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An international research team headed by Dr. Johannes Karges of the Faculty of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, has developed nanoparticles that accumulate in cancer cells and eliminate them after being photoactivated. In addition, they label them in such a way that immune cells learn to eliminate similar cells throughout the body. This means that even undetected metastases can be treated. The researchers presented their findings in the journal Nature Communications of 2 September 2023.
The malicious nature of cancers means that they spread throughout the body: cells from the primary tumor grow into surrounding tissue and travel through the bloodstream and lymphatic system to distant organs, where they form secondary metastatic tumors. “While we now have effective methods to combat primary tumors, metastases are still very difficult to treat,” explains Johannes Karges. “Ninety percent of people who die from cancer die from metastases and tumor regression, not from the primary tumor.”
Together with an international team, he’s developed a drug packaged in nanoparticles that are administered into the bloodstream. “Tumors grow rapidly and uncontrollably, and their tissue is therefore leaky,” he describes. “Unlike in healthy tissues, the nanoparticles therefore accumulate in them easily.” This also means that the particles preferentially accumulate in tumor cells.
Step one: treating a known tumor
At the time of administration, the drug is still ineffective. It only takes effect when activated with light. If there are sufficient nanoparticles in a detected tumor, they can be activated by irradiation with light, for example during surgery. After this energy supply, the active species ensures that immunogenic cell death occurs: the tumor cells containing the photoactivated nanoparticles are eliminated, and the tumor treated by this method disappears.
Step two: sending immune cells on a search
But that’s not all: the nanoparticles and their light-induced effect cause massive oxidative stress in the endoplasmic reticulum of the cells of the treated tumor. “This alerts the body’s own immune system,” explains Johannes Karges. “The immune cells recognize that something is going completely wrong in cells of this type, and that such cells therefore need to be eliminated.” This applies not only to the cells of the photo-treated tumor itself, but to all cells of the same kind throughout the body. “Accordingly, the immune system starts looking for further metastases and renders them harmless,” says Johannes Karges.
The research team proved this active principle in experiments on cancer cells and in animal models. They applied it to effectively treat mice that had been implanted with cells from metastasized and incurable human tumors. “Now, we’re looking for industrial partners who will help us undertake more in-depth studies,” says Johannes Karges. He expects that several more years of development work will be needed before the technology can be widely used in clinical applications.

Herpes is not only unpleasant but it can, in some cases, also have dangerous complications and life-threatening consequences. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a research team has now introduced a completely new approach for treating herpes. Their method is based on the inhibition of an enzyme that is needed for the release of newly formed virus particles from infected cells.
Just before an important interview or anticipated first date — always when you least need it — you feel a tingling and itching on your lip. A glance in the mirror reveals the first little blisters: herpes is back. The majority of adults carry the instigator in their bodies because, once infected, herpes simplex Type 1 viruses (HSV-1) settle into nerve ganglia. They remain in the body throughout a person’s life, inactive most of the time. If the immune system is temporarily weakened, maybe by anxiety or stress, too much sunlight, hormonal fluctuations, or a cold, an outbreak may occur. This is annoying and painful but usually harmless. However, this is not always the case: in some immunocompromised individuals or newborns there can be severe and sometimes life-threatening consequences. Dangerous complications are also a threat if the virus infects the eyes or brain; for example, corneal herpes is one of the leading causes of infection-induced blindness. Antiviral drugs can curb herpes infections but not fully vanquish them.
A team from the University of Georgia, Athens (USA), the University of Illinois at Chicago (USA), and the University of Utrecht (Netherlands), led by Deepak Shukla and Geert-Jan Boons, has now developed an alternative method for the treatment of herpes.
HSV-1 viruses dock to heparan sulfates, molecules that are made of many sugar (saccharide) units and are found in the extracellular matrix and plasma membranes of our cells. Once bound, the viruses can enter the cells. In the late stages of infection the virus causes the infected cells to increase production of heparanase, an enzyme involved in the remodeling of the extracellular matrix. It splits heparan sulfates off the surface of the cell — a prerequisite for the release of the viruses newly produced in the cell so that they can spread to other cells and tissues. The idea behind this project is to block the heparanase.
The team synthesized a series of oligosaccharides that have structures like those of heparan sulfates but are not split by the heparanase enzyme. Molecules made of six or eight saccharides strongly inhibit heparanase. By using complementary computer studies, the team was able to model the way these oligosaccharides are arranged in the enzyme’s binding cavity and determine which molecular interactions are responsible for the strong binding. Treatment of corneal cells infected with HSV-1 with the active oligosaccharides had the effect of inhibiting the virally induced excretion of heparan sulfates, significantly reducing the spread of the virus.
