Publisher Health

A study has uncovered new evidence linking higher levels of neuroticism and anxiety with the ability to experience a deeply relaxing sensation known as the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR). Charlotte Eid and colleagues at Northumbria University, U.K., present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on February 2, 2022.
During ASMR, a person experiences a tingling sensation beginning in the head and neck that may spread throughout the body. Not everyone experiences ASMR, and those who do have different triggers for it; for instance, receiving a massage or listening to quiet sounds, such as whispering. Recent years have seen the creation of numerous online videos featuring sounds and situations that may trigger ASMR, and many viewers report relaxing benefits.
Previous research has suggested that people capable of experiencing ASMR may have elevated levels of neuroticism. However, the precise link between ASMR and personality traits has been unclear.
To help clarify, Eid and colleagues asked 36 volunteers who experience ASMR and 28 non-experiencers to watch a video meant to trigger ASMR. The participants completed several questionnaires to evaluate their neuroticism, general tendency to experience anxiety (“trait anxiety”), and moment-to-moment anxiety (“state anxiety”) before and after watching the video.
Statistical analysis of the participants’ responses found that ASMR experiencers had higher levels of neuroticism and trait anxiety, as well as higher levels of state anxiety before watching the video — however, this type of anxiety was reduced after the video, and ASMR experiencers reported a greater level of benefit from the video. In contrast, non-experiencers did not undergo a reduction in state anxiety after the video.
Further analysis suggested that the differences in neuroticism and anxiety between ASMR experiencers and non-experiencers statistically accounted for the observed difference in the pre- and post-video change in anxiety, highlighting the potential importance of these personality traits.
Overall, these findings suggest that ASMR experiencers may be characterized by greater levels of neuroticism as well as anxiety disorders than non-experiencers. They also suggest that ASMR could serve as an intervention for individuals with elevated levels of neuroticism and/or anxiety in general. However, the authors note, further research is needed to address the limitations of this study and enhance understanding.
The authors add: “Our study found that watching an ASMR video reduced anxiety in those who experience ASMR tingles even when previously not familiar with the phenomenon. Personality characteristics which are linked with high anxiety were also associated with these benefits, therefore ASMR may be a suitable psychological intervention for anxious individuals in general.”
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A staple on any engineer’s workbench, duct tape is a quick and dependable fix for cracks and tears in many structural materials. MIT engineers have now developed a kind of surgical duct tape — a strong, flexible, and biocompatible sticky patch that can be easily and quickly applied to biological tissues and organs to help seal tears and wounds.
Like duct tape, the new patch is sticky on one side and smooth on the other. In its current formulation, the adhesive is targeted to seal defects in the gastrointestinal tract, which the engineers describe as the body’s own biological ductwork.
In numerous experiments, the team has shown the patch can be quickly stuck to large tears and punctures in the colon, stomach, and intestines of various animal models. The adhesive binds strongly to tissues within several seconds and holds for over a month. It is also flexible, able to expand and contract with a functioning organ as it heals. Once an injury is fully healed, the patch gradually degrades without causing inflammation or sticking to surrounding tissues.
The team envisions the surgical sticky patch could one day be stocked in operating rooms and used as a fast and safe alternative or reinforcement to hand-sewn sutures to repair leaks and tears in the gut and other biological tissues.
“We think this surgical tape is a good base technology to be made into an actual, off-the-shelf product,” says Hyunwoo Yuk, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. “Surgeons could use it as they use duct tape in the nonsurgical world. It doesn’t need any preparation or prior step. Just take it out, open, and use.”
Yuk, the study’s co-lead and co-corresponding author, and his colleagues have published their results in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Other co-authors include MIT postdoc and lead author Jingjing Wu; project supervisor and co-corresponding author Xuanhe Zhao, who is a professor of mechanical engineering and of civil and environmental engineering at MIT; and collaborators from the Mayo Clinic and the Southern University of Science and Technology.

