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A UCLA-led team of researchers has found a correlation between early signs of adrenal puberty in first-born daughters and their mothers’ having experienced high levels of prenatal stress. They did not find the same result in boys or daughters who were not first-born.
The 15-year longitudinal study’s findings were published in the February issue of Psychoneuroendocrinology.
The study was the first to identify earlier patterns of adrenal puberty as a result of prenatal stress. Adrenal puberty is marked by changes like the growth of body hair, pimples and aspects of cognitive maturation, but does not include breast development or the onset of menstruation for girls or testicular enlargement for boys.
The finding adds to research in the field of fetal programming, studies that explore the impact that stress and other factors affecting pregnant mothers can have on fetuses and children long after birth.
“This is a first-of-its-kind finding and is fascinating to look at through an evolutionary lens,” said UCLA anthropologist Molly Fox, who led the study with colleagues from UC Irvine, UC Merced, Chapman University and the University of Denver.
Fox explains that a first-born daughter’s maturation, but not early onset of menstruation, may enable her to help her mother rear her other children successfully. The daughter becomes mature enough to help take care of children while not yet able to produce her own children, who would require her attention.
The finding also provides insights into the so-called “eldest daughter syndrome,” the socio-cultural phenomenon discussed online that refers to the childcare and other domestic labor that first-born females often take on, consciously or unconsciously, to help with the traditional parental or adult responsibilities required to run a household. The online discussions focus on oldest daughters feeling an overwhelming sense of responsibility for their family’s well-being.

Researchers recruited participants for the study from two obstetric clinics in Southern California during routine first trimester prenatal care visits. The women were 30 years old on average, all 18 or older, and experiencing singleton pregnancies. For about half of them, this was their first pregnancy. All were English-speaking, 45% were white/non-Latina and 30% were Latina. All were nonsmoking and not using steroid medications, tobacco, alcohol or other recreational drugs during pregnancy. Of the children born to these mothers, 48% were female and 52% were male.
Women’s stress, depression and anxiety levels were measured at 15-, 19-, 25-, 31- and 37-weeks’ gestation to create a prenatal psychological distress composite score. They were also assessed at two to three months postpartum to assign a postnatal distress composite score. The depression assessment asked respondents to rate the truth of statements such as “I felt lonely.” An example of an anxiety question was how often they felt particular symptoms, such as “jittery.”
At ages 8-10, 11-12 and 13-16, children’s biomarkers of adrenal and gonadal puberty were separately measured, including body hair, skin changes, growth in height or growth spurts, breast development and the onset of menstruation (in females), voice changes and facial hair growth (in males). Hormone levels that are indicators of adrenal and gonadal puberty were measured through saliva samples at all assessment stages.
The study also measured childhood adversity to account for other factors known to correlate to early maturation or signs of puberty in children and adolescents. These included the death of a parent or parental separation before age 5, the absence of the father and low income-to-needs ratios experienced at ages 7-9.
“This research adds to the body of knowledge in our field showing the significant and lifelong impacts to women and their offspring when it comes to prenatal emotional, environmental and other factors,” Fox said. “This is important as we continue to come up with practical and policy solutions that contribute to greater access to healthcare and the general wellbeing of pregnant mothers.”

Bats carry some of the deadliest zoonotic diseases that can infect both humans and animals, such as Ebola and COVID-19.
In a recently published article in the journal Cell Genomics, a Texas A&M research team revealed that some species of bats are protected against the viruses they carry because they commonly exchange immune genes during seasonal mating swarms.
“Understanding how bats have evolved viral tolerance may help us learn how humans can better fight emerging diseases,” said Dr. Nicole Foley, from the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS). “As genomicists, our work often lays the groundwork for research by scientists who study virus transmission directly. They may be developing vaccines for diseases or monitoring vulnerable animal populations. We all depend on each other to stay ahead of the next pandemic.”
Because bats are often immune to the diseases they carry, Foley and Dr. Bill Murphy, a professor in the VMBS’ Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, believe that studying bats’ disease immunity could hold the key to preventing the next global pandemic.
“Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the prediction and prevention of outbreaks is front of mind for researchers and the public alike,” Foley said. “Several bat species are tolerant of viruses that are detrimental to human health, which means they become reservoirs for disease — they carry the viruses, but crucially they don’t develop symptoms.”
The Secret Of Swarming Behavior
To uncover exactly how bats have evolved tolerance to these deadly viruses, Foley, Murphy, and their international research partners mapped the evolutionary tree of Myotis bats, something they knew to be crucial in trying to identify which genes might be involved.