In addition, inhibition of heparanase through the new inhibitors can impede the migration and proliferation of immortalized cells (that is, cells with uncontrolled cell growth). This enzyme has been strongly implicated in cancer metastasis, suggesting another potential application for the inhibitors in the future.

Many people with diseases such as cancer or diabetes or those who have had a heart attack or stroke also suffer from depression. How effective are antidepressants for these patients? And are they just as safe for these people as for those without physical health problems? Researchers from Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Aarhus University in Denmark have teamed up to investigate these questions. They compiled and analyzed studies published over several decades from around the world in a systematic review. Their findings are highly relevant to clinical practice. They have now been published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
“About 20 percent of people with physical health problems also suffer from depression, and both should be treated,” says Prof. Christian Otte, Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences on the Charité Campus Benjamin Franklin. “Contraindications and interactions with other medications that the patient is taking are important factors in choosing the right antidepressant. Luckily, though, there are many different antidepressants with different mechanisms of action these days, so there is at least one suitable medication to treat depression that is an option for people with almost any physical issue,” Otte explains. Even so, one question has thus far remained open for both patients and their doctors: Are antidepressants in fact effective and safe in these individual cases? “We didn’t have a conclusive answer to that until now,” Otte says. “After all, the studies that go toward approving antidepressants are performed almost exclusively in physically healthy subjects.”
In-depth review of the existing research
To summarize the existing research from around the world, the team working on the study systematically searched several medical databases, looking at meta-analyses of clinical trials. The researchers applied strict selection criteria: “In our work, we only considered analyses that synthesize data from randomized controlled studies, since they are the best way to investigate a medication’s efficacy and safety,” says Dr. Ole Köhler-Forsberg, a depression researcher at Aarhus University. “Overall, we identified 52 high-quality meta-analyses for 27 different physical health problems, especially cancer, heart and metabolic diseases, as well as rheumatological and neurological disorders.” Otte explains: “We were able to show that antidepressants are in fact about equally effective and safe in patients with both depression and physical health problems as in those without these physical health conditions.” Antidepressants do cause a somewhat higher incidence of side effects than placebo treatment, but the researchers do not believe there are any general safety concerns about using these treatments for people with physical health issues.
Findings with high clinical relevance
“These findings are good news for people with depression and physical health problems — and they are highly relevant to clinical practice,” Otte explains. “Quality of life is often severely impaired, especially by depression. We also know that the course of physical disease is worse in patients who also have depression, so treating those patients with antidepressants in addition to other therapeutic measures can really help.” The researchers expect the study results to be included in the Nationale VersorgungsLeitlinie (NVL), the German national disease management guidelines, for depression. These guidelines are a joint initiative by the German Medical Association (Bundesärztekammer), the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung), and the German Association of the Scientific Medical Societies (AWMF) aimed at improving the quality of medical treatment in the country.
“We were surprised to see how few large-scale studies there are on this topic at all, especially in frequent combinations such as cancer with depression. We believe there is still a lot of research to be done in this area,” Otte says. He and his team are already planning future projects to find out whether antidepressants might have other effects beyond improving depression and whether they could also alleviate individual symptoms of other physical health problems that are present at the same time, for example.

Source: Guttmacher Institute Note: Data compares January to June 2023 with a six-month period in 2020. Legal abortions most likely […]

Early findings of two studies from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center shed light on new ways to anticipate recurrence in HPV-positive head and neck cancer sooner. The papers, published in Cancer and Oral Oncology, offer clinical and technological perspectives on how to measure if recurrence is happening earlier than current blood tests allow, and provide a framework for a new, more sensitive blood test that could help in this monitoring.
“When metastatic head and neck cancer returns, it impacts their quality of life and can be disfiguring, interfering with the ability to talk, swallow, and even breathe,” said Paul Swiecicki, M.D., associate medical director for the Oncology Clinical Trials Support Unit at Rogel. “As of now, there’s no test to monitor for its recurrence except watching for symptoms or potentially using a blood test which may not detect cancer until shortly before it clinically recurs.”
The paper in Cancer aims to identify different clinical ways that providers can more strategically track for recurrence. To do this, Swiecicki and his team needed to first understand what patient population was at the highest risk to then figure out an appropriate monitoring pattern.
