Publisher Health

How well can we assess the strength of our own immune system? The answer is that we are surprisingly good at this! A study by Konstanz psychologist Stephanie Dimitroff examined how freshly vaccinated people assess the strength of their immune response to the respective pathogen. Participants’ self-assessments were compared with the actual number of antibodies in their blood. And what was the result? In general, participants’ predictions corresponded surprisingly well to their antibody levels. This relationship was particularly strong when the immune response to the vaccination was weak, i.e. the body was not sufficiently protected against illness.
At the University of Konstanz, Stephanie Dimitroff researches the connection between our brain and our immune system. “Listen to your body,” she concludes from her study. “The field of medicine is moving towards greater patient orientation. Our findings support the idea that patients’ self-perceptions provide valuable clues about their state of health. Physicians should listen to them more.”
Communication between the immune and nervous systems
We all have a feel for our own bodies and whether we feel well, sick or injured. One part of our brain, the insula, receives information from the body and gives us a basic impression of its condition. Until now, it was assumed that this impression was quite general in nature. However, Stephanie Dimitroff’s study now suggests that our brain can perceive the body’s condition more specifically than previously thought. Is it possible that our brain can assess the state of our immune system?
“Of course, our brain does not count antibodies. But our immune system is intrinsically connected to the central nervous system,” Dimitroff explains. “The immune system is regulated via this connection. And our brain also receives information from the immune system.”
This communication between the immune system and the central nervous system is key for our sense of well-being or illness. “It is important to know here: When we feel ill, for example, we have a cold, this feeling is caused quite significantly by the immune system’s communication with the central nervous system,” says Dimitroff. “The brain receives signals that something is wrong with the body and causes the feeling of illness as a result.”
The same flow of information between the immune and nervous systems can generally also take place when the body is not ill. This means it could be possible that this communication process gives us an impression of our immune system even when we are healthy. Stephanie Dimitroff’s study investigates whether this is actually the case.

ETH Zurich Professor Ori Bar-Nur and his team grow muscle cells in the laboratory. In this case, they are mouse cells, but the researchers are also interested in human and cow cells. Promising applications resonate with both: human muscle tissue cultured in the lab could be used in surgery, while human muscle stem cells could help people with muscle diseases; meanwhile, lab-grown cow muscle tissue could revolutionise the meat industry by enabling the production of meat with no need to slaughter animals.
For now, however, the ETH team’s research is focused on optimising the generation of muscle stem cells and making it safer. They have now succeeded in doing so via a new approach.
Reprogrammed cells
Like other researchers in the field, the scientists at ETH Zurich use a different, easier to grow cell type as the starting material for generating muscle cells: connective tissue cells. Using a cocktail of small molecules and proteins, they molecularly “reprogram” these cells, thereby converting them into muscle stem cells, which then multiply rapidly and produce muscle fibers. “This approach enabled us to produce large quantities of muscle cells,” explains Xhem Qabrati, a doctoral student in the Bar-Nur group and one of two lead co-authors on this study. “Although muscle cells could also be cultured directly from muscle biopsies, the cells tend to lose their functionality after isolation, rendering it challenging to produce large quantities of cells.”
An important component of the used cocktail — and a central catalyst for cell transformation — is the protein MyoD. This is a transcription factor which regulates the activity of certain muscle genes in the cell nucleus. MyoD is not normally present in connective tissue cells. Before these cells can turn into muscle cells, scientists have to coax them to produce MyoD in their nucleus for several days.
No genetic engineering
Until now, researchers have turned to genetic engineering for this process: They used viral particles to carry the DNA blueprint for the MyoD protein into the cell nucleus. There, the viruses insert these building instructions into the genome, enabling the cells to produce the MyoD protein. However, this approach carries a safety risk: scientists cannot control where exactly in the genome viruses insert these instructions. Sometimes the viruses integrate into the middle of a vital gene, damaging it, or this insertion process might lead to changes that can trigger cancer cell formation.