“Myotis bats are the second-largest genus of mammals, with over 140 species,” she said. “They’re found almost all over the world and they host a large diversity of viruses.”
To add to the difficulties associated with figuring out relationships among species, Myotisand other bat species also engage in swarming behavior during mating.
“You can think of swarming behavior like a social gathering; there’s lots of flight activity, increased communication and inter-species mingling; for bats, it’s not unlike going to a club,” Foley said.
Complicating things for the researchers, swarming creates increased numbers of hybrids — individual bats with parents from different species.
“The problem with Myotis bats is that there are so many species, about 130, but they all look very similar,” Foley said. “It can be very hard to distinguish them from each other, and then hybridization makes it even more difficult. If we’re trying to map out how these bats evolved so we can understand their disease immunity, being able to tell who’s who is very important.”
Untangling Hybridization
With this in mind, to create a map of the true relationships between Myotis bats, Foley and Murphy first untangled the genetic code for hybridization so they could tell more clearly which species were which.

“We collaborated with researchers from Ireland, France and Switzerland to sequence the genomes of 60 Myotis bat species,” she explained. “That allowed us to figure out which parts of the DNA represented the species’ true evolutionary history and which parts arose from hybridization.”
With that part of the puzzle solved, the researchers were finally able to examine the genetic code more closely to see how it might shed light on disease immunity.
They found that immune genes were some of those most frequently exchanged between species while swarming.
“Swarming behavior has always been a bit of a mystery for researchers,” Foley said. “Now we have a better understanding of why this particular behavior evolved — perhaps to promote hybridization, which helps spread beneficial immune gene variants more widely throughout the population.”
New Questions For Researchers
Foley and Murphy’s findings have opened the doors to new questions about the importance of hybridization in evolution.
“Hybridization played a much bigger role in our findings than we anticipated,” Foley noted. “These results have led us to wonder to what extent hybridization has obscured genomicists’ knowledge of mammalian evolutionary history, so far.
“Now, we’re hoping to identify other instances where hybridization has occurred among mammals and see what we can learn about how they are related and even how and why genomes are organized the way that they are,” she said.

Wales international footballer Tom Lockyer has shown BBC Breakfast’s Sally Nugent the implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) he has had fitted in his chest.The Luton Town defender, 29, collapsed on the pitch after suffering a cardiac arrest during a Premier League match against Bournemouth in December.ICDs are designed to restart the heart instantly in case of a similar occurrence in the future.READ MORE: Lockyer putting family first after cardiac arrest

