Publisher Health

Published1 hour agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingThis video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.By Anton FerrieBBC Scotland NewsAbout one in seven people in the UK now take medication to treat depression but some say they are not being given appropriate advice about the potential side-effects of the drugs they have been prescribed.Seonaid Stallan’s son Dylan was a teenager when he began receiving treatment for body dysmorphia and depression. “He was struggling with the way he felt about himself, the way he looked,” Seonaid said. “He was extremely anxious. He would be physically sick. He would be unable to leave the house.”Dylan, from Glasgow, was treated with the antidepressant Fluoxetine from the age of 16. But when he turned 18, his medication was changed to Sertaline.Within two months of his prescription change he had taken his own life.His mother says neither of them were warned about potential side-effects when his medication was changed.Seonaid says she was at the appointment with her son and they were not told he might feel worse on the new drug before he felt better.She says he was also told that it would be okay to drink alcohol while on the new antidepressant.NHS guidance says it is best to avoid alcohol when starting on Sertraline until you see how it makes you feel – and the leaflet inside the box itself says alcohol should be avoided. Seonaid says the night before her son took his own life in 2015, he had drunk a “considerable amount” of alcohol. She says Dylan had expressed no suicidal thoughts before starting on Sertaline. Seonaid says “none of us can say for sure what would have happened” had she and Dylan been told about the possible effects of drinking alcohol. But she believes the advice they received from the clinic played a role in her son’s decision to end his life.The private clinic where Dylan was treated told the BBC it was “deeply saddened” by his death and extended its condolences to his family. “Though we are not in a position to comment on any individual’s treatment, our clinical team would of course be happy to meet with Ms Stallan if there remain concerns she would like to discuss,” it said.The effectiveness of antidepressants on under-18s is not fully known and in the UK only one kind of drug – Fluoxetine, commonly called Prozac – is prescribed to this group. But, when you turn 18, like Dylan, you can be prescribed any antidepressant.There is some clinical trial evidence to suggest the risk of suicide in 18-24 year-olds is increased when they take these medications. Better understandingProf Bernadka Dubicka says a discussion around side-effects should be happening whenever a patient is prescribed antidepressants, regardless of age. She told the BBC: “The data seems to show that up until the age of 25, one in 50 young people who are on an antidepressant might experience an increase in suicidal thinking and self-harm in those first few weeks after taking an antidepressant.”Seonaid believes better research and a better understanding of the side-effects of antidepressants may be life-saving, as rates of prescriptions go up. She told Dylan’s story to a new documentary for the BBC iPlayer which features the stories of young people whose lives have been changed – and saved – by antidepressants. Wider discussion of side-effects when taking these drugs has grown as numbers of those prescribed the drugs have risen. About one in seven people in the UK now take antidepressants and about 8% of those are under 25. The physical and mental side-effects of the drugs can be wide-ranging from headaches and brain fog to more severe side-effects such as loss of sexual function and suicidal thoughts. Experts say there is not always time for these side-effects to be fully discussed at the point the drugs are prescribed. GP and sexual medicine expert Dr Ben Davis believes the current pressures on GPs mean in-depth discussion of the effects of the drugs does not always happen. He said: “There are people for whom they are life-saving medication. “But the other side is a 10-minute consultation with someone you’ve never met before, with the pressure of someone who is seeing 30 people a day.”Do good decisions about long term medication happen in that environment? I think not.”The BBC has spoken to more than 100 people who have used or are using antidepressants, and all of them report side-effects of some kind. For some it has had a profound and negative impact on their sex lives. Connor, who spoke to us under a pseudonym to shield his identity, has described the impact that antidepressants have had on his body. He suffers from what is known as PSSD, or Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction. An SSRI is a class of antidepressant that includes Sertraline, which Connor began taking in his 30s.He says that within 24 hours of his first pill, his sex drive disappeared, which was accompanied by extreme physical symptoms. No attractionTwelve months after stopping taking antidepressants, these symptoms persist.”I still have numbness in my genitals,” he says. “I’m basically asexual. I have no attraction to the opposite sex. “When I considered myself to be a depressed person, I had a very healthy sex life.”Connor is one of more than 1,000 people who are part of the PSSD Network, an online community started to raise awareness of the condition, which is not currently recognised by the NHS. He says antidepressants have “completely destroyed [his] life”.Dr Davis says sexual difficulties on antidepressants are prevalent. “We know that one in two people with depression will have some difficulty with sex,” he said. “But we also know if you give medication to people, if you give antidepressants, there is evidence that up to eight in 10 people suffer from sexual difficulties with medication.”But for some, the risk of side-effects is worth the positive impact that antidepressants can have.London-based comedian Elliot Brown has been taking antidepressants on-and-off since the age of 16.One side effect has been a reduction in his libido.”In terms of sex drive, it’s a lot higher when I’m off them,” he said.”Your partner who you’re with sometimes, their thought is, ‘is it because I don’t find them attractive enough’?”That’s the point where you have to be honest with them.”He says, regardless of side-effects he experiences, the trade-off has been worth it and they have saved his life. “I don’t think I’d be here without them,” Elliot says. “I think it’s more important to want to be here and be with your loved ones than get lucky occasionally, or, for me, very rarely.”You can watch Are My Antidepressants Worth It? on the BBC iPlayer.If you or someone you know are feeling emotionally distressed, the BBC Action Line can point you to organisations that offer advice and support.More on this storyTeenage antidepressants ‘doing harm’Published5 February 2018Woman denied police job over antidepressants policyPublished29 JulyAround the BBCBBC One – Disclosure, Are My Antidepressants Worth It-