Researchers have tested a variety of popular hacks for improving the fit of KN95 and surgical masks, and found that while some hacks do improve fit, they can also come at the cost of the wearer’s comfort.
Proper fit is essential to the effectiveness of a face mask, especially for those in healthcare settings who are caring for patients with COVID-19.
However, face masks, like faces, come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and some users have experimented with ‘hacking’ their masks to improve the fit. Some popular hacks include using rubber bands as a ‘brace’, knotting the elastic ear loops, or taping the edges of the mask directly to the face.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge tested seven different hacks for surgical and KN95 masks (similar to FFP2 masks in the UK) and found that two hacks in particular: first aid tape and nylon tights, significantly improved mask fit. However the tights, in particular, were highly uncomfortable for wearers.
The researchers hope their results, reported in the journal PLoS ONE, could be used by mask designers and manufacturers to improve fit for as wide a range of users as possible in future, particularly in healthcare settings.
Masks have been a defining feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. In early 2020, when high-quality masks and PPE were unavailable in many areas, health care workers and others made poorly-fitting face coverings out of whatever was available: scarves, t-shirts, or layered cloth.

A powerful class of antibiotics called carbapenems can circumvent antibiotic resistance thanks to a particular chain of atoms in their structure. Now, a team of researchers from Penn State and Johns Hopkins University have imaged an enzyme involved in the creation of this chain to better understand how it forms — and perhaps replicate the process to improve future antibiotics. A paper describing the process appears Feb. 2 in the journal Nature.
Carbapenems are naturally occurring potent, broad-spectrum antibiotics that belong to a larger group called beta-lactam antibiotics that also includes penicillin. Carbapenems are often used as a last resort to treat bacterial infections, including hospital-acquired and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia — an increasing problem during the COVID-19 pandemic. Certain carbapenems have a side chain that includes two or three methyl groups — a carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms — that help them thwart antibiotic resistance.
“In many cases, bacteria can evolve resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics by degrading a structure in the antibiotic called the ‘beta-lactam ring,’ which renders it ineffective,” said Squire Booker, a biochemist at Penn State, investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and an author of the paper. “But the addition of the methyl groups in the side chain prevents this degradation, making carbapenems powerful clinical tools. In this study, we imaged a protein called TokK that we know facilitates the synthesis of the side chain in order to reconstruct the initial chemical steps in this process.”
TokK is a type of radical SAM (S-adenosylmethionine) enzyme that is involved in the process of methylation — adding a methyl group. In this case, TokK helps facilitate the addition of three methyl groups to the antibiotic, building the side chain that is so critical in this antibiotic.
The researchers found that, like most radical SAM enzymes, TokK first uses one if its iron-sulfur clusters to convert a SAM molecule into a “free radical,” which propels the reaction forward. The radical then takes a hydrogen atom from the under-construction antibiotic. TokK then donates a methyl group from a part of its structure called methyl-cobalamin to the vacant spot on the antibiotic where the hydrogen was removed. This methylation process is repeated three times, ultimately producing the side chain with three methyl groups.
“TokK acts like a scaffold in this process, bringing together the methyl-cobalamin, a SAM molecule, and the antibiotic into an ideal position for transfer of the methyl group to occur,” said Hayley Knox, a graduate student at Penn State and an author of the paper. “The second methyl group is actually attached much more quickly than we would expect based on the energetics. We think that this is because the components are already so well aligned from the first step.”
Cobalamin, also known as vitamin B12, helps facilitate a variety of enzyme-driven reactions. However, this type of “radical chemistry” is uncommon in known reactions where cobalamin is involved, suggesting that cobalamin may play a different role than anticipated in many reactions.
“Typically, we think of methylcobalamin as being involved in what we call ‘polar chemistry’ rather than ‘radical chemistry,'” said Booker. “But here we found that TokK, and we think many other cobalamin-dependent radical SAM enzymes, use radical chemistry. It turns out that cobalamin is much more versatile than we had previously appreciated.”