Published2 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Eleanor Layhe, Anna Meisel and Divya TalwarBBC File on 4An “unprecedented” number of women are being investigated by police on suspicion of illegally ending a pregnancy, the BBC has been told. Abortion provider MSI says it knows of up to 60 criminal inquiries in England and Wales since 2018, compared with “pretty well zero” before.Some investigations followed natural pregnancy loss, File on 4 found. Pregnancy loss is investigated only if credible evidence suggests a crime, the National Police Chiefs’ Council says.File on 4 has spoken to women who say that they have been “traumatised” and left feeling “suicidal” following criminal investigations lasting years.Speaking for the first time, one woman described how she had been placed under investigation after giving birth prematurely, despite maintaining that she had never attempted an abortion. In England, Scotland and Wales, abortion is legal up to 24 weeks with the approval of two doctors. However, after 10 weeks the procedure must be carried out in an approved clinic or NHS hospital. Outside of these circumstances, deliberately ending a pregnancy remains a criminal offence in England and Wales under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, which carries a maximum punishment of life in prison. Image source, Getty ImagesDr Jonathan Lord, medical director at MSI, which is one of the UK’s main abortion providers, believes the “unprecedented” number of women now falling under investigation may be linked to the police’s increased awareness of the availability of the “pills by post” scheme – introduced in England and Wales during the Covid-19 lockdown. Scotland also introduced a similar programme.These “telemedicine” schemes, which allow pregnancies up to 10 weeks to be terminated at home, remain in effect. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the UK’s other main abortion provider, says it has received more than two dozen police requests for the medical records of women who have enquired about an abortion. In March, MPs are due to vote on an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill that would fully decriminalise abortion in England and Wales. ‘I just froze’File on 4 spoke to Katie (not her real name), who has been under investigation for several years for illegally procuring an abortion. She says she believed that she was approximately seven weeks pregnant when she contacted a provider and received abortion pills through the post.After taking the pills at home, Katie says she went into labour and gave birth to a stillborn baby. She later realised the pregnancy had progressed beyond the 24-week limit.”After I gave birth I just froze – nothing will ever prepare you for something like that,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do. I just kept thinking: ‘How did this happen? How did I not know?'”Katie was taken to hospital, where staff called the police. She was arrested on suspicion of self-inducing an abortion illegally and held in police custody before she was released on bail.MSI’s Dr Lord says criminal investigations further “traumatise” women after abortions, and that women like Katie deserve “compassion” rather than “punishment”. “These women are often vulnerable and in desperate situations – they need help, and prosecuting them is not the way to do that,” he says. When abortion is a crimeDivya Talwar speaks to women who have been investigated by police on suspicion of illegally ending a pregnancy.Listen on BBC SoundsKatie could face a prison sentence. She maintains that she had no idea that she was over the legal time limit when she took the pills – she says she did not feel different and had not put on any weight. “Being under investigation, it’s such a long process and months go past without you hearing anything,” she says.”I have genuinely felt suicidal at times because of it.” Melanie McDonagh, a journalist who has written widely about abortion and believes abortion should not be fully decriminalised, says the rise in police investigations is a consequence of “pills by post” and called for in-person consultations to be reintroduced at clinics.”If we return to the situation before telemedicine in 2020, then there would be a guard against most of these cases happening in the first place,” she says.’Outdated law’ Abortion providers say the 1861 law that makes abortion a criminal offence is no longer fit for purpose – and the increase in cases being investigated means they want abortion to be fully decriminalised.In Scotland, abortion is criminalised under common law. Abortion was fully decriminalised in Northern Ireland in 2020.The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) says prosecutions under the law are rare: “We carefully consider the personal circumstances of those who end their pregnancy outside the legal parameters and address these as sensitively as possible.Carla Foster: Mother jailed over lockdown abortion to be released”Our prosecutors have a duty to ensure that laws set by Parliament are properly considered and applied when making difficult charging decisions.”Only four women have gone on to be convicted of procuring an illegal abortion in the past 20 years. One of these women, Carla Foster, was jailed in June last year. Another woman, Bethany Cox, was cleared of the same charge in January. Since December 2022, four more women in England have appeared in court under the law. Charges were dropped against one and discontinued in another case, while two women face a potential trial. Image source, Alamy In some cases, women have been reported to police on suspicion of having an illegal abortion by healthcare workers, including midwives. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) issued new guidance to medical professionals in January, urging them not to report women to police if they suspected they may have illegally ended their pregnancies.RCOG said it was concerned that “traumatised” women were being prosecuted after abortions. But abortion providers MSI and BPAS say this does not go far enough, because women can still be subject to criminal investigation if they are reported by someone else. However, Melanie McDonagh says health professionals should not be discouraged from contacting police and that they have a “responsibility” to both the woman and the foetus. MPs are set to vote on the amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill that would decriminalise abortion next month. It will become law if approved by both the House of Commons and the Lords, Those who coerce women into abortions against their will would not be protected from prosecution if it passes.Labour MP Diana Johnson, who tabled the amendment, says it would bring England and Wales into line with Northern Ireland.But opponents of the proposed law change say it sets a dangerous precedent. Melanie McDonagh says changing the law would be “disastrous”. She says: “If abortion was decriminalised, we would have more cases of women having abortions beyond the legal limit.”We should be doing everything in our power to discourage this, and the law acts as a deterrent.” ‘Treated like criminals’ File on 4 has also found evidence of women falling under suspicion of illegally ending a pregnancy following a natural pregnancy loss – rather than taking pills – or premature birth. Sammy, who lives with her husband and teenage son in the north of England, says she decided to have an abortion after falling pregnant last year. But staff at the abortion clinic told Sammy she was over the legal 24-week time limit.”I was all over the place, I searched for information about adoption and abortion,” she says.Even though abortion pills would not have been medically safe or legal to take, she says she did at one point put abortion tablets in her online basket and researched information about abortion methods as well as adoption.She says, though, that she did not go through with the purchase of the tablets, deciding instead to come to terms with continuing the pregnancy. But six days later, she says she started to feel unwell and realised she was going into premature labour. Her son was born at home over three months premature, weighing only 1lb 5oz (700g).”He was blue in colour, he wasn’t breathing, so I had to start CPR on him,” she says. While she previously had wanted a termination, “that didn’t mean I didn’t want him to survive” after he was born, she says – and he did survive. Sammy’s husband called 999 and police and paramedics arrived. After Sammy was taken to hospital, her husband was arrested on suspicion of procuring an illegal abortion. She was told she needed to be interviewed at the police station. “We were treated like criminals from the get-go, but we’d done nothing wrong,” she says. Sammy’s husband was released on bail, but they both remained under police investigation for over a year. Last month, Sammy was told police were dropping the investigation because of a lack of evidence. Dr Lord said that in another case, a teenager was investigated by hospital staff after a pregnancy loss because she had previously contacted an abortion provider. He said: “This is a national scandal, which I think we will look back on in years to come and think, how was this allowed to happen?” The police force that handled Sammy’s case said officers who arrived at her house had identified information to suggest that a crime may have been committed and a “thorough” investigation was required.It said no-one involved would face any further police action. Sammy says although she is relieved, she is still dealing with the impact of the investigation on her mental health. “I still don’t sleep properly because I’m still constantly worrying about being taken away,” she says. “I think without the support of my family, I wouldn’t still be here.” More on this storyMother jailed over lockdown abortion to be releasedPublished18 July 2023

