Publisher Health

A new study suggests that people with early-stage Parkinson’s disease who regularly got one to two hours of moderate exercise twice a week, like walking or gardening, may have less trouble balancing, walking and doing daily activities later. The research is published in the January 12, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers found that those who exercised regularly over five years did better on cognitive tests and had slower progression of the disease in several aspects.
“Our results are exciting, because they suggest it may never be too late for someone with Parkinson’s to start an exercise program to improve the course of their disease,” said study author Kazuto Tsukita, MD, of Kyoto University in Japan and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “That’s because we found that to slow progression of the disease, it was more important for people with Parkinson’s to maintain an exercise program than it was to be active at the beginning of the disease.”
The study looked at 237 people with early-stage Parkinson’s. They had an average age of 63 and were followed by researchers for up to six years.
Participants’ exercise levels at the start of the study were determined using a questionnaire that measures time and intensity during the previous week of leisure activity, like walking and biking; household activity, like gardening; and occupational activity, like taking care of others. Common cognitive tests were used to measure people’s verbal and memory skills and how much time it took to complete mental tasks.
Researchers found that people’s physical activity level at the start of the study was not associated with the progression of their Parkinson’s later on. Instead, they found it was more important to maintain physical activity over time.
People who got at least at least four hours per week of moderate to vigorous exercise like walking or dancing had slower decline in balancing and walking five years later, compared to those who did not get that much exercise. Researchers used a common test to rate each person’s Parkinson’s symptoms on a scale of zero to four, with higher scores indicating more severe impairment. People who got below average levels of moderate to vigorous exercise, or less than one to two hours, once or twice a week, increased from an average score of 1.4 to 3.7 over six years. That’s compared to those who got above average levels of moderate to vigorous exercise, who on average increased from a score of 1.4 to 3.0 during that time.
One cognitive test researchers used was a common paper-and-pencil test used to measure mental processing speed. The test gives the participant 90 seconds to match numbers with geometric figures and has a maximum possible score of 110. People who did less than 15.5 hours of work per week, on average, dropped from a 44 to a 40 on the test six years later. That’s compared to an average drop from a score of 44 to 43 for those who did more than 15.5 hours of work over the same period.
“Although medications can provide people with Parkinson’s some symptom relief, they haven’t been shown to slow the progression of the disease,” Tsukita said. “We found that regular physical activity, including household tasks and moderate exercise, may actually improve the course of the disease over the long run. Best of all, exercise is low cost and has few side effects.”
The study does not prove that maintaining an exercise program will delay the effects of Parkinson’s disease. It only shows an association.
A limitation of the study is that activity levels were self-reported and may not be accurate.
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Vaccination offers long-lasting protection from the worst outcomes of COVID-19, according to a new study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The emergence of the delta and omicron variants has raised questions about whether breakthrough infections are caused by waning immunity or by the more transmissible variants.
Results of the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggest that declining immunity is responsible for breakthrough infections, but vaccines maintained protection from hospitalization and severe disease nine months after getting the first shot.
“The primary takeaway message from our study is that unvaccinated people should get vaccinated right away,” said lead study author Danyu Lin, PhD, Dennis Gillings Distinguished Professor of Biostatistics at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. “The results of our study also underscore the importance of booster shots, especially for older adults.”
The study, which is a collaboration between the UNC-Chapel Hill and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, examined data on COVID-19 vaccination history and health outcomes for 10.6 million North Carolina residents between December 2020 and September 2021.
The study results were used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to support the use of booster shots.

A study in mice led by UCLA researchers shows that removing chemical messengers in the brain that are involved in both wakefulness and addiction may make withdrawal from opioids easier and help prevent relapse.
In 2000, UCLA sleep researchers discovered that human narcolepsy — a condition where people are overwhelmed with daytime drowsiness and sudden attacks of sleep — was caused bya loss of roughly 90% of the 80,000 brain cells containing hypocretin (also called orexin), a chemical messenger important in the regulation of sleep and wakefulness. Typically, people with narcolepsy are treated with drugs that for most people would be highly addictive, but interestingly these patients show little, if any, signs of drug addiction or withdrawal themselves.
