Publisher Health

Children who are the youngest in their class to be identified with ADHD are just as likely to keep the diagnosis as older pupils in their year group, scientists have found.
Experts from the University of Southampton and Paris Nanterre University, working with researchers worldwide, made the discovery after examining data from thousands of patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
In the past, scientists have questioned the validity of an ADHD diagnosis in younger pupils — arguing they receive it because they are less mature than those born towards the start of the school year.
But the study, published in Lancet Psychiatry, revealed children who are the youngest in the class and get diagnosed with the condition were still as likely to retain it later on as their older peers.
Senior lead author Professor Samuele Cortese, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Southampton, said: “We know the youngest children in their year group are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD — but many believe this is because they lag behind their older classmates.
“However, no one has ever explored if these younger children who are diagnosed with ADHD retain the diagnosis later on — until now. Our study shows for the first time that these youngsters are no more likely to lose the diagnosis over time than older children.”
Around 360 million people worldwide have been diagnosed with ADHD, according to the World Health Organisation, with around a third under the age of 18.

Published13 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Jumana EmadBy Dalia HaidarBBC ArabicOne month ago, Gaza resident Jumana Emad was in the final stages of pregnancy.She was happily sharing pictures of her heavily pregnant belly, waiting to put her birthing plan into action.She knew she was going to have a girl, her husband was excited, her hospital bag was packed and her four-year-old daughter Tulin couldn’t wait to meet her baby sister. Then everything changed.Hamas killed more than 1,400 people in Israel and took more than 200 people hostage in an attack on 7 October. Israel launched retaliatory air strikes on Gaza which – the Hamas-run health ministry says – have killed almost 7,000 people.”I was scared,” Jumana told the BBC. “I was in labour among continuous shelling.”The 25-year-old freelance journalist followed Israeli orders to leave her home in the north. She left Gaza City two days after Israeli strikes began and headed south.Afraid and nine months pregnant, Jumana took her daughter to a relative’s house. She took only a single piece of clothing, a box of milk and a small bag for her daughter.”The situation was tough,” she explained in a voice message.Image source, Jumana Emad”We didn’t sleep at night. There was a lot of shelling and we had to go to another place. Pregnant women like me should be going out for walks but because of the war we are not able to go out even to buy food,” she explained in another message.Jumana repeatedly spoke of power outages, internet interruptions and water shortages, in addition to her fear and anxiety over giving birth in such difficult circumstances. On Friday 13 October, Jumana went into labour.She had originally planned to go to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which is a big hospital, but she was told it was under immense pressure. Instead, Jumana went to Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, a smaller hospital in the middle of the Gaza Strip. But even getting there was hard. In pain and in labour Jumana struggled to find someone to take her. “Taxi drivers are afraid, and ambulances don’t have time for a woman about to give birth,” she explained.She described the hours of labour as hard and terrifying. “There was intense shelling in a house next to the hospital, the sound was so loud that I thought the shelling had reached the hospital itself. Injured people kept arriving. I could hear screams from every direction. I was also thinking about my first daughter. I was worried about her because she was far away from me.”All I thought about was I want to deliver my baby no matter what.”Jumana described her feeling of shock when hours later that evening, she gave birth to a baby girl, who she decided to name Talia.”Her crying meant we were all still alive,” she recalls.There was no bed available for Jumana immediately after childbirth. In pain and bleeding, she had to wait until a bed was found and squeezed into a small room.”I was lucky to have one, other women lay on couches and on the floor in the hospital corridor immediately after giving birth,” she says.Image source, Jumana EmadThe United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that there are about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza with 5,500 of them expected to give birth in the next 30 days. It says hospitals are overwhelmed and are running out of medicine and basic supplies.The day after she gave birth, Jumana sent a video of herself holding her baby daughter in a taxi, wrapped in a white blanket. She had left the hospital to join her family but says even that was an ordeal.”The lift stopped working due to a power issue,” she says. So Jumana, on the fourth floor of the hospital, in pain after giving birth and with her newborn in her arms, had to walk down several flights of stairs to get to the exit.Once out of the hospital, she was faced with trying to get transport back to the place where she was staying. “We spent an hour looking for a taxi, and none of the drivers agreed to take us. They were scared after a nearby shelling in the morning. In the end, we found one, but he asked for a higher fare and didn’t drop us off in front of the house.” Jumana says childbirth in such hard circumstances has taken its toll. “I am worn out mentally. I no longer have the desire to do anything,” she admits.But she tells me Baby Talia is doing well: “She is a mix of my features, her sister’s and her father’s.”If it wasn’t for the war, I would have wanted to celebrate a beautiful event one week after the birth. I would have invited all my family members and held an Aqiqah [a traditional Islamic celebration] for her,” Jumana trails off.She says she does not know what the future holds for her family but is grateful for their new arrival saying: “She is my hope in this life of war and death.”