The team examined 450 patients with metastatic head and neck cancer, including people with HPV-positive and HPV-negative cancer. HPV-positive cancer is caused by the human papillomavirus and is increasingly more common in head and neck cancer patients. The team identified some predictors of when recurrences would happen, and to what organs the recurrent cancer would most commonly spread. Patients with HPV-positive cancers were found to develop recurrent disease significantly later than those that were HPV-negative, and also were more likely to spread to the lungs. Taken together, these characteristics may help create a “surveillance” method in the future that combines routine blood testing and imaging to hopefully catch these recurrences and intervene before it’s incurable.
Swiecicki is quick to mention that, at this point, the results of this study are largely theoretical and provide a helpful framework to direct further research. That’s where the newly developed blood test, highlighted in Oral Oncology, comes into play.
Blood biomarkers — pieces of DNA that tumors shed into the blood — are tiny and hard to detect. Commercially available blood tests currently being used may not be sensitive enough to detect a recurrence significantly earlier than clinical surveillance, though several studies with multiple types of tests are ongoing. A research team, led by Muneesh Tewari, M.D., Ph.D., Swiecicki and Chad Brenner, Ph.D., aimed to create a highly sensitive blood test to detect cancer even when a smaller number of DNA fragments were present, with the intention of providing a better option for detecting cancer earlier in patients.
Not only is this test more sensitive and able to detect a smaller number of DNA fragments in blood, but it’s innovative in other ways too, says Chandan Bhambhani, Ph.D., the first author of the study. “We achieved this level of sensitivity by looking for nine different pieces of the HPV genome DNA all at once,” said Bhambhani, research lab specialist.
Tewari says this is a step towards a more proactive approach to tackling recurrence in head and neck cancer. “As of now, we only have the tools to react to symptoms when they recur. We want to find a way to be able to detect what’s causing the symptoms much, much sooner, even before the symptoms appear.”
As a clinician, Swiecicki agrees. “It’s exciting to have the ability to potentially detect cancer before it’s incurable and offer us a window for clinical trials to see if we could intervene on cancer to help give people both a better quality of life and perhaps longer quality of life, and even convert their disease from incurable to curable. We don’t know if that’s the case yet, but this is the first tool needed for that to develop.”
“Successful collaborative research projects like these are the direct result of how the Rogel Cancer Center enables our faculty to work together in ways that might not otherwise be possible. We have an outstanding network of faculty and researchers at our university, who are working together to develop innovative blood-based tests like the one highlighted in this story. It is our hope that these collaborative projects will lead directly to even more tools that improve the outcomes and quality of life of cancer patients.” said Brenner, Director of the Head and Neck Oncology Program.

The ketogenic (keto) diet may lower testosterone levels in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), according to a new paper published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.
PCOS is the most common hormone disorder in women, affecting 7-10% of women of childbearing age. It can cause infertility and raises the risk of developing diabetes, obesity and other metabolic health problems.
Women with PCOS have at least two of these signs: Elevated levels of testosterone and other androgen hormones associated with male reproduction, Irregular periods, and Large ovaries with many small follicles.The keto diet is a high fat, low carbohydrate diet that has shown promising effects in women with PCOS. Research has found it may help women lose weight and maintain weight loss, improve their fertility, optimize their cholesterol levels and normalize their menstrual cycles.
“We found an association between the ketogenic diet and an improvement in reproductive hormone levels, which influence fertility, in women with PCOS,” said study author Karniza Khalid, M.B.B.S., M.Med.Sc., of the Ministry of Health Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “These findings have important clinical implications, especially for endocrinologists, gynecologists and dieticians who, in addition to medical treatment, should carefully plan and customize individual diet recommendations for women with PCOS.”
The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of clinical trials in women with PCOS on the keto diet and examined the diet’s effects on their reproductive hormones (follicle stimulating hormone, testosterone and progesterone) and weight change.
They found women with PCOS who were on the keto diet for at least 45 days saw significant weight loss and an improvement in their reproductive hormone levels. Their follicle-stimulating hormone ratio was lower, which means they may have a better chance of ovulating. The women also had lower testosterone levels, which could help with excess hair growth and other symptoms of excess male sex hormones.
The other authors of this study are Saraswathy Apparow, Irma Liyana Mushaddik, Amalina Anuar and Anasufiza Habib of the Ministry of Health Malaysia; and Syed A. A. Rizvi of Larkin University in Miami, Florida.
The study received no external funding.