Published32 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Nicola TheisThousands of people in England with a genetic condition that raises their risk of bowel cancer by up to 80% will be given regular cancer checks.The move will save lives by detecting cancers early in people with Lynch syndrome, the NHS says. The condition is thought to affect 175,000 people in England, but few are aware they have it.A simple blood test can identify it – those affected can have a colonoscopy every two years from a young age.The procedure will be offered at local bowel cancer screening centres, close to people’s homes, NHS England said.What is Lynch syndrome?Lynch syndrome is an inherited condition that increases the risk of certain cancers, including bowel, ovarian and pancreaticIt does not directly cause cancer, but genetic mutations which run in families can make the disease more likely at a younger ageOne in 400 people in England is thought to have it, but only 5% are aware they doIt is thought to raise the lifetime risk of bowel cancer by up to about 80%About 1,100 bowel cancers are caused by Lynch syndrome each year in EnglandGenetic testing for Lynch syndrome is now available to all those diagnosed with bowel and endometrial cancer, and relatives and families can also be tested.University lecturer Nicola Theis, from Cheltenham, found out she had Lynch syndrome following her dad’s diagnosis with advanced bowel cancer in 2019.He was only given months to live, which she says was “devastating for our family”.But he started receiving immunotherapy treatment which began to shrink his tumour.”Miraculously, he was cancer-free in less than a year and his scans have been clear since. I’m so happy he’s still with us,” Nicola says.She was then tested and diagnosed with Lynch syndrome, and is now being screened regularly.”Being part of the screening programme gives me the confidence that any cancers that may develop can be caught earlier, when they’re more treatable.” Hard to detectBowel cancer is now the third most common cancer in the country and cases are rising year on year, according to the clinical director for cancer at NHS England.”It also tends to be one of the harder cancers to detect at an early stage because signs and symptoms usually appear later,” Prof Peter Johnson said.He said people should come forward for regular screening when invited, and also look out for any potential symptoms.They include:a change in bowel habitsblood in the pooabdominal painBowel cancer: How to check your poo”If you do notice any of these changes, please do come forward for checks at your GP surgery – getting checked saves lives,” Prof Johnson added.Routine bowel cancer screening in England for those who do not have Lynch syndrome is available from age 56 to 74, when a home-testing kit called Fit (faecal immunochemical test) is sent through the post. In London, which has the lowest uptake of screening, the kits are sent out to people from the age of 54. NHS England has pledged to offer bowel cancer screening to everyone from the age of 50 by 2025. GPs can also offer the Fit test to patients of any age with symptoms. Anyone aged 75 and over can request a kit over the phone from the NHS.Screening for bowel cancer starts at 50 in Scotland, 51 in Wales and 60 in Northern Ireland.’Finding cancer early’The charity Bowel Cancer UK said it expected to see “a vast improvement” in outcomes for people with Lynch syndrome with the offer of regular cancer checks.”They will now have regular access to high-quality colonoscopy tests regardless of where they live in England,” said chief executive Genevieve Edwards.She said England was the first country in the world to introduce a programme to improve the care of people with Lynch syndrome, which is one of the most common inherited cancer syndromes.Health Minister Andrew Stephenson said: “This means that the NHS has a better chance of finding cancers at a time when they can be more easily and effectively treated.” But waiting times for cancer treatment in England in 2023 were the worst on record, a recent BBC News analysis found.Only 64.1% of patients started treatment within 62 days of cancer being suspected, meaning nearly 100,000 waited longer than they should have done for life-saving care.However, there were improvements during 2023 in how quickly patients were diagnosed – 72% were told whether or not they had cancer within 28 days of an urgent referral.More on this storyBowel cancer: How to check your pooPublished29 June 2022Are we failing young people with cancer?Published29 June 2022Cancer waiting times in 2023 worst on recordPublished8 FebruaryRelated Internet LinksBowel cancer screening – NHSColonoscopy – NHSTesting for Lynch syndrome – what you need to know – Bowel Cancer UKThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

A new study from the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai shows there is a gender gap between women and men when it comes to exercise.
The findings, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), show that women can exercise less often than men, yet receive greater cardiovascular gains.
“Women have historically and statistically lagged behind men in engaging in meaningful exercise,” said Martha Gulati, MD, director of Preventive Cardiology in the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, the Anita Dann Friedman Chair in Women’s Cardiovascular Medicine and Research and co-lead author of the study. “The beauty of this study is learning that women can get more out of each minute of moderate to vigorous activity than men do. It’s an incentivizing notion that we hope women will take to heart.”
Investigators analyzed data from 412,413 U.S. adults utilizing the National Health Interview Survey database. Participants between the time frame of 1997 to 2019 — 55% of whom were female — provided survey data on leisure-time physical activity. Investigators examined gender-specific outcomes in relation to frequency, duration, intensity and type of physical activity.
“For all adults engaging in any regular physical activity, compared to being inactive, mortality risk was expectedly lower,” said Susan Cheng, MD, MPH, the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Cardiovascular Health and Population Science, director of the Institute for Research on Healthy Aging in the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute, and senior author of the study. “Intriguingly, though, mortality risk was reduced by 24% in women and 15% in men.”
The research team then studied moderate to vigorous aerobic physical activity, such as brisk walking or cycling, and found that men reached their maximal survival benefit from doing this level of exercise for about five hours per week, whereas women achieved the same degree of survival benefit from exercising just under about 2 ½ hours per week.
Similarly, when it came to muscle-strengthening activity, such as weightlifting or core body exercises, men reached their peak benefit from doing three sessions per week and women gained the same amount of benefit from about one session per week.

