therapies that intentionally enhance the braking effect or reduce the accelerator activity. “This knowledge will provide the means for patients who have lost their ability to control their levels of anxiety to regain it,” Capecchi says.
Van Deren adds a note of caution. “We’re far from the therapeutic side,” he says, “but in the future, one could probably target very specific immune cell populations in the brain and correct them through pharmacological or immunotherapeutic approaches. This would be a major shift in how to treat neuropsychiatric disorders.”
The study appears in Molecular Psychiatry under the title “Defective Hoxb8 microglia are causative for both chronic anxiety and pathological overgrooming in mice.”
The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, including the National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH093595), the Dauten Family Foundation, and the University of Utah Flow Cytometry Facility. The authors note that the content is solely their responsibility and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

New research from the University of Georgia reports that people who use e-cigarettes, traditional cigarettes or both are more likely to develop diabetes. According to the study, smokers showed a notably higher rate of prediabetes and diabetes diagnoses compared with nonsmokers.
“In an era when e-cigarettes are marketed as a ‘safer’ alternative to smoking, this suggests they may carry a hidden peril and may be quietly contributing to long-term health problems like prediabetes and diabetes,” said Sulakshan Neupane, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “As the use of e-cigarettes rises rapidly, it’s vital we understand their broader health impacts. This is not just about the lungs anymore but the entire body and metabolic health.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that vaping continues to grow in popularity, especially among younger people. The study’s results indicate that diabetes rates may also rise within these groups as e-cigarette use expands.
Researchers also reported that the likelihood of developing diabetes or prediabetes is even higher for Hispanic and Black individuals living in economically disadvantaged settings, along with people who already have underlying health problems.
Dual Users Face Sharp Increases in Prediabetes
Utilizing more than 1.2 million responses from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey, the research team examined how e-cigarette use and traditional smoking relate to prediabetes and diabetes diagnoses.
The analysis showed that vaping alone was linked to a 7% increase in prediabetes risk. The researchers suggested that e-cigarette use may temporarily impair insulin function and contribute to weight gain, both of which are tied to prediabetes.

While 7% may seem modest, it represents roughly 7,000 additional prediabetes cases each year in the U.S based on current population trends.
The study also found that smoking cigarettes or cigars increased prediabetes risk by 15%. The risk climbed even higher for people who both smoked and vaped, reaching 28%.
Individuals who used both cigarettes and e-cigarettes were also more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes itself, with risks rising by 7 and 9% respectively.
“E-cigarette use alone elevates the likelihood of prediabetes, with dual use conferring an additional risk. This study highlights potential compounding harm from using both product types,” said Neupane.
Weight, Income and Demographics Influence Risk Levels
The researchers observed that certain personal and demographic factors further intensified the likelihood of developing prediabetes or diabetes.

People who were overweight or obese and smoked were especially vulnerable, as e-cigarette users with a higher body mass index had worse outcomes than those at a normal weight. Hispanic, Black and Asian individuals who smoked or vaped were more frequently diagnosed with prediabetes or diabetes compared with white individuals.
Lower income was another major contributor. Those in the lowest income groups had a 12% higher risk of both conditions.
“People who aren’t earning enough money experience mental stress and tend to smoke or use alcohol to reduce that stress, which leads to these increased risk factors,” Neupane said.
Regular physical activity, however, provided some protection. Exercise reduced prediabetes risk for smokers by 8%, offering a potential way to counter some of the harmful effects.
“These findings have important implications for public health efforts to curb smoking and improve diabetes outcomes,” said Neupane.
The study was published in AJPM Focus. Co-authors included Agricultural and Applied Economics Professor Wojciech J. Florkowski and Chandra Dhakal, a Ph.D. graduate from UGA who now works for the CDC Foundation.

Curiosity about extending human life may be especially visible among certain tech enthusiasts today, but people have been fascinated by the idea of a lasting fountain of youth, or even immortality, for thousands of years.
Some of the approaches most strongly supported by scientific evidence, such as strict dieting for health and longevity, can be difficult to follow consistently.
Exploring How Environment Shapes Longevity
New work from the laboratory of Scott Leiser, Ph.D., in the Molecular and Integrative Physiology Department at the University of Michigan Medical School, highlights notable links between a longevity-associated gene, environmental influences and behavior.
These findings help researchers move closer to uncovering the biological pathways that might be used to lengthen life while avoiding the uncomfortable aspects of current strategies.
Worm Studies Reveal How Cues Affect Lifespan
The first study, published in PNAS, uses the model organism C. elegans (a widely studied worm species) to investigate how environmental signals and access to food influence longevity.

“Believe it or not, most of the central ideas and types of metabolism we study are conserved from worms to people,” said Leiser.
He explained that both humans and worms release hormones, including adrenaline or dopamine, in response to what they sense around them. Neurons in worms react to their surroundings in much the same way, triggering physiological changes.
Past research has shown that stress related to limited food availability can increase survival.
Earlier work in flies by Scott Pletcher, Ph.D., Leiser’s colleague at U-M, revealed that simply smelling food can counteract this survival benefit.
Touch Interferes With Longevity Pathways
Leiser, project leader Elizabeth Kitto, Ph.D., and contributor Safa Beydoun, Ph.D., questioned whether other sensory experiences, such as touch, might also reduce the life-extending outcomes of dietary restriction and, if so, what mechanisms might be involved.