La noticiaSegún un estudio publicado el mes pasado en The Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, los niños de 1 año expuestos a más de cuatro horas diarias frente a una pantalla experimentaron retrasos en el desarrollo de las capacidades de comunicación y resolución de problemas a los 2 y 4 años.La investigación también reveló que los niños de 1 año que estuvieron expuestos más tiempo frente a una pantalla que sus compañeros presentaron retrasos a los 2 años en el desarrollo de la motricidad fina y las habilidades personales y sociales. Sin embargo, estos retrasos parecían disiparse a los 4 años.El estudio no encontró que el tiempo frente a una pantalla causara los retrasos en el desarrollo, sino más bien que hay una relación entre un mayor tiempo de exposición frente a una pantalla con los retrasos en el desarrollo de los bebés. Según los expertos, este patrón podría explicarlo el valor del tiempo cara a cara para los niños pequeños.La investigación también encontró que los niños de 1 año expuestos a más tiempo frente a una pantalla que sus compañeros mostraban retrasos a los 2 años en el desarrollo de la motricidad fina y las habilidades personales y sociales.Kike Calvo/Alamy¿Por qué es importante?David J. Lewkowicz, psicólogo del desarrollo del Centro de Estudios Infantiles de la Universidad de Yale, afirmó que la interacción cara a cara entre padres e hijos es crucial para darles un valioso conjunto de información a los bebés, incluida la manera en cómo las expresiones faciales, las palabras, el tono de voz y la retroalimentación física se combinan para expresar lenguaje y significado.“Esto no ocurre cuando estás viendo una pantalla”, comentó y agregó que no le sorprendían los resultados de la investigación.Los hallazgos, de investigadores japoneses, se extrajeron de cuestionarios sobre desarrollo y tiempo frente a una pantalla que se entregaron a los padres de casi 8000 niños pequeños. En general, se descubrió que los bebés expuestos a mayores niveles de tiempo frente a una pantalla eran hijos de madres primerizas más jóvenes, con menores ingresos y niveles de educación en el hogar y de quienes sufrían de depresión posparto. (Se reportó que apenas el cuatro por ciento de los bebés estuvo expuesto a pantallas durante cuatro o más horas al día, mientras que el 18 por ciento pasó entre dos y menos de cuatro horas frente a una pantalla al día y la mayoría, menos de dos horas).El estudio destacó una “asociación dosis-respuesta” entre el tiempo frente a una pantalla y los retrasos en el desarrollo: mientras más tiempo los bebés pasaban frente a una pantalla, más probabilidades había de que presentaran retrasos en el desarrollo.¿Qué sigue?Los autores del estudio señalaron que la investigación no distinguía entre el tiempo frente a una pantalla que tenía como objetivo ser educativo y el tiempo frente a una pantalla más enfocado al entretenimiento. Los investigadores agregaron que los estudios futuros debían explorar esta perspectiva.Según Lewkowicz, los padres por lo regular le preguntan cuánto tiempo de pantalla es el adecuado. Su respuesta: “Habla con tu hijo lo más que puedas, cara a cara todo lo que puedas”, mencionó.Pedirles a los padres que priven todo el tiempo de pantallas a sus hijos es poco práctico, afirmó: “Nadie le hará caso a eso. Tiene que ser con moderación. Con una fuerte dosis de interacción social en la vida real”.Matt Richtel es un escritor y reportero ganador del Premio Pulitzer radicado en San Francisco. Se unió al Times en 2000 y su trabajo se ha centrado en la ciencia, la tecnología, los negocios y la narración de historias en torno a estos temas. Más sobre Matt Richtel

An uptick in hospitalizations and deaths persists, but the numbers are relatively low and new vaccines are around the corner.Jill Biden, the first lady, tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday. Governor Kathy Hochul of New York has announced that the state will send high-quality masks and rapid tests to school districts that request them. Already, schools in Kentucky and Texas have closed, citing widespread respiratory illness among students and staff.The coronavirus is in the air again. Literally.A steady uptick in cases since July and reports of worrisome new variants have fueled concern that the virus is poised to make a comeback this fall and winter. But in interviews, experts offered reassurances that the country will not see a return to the nightmarish scenarios of previous years.There is no evidence that any of the variants in circulation cause more severe disease or evade immunity adroitly enough to render vaccines ineffective. And although hospitalizations and deaths are increasing week by week, the numbers remain low, noted Gigi Gronvall, a biosecurity expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.