This improved understanding of how the side chain in carbapenems is created could provide important insight for how to replicate this process and potentially improve antibiotics.
“Multiple methylations by a radical SAM enzyme are unusual, although not unprecedented, and have created a ‘library’ of two- and three-carbon variants of the carbapenem core in nature,” said Craig Townsend, Alsoph H. Corwin Professor of Chemistry at Johns Hopkins and an author of the paper. “Two methyl groups may be optimal for antibiotic activity, but one wonders if engineering of TokK to incorporate four or more of these groups could lead to further improvements in the running battle against bacterial resistance.”
This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Penn State Eberly College of Science, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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Materials provided by Penn State. Original written by Gail McCormick. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

In one of the first studies to examine the link between neighborhood characteristics and weight gain during pregnancy, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health researchers find that pregnant people who live in walkable neighborhoods in New York City have lower odds of excessive gestational weight gain (GWG) than those who live elsewhere in the city. They also found that living in a neighborhood with high rates of poverty increased the odds of excessive GWG. The findings are published in the journal Obesity.
Excessive or inadequate weight gain during pregnancy poses numerous health risks for both pregnant individuals and children. Excessive GWG is associated with a higher risk of pregnancy complications, including pregnancy-related hypertension and greater long-term postpartum weight retention. Excessive GWG is also associated with the risk for childhood asthma and obesity. Earlier research by Columbia Mailman researchers found that GWG was linked with a three-fold increased risk of childhood obesity at age 7 and excessive maternal weight gain.
Neighborhood walkability refers to urban form characteristics that support and favor walking and is defined by criteria including population density, land-use mix, density of public transit infrastructure, and street connectivity. Residents of walkable neighborhoods have been shown to engage in more walking, greater overall physical activity, and to have lower body mass index (BMI). Walkable neighborhoods are associated with better control of blood sugar among people with Type II diabetes. The most walkable areas of New York City include Battery Park City, Greenwich Village, NoHo, SoHo, Little Italy, and the West Village (Manhattan CBs 1 and 2). The least walkable areas include neighborhoods in eastern Queens and parts of Staten Island (Queens CB13 and Staten Island CB2).
“Given the long-lasting benefits of healthy pregnancies for parental and child health, this research provides further impetus for the use of urban design and poverty reduction to support healthy weight and reduce the risk of excessive gestational weight gain and related health risks,” says the study’s first author, Eliza Kinsey, PhD, formerly a postdoctoral research scientist in the Department of Epidemiology, now an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
The current study was conducted in partnership with researchers at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) Bureau of Vital Statistics and used de-identified birth record data for the year 2015 to examine neighborhood-level influences on GWG. Using medical record data, the DOHMH compiles data on all live births in the city, including basic health and demographic information for the pregnant individual and birth outcome statistics (e.g., birth weight, gestational age).
Among the sample of 106,285 births, 42 percent of the pregnant individuals experienced excessive GWG, and 26 percent had inadequate GWG. Pregnant people living in neighborhoods ranking among the poorest quarter of the city had an additional 17 percent greater odds of excessive GWG. Pregnant people living in the top quarter of neighborhoods ranked for walkability had 13 percent lower odds of excessive GWG. These findings align with prior studies in New York City that have found that both neighborhood poverty and walkability predict BMI in the general population.
Adjustment for pre-pregnancy BMI attenuated the association between neighborhood poverty and excessive GWG but had little impact on the association between neighborhood walkability and excessive GWG.
Senior author Andrew Rundle, DrPH, professor of epidemiology, noted: “Neighborhood walkability is likely associated with GWG due to differences in behavior during pregnancy, presumably walking for exercise and daily activities — not solely by influences on pre-pregnancy BMI. A significant amount of the exercise pregnant people get comes from low-impact activities like walking. Making neighborhoods more walkable has a host of health benefits, both for those currently living there and future generations.”