A research team co-led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and The University of Hong Kong (HKU) has recently made a significant advancement in spinal cord injury treatment by using genetically modified human neural stem cells (hNSCs). They found that specifically modulating a gene expression to a certain level in hNSCs can effectively promote the reconstruction of damaged neural circuits and restore locomotor functions, offering great potential for new therapeutic opportunities for patients with spinal cord injury.
Traumatic spinal cord injury is a devastating condition that commonly results from accidents such as falls, car crashes or sport-related injuries. Spinal neurons with long axons play critical roles in transmitting signals between the brain and the rest of the body, controlling our movement and sensory perception. Spinal cord injury causes irreversible damage to neurons and axons, which significantly interrupts signal transmission, hence leading to defective locomotion and somatosensory functions.
“Currently, there are no effective clinical management or treatment regimens for patients with spinal cord injury, often leaving them with lifelong disabilities,” explained Professor Jessica Liu Aijia, Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at CityU and the co-leader of the research. “While recent progress has been made in promoting spinal cord regeneration through transplantation of hNSCs derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells, the degree of functional recovery obtained has been modest. This is largely due to the hostile micro-environment around the lesion site, such as the formation of barrier-like structures called astroglial scars and the lack of neurotrophic factors in adults for neuronal differentiation. These factors hinder functional neuronal regeneration, resulting in prolonged repairing and limited functional recovery.”
A gene — SOX9 was reported with a high-level expression at the injury site in previous studies, and the gene itself is the leading cause of the glial scars’ formation and the hindrance of neuronal survival and differentiation. To overcome the adverse effects of the post-injury micro-environment, the joint-research team engineered the transplanted neural stem cells with a graded reduction of SOX9 by approximately 50%.
The genetically modified hNSCs expressing half-dose of SOX9 resulted in robust neuronal differentiation and maturation (a process by which immature cells in the nervous system become specialised nerve cells) after transplantation in a hostile microenvironment, promoting neural circuits reconstruction in the spinal cord within a shorter period of time. It also remarkably reduced glial scar accumulation, facilitating long-distance axon outgrowth. The team recorded a large number of axons extending more than 35mm at 3 months post-graft, while relatively less in number with shorter extensions to 25mm with non-modified neural stem cells.
To further explore the therapeutic effects of the modified hNSCs in treating spinal cord injury, the research team used a severe spinal cord injury rat model to evaluate the locomotion recovery after transplantation, including grid walking and consecutive walk. The former recorded limb coordination, such as the capability to grasp a grid rung with correct placement, and the latter recorded stepping patterns to demonstrate their gait and fingertip motor ability.
Compared to rats’ graft with non-modified hNSCs, rats’ graft with SOX9 gene-modified hNSCs performed much better in placing their affected hind paws on the grid, with fewer misdirected steps after 10 weeks post-injury. In addition, these treated rats demonstrated a good gait with clear paw position and toe movement when walking across a metre-long narrow corridor.
“Our findings reveal a new treatment direction by using a genetically modified strategy to alter the grafts’ response to the deleterious microenvironment in vivo after injury, improving cell tolerance to the niche and self-differentiation potential. This brings a new treatment direction for repairing damaged spinal cord,” said Professor Liu.
“This genetic modification of hNSCs, particularly those derived from patient-specific human-induced pluripotent stem cells, which can be generated from a patient’s skin or blood cells, eliminates ethical concerns in using embryonic stem cells and minimises the risk of rejection by the immune system. It provides a more effective autologous stem cell therapy for severe traumatic spinal cord injury,” she added.

The COVID-19 pandemic took disinfecting to new heights. Now, a new study examining a commonly used item might convince you not to let your guard down just yet.
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science tested wristbands of various textures to determine their risk for harboring potentially harmful pathogenic bacteria. Despite being worn daily, routine cleaning of wristbands is generally overlooked or simply ignored.