“These increases are more alarming by statistics than in reality,” Dr. Gronvall said. Hospital admissions for Covid increased by about 16 percent in the week ending Aug. 26, compared with the previous week. But the 17,400 new admissions were less than half the number in the same period last year, and about one-fifth the number in 2021.Deaths from Covid increased by nearly 18 percent over the previous week, but the numbers remained relatively low, averaging just over 600 deaths per week in August, compared with about 3,000 per week in late August 2022, and about 14,000 per week in late August 2021.“What I think we’re seeing is the virus continuing to evolve, and then leading to waves of infection, hopefully mostly mild in severity,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, head the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.At the moment, the numbers suggest that Americans should tailor their behavior to their own risks, some experts said.Those who are the most vulnerable to Covid — older adults, pregnant women and those with weakened immune systems — might well choose to take the utmost precautions, such as masking most or all of the time and avoiding crowded indoor spaces.Those with reduced risk may want to take precautions in some circumstances, especially if they might pass the virus to more vulnerable people. Stay up-to-date on Covid shots, Dr. Gronvall said, and get Paxlovid, the antiviral treatment, if you become infected and qualify.Though most scientists are cautiously optimistic, it is difficult to predict what will happen in the next few months because of two factors: the vaccines and the variants.The Biden administration has said that rather than periodic boosters, Americans now should expect to receive a single Covid shot each fall, much like the annual flu vaccine. This year’s Covid vaccines may be available as early as next week, when advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are scheduled to review data and issue recommendations for use.(Regulators in the European Union and Britain have already approved the updated vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech for use in everyone 6 months and older.)The shots will be available for free to most Americans through private insurers and through a new federal program for uninsured people. But it’s unclear how many Americans will opt for vaccination. As of May 2023, fewer than half of adults older than 65, and just about one in five American adults overall, had opted for the bivalent booster shot offered last fall.The updated vaccines target XBB.1.5, a virus variant that was dominant earlier this year when federal officials had to settle on a formulation. But since then, that variant has been superseded by several close relatives.Limited surveillance suggests that the most prevalent variant is now EG.5, nicknamed Eris, which accounts for about 22 percent of cases. EG.5 is also circulating widely in many European countries, including Britain, and in Asia. It may be more transmissible than XBB.1.5 and can sidestep the body’s immune defenses, but only partly.“That’s why we’re not seeing EG.5 sweeping crazily fast across the globe,” said Yunlong Cao, a researcher at Peking University, who analyzed the variant.EG.5 and another virus variant, FL.1.5.1, which accounts for about 15 percent of cases in the United States, both carry a genetic mutation that may help them not just dodge the immune system, but also bind more tightly to human cells.But there is nothing unexpected or alarming about the coronavirus acquiring new mutations, said Andrew Read, an evolutionary microbiologist at Pennsylvania State University.“When a mutation confers an interesting new trick that’s got an advantage, it’s going to be popping up in many different places,” Dr. Read said. “Everything we see is just consistent with how you imagine virus evolution proceeding in a situation where a new virus has jumped into a novel host population.”Yet one variant initially caused some consternation among scientists: BA.2.86, nicknamed Pirola.“It captured people’s attention because it emerged in 10 countries simultaneously, and it contains over 30 mutations in the spike protein,” Dr. Barouch said. “And so there was a substantial worry that it might be a drastic shift toward increased antibody evasion.”But recent data from several teams, including one led by Dr. Barouch, have put those fears to rest. The studies showed that BA.2.86 did not dodge immunity from infection or vaccination.And BA.2.86’s prevalence is so minor that, so far, it barely makes the C.D.C.’s catalog of variants spreading in the country. Even so, “I think we still need to remain vigilant, because BA.2.86 likely will continue to evolve,” Dr. Barouch said.Each mutation “needs to be evaluated vigorously and rigorously and as quickly as possible,” he said.