Co-authors of the current study include Elizabeth Widen, University of Texas at Austin; James Quinn, Columbia Mailman; Mary Huynh and Gretchen Van Wye, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene; Gina Lovasi, Drexel University, Philadelphia; and Kathryn Neckerman, Columbia University Population Research Center.
The study was supported by Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grants HD101657, HD086304, HD042849)

A combined treatment strategy targeting SARS-CoV-2 symptoms and severe lung tissue injury is essential to minimize lung sequelae — chronic complications resulting from COVID-19 infection, according to a review published this week in Clinical Microbiology Reviews, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
Therapy using lung epithelial stem and progenitor cells shows promise for mitigating the potentially lethal and highly damaging virus-induced inflammatory storm that can occur in severe cases of COVID-19, said Huaiyong Chen, Ph.D., principal investigator at Tianjin Institute of Respiratory Diseases, and Director of Tianjin Key Laboratory of Lung Regenerative Medicine, Haihe Hospital, Tianjin University, China.
“To minimize the damage to the lung, we should promote tissue regeneration efficiently by activating surviving lung stem and progenitor cells, or else by directly transplanting healthy lung stem and progenitor cells into damaged lungs,” said Chen.
Both cell types can differentiate into lung epithelial cells, which cover the inner surfaces of the lungs where air exchange occurs. In so doing, they can repair lung damage caused by SARS-CoV-2, including fibrosis.
The first step towards activating these regenerative cells is to prime the tissue environment with mesenchymal stem cells. These cells do not normally reside in the lung, but when transplanted there, they secrete growth factors that support the growth and differentiation of the lung epithelial stem and progenitor cells. That, in turn, can repair the damage. The investigators are currently using animal models to figure out how best to accomplish this.
But in severe cases, these regenerative cells may be damaged by cytokines, which are produced by immune cells in excessive numbers during lung inflammation, preventing full restoration of lung structure and function.
In such cases, healthy stem and progenitor cells might have to be transplanted into a person’s lungs. However, as with any transplant, immune rejection is likely to be a problem. It may be possible to use gene editing technology, known as CRISPR, to modify these cells to reduce immunogenicity prior to transplantation, a possibility Chen is investigating.
For less severe cases, researchers will need to screen for compounds that boost the capacity of progenitor and stem cells to trigger repair and regeneration of lungs following these injuries. Previous research has shown that certain compounds that target signaling pathways in stem and progenitor cells show potential for enhancing lung regeneration in patients with asthma and lung fibrosis. They may do likewise for SARS-CoV-2 patients.
The impetus for the current study was Chen’s discovery that even 12 years after recovery, some survivors of the closely related virus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), first identified in 2003, were living with multiple sequelae, reducing quality of life. “I realized then that something had to be done to maximize the lung regeneration, repair and recovery,” Chen said.
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Researchers have discovered a mechanism that may explain why COVID-19 patients lose their sense of smell.
Published online February 2 in the journal Cell, the new study found that infection with the pandemic virus, SARS-CoV-2, indirectly dials down the action of olfactory receptors (OR), proteins on the surfaces of nerve cells in the nose that detect the molecules associated with odors.
Led by researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Columbia University, the new study may also shed light on the effects of COVID-19 on other types of brain cells, and on other lingering neurological effects of COVID-19 like “brain fog,” headaches, and depression.
Experiments showed that the presence of the virus near nerve cells (neurons) in olfactory tissue brought an inrushing of immune cells, microglia and T cells, that sense and counter infection. Such cells release proteins called cytokines that changed the genetic activity of olfactory nerve cells, even though the virus cannot infect them, say the study authors. Where immune cell activity would dissipate quickly in other scenarios, in the brain, according to the team’s theory, immune signaling persists in a way that reduces the activity of genes needed for the building of olfactory receptors.
“Our findings provide the first mechanistic explanation of smell loss in COVID-19 and how this may underlie long COVID-19 biology,” says co-corresponding author Benjamin tenOever, PhD, professor in the Department of Microbiology at NYU Langone Health. “The work, in addition to another study from the tenOever group, also suggests how the pandemic virus, which infects less than 1 % of cells in the human body, can cause such severe damage in so many organs.”