For the study, researchers tested plastic, rubber, cloth, leather and metal (gold and silver) wristbands to see if there is a correlation between wristband material and the prevalence of bacteria. They investigated the hygienic state of these various types of wristbands worn by active individuals and identified the best protocols to properly disinfect them.
Using standard microbiological assays, researchers looked at bacterial counts, type of bacteria and their distribution on the wristband surfaces. They also conducted a bacteria susceptibility assay study screening the effectiveness of three different disinfectant solutions: Lysol™ Disinfectant Spray; 70 percent ethanol, commonly used in hospitals and alcohol wipes; and a more natural solution, apple cider vinegar.
Results of the study, published in the journal Advances in Infectious Diseases, suggest you may want to “go for the gold” or silver the next time you purchase a wristband. Nearly all wristbands (95 percent) were contaminated. However, rubber and plastic wristbands had higher bacterial counts, while metal ones, especially gold and silver, had little to no bacteria.
“Plastic and rubber wristbands may provide a more appropriate environment for bacterial growth as porous and static surfaces tend to attract and be colonized by bacteria,” said Nwadiuto Esiobu, Ph.D., senior author and a professor of biological sciences in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science.
The most important predictor of wristband bacteria load was the texture of wristband material and activity (hygiene) of the subject at sampling time. There were no significant differences between males and females in the occurrence or distribution of the bacteria groups.

Trust your gut? Your doctor likely will, too. Probiotics engineered to sense and report signs of bowel inflammation could deliver firsthand knowledge of your system’s inner workings — provided they are not killed or dispersed in the process.
Working toward making this scenario a clinical reality, Rice University bioengineers developed a platform that allows engineered biosensor bacteria safe passage through the gastrointestinal (GI) tract in an animal model, according to a study published in Biomaterials. “Good” bacteria designed to produce a fluorescent protein in response to physiological signs of disease fared and performed well inside the rat gut, protected inside alginate particles.
By combining synthetic biology with creative biomaterial design, the research groups of Rice faculty members Jeffrey Tabor and Omid Veiseh designed a platform that could eventually be deployed in a clinical setting not only to diagnose inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), but also to monitor disease progression, assess treatment response and help provide care tailored to individual patients’ unique gut microbiome.
“For our proof-of-concept study, we chose inflammatory bowel disease, an autoimmune disorder that causes painful and recurrent inflammation flares,” said Elena Musteata, a graduate student in systems, synthetic and physical biology in the Tabor lab. “But gut health plays many important roles in the human body, affecting metabolism, immunity, brain function and other systems. As we discover more biomarkers for different diseases, we can use this platform to diagnose and monitor a lot of different health conditions.”
The platform could help replace what is often a prolonged and complex diagnostic process for IBD — which involves invasive, time-consuming procedures like colonoscopies and biopsies and relies, in part, on subjective self-monitoring — with a much simpler and faster procedure.
“With our system, patients could theoretically receive a prescription for the capsules and simply drop off a stool sample after ingestion, eliminating the need for repeated colonoscopies or biopsies,” said Samira Aghlara-Fotovat, a bioengineering graduate student in the Veiseh lab. “Monitoring disease progression over time or keeping track of how a patient is responding to a given therapy could be much more accessible using a platform like this.”
According to Musteata, a quicker diagnosis could lead to better patient outcomes: “Especially with IBD, it’s very important to minimize the delay between symptom onset and treatment,” she said. “Having a way to assess gut health within a short amount of time and then take action could really generate a significant advance in the clinical management of chronic inflammation and other gut-related disorders.”
Another reason the platform may lead to improved patient outcomes is the ability to tailor treatments to individual patients’ physiology.

Americans in the northeast paid greater attention to air quality alerts this summer as wildfire smoke thickened skies with an orange-tinted haze. Smoke and other sources of air pollution contain tiny particles, called fine particulate matter (PM 2.5). Smaller than the width of a human hair, PM 2.5 pose health dangers when inhaled, especially to people with pre-existing heart and lung conditions. To assess exposure to PM 2.5 and help public health officials develop strategies, a Penn State-led research team designed improved models using artificial intelligence and mobility data.