A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that chemotherapy may not be reaching its full potential, in part because researchers and doctors have long misunderstood how some of the most common cancer drugs actually ward off tumors.
For decades, researchers have believed that a class of drugs called microtubule poisons treat cancerous tumors by halting mitosis, or the division of cells. Now, a team of UW-Madison scientists has found that in patients, microtubule poisons don’t actually stop cancer cells from dividing. Instead, these drugs alter mitosis — sometimes enough to cause new cancer cells to die and the disease to regress.
Cancers grow and spread because cancerous cells divide and multiply indefinitely, unlike normal cells which are limited in the number of times they can split into new cells. The assumption that microtubule poisons stop cancer cells from dividing is based on lab studies demonstrating just that.
The new study was led by Beth Weaver, a professor in the departments of oncology and cell and regenerative biology, in collaboration with Mark Burkard in the departments of oncology and medicine. Published Oct. 26 in the journal PLOS Biology and supported in part by the National Institutes of Health, the study broadens previous findings the group made about a specific microtubule poison called paclitaxel. Sometimes prescribed under the brand name Taxol, paclitaxel is used to treat common malignancies including those originating in the ovaries and lungs.
“This was sort of mind-blowing,” Weaver says about the previous research. “For decades, we all thought that the way paclitaxel works in patient tumors is by arresting them in mitosis. This is what I was taught as a graduate student. We all ‘knew’ this. In cells in a dish, labs all over the world have shown this. The problem was we were all using it at concentrations higher than those that actually get into the tumor.”
Weaver and her colleagues wanted to know if other microtubule poisons work the same way as paclitaxel — not by stopping mitosis but by messing it up.
The question has significant implications for scientists searching for new cancer treatments. That’s because drug discovery efforts often hinge on identifying, reproducing and improving upon the mechanisms believed to be responsible for a compound’s therapeutic effect.

A drama teacher has spoken about how her life has improved since she stopped drinking alcohol. Emily Power decided she wanted to give up in 2021 after starting as a teenager. The 28-year-old, from Cardiff, said she now felt more happy and healthy than she had before.“Sobriety has changed my life for the better in every way,” Ms Power said.Read more on the rise of young people choosing not to drink here.

Long-term consumption of water with fluoride levels far above established drinking water standards may be linked to cognitive impairments in children, according to a new pilot study from Tulane University.
The study, published in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology, was conducted in rural Ethiopia where farming communities use wells with varying levels of naturally occurring fluoride ranging from 0.4 to 15.5 mg/L. The World Health Organization recommends fluoride levels below 1.5 mg/L.
Researchers recruited 74 school-aged children and rated their ability to draw familiar objects such as a donkey or a house, with scores reflecting any missing details. They used a standard computerized memory test which is language and culture neutral as another tool to measure cognitive ability.
The study found that higher exposure to fluoride in drinking water was linked to more errors on the drawing and memory tests. Lead author Tewodros Godebo, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said the “causal relationship between fluoride exposure and neurotoxicity remains unclear” but he hopes these preliminary findings will spur more research into the potential cognitive impacts of fluoride exposure.
“Though further epidemiological studies are needed to validate the findings, these results add to the growing concern about the potential neurotoxic effects of fluoride, especially during early brain development and childhood,” Godebo said. “These tests affirmed a clear association between high fluoride and cognitive impairment.”
Fluoride is essential for preventing tooth decay. However, excess intake of fluoride has been linked to lower IQs in past epidemiological studies in rural communities in China and India.
Additionally, past animal research has shown that fluoride can cross the placenta and blood-brain barriers. In regions with no alternative water sources, this means excess fluoride exposure could be a chronic issue that begins at conception.

University of Queensland researchers have shown that endometriosis and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) share genetic risk factors, explaining why patients with one condition may also have the other.
Professor Grant Montgomery and Dr Sally Mortlock at UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience found a significant relationship between the risks for endometriosis and common gastrointestinal disorders such as IBS, peptic ulcer disease (PUD) and gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD).
“This genetic finding supports the clinical observation of an increased incidence of gastrointestinal disorders in women with endometriosis,” Professor Montgomery said.
“We hope that this study will raise more awareness about the overlap of these conditions.”
Endometriosis is a severe condition affecting 1 in 7 women caused by tissue that resembles the uterus lining growing outside the uterus.
Women with endometriosis are twice as likely to have an IBS diagnosis compared to women without the disease and 1.4 times more likely to have a diagnosis of GORD.
“Sufferers can find it difficult to distinguish the source of their pain leading to confusion or misdiagnosis and years of delay in treatment during which time the endometriosis can progress to more severe disease,” Professor Montgomery said.
“Endometriosis should be considered as a possible cause if a woman presents to her GP with abdominal pain and gastrointestinal symptoms.
“As our knowledge of risk factors for endometriosis increases, we hope to move closer to understanding how the disease develops and improve treatments and diagnosis,” he said.
Professor Montgomery and Dr Mortlock worked with Dr Fei Yang from IMB and colleagues at UQ’s School of Public Health on the genetic studies.