Change in Architecture
One unique symptom of COVID-19 infection is loss of smell without the stuffy nose seen with other infections like the common cold, researchers say. In most cases, the smell loss lasts only a few weeks, but for more than 12 percent of COVID-19 patients, olfactory dysfunction persists in the form of ongoing reduction in the ability to smell (hyposmia) or changes in how a person perceives the same smell (parosmia).

In recent years, deadly infectious diseases, including Ebola and COVID-19, have emerged to cause widespread human devastation. Although researchers have developed a range of sophisticated methods to detect such infections, existing diagnostics face many limitations.
In a new study, Chao Wang, a researcher at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute and School of Electrical, Computer & Energy Engineering, along with ASU colleagues and collaborators at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle describe a novel method for detecting viruses like Ebola virus (EBOV) and SARS CoV-2.
The technique, known as Nano2RED, is a clever twist on conventional high-accuracy tests relying on complex testing protocols and expensive readout systems. The in-solution nano-sensors (“Nano2” in the name) serve to detect disease antigens in a sample by simple mixing. The innovative Rapid and Electronic Readout process (“RED”) developed in the Wang lab delivers test results, which are detectable as a color change in the sample solution, and record the data through inexpensive semiconductor elements such as LEDs and photodetectors.
The technology represents a significant advance in the fight against infectious diseases. It can be developed and produced at very low cost, deployed within weeks or days after an outbreak, and made available for around 1 cent per test.
Compared with widely used high-accuracy lab tests, such as ELISA, Nano2RED is much easier to use. It does not require surface incubation or washing, dye labelling, or amplification, yet still provides about 10 times better sensitivity than ELISA. In addition, the use of semiconductor devices supports a highly portable digital readout system, which can be developed and produced at a cost as low as a few dollars, making it ideal not only for lab use but for clinics, home use, and remote or resource-strained locations. This approach is based on modular designs, and could potentially be used to test for any pathogen.
“This technology works not because it is complex but because it is simple,” says professor Wang. “Another unique feature is the multidisciplinary nature of biosensing. A fundamental understanding of biochemistry, fluidics, and optoelectronics helped us come up with something this ‘simple’.”
Wang is a researcher with the Biodesign Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics at ASU. He is also a researcher with ASU’s School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering; and the Center for Photonic Innovation. Dr. Liangcai Gu is the collaborator at Department of Biochemistry and Institute for Protein Design at UW, Seattle.

The function of an enzyme, critical to most forms of life, has been revealed.
A research team, led by the John Innes Centre found that the enzyme DNA topoisomerase VI (topo VI) performs a critical role in removing chromosome tangles that occur in the cell nucleus of plants.
This function enables the process of endoreduplication where the DNA content is doubled. Endoreduplication is the source of polyploidy, where a plant has multiple sets of chromosomes, including in some major crops.
Topo VI was discovered, many years ago, in archaea, a type of single-celled organism without a nucleus. It was only found in plants and parasites such as malaria, more recently leading to the scientific question: what is the function of this enzyme in eukaryotes, organisms whose cells contain a nucleus?
“Our study shows that topo VI in plants functions to remove chromosome tangles that occur during the endoreduplication process. This potentially explains its presence in plants where during endoreduplication, entanglements are most likely to occur,” explains lead author Dr Shannon McKie.
The team, a collaboration between the John Innes Centre and the National Institutes of Health, USA, used a combination of biochemistry and single-molecule analysis (using magnetic tweezers) to study the function of the enzyme in archaea.
“Our study gives unprecedented insight into the mechanism of action of this enzyme at the molecular level,” said Group Leader Professor Tony Maxwell and a senior author of the paper.
“This work may give us a clue to the role of topo VI in plasmodial parasites and suggests that the enzyme could be a target for anti-malarial drugs in the future. In plants too, topo VI could have potential as a target for herbicides,” he added.