“Our research shows that incorporating artificial intelligence and mobility data into air quality models can improve the models and help decision makers and public health officials prioritize areas that need extra monitoring or safety alerts because of unhealthy air quality or a combination of unhealthy air quality and high pedestrian traffic,” said Manzhu Yu, assistant professor of geography at Penn State and first author of the study.
Reported in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science, the researchers examined PM 2.5 measurements across eight large metropolitan areas in the continental United States. Air quality data came from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) monitoring stations and low-cost sensors usually purchased and distributed by local community organizations. They used the data to find hourly PM 2.5 averages in each region.
The scientists input the air quality data into a land use regression model. The model uses local geographical factors like satellite-measured aerosol levels, also called aerosol optical depth; distance to nearest road or stream; elevation; vegetation; and meteorological conditions such as humidity and wind speed to examine how the factors affect air quality. Past models have taken a linear approach to assessing air pollution, meaning that they assigned a fixed importance to each geographic factor and its impact on air quality, Yu explained. Certain factors like vegetation and meteorological conditions, however, cannot be represented this way because they change hourly or seasonally and may have complex interactions with other factors that affect air quality.
Yu and her colleagues took a nonlinear approach to better account for these changing or complex factors by incorporating automated machine learning — a type of artificial intelligence that automatically performs time-consuming tasks such as data preparation, parameter selection, and model selection and deployment — into the land use regression model. The automated machine learning approach used an ensemble method, which allows the machine to run and combine multiple models, to identify the best-performing model for each region. The researchers also examined anonymized cell phone mobility data to pinpoint areas with unhealthy air quality and high visitor numbers.
The researchers found that their automated machine learning method with integrated data from low-cost sensors and EPA monitoring stations improved the accuracy of air pollution exposure models by an average of 17.5%, offering greater spatial variation than using regulatory monitors alone. Yu credited the improved accuracy to the method’s ability to better account for the dynamic variables of aerosol optical depth and meteorological factors, which consistently proved to be the most important across all study regions. The mobility data component allowed the team to map potential hotspots within regions and times during the day and year when large numbers of people may be exposed to high PM 2.5 levels in these areas.
“Many areas may have consistently high air pollution levels, like those near factories and major transportation hubs, but that is not enough information to make a prioritized list of places needing extra monitoring or health alerts,” she said. “Our mobility-based exposure maps show public health officials and decision makers hotspots that have unhealthy air quality levels plus high visitor traffic. They can use this information to send alerts to people’s mobile phones when they enter an area with really high PM 2.5 levels to reduce their exposure to unhealthy air quality.”
Additional contributors to the research were Shiyan Zhang, doctoral candidate in geography, Penn State; Junjun Yin, assistant research professor in the Social Science Research Institute, Penn State; Jiheng Miao, who recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in geography from Penn State; Kai Zhang, Empire Innovation Associate Professor in the School of Public Health, State University of New York, Albany; and Matthew Varela, an incoming Penn State graduate student who recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma and participated in the study during Penn State’s summer 2022 Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Climate Science program.
Penn State, through the Miller Faculty Fellow Award from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, supported this research.

For the first time, researchers have found a potential drug candidate that improved outcomes for patients with a type of childhood brain tumor for which there are no effective treatments. The compound, called ONC201, nearly doubled survival for patients with diffuse midline glioma (DMG) or diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), compared to previous patients.
The findings are reported by an international team of researcher led by the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center and the Chad Carr Pediatric Brain Tumor Center.
In addition to reporting on the results of two early stage clinical trials, the paper reveals the underlying mechanisms behind the compound’s success in these tumors. The paper is published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Diffuse midline gliomas including DIPG with a mutation called H3K27M are particularly aggressive, with an overall survival rate of 11-15 months. These tumors are most frequently found in children and young adults. The only available treatment is radiation, and even that is difficult as the tumors are located amid brain regions with critical functions.