Cheng said that women had even greater gains if they engaged in more than 2 ½ hours per week of moderate to vigorous aerobic activity, or in two or more sessions per week of muscle-strengthening activities. The investigators note their findings help to translate a longstanding recognition of sex-specific physiology seen in the exercise lab to a now-expanded view of sex differences in exercise-related clinical outcomes.
With all types of exercise and variables accounted for, Gulati says there’s power in recommendations based on the study’s findings. “Men get a maximal survival benefit when performing 300 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per week, whereas women get the same benefit from 140 minutes per week,” Gulati said. “Nonetheless, women continue to get further benefit for up to 300 minutes a week.”
Christine M. Albert, MD, MPH, chair of the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute and the Lee and Harold Kapelovitz Distinguished Chair in Cardiology, says concrete, novel studies like this don’t happen often.
“I am hopeful that this pioneering research will motivate women who are not currently engaged in regular physical activity to understand that they are in a position to gain tremendous benefit for each increment of regular exercise they are able to invest in their longer-term health,” said Albert, professor of Cardiology.
Other Cedars-Sinai authors include Tzu Yu Huang, MSc; Alan Kwan, MD; David Ouyang, MD; and Joseph Ebinger, MD. Other authors include Hongwei Ji, MD; Kaitlin Casaletto, PhD; Kerrie L. Moreau, PhD; and Hicham Skali, MD, MSc.
Funding: This work was supported in part by NIH grants K23HL153888, K23AG058752, R21HL156132, R01HL142983, R01HL151828, R01HL131532, R01HL143227, R01AG072475, U54AG062319, and U54AG065141, and the Erika J Glazer Family Foundation, National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFC2502800), National Natural Science Foundation of China (82103908), Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (ZR2021QH014), Shuimu Scholar Program of Tsinghua University, and National Postdoctoral Innovative Talent Support Program (BX20230189).

Hydrogels are versatile biomaterials conquering an increasing number of biomedical areas. Consisting of water-swollen molecular networks that can be tailored to mimic the mechanical and chemical features of various organs and tissues, they can interface within the body and on its outer surfaces without causing any damage to even the most delicate parts of the human anatomy. Hydrogels are already used in clinical practice for the therapeutic delivery of drugs to fight pathogens; as intraocular and contact lenses, and corneal prostheses in ophthalmology; bone cement, wound dressings, blood-coagulating bandages, and 3D scaffolds in tissue engineering and regeneration.
However, attaching hydrogel polymers quickly and strongly to one another has remained an unresolved unmet need as traditional methods often result in weaker adhesion after longer-than-desired adhesion times, and rely on complex procedures. Achieving rapid adhesion of polymers could enable numerous new applications, including, for example, hydrogels whose stiffness could be finely tuned to better conform to specific tissues, on-demand encapsulation of flexible electronics for medical diagnostics, or the creation of self-adhesive tissue wraps for hard-to-bandage parts of the body.
Now, scientists at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have created a simple and versatile method to instantly and effectively bond layers made of the same or different types of hydrogels and other polymeric materials, using a thin film of chitosan: a fibrous, sugar-based material derived from the processed outer skeletons of shellfish. They successfully applied their new approach to several unsolved medical problems, including the local protective cooling of tissues, sealing of vascular injuries, and prevention of unwanted “surgical adhesions” of internal body surfaces that should not stick to each other. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS[BB1] ).
“Chitosan films with their abilities to effectively assemble, fine-tune, and protect hydrogels in the body and beyond, open numerous new opportunities to create devices for regenerative medicine and surgical care,” said senior author and Founding Wyss Institute Core Faculty member David Mooney, Ph.D. “The speed, ease, and effectiveness with which they can be applied makes them highly versatile tools and components for in vivoassembly processes in often short time-windows during surgeries, and the simple fabrication of complex biomaterial structures in manufacturing facilities.” Mooney also is the Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS.
Engineering a new bond
Over the past years, Mooney’s team at the Wyss Institute and SEAS has developed “Tough Adhesives,” a collection of regenerative medicine approaches that use stretchable hydrogels to facilitate wound healing and tissue regeneration by strongly sticking to wet tissue surfaces and conforming to tissues’ mechanical properties. “Precisely formulated Tough Adhesives and non-adhesive hydrogels give us and other researchers new opportunities to improve patient care. But to take their functionalities one or even multiple steps further, we wanted to be able to combine two or more hydrogels in more complex assemblies, and to do this fast, safely, and in a simple process,” said co-first author and former Wyss Research Associate Benjamin Freedman, Ph.D., who spearheaded several Tough Adhesive developments with Mooney. “Existing methods to instantly bond hydrogels or elastomers had striking disadvantages because they relied on toxic glues, the chemical functionalization of their surfaces, or other complex procedures.”
Through a biomaterial screening approach, the team identified bridging films completely made of chitosan. Chitosan is a sugary polymer that can be easily made from the chitin shells of shellfish and has already found its way into wide-ranging commercial applications. For example, it is currently used to treat seeds and as a biopesticide in agriculture, to prevent spoilage in winemaking, in self-healing paint coatings, and in medical wound management.