The next stage for the research team is to purify plant and plasmodial topo VI enzymes to characterise their properties and develop them as potential drug targets.
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Data is not only the answer to numerous questions in the business world; the same applies to biomedical research. In order to develop new therapies or prevention strategies for diseases, scientists need more and better data, faster and faster. However, the quality is often very variable and the integration of different data sets often almost impossible. With the Computational Health Center at Helmholtz Munich, one of Europe’s largest research centers for artificial intelligence in medical science is now being established under the direction of Fabian Theis. In close cooperation with the Technical University of Munich (TUM), more than one hundred scientists are using artificial intelligence and machine learning to discover solutions to precisely these problems, thus enabling medical innovations for a healthier society. In the latest issue of the journal Nature Methods, they present three articles with groundbreaking new solutions.
According to Fabian Theis, Head of the Computational Health Center at Helmholtz Munich and Professor for Mathematical Modelling of Biological Systems at TUM: “It’s been a crazy 4 weeks, with many of our scientific stories and methods coming to fruition in that same time window. Our research groups focuses on using single cell genomics to understand the origin of disease in a mechanistic fashion — for this we leverage and develop machine learning approaches to better represent this complex data. In the three new paper, we worked on single cell data integration, trajectory learning and spatial resolution, respectively. Besides the applications shown in the papers, we expect to support the next generation of single-cell research towards disease understanding.”
Here are the latest solutions developed by Helmholtz Munich and TUM researchers:
Solving the data integration challenge
To see whether an observation one makes in a single dataset can be generalized, you can check whether the same can be observed in other datasets of the same system. In single-cell data, so-called batch effects complicate combining datasets in this manner. These are differences in the molecular profiles between samples as they were generated at a different time, in a different place, or from a different person. Overcoming these effects is a central challenge in single-cell genomics with more than 50 proposed solutions. But which one is the best? A group of researchers around Malte Lücken carefully curated 86 datasets and compared 16 of the most popular data integration methods on 13 tasks. After over 55,000 hours of computation time and a detailed evaluation of 590 results, they built a guide for optimized data integration. This allows for improved observations on disease processes across datasets at a population scale.
Predicting cell states with open-source software
Many questions in biology revolve around continuous processes like development or regeneration. For any cell in such a process, single-cell RNA-sequencing measures gene expression. The method, however, is destructive to cells and scientists obtain only static snapshots. Thus, many algorithms have been developed to reconstruct continuous processes from snapshots of gene expression. A common limitation: These algorithms cannot tell us anything about the direction of the process. To overcome this limitation, Marius Lange and colleagues developed a new algorithm called CellRank. It estimates directed cell-state trajectories by combining previous reconstruction approaches with RNA velocity, a concept to estimate gene up- or down-regulation. Across in-vitro and in-vivo applications, CellRank correctly inferred fate outcomes and recovered previously known genes. In a lung regeneration example, CellRank predicted novel intermediate cell states on a dedifferentiation trajectory whose existence was validated experimentally. CellRank is an open-source software package that is already used by biologists and bioinformaticians around the world to analyze complex cellular dynamics in situations like cancer, reprogramming or regeneration.
Visualizing spatial omics analysis
Recent years have seen a growing development of technologies to measure gene expression variation in tissue. The advantage of such technologies is that scientists can see cells in their context, thus being able to investigate principles of tissue organization and cellular communication. Researchers need flexible computational frameworks in order to store, integrate and visualize the growing diversity of such data. To tackle this challenge, Giovanni Palla, Hannah Spitzer, and colleagues developed a new computational framework, called Squidpy. It enables analysts and developers to handle spatial gene expression data. Squidpy integrates tools for gene expression and image analysis to efficiently manipulate and interactively visualize spatial omics data. Squidpy is extensible and can be interfaced with a variety of machine learning tools in the python ecosystem. Scientists around the world are already using it to analyze spatial molecular data.