“It’s an incredibly difficult tumor to treat,” said senior author Carl Koschmann, M.D., associate professor of pediatric neuro-oncology and clinical scientific director of the Chad Carr Pediatric Brain Tumor Center at Michigan Medicine. “Prior to this study, there have been more than 250 clinical trials that have not been able to improve outcomes. This is a major crack in the armor.”
In two clinical trials testing ONC201 in a total of 71 patients with H3K27M-mutated diffuse midline gliomas, the median overall survival was nearly 22 months for tumors that had not recurred at the time of enrollment. Almost a third of the patients lived longer than two years.
ONC201 took an unusual path to a clinical trial. Initially designed to target dopamine receptors, which are upregulated in many different tumors, researchers saw that the drug passes the blood-brain barrier, one of the biggest challenges to designing drugs for brain tumors. Initial trials in glioblastoma were not successful, but a small number of patients with DMG that carried the H3K27M mutation had more promising results. Without understanding why it worked better in these patients, a phase 1 trial was started in children and young adults with H3K27M-mutated DMG.

In antibacterial photodynamic therapy, irradiation is used to produce reactive oxygen species that kill off bacteria. Because it requires external light and oxygen, this method is only suitable for surface infections. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a Chinese research team has now introduced a molecular “singlet oxygen battery” that can be “charged” with reactive oxygen, which it then releases in deep tissue layers to target methicillin-resistant staphylococcus.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are on the rise. Though often harmless to healthy people, dreaded multidrug-resistant “hospital pathogens” such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) use injuries or fresh surgical wounds to gain entry to the body. They also infect immunocompromised patients. Because antibiotics are not effective, there is sometimes no remedy.
One highly promising alternative is antibacterial photodynamic therapy, which is already widely used in dentistry. In this technique, a light-activated substance (photosensitizer) is irradiated, triggering a photodynamic reaction that produces singlet oxygen (1O2), an excited form of oxygen. Unlike antibiotics, this substance simultaneously attacks multiple biomolecular sites on the bacteria. It is easy to use, safe, painless, and generally free of side effects. Unfortunately, it has only been useful for surface infections because the necessary light only penetrates a few millimeters into the tissue. Additionally deeper tissue layers also do not have enough oxygen for effective treatment.
A team led by Bingran Yu and Fu-Jian Xu at Beijing University of Chemical Technology has now developed a new approach to photodynamic therapy: a “singlet oxygen battery” that can be used to fight deep bacterial infections because it requires neither light nor external oxygen.
The conversion of oxygen into reactive singlet oxygen through irradiation in the presence of a molecule that captures light (photosensitizer) happens first. The “battery” is “charged” with the singlet oxygen. This “battery” consists of a special nitrogen-containing, six-membered ring of carbon atoms (pyridone) that tightly binds the singlet oxygen. The reactive oxygen molecule bridges two opposite vertices of the ring (endoperoxide). A peptide bound to the ring specifically “recognizes” MRSA bacteria, so the molecular batteries accumulate around and in the bacteria and continuously release their singlet oxygen. The bacteria are thus simultaneously attacked at many different locations, including their membrane, DNA, enzymes, and other proteins. This makes the development of resistance virtually impossible. When administered to mice through nebulization, the singlet oxygen battery was shown to be very effective in treating pulmonary infections caused by MRSA. Systemic side effects were not observed.