The team found that chitosan films achieved rapid and strong bonding of hydrogels through chemical and physical interactions that are different from those involved in traditional hydrogel bonding methods. Instead of creating new chemical bonds based on the sharing of electrons between individual atoms (covalent bonds), induced by a tiny shift in pH, chitosan’s sugar strands rapidly absorb water residing between hydrogel layers and entangle themselves with the polymer stands of hydrogels, forming multiple bonds via electrostatic interactions and hydrogen bonding (non-covalent bonds). This results in adhesive forces between hydrogels that significantly exceed those created through traditional hydrogel bonding approaches.
First applications
To demonstrate the breadth of potential of their new method, the researchers focused on very different medical challenges. They showed that Tough Adhesives modified with chitosan films could now be easily wrapped around cylindrical shapes like an injured finger as self-adhering bandages to provide improved wound care. Due to the high water content of chitosan-bonded hydrogels, their application also allowed the local cooling of underlying human skin, which in the future could lead to alternative burn treatments.
The researchers also wrapped hydrogels (tough gels) whose surfaces were modified with thin chitosan films seamlessly around bowel, tendon, and peripheral nerve tissue without bonding to the tissues themselves. “This approach offers the possibility to effectively insulate tissues from each other during surgeries, which otherwise can form ‘fibrotic adhesions’ with sometimes devastating consequences. Their prevention is an unmet clinical need that commercial technologies cannot adequately address yet,” explained Freedman.
In another application, they layed down a thin chitosan film on a tough gel that was already placed on an injured pig aorta ex vivo as a wound sealant to increase the overall strength of the bandage, which was exposed to the cyclical mechanical forces of blood pulsing through the vessel.
“The numerous possibilities emerging from this study by Dave Mooney’s group add a new dimension to the engineering of biomedical hydrogel devices, which could lead to elegant solutions for urgent unmet problems in regenerative and surgical medicine that many patients could benefit from,” said Wyss Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering at SEAS.
Additional authors on the study are co-first author Juan Cintron Cruz, Mathew Lee, and James Weaver at the Wyss Institute and SEAS; Phoebe Kwon, Haley Jeffers, and Daniel Kent at SEAS; and Kyle Wu at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. The study was supported by the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging (under award# K99/R00AG065495), and the Harvard GSAS Research Scholar initiative.

In the largest genome-wide association study to date on Type 2 diabetes, a team of international researchers, co-led by a University of Massachusetts Amherst genetic epidemiologist, has located 1,289 genetic markers associated with Type 2 diabetes (145 of which are newly identified) and generated risk scores for diabetes complications.
In research published Monday, Feb. 19 in the journal Nature that advances understanding into the inheritability of Type 2 diabetes, the scientists used cutting-edge computational approaches to identify eight distinct mechanistic clusters of genetic variants linked to the disease. They also discovered associations between individual clusters and diabetes complications.
“We tried to figure out some of the mechanisms for how these genetic variants are working — and we did,” says co-senior author Cassandra Spracklen, assistant professor of biostatistics and epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences.
Ultimately, the goal is to identify potential genetic targets to treat or even cure the chronic metabolic disease that affects and sometimes debilitates more than 400 million adults worldwide, according to the International Diabetes Federation.
The study — emerging from the newly formed Type 2 Diabetes Global Genomics Initiative — included data from a highly diverse group of more than 2.5 million individuals, 428,452 of whom have Type 2 diabetes.
“We found eight clusters of Type 2 diabetes-associated variants that have also been associated with other diabetes risk factors — such as obesity and liver-lipid metabolism — suggesting the mechanisms for how the variants may be acting to cause diabetes,” Spracklen says. “Then we asked if these clusters were also associated with Type 2 diabetes complications? And we found that several of them to also associated with vascular complications, such as coronary artery disease and end-stage diabetic nephropathy.”
Even though effective treatments are available for Type 2 diabetes, the option for precision medicine tailored to the individual is still limited. For many people with the disease, treatment strategies still rely on trial and error. Being better able to understand the disease mechanisms will help predict individuals’ risk of Type 2 diabetes and allow for earlier intervention.