To explore this, they placed worms on a layer of beads that mimicked the feel of the E. coli they normally encounter while feeding.
This gentle tactile cue was enough to suppress the activity of a longevity-related gene in the intestine (fmo-2) and reduced the lifespan extension usually produced by dietary restriction.
Leiser had previously shown in 2015 that fmo-2 is both necessary and sufficient for lifespan extension in response to dietary restriction.
“The fmo-2 enzyme remodels metabolism, and as a result increases lifespan,” he explained. “Without the enzyme, dietary restriction does not lead to a longer lifespan.”
Their experiments revealed that touch activates a neural circuit that alters signals from cells releasing dopamine and tyramine. This lowers the induction of intestinal fmo-2 and reduces the longevity benefits of restricted diets.
Potential to Manipulate Longevity Mechanisms
According to Leiser, the most significant implication for human health is that these circuits can potentially be adjusted.
“If we could induce fmo-2 without taking away food, we could activate the stress response and trick your brain into making you long-lived.”
Before that is possible, however, researchers need to understand other roles that fmo-2 plays in living organisms.
Behavioral Effects of the fmo-2 Enzyme
In a separate study published in Science Advances, the team found that the enzyme influences behavior in clear and measurable ways.
Worms engineered to overexpress fmo-2 showed little reaction to positive or negative changes in their surroundings. They did not retreat from potentially dangerous bacteria, and after a short fast, they did not pause to feed the way typical worms would.
Worms that lacked fmo-2 entirely also explored their environment less frequently than normal worms. Both of these behavioral changes stemmed from altered tryptophan metabolism.
“There are going to be side effects to any intervention to extend life-and we think one of the side effects will be behavioral,” said Leiser.
“By understanding this pathway, we could potentially provide supplements to offset some of these negative behavioral effects.”
Future Research Directions
Leiser plans to continue investigating how the brain, metabolism, behavior and health interact, with the goal of supporting the development of drugs that target these natural pathways.
“Investigating all of the individual signals that our brain is responding to from the gut is a hot but not well understood area.”
Additional authors: Ella Henry, Megan L. Schaller, Mira Bhandari, Sarah A. Easow, Angela M. Tuckowski, Marshall B. Howington, Ajay Bhat, Aditya Sridhar, Eugene Chung, Charles R. Evans

The NHS waiting list in England has fallen after three months of consecutive rises.At the end of September, it stood at 7.39 million, down from 7.41 million the month before.Of those waiting, 61.8% of patients had been waiting less than 18 weeks.That is the best performance for more than two years, but is well below the target of 92%, which the government has promised it will hit by the end of the parliament.The NHS also released figures showing more than one million people came forward for flu jabs in the past week after a vaccination “SOS” was issued last week amid the early rise in flu cases this year.Rates of flu are three times higher than there were at this stage last winter.Some 14.4 million people have been vaccinated, NHS England said, which is slightly more than had been vaccinated at this stage last year. The over 65s, those with certain health conditions, pregnant women and under 16s are all eligible for flu jabs on the NHS.NHS England medical director Prof Meghana Pandit said the drop in waiting lists was “fantastic news”.But she said it looked set to be a difficult winter which would see the NHS stretched to its “limits”.”Flu is peaking early and looking like it will be long lasting, while industrial action is starting on Friday.”A five-day walkout by resident doctors, the new name for junior doctors, begins at 07:00 GST on Friday.It is the 13th walkout of the long-running dispute by the British Medical Association and comes after talks broke down last week between the doctors’ union and government.Health Secretary Wes Streeting has called the actions of the BMA “morally reprehensible”.On the fall in the waiting list, Streeting said the investment being made was paying off.He added: “There’s a long way to go, but the NHS is now on the road to recovery.”

Researchers have designed a new class of drug molecule capable of specifically destroying TERRA, an RNA molecule that some cancer cells rely on to survive. Using a technique known as “RIBOTAC,” the compound is able to locate TERRA inside the cell and break it apart while avoiding healthy RNA. The work suggests a possible path toward future cancer therapies that focus on the genetic drivers of disease rather than its outward effects.
A team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has created a drug-like molecule that can locate and eliminate an RNA segment tied to cancer development. The study, published in Advanced Sciences, was conducted by Dr. Raphael I. Benhamou, Elias Khaskia, and Dipak Dahatonde of the university’s Faculty of Medicine. Their research centers on TERRA, an RNA molecule that helps maintain the ends of chromosomes — the regions of DNA that support cell stability and overall health.
When TERRA functions improperly, it can disrupt normal cell aging and division. In several cancers, including certain tumors of the brain and bone, cancer cells exploit TERRA to continue growing and dividing.
“We’ve created a tool that acts like a guided missile for bad RNA,” said Dr. Benhamou. “It can find TERRA inside cancer cells and make it disappear — without harming healthy parts of the cell.”
How the RIBOTAC Molecule Works
The researchers built a small molecule using RIBOTAC, short for Ribonuclease-Targeting Chimera. This molecule identifies a distinctive shape in TERRA called a G-quadruplex — a folded structure — and then recruits a natural enzyme in the cell, RNase L, to break down the RNA.
This marks the first demonstration of a tool that can destroy TERRA with such accuracy. The molecule selectively targets TERRA and does not affect other RNA molecules that share similar features.

In experiments using cancer cell lines such as HeLa and U2OS cells (which represent a hard-to-treat type of cancer), the treatment lowered TERRA levels and slowed cancer cell growth.
Potential to Reshape Future Cancer Therapies
The finding points to the possibility of developing medicines that target RNA molecules directly — not only proteins, which are the primary focus of most current drugs.
“This is a new way of thinking about medicine,” said Benhamou. “Instead of focusing only on proteins, we’re now learning how to target the RNA that controls them. That could open the door to treating diseases we once thought were impossible to reach.”