The lack of hypocretin-producing neurons and addiction seen in narcolepsy took on a different twist when nearly two decades later the researchers made the surprising discovery that the brains of people addicted to heroin (a commonly abused opioid) have, on average, 54% more hypocretin-producing neurons than people who don’t have a substance abuse disorder — and confirmed the same finding in mice. However, when they stopped the opioid treatment in the mice, they found that the increase in hypocretin remained, lasting as long as four weeks.
This finding suggested that continued elevated levels of hypocretin could play a role in drug cravings, and, at the same time, shed light on why narcoleptic patients with very few of these hypocretin-producing neurons show little, if any, signs of addiction.
While studies in people are needed to confirm these findings, taken together, they suggest that developing drugs that target the hypocretin system may help treat addiction.
In this new study, the UCLA researchers found that increasing the number of hypocretin-producing neurons in the mice with opioids resulted in the elevation of hypocretin levels in the locus coeruleus (LC), an area of the brain known to play an important role in regulating opioid withdrawal symptoms.
In addition, they found that the increased amounts of hypocretin present in the LC were directly involved in increasing the levels of an enzyme called tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), which is responsible for making norepinephrine (NE), a naturally occurring neurochemical in the body. Neurons in the LC produce NE and distribute it to other parts of the brain where it stimulates functions such as arousal, wakefulness, attention or a ‘fight or flight’ stress response.
When opioids are stopped, the activity of the LC greatly increases, causing more NE to be released, which is widely thought to play a principal role in opioid withdrawal symptoms. Thus, the researchers hypothesized that removal of hypocretin-producing neurons would lessen the signs of withdrawal in the mice. Their findings confirmed this hypothesis showing that the lack of hypocretin producing neurons reduced both the physical and emotional symptoms of opioid withdrawal and stopped the increase in the levels of TH in the LC.
The reduction of withdrawal symptoms in mice lacking hypocretin producing neurons suggest that drug therapies that regulate the production of hypocretin may be an effective treatment for opiate addiction and withdrawal.

Harnessing the power of genomics to find risk factors for major diseases or search for relatives relies on the costly and time-consuming ability to analyze huge numbers of genomes. A team co-led by a Johns Hopkins University computer scientist has leveled the playing field by creating a cloud-based platform that grants genomics researchers easy access to one of the world’s largest genomics databases.
Known as AnVIL (Genomic Data Science Analysis, Visualization, and Informatics Lab-space), the new platform gives any researcher with an Internet connection access to thousands of analysis tools, patient records, and more than 300,000 genomes. The work, a project of the National Human Genome Institute (NHGRI), appears today in Cell Genomics.
“AnVIL is inverting the model of genomics data sharing, offering unprecedented new opportunities for science by connecting researchers and datasets in new ways and promising to enable exciting new discoveries,” said project co-leader Michael Schatz, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Biology at Johns Hopkins.
Typically genomic analysis starts with researchers downloading massive amounts of data from centralized warehouses to their own data centers, a process that is not only time-consuming, inefficient, and expensive, but also makes collaborating with researchers at other institutions difficult.
“AnVIL will be transformative for institutions of all sizes, especially smaller institutions that don’t have the resources to build their own data centers. It is our hope that AnVIL levels the playing field, so that everyone has equal access to make discoveries,” Schatz said.
Genetic risk factors for ailments such as cancer or cardiovascular disease are often very subtle, requiring researchers to analyze thousands of patients’ genomes to discover new associations. The raw data for a single human genome comprises about 40GB, so downloading thousands of genomes can take takes several days to several weeks: A single genome requires about 10 DVDs worth of data, so transferring thousands means moving “tens of thousands of DVDs worth of data,” Schatz said.

A new study has found that people who experienced increased stress, anxiety and depression at the start of the pandemic, were at greater risk of getting Covid-19.
The research, published in Annals of Behavioral Medicine, found that greater psychological distress during the early phase of the pandemic was significantly associated with participants later reporting SARS-CoV-2 infection, a greater number of symptoms and also more severe symptoms.
Professor Kavita Vedhara in the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham, led the study, along with colleagues from King’s College London and the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Previous research has shown that psychological factors such as stress and social support are associated with increased susceptibility to viral respiratory illnesses and more severe symptoms.
During the Covid-19 pandemic there has been a well-documented deterioration in psychological wellbeing and increased social isolation. The purpose of this study was to find out whether people who experienced these difficulties during the pandemic were more at risk of contracting and/or experiencing Covid-19 symptoms.