“We’re trying to understand how diabetes develops,” says Spracklen, adding that the new research includes data from cohorts not available in an earlier genome-wide association study published in 2022 in Nature Genetics, for which Spracklen was co-first author. “And we’re trying to better understand how these genetic variants are actually working within a biological tissue or at the cellular level, which can ultimately lead to new drug targets and treatments.”
Senior corresponding author Eleftheria Zeggini, director of the Institute of Translational Genomics at Helmholtz Munich and a professor at the Technical University of Munich, notes that collaboration among scientists is essential for evaluating vast patient data and achieving a comprehensive understanding of genomic risk variants.
“The genetic information in our cells harbors secrets about the risks, progression and complications of many diseases,” she says. “Our work leads to an improved understanding of disease-causing biological mechanisms. Better knowledge of progression risk for Type 2 diabetes complications can help put in place early interventions to delay or even prevent these debilitating medical conditions.”
The paper concludes, “Our findings … may offer a route to optimize global access to genetically informed diabetes care.”

The prospect of the worrisome triple threat of COVID, RSV and flu was assuaged last year by the effectiveness of flu vaccines. Two recent studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s VISION Network have found that flu vaccines were effective for all ages against both moderate and severe flu in the U.S. during the 2022-2023 flu season.
Both the pediatric and adult VISION Network studies analyzed flu-associated emergency department (E.D.)/urgent care visits (indicative of moderate disease) and hospitalization (indicative of severe disease) from October 2022 through March 2023, a flu season in which far fewer individuals were social distancing or wearing masks than during the two previous flu seasons.
Vaccination reduced the risk of flu-related E.D./urgent care visits and hospitalization for those 6 months to 17 years by almost half. For adults, regardless of age, vaccination reduced the risk of E.D. urgent care visits by almost half and reduced the risk of hospitalization by slightly more than a third.
These results led the authors of both studies to conclude that flu vaccination is likely to substantially reduce illness, death and strain on healthcare resources.
“We study the effectiveness of flu and other vaccines to ensure that our processes for forecasting the most effective vaccines are working well and therefore might potentially also be translatable to other diseases as well,” said Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S., a co-author of both the pediatric and adult VISION Network studies, Regenstrief Institute vice president for data and analytics and a family practice physician. “Given influenza’s significant disease burden — for example the H1N1 (swine) flu killed over a quarter of a million people worldwide in 2009-2010 — we want to make sure that we understand virus trends as well as other factors and that we’re continuing to do as well as and as much as we can to reduce the flu disease burden.”
Both the pediatric and adult studies evaluated electronic health record (EHR) data from sites across three healthcare systems in California, Utah, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Flu vaccine effectiveness: 2022-2023 flu season for ages 6 months to 17 years
Vaccination reduced the risk of flu-related E.D./urgent care visits (moderate disease) by 48 percent and hospitalization (severe disease) by 40 percent overall across ages 6 months to 17 years. Broken down by age, risk reduction was greater for those age 6 months to 4 years than older children and adolescents.

Ages 6 months to four years Vaccination reduced the risk of E.D./urgent care visits (moderate disease) by 53 percent. Vaccination reduced the risk of hospitalization (severe disease) by 56 percent.Ages 5 to 17 years Vaccination reduced the risk of E.D./ urgent care visits (moderate disease) by 38 percent. Vaccination reduced the risk of hospitalization by 46 percent.Approximately 30 percent of E.D./critical care visits for acute respiratory illness in children and adolescents were positive for flu, as were 14 percent of hospitalizations.
“Vaccine Effectiveness Against Pediatric Influenza-A-Associated Urgent Care, Emergency Department, and Hospital Encounters During the 2022-2023 Season, VISION Network” is published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Flu vaccine effectiveness: 2022-2023 flu season for ages 18-64
Vaccine effectiveness was 45 percent against E.D./critical care visits(moderate disease) for adults under age 65. Effectiveness against hospitalization (severe disease) was 23 percent.