Bacteriophages, also called phages, are viruses that infect and kill bacteria, their natural hosts. But from a macromolecular viewpoint, phages can be viewed as nutritionally enriched packets of nucleotides wrapped in an amino acid shell. A study published October 26 in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Jeremy J. Barr at Monash University, Victoria, Australia, and colleagues suggests that mammalian cells internalize phages as a resource to promote cellular growth and survival.
Phage interactions with bacteria are well known, and interactions between bacteria and their mammalian host can lead to a range of symbioses. However, the impact of bacteriophages on mammalian cellular and immunological processes is not well understood. In order to investigate how mammalian cells’ immune responses interact with and are modulated by interactions with phages, researchers applied the well-studied phage T4 to mammalian cells in vitro and analyzed the cellular responses using luciferase reporter and antibody microarray assays. The phage-free supernatant served as a comparative control.
The researchers found that T4 phages did not activate DNA-mediated inflammatory pathways, but triggered a sequence of signaling pathway events that promote cellular growth and survival. Future studies are needed, however, to determine why cells use phage particles as resources, and whether they have specifically evolved via adaptation to benefit from this internalization.
According to the authors, “This preliminary study provides novel insights into the impact phages have on mammalian systems, with broader potential implications across the fields of immunology, phage therapy, microbiome, and human health.”
Barr adds, “This work provides new insights into the additional benefits that bacteriophages may have on their mammalian hosts. This is of particular importance given the increased use of phage therapy to treat antibiotic-resistant infections.”

Receiving a clot-busting drug in an ambulance-based mobile stroke unit (MSU) increases the likelihood of averting strokes and complete recovery compared with standard hospital emergency care, according to researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian, UTHealth Houston, Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center and five other medical centers across the United States.
The study, published online in the Annals of Neurology on Oct. 6, determined that MSU care was associated with both increased odds of averting stroke compared with hospital emergency medical service (EMS) — 18 percent versus 11 percent, respectively — and a higher percentage of patients — 31 percent versus 21 percent — had early symptom resolution, within 24 hours after stroke.
Patients in this study were treated with tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA), a mainstay medication delivered intravenously (IV) in stroke cases. The drug dissolves the clot in an artery that is blocking blood flow to the brain, making treatment time critical. “While this is known to improve patient outcomes, how many patients fully recover afterward wasn’t clear from prior research,” said lead author Dr. Babak Benjamin Navi, associate professor, vice chair for hospital neurology services and chief of stroke and hospital neurology, in the neurology department at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is also acting medical director of the MSU, operated by NewYork-Presbyterian, in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and the Fire Department of New York.
Every Minute Counts When Treating Stroke
“On average, the faster you treat someone, the more likely you are to have a good functional outcome because you’re able to preserve more brain tissue,” Dr. Navi said, who is also associate professor of neuroscience at the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell and the medical director of the stroke center at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “The brain can only sustain reduced blood flow for so long before permanent injury develops.”
Using multicenter trial data from 2014-2020, the researchers evaluated 1,009 patients: 644 received t-PA in an MSU, and 365 received EMS care. Overall, patients received t-PA at a median interval of 87 minutes after the onset of stroke symptoms. The study found that with t-PA treatment in this time frame, about one in four patients who had a suspected stroke recovered within 24 hours and one in six averted a stroke with no demonstrable trace of brain injury on an MRI.
The outcome improved for patients treated by an MSU since the time from symptom onset to treatment was 37 minutes faster than for EMS care, meaning many more patients received vital t-PA within the crucial first hour. MSU care further increased the odds of averting a stroke with nearly one-third of patients recovering to normal within 24 hours. In addition, the researchers found other factors that contributed to better patient outcome: treatment within the first 45 minutes, younger age, being female, history of high cholesterol, lower blood pressure, lower stroke severity and no blockage of large blood vessels.