The Faroe Islands, an incongruous speckling of green in the North Atlantic, are about as far away as you can hope to get on Earth from a toxic-waste dump, time zones distant from the nearest population centers (Norway to the east, Iceland to the west). Pál Weihe was born in the Faroes and has lived there for most of his life. He is a public-health authority for the nation, population around 53,000; chairman of the Faroese Medical Association and chief physician of the Department of Occupational Medicine and Public Health in the Faroese hospital system. He is also vice chairman of the Faroe Islands Art Society; a widower; a grandfather. A crumpled funeral program and half-empty juice boxes share space in the back seat of his Land Cruiser. Listen to This ArticleFor more audio journalism and storytelling,

Published18 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Trisha Husada, Quin Pasaribu and Kelly Ngin Jakarta and SingaporeMultiple doctors have advised Farah Noorfirman to leave her hometown Jakarta for her health’s sake. The 22-year-old asthmatic often wears a mask and carries an inhaler, but the air quality in the city is not helping. The Indonesian capital, which has long wrestled with air pollution, was ranked the most polluted city on global charts nearly every day last week.President Joko Widodo on Monday even mandated that all civil servants work from home amid worsening air quality.Last week, Jakarta saw its airborne concentration of the pollution particles known as PM2.5 outpace other heavily polluted cities such as Riyadh, Doha and Lahore, according to live data from Swiss air quality technology company IQAir. The company ranks pollution in major cities in real time every day. Jakarta has also been consistently ranked among the 10 most polluted cities globally since May. The capital city and its surrounding region are home to about 30 million people.These days, Farah also carries an oximeter – a device usually placed on a fingertip to measure oxygen levels in someone’s blood – to better monitor her condition.”For people with asthma, even if your oxygen levels fall just a little, you can really feel it. And it’s not just tightness, my chest really hurts. So it’s hard to breathe,” said Farah, who works as an intern at a marketing agency.”My asthma is severe and also hereditary. Every doctor told me to move out of Jakarta. ‘Get out of Jakarta if you want to get better, or you will continue to be like this,’ they’ll say.””I am quite tired because I can’t do anything. But this is where I live. Apart from wearing a mask, there is not much I can do,” Farah said.Image source, Farah NoorfirmanLocal authorities blame the pollution spike on the dry season and vehicle emissions, and will soon carry out random checks on vehicles and force drivers to undergo emission tests. President Widodo urged weather modification to produce artificial rain in Greater Jakarta, and advised companies to impose hybrid working. The city government is also considering an order for half of its civil servants to work from home. But Jakarta residents like Juan Emmanuel Dharmadjaya find themselves in a dilemma. “I really want to stay in Indonesia because this is where I was born and my family is here. But the air pollution is a silent killer.” The 22-year-old previously suffered from tuberculosis and now has sinus issues. The deteriorating air quality is taking a toll on his health, he said. “I cannot focus on my daily life because my nose gets runny and very itchy all the time,” said Juan, who works in the IT industry.Alluding to his time as a student in Germany, he said: “In Europe, I’ve never had a runny nose or cough even during the winter when the temperature goes below freezing. But when I returned to Jakarta, my nose immediately ran. It’s so bad and clogged.”Image source, Juan Emmanuel DharmadjayaSigit Reliantoro, a senior official at Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry, told reporters at a press conference last Friday that dry air in June, July, and August has “invariably” led to an escalation of air pollution in Jakarta. Dry air typically means pollutants remain suspended in the air for extended periods. Wildfires are also more common during dry seasons.Government research shows that vehicle emissions account for 44% of air pollution, Sigit noted. But activists like Muhammad Aminullah believe factories and coal-fired power plants are the primary contributors to Jakarta’s toxic smog. Although Indonesia has big ambitions to cut carbon emissions – such as by phasing out coal for electricity by 2056 – it is currently the world’s biggest exporter of thermal coal. Phasing out coal is costly because of the large numbers of people employed in related industries in Indonesia.The government has not come down hard enough on these industries because of “economic and political interests,” said Aminullah, who leads The Indonesian Forum for the Environment, also known as Walhi. He claims that the ashes from burning coal are not properly managed even if the plant is located near a community settlement. Amrin (not his real name), who lives near a coal-fired power plant, is among those affected. He told the BBC his family used to store rainwater for bathing and consumption. But that was no longer feasible after the plant started operating in 2009.”We don’t dare to do that anymore because the water collected is black and contaminated by a lot of thick black dust on the roof,” he said.More on this storyBurning mangroves for a living: ‘I’d quit if I could’Published1 day agoPresident found negligent over Jakarta filthy airPublished16 September 2021