The team of experts conducted an observational study of nearly 1,100 adults, who completed surveys during April 2020 and self-reported incidence of Covid-19 infection and symptom experience across the pandemic through to December 2020.
Regression models were used to explore these relationships, taking into account demographic and occupational factors.
The results showed that Covid-19 infection and symptoms were more common among those experiencing elevated psychological distress.
Professor Vedhara says: “The significance of the work is in that it turns the debate regarding the mental health aspects of the pandemic on its head. Our data show that increased stress, anxiety and depression are not only consequences of living with the pandemic, but may also be factors that increase our risk of getting SARS-CoV-2 too.
“Further work is now needed to determine whether and how public health policy should change to accommodate the fact that the most distressed people in our communities appear to be at greatest risk of Covid-19 infection.”
Professor Trudie Chalder, Professor of Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy from King’s College London said: “Previous work has shown a clear relationship between distress and the development of viral infections indicating a vulnerability. Our study found that distress was associated with self-reported Covid-19 infection and the next step is to investigate whether this association is found in those with confirmed infection.”
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In a new study, scientists at the University of Missouri demonstrate the direct transmission of bisphenol A (BPA) from a mother to her developing child via the placenta could negatively impact fetal brain development. Cheryl Rosenfeld, a professor of biomedical sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and colleagues propose more attention should be placed on how this temporary organ affects fetal brain development.
“The placenta is only a temporary organ that aids in the exchange of nutrients and waste between mother and child during pregnancy, but how the placenta responds to toxicants like BPA during pregnancy can lead to long-term health consequences,” Rosenfeld said. “We focused on the role of microRNAs within the placenta, which are known to be key mediators in regulating cellular functions, including neural development, and the identification of certain markers for cancer.”
Rosenfeld suspects the microRNAs are playing a role in how the effects of BPA exposure can lead to neurological disorders later in life.
“These microRNAs can be packaged inside extracellular vesicles and can be transported to distant organs within the body,” Rosenfeld said. “We’re assuming that by changing the pattern of microRNAs in the placenta, these small molecules can then reach the brain, resulting in harmful effects. Even before the brain’s neurons are developed, these microRNA packages may already be guiding fetal brain development. These changes may even be different in female versus male fetuses.”
BPA is used in many household items such as plastic water bottles and food containers, and the epoxy coating of metal food cans. Exposure can occur during the simple act of microwaving food inside polycarbonate plastic food containers. While recent efforts have begun toward making products “BPA free,” the more than decade-long debate surrounding what’s considered safe levels of BPA exposure continues. Numerous studies have looked into possible related health consequences, including neurobehavioral disorders, diabetes, obesity and various reproductive deficiencies.
Rosenfeld believes microRNAs’ changes in the placenta could also be used as an early diagnostic biomarker for BPA exposure.
“By identifying the relationship between these microRNAs and fetal brain development through BPA exposure, targeted therapies could eventually be developed to help prevent or reverse some of the harmful effects of BPA exposure that occur due to these microRNAs,” Rosenfeld said.
Future plans for this work include examining the relationship between the placenta and the brain outside of the body through using cell culture systems.
This latest discovery continues a more than decade-long interest by Rosenfeld on the effects of BPA exposure. Her most recent focus on the relationship between the placenta and the brain could help scientists with developing a foundation for an early step in translational medicine, or research that aims to improve human health by determining the relevance of animal science discoveries to people.
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Materials provided by University of Missouri-Columbia. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Endometrial cancer is the most common cancer of the female reproductive system. Patients who have active immune responses against cancer cells tend to have better outcomes, but much of what is known focuses on only one type of immune cell called T cells. In a new study published in Cancer Research, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers provide insight on the role of B cell immunity in endometrial cancer.
The immune system is composed of many different types of cells. T cells have a primary role of killing infected or cancerous cells and activating other immune cells. B cells produce antibodies to target cells for destruction. These antibodies are classified into 5 subtypes — IgM, IgD, IgG, IgE or IgA — and regulate different B cell processes and activity.
Interactions that occur between different immune cells and between immune and cancer cells can both negatively and positively impact cancer progression. Immune cells often infiltrate into or surround tumors, and patients who have higher levels of these infiltrating cells tend to have a better prognosis than those without the presence of active immune cells. Several different immunotherapies that activate the immune system to target cancer cells for destruction have been approved to treat patients with endometrial cancer; however, these agents focus solely on T cells.