Inflammation is a risk factor for many chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease (CVD), and the impact of diet on inflammation is an area of growing scientific interest. In particular, recommendations to limit red meat consumption are often based, in part, on old studies suggesting that red meat negatively affects inflammation — yet more recent studies have not supported this.
“The role of diet, including red meat, on inflammation and disease risk has not been adequately studied, which can lead to public health recommendations that are not based on strong evidence,” said Dr. Alexis Wood, associate professor of pediatrics — nutrition at the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. “Our team sought to take a closer look by using metabolite data in the blood, which can provide a more direct link between diet and health.”
Wood and her team analyzed cross-sectional data captured from approximately 4,000 older adults participating in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), and recently published their findings in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Cross-sectional data is a useful source of evidence on how diet affects health; it uses data that is observed with free-living people, without attempting to influence their usual lifestyle. In this way, it may be easier to take results from such studies and apply them to non-research settings. In addition to assessing participants’ self-reported food intake and several biomarkers, researchers also measured an array of dietary intake metabolites in blood. Plasma metabolites can help capture the effects of dietary intake as food is processed, digested and absorbed.
Researchers found that when adjusted for body mass index (BMI), intake of unprocessed and processed red meat (beef, pork or lamb) was not directly associated with any markers of inflammation, suggesting that body weight, not red meat, may be the driver of increased systemic inflammation. Of particular interest was the lack of a link between red meat intake and C-reactive protein (CRP), the major inflammatory risk marker of chronic disease.
“Our analysis adds to the growing body of evidence that indicates the importance of measuring plasma markers, such as metabolites, to track diet and disease risk associations, versus relying on self-reported dietary intake alone,” Wood said. “Our analysis does not support previous observational research associations linking red meat intake and inflammation.”
Because observational studies cannot indicate cause and effect, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) where individuals are randomly assigned to consume a dietary factor of interest or not consume it, are needed as an additional line of evidence to adequately understand if red meat does not alter inflammation. Several RCTs have demonstrated that lean unprocessed beef can be enjoyed in heart-healthy dietary patterns.
“We have reached a stage where more studies are needed before we can make recommendations to limit red meat consumption for reducing inflammation if we want to base dietary recommendations on the most up-to-date evidence,” Wood said. “Red meat is popular, accessible and palatable — and its place in our diet has deep cultural roots. Given this, recommendations about reducing consumption should be supported by strong scientific evidence, which doesn’t yet exist.”
Other contributors to this work include Goncalo Graca, Meghana Gadgil, Mackenzie K. Senn, Matthew A. Allison, Ioanna Tzoulaki, Philip Greenland, Timothy Ebbels, Paul Elliott, Mark O. Goodarzi, Russell Tracy, Jerome I. Rotter and David Herrington.
The study was supported by the Beef Checkoff. Wood was supported, in part, by the USDA/ARS (Cooperative Agreement 58-3092-5-001). Mark Goodarzi was supported by the Eris M. Field Chair in Diabetes Research. Jerome Rotter was supported, in part, by the National Institutes of Health grants from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease (DK063491), from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (UL1TR001881), the CHARGE Consortium, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI; R01HL105756).

Bone is maintained via delicate balance between formation and resorption, and its imbalance leads to bone related diseases like osteoporosis rheumatism and periodontitis. In studies published in scientific journals J Biol Chem and Cell Struct Funct, researchers led by Osaka University revealed proteins named Rab32 and Rab38 play pivotal roles in bone resorption in osteoclast, cell specialized in the process. These proteins are also crucial for pigmentation of hair and skins.
Bone is resorbed by specialized cell called osteoclast, and several substances are secreted out to the pits where osteoclast attaches to bones and resorption occurs, like acids (H+) and degrading enzymes (TRAP, CatK). Rab is a group of small proteins that regulate the logistics between diverse compartments inside the cells called organelle. Over 50 Rab proteins are known in mammalian cells including human and mouse, and they are thought to be specifically involved in the traffic between each specific organelle, thereby reliable logistics between them are guaranteed.
“Despite osteoclast should employ Rab dependent traffic, which Rabs are involved had been scarcely understood” says lead author of the first paper, Kazuya Noda. “To better understand the molecular mechanisms of osteoclast function, we first screened Rab proteins especially induced during osteoclast formation in mouse.”
Rab38 was found to be elevated during differentiation into osteoclast. Importantly, Rab38 has closely resembled partner Rab32, and both of them are known to be important for determination of hair color, by regulating the logistics to melanosome, an organelle specialized for color pigmentation in skin and hair forming cells.
In the second paper, lead author Kanako Tokuda constructed mouse deleted of both Rab32 and Rab38 from whole body, namely double knock out mouse. As expected, double knock out mouse shows beige-like hair color and red eyes, while wild type mouse has black hair and eyes. Interestingly, double knock out mouse shows increased bone density and as the age progress, the spine becomes more bent especially in male mouse.
“We also showed bone resorption by osteoclast is defected in doble knock mouse” says co-senior author of the second paper, Shiou-ling Lu. “We revealed Rab32 and Rab38 engaged organelle, LRO, is important for bone resorption by osteoclast.”
Significantly, bone related diseases like osteoporosis, rheumatism and periodontitis are associated hyper activation of bone resorption by osteoclast. “Therefore, understanding the underlying mechanism of bone resorption facilitated by Rab32 and Rab38 will provide us useful information regarding potential treatment target for these diseases” says senior author of the two papers, Takeshi NODA.