Published5 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Katherine LathamTechnology reporterInfertility affects 7% of the male population. Now artificial intelligence (AI) may be about to help solve the problem.Dr Steven Vasilescu says that the AI software developed by him and his team can spot sperm in samples taken from severely infertile men 1,000 times faster than a highly trained pair of eyes.”It can highlight a potentially viable sperm before a human can even process what they’re looking at,” he says.Dr Vasilescu is a biomedical engineer at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), in Australia, and founder of medical company NeoGenix Biosciences.The system he and his colleagues have developed is called SpermSearch.It has been designed to help men who have no sperm in their ejaculate at all, 10% of infertile men, a condition called non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA).Image source, Dale GossUsually in these cases, a small portion of the testes is surgically removed, and taken to a lab, where an embryologist can manually search for healthy sperm.The tissue is teased apart and examined under a microscope. If any viable sperm are found, they can be extracted and injected into an egg.This process, says Dr Vasilescu, can take multiple staff six or seven hours, and there is danger of fatigue and inaccuracy. “When an embryologist looks down the microscope, what they see is just this complete mess – a starscape of cells,” he says.”There’s blood and tissue. There might be only 10 sperm in the whole thing, but there can be millions of other cells. It’s a needle in a haystack,” says Dr Vasilescu.He says that, by contrast, SpermSearch can find any healthy sperm in seconds, when photographs of the samples are immediately uploaded into the computer.To achieve this speed, Dr Vasilescu and his colleagues trained the AI to identify sperm in these complex tissue samples by showing it thousands of such images.In a published scientific paper, the UTS biomedical engineering team said that in a test SpermSearch was 1,000 times faster than an experienced embryologist.However, SpermSearch is not designed to replace embryologists, but rather to act as an assistive tool. Image source, NeoGenix BiosciencesDr Sarah Martins da Silva says that such speed in finding any sperm is vital. “Time is critical,” says the clinical reader in reproductive medicine at the University of Dundee.”If you’ve got somebody that’s had an egg collection, and you’ve got eggs that need to be fertilised, there’s only a small time window for us to be able to do that. Speeding up the process would be hugely advantageous.”With sperm counts widely reported to have declined by half over the past four decades, infertility remains a growing problem.Factors behind the drop in male fertility are reported to include everything from pollution and smoking, to poor diets, not getting enough exercise, and too much stress.Dr Meurig Gallagher is another academic working to help men with infertility problems.An Assistant Professor in the Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine at the University of Birmingham, his new technique uses imaging software to track the speed and action of sperm tails.”Watching the tail gives insight into the health of a sample,” he says. “Minute changes can tell us whether the sperm is under environmental stress, about to die, or is responding to a biological cue.”Image source, Meurig Gallagher Meanwhile, Belfast-based fertility firm Examen uses a technique known as single cell gel electrophoresis to identify DNA damage in individual sperm.Prof Sheena Lewis and her team have been developing the technique for more than 20 years.However, Prof Lewis, who is emeritus professor in reproductive medicine at Queens University Belfast and chief executive of Examen, says that while developments in the use of AI are exciting, medicine moves very slowly. For example, SpermSearch is currently at the stage of proof-of-concept, following a very small trial involving just seven patients.”It doesn’t mean anything yet,” says Prof Lewis. “The length of time between something being at proof-of-concept to being commercially available is probably between two and five years.”It’s got a long way to go. It’s also aimed at the very small group of men who have NOA. Anything you can do is fantastic – but it’s never going to be mainstream.”Read additional stories on artificial intelligenceBack in Sydney, Dr Vasilescu says treatment like theirs is the “last stop”.”It can be the difference between fertilising an egg – or just stopping treatment,” he says.”If we can make the embryologist more efficient, more accurate, they might find sperm they wouldn’t otherwise find. That gives a man the chance of fathering his own biological children.”The UTS team are now poised to take their AI to clinical trials. “An actual live pregnancy – that’s the next step,” says Dr Vasilescu.

Treating newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes patients with semaglutide (trade names Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus) may drastically reduce or even eliminate their need for injected insulin.
Those are the remarkable findings of a small University at Buffalo study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine and published online on Sept. 6.
“Our findings from this admittedly small study are, nevertheless, so promising for newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes patients that we are now absolutely focused on pursuing a larger study for a longer period of time,” says Paresh Dandona, MD, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Medicine, former chief of the Division of Endocrinology in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB and senior author on the paper.
A total of 10 patients at UB’s Clinical Research Center in the Division of Endocrinology were studied from 2020 to 2022, all of whom had been diagnosed in the past three to six months with Type 1 diabetes. The mean HbA1c level (an individual’s average blood sugar level over 90 days) at diagnosis was 11.7, far above the American Diabetes Association’s HbA1c recommendation of 7 or below.
The patients were treated first with a low dose of semaglutide while also taking meal-time (bolus) insulin and basal (background) insulin. As the study continued, semaglutide dosing was increased while mealtime insulin was reduced in order to avoid hypoglycemia.
“Within three months, we were able to eliminate all of the mealtime insulin doses for all of the patients,” says Dandona, “and within six months we were able to eliminate basal insulin in 7 of the 10 patients. This was maintained until the end of the 12-month follow-up period.”
During that time, the patients’ mean HbA1c fell to 5.9 at six months and 5.7 at 12 months.