With a goal of developing new treatment strategies that take advantage of other types of immune cells, Moffitt researchers aimed to better understand the role B cells play in endometrial cancer. They analyzed 107 endometrial cancer specimens for expression of specific antibodies. They discovered that all endometrial cancer subtypes displayed expression of IgA and IgG antibodies, with most tumors having higher levels of IgA. They also found that immune cell infiltration of endometrial tumors was associated with patient outcomes according to tumor subtype. For example, higher levels of B cells were associated with better outcomes among high-grade endometrioid and serous endometrial cancer subtypes, while higher levels of T cells were associated with improved survival among clear cell endometrial cancer subtypes.
The research team found that all endometrial cancer tumors expressed the antibody receptor pIgR, and after several laboratory experiments discovered that IgA bound to pIgR, activating a series of cell signaling pathways culminating in the stimulation of pro-inflammatory pathways, stress mechanisms and apoptotic cell death.
“This data suggests it may be possible to develop therapies that focus on B cells or antibodies to be used in combination with other approved T-cell associated immunotherapies in endometrial cancer and possibly other gynecologic malignancies,” said Jose Conejo-Garcia, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the Department of Immunology at Moffitt.
This study was supported by the National Cancer Institute (P30CA076292, R01CA157664, R01CA124515, R01CA178687, R01CA211913, R01CA184185, T32CA009140, U01CA232382 and U54CA193489) and the American Cancer Society.
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Materials provided by H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Black men are disproportionately impacted by injuries in the United States. This disparity is glaring given that injury is one of the top ten causes of death. Data show that injured Black men from disadvantaged neighborhoods experience higher injury mortality, years of life-expectancy loss, and psychological symptoms that persist after initial wounds have been treated.
While much research has examined individual characteristics that predict poor recovery from injury, fewer studies have focused on social and physical features of the environment and how they may impact the recovery of injury survivors.
A new study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) focuses on injured Black men’s perceptions of their injury recovery environments, including how unsafe they feel and the varying availability of resources for recovery within their neighborhoods. The findings emphasize the importance of the neighborhood environment in recovery after injury and the role of social support and resource allocation to injury survivors in the aftermath. The study has implications for the need for changes that could better support patients dealing with the consequences of serious injuries within the context of neighborhood-level adversity.
“Our findings raise important considerations on the inpatient and discharge experiences of injury survivors. Survivors expressed significant barriers to recovery, and the importance of their social networks but limited resources available to them. Our participants expressed a deep human need to be listened to and treated with respect,” says Marta Bruce, PhD, RN, of Penn Nursing and an intensive care nurse at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, lead author of the article.
“This research points to the importance of intervention at the critical window of the inpatient experience prior to discharge for increased empathetic communication, better coordination of social work and mental health services, and better planning for the challenges of discharge raised by our participants,” says Therese S. Richmond, PhD, RN, FAAN, Andrea B. Laporte Professor of Nursing and Associate Dean for Research & Innovation at Penn Nursing, and co-author of the study. “Clinicians should consider that an injury represents a traumatic disruption in survivors’ lives and that the journey to recovery is affected by social and environmental factors outside the walls of the hospital.”
The study’s findings have been published in an article, “Injured Black Men’s Perceptions of the Recovery Environment,” in Social Science & Medicine and is available online. Coauthors of the article include Connie M. Ulrich, PhD, RN, FAAN, Lillian S. Brunner Chair in Medical and Surgical Nursing, Professor of Nursing, and Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy; and Jessica Webster, MS, LPC, both of Penn Nursing.
The study was supported by the National Institute of Nursing Research of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01NR013503 (PI: Richmond) the Office of Nursing Research (ONR) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and the Hillman Scholars in Nursing Innovation.
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UConn bioengineers successfully regrew cartilage in a rabbit’s knee, a promising hop toward healing joints in humans, they report in the 12 January issue of Science Translational Medicine.
Arthritis is a common and painful disease caused by damage to our joints. Normally pads of cartilage cushion those spots. But injuries or age can wear it away. As cartilage deteriorates, bone begins to hit bone, and everyday activities like walking become terribly painful.