Adults younger than 65 typically received standard-dose inactivated vaccines.
Flu vaccine effectiveness: 2022-2023 flu season for ages 65 and older
Vaccine effectiveness was 41 percent against both flu-associated E.D./urgent care visits (moderate disease) and hospitalization (serious disease) for this age group.
Adults age 65 and older typically received enhanced vaccine products.
“Influenza vaccine effectiveness against influenza-A-associated emergency department, urgent care, and hospitalization encounters among U.S. adults, 2022-2023” is published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
“As with COVID, the dynamics of flu differs between children and adults. But we found that for both children and adults, vaccination significantly reduced the need for trips to the E.D, or critical care center and for hospitalization for flu-related illnesses last flu season and this is encouraging,” said Dr. Grannis. “I’m hopeful that we will see similar or even better vaccine effectiveness during the current flu season. Even if they do experience symptoms, people who are vaccinated typically tend to have milder, shorter cases of the flu, a viral illness which can carry a severe disease burden.
“The vaccine effectiveness we saw in last year’s flu season is encouraging. As both a research scientist and a primary care physician, I urge everyone to be vaccinated for flu this year and every year — it’s good for each person’s health and the health of your community.”
About Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S.
In addition to his role as the vice president for data and analytics at Regenstrief Institute, Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S., holds the Regenstrief Chair in Medical Informatics and is a professor of family medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers discovered a molecular mechanism by which excessive dietary protein could increase atherosclerosis risk. The findings were published in Nature Metabolism today.
The study, which combined small human trials with experiments in mice and cells in a Petri dish, showed that consuming over 22% of dietary calories from protein can lead to increased activation of immune cells that play a role in atherosclerotic plaque formation, driving the disease risk. Furthermore, the scientists showed that one amino acid — leucine — seems to have a disproportionate role in driving the pathological pathways linked to atherosclerosis, or stiff, hardened arteries.
“Our study shows that dialing up your protein intake in pursuit of better metabolic health is not a panacea. You could be doing real damage to your arteries,” said senior and co-corresponding author Babak Razani, M.D., Ph.D., professor of cardiology at Pitt. “Our hope is that this research starts a conversation about ways of modifying diets in a precise manner that can influence body function at a molecular level and dampen disease risks.”
According to a survey of an average American diet over the last decade, Americans generally consume a lot of protein, mostly from animal sources. Further, nearly a quarter of the population receives over 22% of all daily calories from protein alone.
That trend is likely driven by the popular idea that dietary protein is essential to healthy living, says Razani. But his and other groups have shown that overreliance on protein may not be such a good thing for long-term health.
Following their 2020 research, in which Razani’s laboratory first showed that excess dietary protein increases atherosclerosis risk in mice, his next study in collaboration with Bettina Mittendorfer, Ph.D., a metabolism expert at the University of Missouri, Columbia, delved deeper into the potential mechanism and its relevance to the human body.
To arrive at the answer, Razani’s laboratory, led by first-authors Xiangyu Zhang, Ph.D., and Divya Kapoor, M.D., teamed up with Mittendorfer’s group to combine their expertise in cellular biology and metabolism and perform a series of experiments across various models — from cells to mice to humans.

“We have shown in our mechanistic studies that amino acids, which are really the building blocks of the protein, can trigger disease through specific signaling mechanisms and then also alter the metabolism of these cells,” Mittendorfer said. “For instance, small immune cells in the vasculature called macrophages can trigger the development of atherosclerosis.”
Based on initial experiments in healthy human subjects to determine the timeline of immune cell activation following ingestion of protein-enriched meals, the researchers simulated similar conditions in mice and in human macrophages, immune cells that are shown to be particularly sensitive to amino acids derived from protein.
Their work showed that consuming more than 22% of daily dietary calories through protein can negatively affect macrophages that are responsible for clearing out cellular debris, leading to the accumulation of a “graveyard” of those cells inside the vessel walls and worsening of atherosclerotic plaques overtime. Interestingly, the analysis of circulating amino acids showed that leucine — an amino acid enriched in animal-derived foods like beef, eggs and milk — is primarily responsible for abnormal macrophage activation and atherosclerosis risk, suggesting a potential avenue for further research on personalized diet modification, or “precision nutrition.”
Razani is careful to note that many questions remain to be answered, mainly: What happens when a person consumes between 15% of daily calories from protein as recommended by the USDA and 22% of daily calories from protein, and if there is a ‘sweet spot’ for maximizing the benefits of protein — such as muscle gain — while avoiding kick-starting a molecular cascade of damaging events leading to cardiovascular disease.
The findings are particularly relevant in hospital settings, where nutritionists often recommend protein-rich foods for the sickest patients to preserve muscle mass and strength.
“Perhaps blindly increasing protein load is wrong,” Razani said. “Instead, it’s important to look at the diet as a whole and suggest balanced meals that won’t inadvertently exacerbate cardiovascular conditions, especially in people at risk of heart disease and vessel disorders.”
Razani also notes that these findings suggest differences in leucine levels between diets enriched in plant and animal protein might explain the differences in their effect on cardiovascular and metabolic health. “The potential for this type of mechanistic research to inform future dietary guidelines is quite exciting,” he said.
Additional authors of the study are Yu-Sheng Yeh, Ph.D., also from Pitt; Alan Fappi, Ph.D. and Vasavi Shabrish, Ph.D., both of the University of Missouri, Columbia; Se-Jin Jeong, Ph.D., Jeremiah Stitham, M.D., Ph.D., Ismail Sergin, Ph.D., Eman Yousif, M.D., Astrid Rodriguez-Velez, Ph.D., Arick Park, M.D., Ph.D., Joel Schilling, M.D., Ph.D., Marco Sardiello, Ph.D., Abhinav Diwan, M.D., Nathan Stitziel, M.D., Ph.D., Ali Javaheri, M.D., Ph.D., Irfan Lodhi, Ph.D., and Jaehyung Cho, Ph.D., all of Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis; Arif Yurdagul Jr, Ph.D., and Oren Rom, Ph.D., both of the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center; and Slava Epelman, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Toronto.