The best treatments available try to replace the damaged cartilage with a healthy piece taken from elsewhere in the body or a donor. But healthy cartilage is in limited supply. If it’s your own, transplanting it could injure the place it was taken from; if it’s from someone else, your immune system is likely to reject it.
The best possible treatment would be to regrow healthy cartilage in the damaged joint itself. Some researchers have tried amplifying chemical growth factors to induce the body to grow cartilage on its own; other attempts rely on a bioengineered scaffold to give the body a template for the fresh tissue. But neither of these approaches works, even in combination.
“The regrown cartilage doesn’t behave like native cartilage. It breaks, under the normal stresses of the joint,” says UConn bioengineer Thanh Nguyen.
Nguyen’s lab has also been working on cartilage regeneration, and they’ve discovered that electrical signals are key to normal growth. They designed a tissue scaffold made out of nanofibers of poly-L lactic acid (PLLA), a biodegradable polymer often used to stitch up surgical wounds. The nanomaterial has a neat property called piezo-electricity. When it is squeezed, it produces a little burst of electrical current. The regular movement of a joint, such as a person walking, can cause the PLLA scaffold to generate a weak but steady electrical field that encourages cells to colonize it and grow into cartilage. No outside growth factors or stem cells (which are potentially toxic or risk undesired adverse events) are necessary, and crucially, the cartilage that grows is mechanically robust.
The team recently tested the scaffold in the knee of an injured rabbit. The rabbit was allowed to hop on a treadmill to exercise after the scaffold was implanted, and just as predicted, the cartilage grew back normally. “Piezoelectricity is a phenomenon that also exists in the human body. Bone, cartilage, collagen, DNA and various proteins have a piezoelectric response. Our approach to healing cartilage is highly clinically translational, and we will look into the related healing mechanism,” says Dr. Yang Liu, a postdoctoral fellow in Nguyen’s group and the lead author of the published work.
The results are exciting, but Nguyen is cautious.
“This is a fascinating result, but we need to test this in a larger animal,” one with a size and weight closer to a human, Nguyen says. His lab would want to observe the animals treated for at least a year, probably two, to make sure the cartilage is durable. And it would be ideal to test the PLLA scaffolds in older animals, too. Arthritis is normally a disease of old age in humans. Young animals heal more easily than old — if the piezoelectric scaffolding helps older animals heal as well, it truly could be a bioengineering breakthrough.
This work is supported by the NIH (grants # R21EB024787 and R21AR078744). Other co-authors in the STM publication include Godwin Dzidotor, Thinh T. Le, Tra Vinikoor, Kristin Morgan, Eli J. Curry, Ritopa Das, Aneesah McClinton, Ellen Eisenberg, Lorraine N. Apuzzo, Khanh T. M. Tran, Pooja Prasad, Tyler J. Flanagan, Ho-Man Kan, Meysam T. Chorsi, Dr. Seok-Woo Lee, Dr. Kevin W. H. Lo and Dr. Cato T. Laurencin.
Video of rabbit: https://youtu.be/qCs75EBdLOg
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Materials provided by University of Connecticut. Original written by Kim Krieger. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Male mosquitoes beat their wings faster when swarming at sunset to better detect females and increase their chance of reproducing, finds a novel study led by UCL scientists.
Published in Science Advances, the findings provide a vital new insight into how mosquitoes, driven by their internal circadian clock, combine changes in wing beats with their acute auditory senses to successfully mate. Faster wing beats produces a different flight tone (sound), allowing male mosquitoes to better detect the flight tones of females.
Researchers say that understanding the intricacies of the mosquitoes’ mating game could help curb the spread of diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and the Zika virus.
Lead author Professor Joerg Albert (UCL Ear Institute) said: “Mosquitoes are exquisitely auditory animals; without their sense of hearing they could not reproduce.
“Within busy swarms males need to locate females during mid-flight by detecting the females’ faint flight tones. But given that these flight tones are nearly inaudible for the males, how does their hearing work?
“Understanding this fascinating mating system could help limit the numbers of offspring, which is of crucial importance in the fight against mosquito borne diseases.”
For the study, researchers at UCL Ear Institute recorded the flight tones (=wing beats) of free-flying malaria mosquitoes Anopheles gambiae, in swarms of 100 males or 100 females in special incubators with highly sensitive microphones.