Listening to music and drinking coffee are the sorts of everyday pleasures that can impact a person’s brain activity in ways that improve cognitive performance, including in tasks requiring concentration and memory.
That’s a finding of a new NYU Tandon School of Engineering study involving MINDWATCH, a groundbreaking brain-monitoring technology.
Developed over the past six years by NYU Tandon’s Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Rose Faghih, MINDWATCH is an algorithm that analyzes a person’s brain activity from data collected via any wearable device that can monitor electrodermal activity (EDA). This activity reflects changes in electrical conductance triggered by emotional stress, linked to sweat responses.
In this recent MINDWATCH study, published in Nature Scientific Reports, subjects wearing skin-monitoring wristbands and brain monitoring headbands completed cognitive tests while listening to music, drinking coffee and sniffing perfumes reflecting their individual preferences. They also completed those tests without any of those stimulants.
The MINDWATCH algorithm revealed that music and coffee measurably altered subjects’ brain arousal, essentially putting them in a physiological “state of mind” that could modulate their performance in the working memory tasks they were performing.
Specifically, MINDWATCH determined the stimulants triggered increased “beta band” brain wave activity, a state associated with peak cognitive performance. Perfume had a modest positive effect as well, suggesting the need for further study.
“The pandemic has impacted the mental well-being of many people across the globe and now more than ever, there is a need to seamlessly monitor the negative impact of everyday stressors on one’s cognitive function,” said Faghih. “Right now MINDWATCH is still under development, but our eventual goal is that it will contribute to technology that could allow any person to monitor his or her own brain cognitive arousal in real time, detecting moments of acute stress or cognitive disengagement, for example. At those times, MINDWATCH could ‘nudge’ a person towards simple and safe interventions — perhaps listening to music — so they could get themselves into a brain state in which they feel better and perform job or school tasks more successfully.”
The specific cognitive test used in this study — a working memory task, called the n-back test — involves presenting a sequence of stimuli (in this case, images or sounds) one by one and asking the subject to indicate whether the current stimulus matches the one presented “n” items back in the sequence. This study employed a 1-back test — the participant responded “yes” when the current stimulus is the same as the one presented one item back — and a more challenging 3-back test, asking the same for three items back.

In a series of three editorials published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the international team of scientists discuss issues facing the wearables field including lack of standardisation of devices and data, disconnects between research and industry and the impact of inequality in ownership.
Currently around a third of UK adults own a smartwatch or fitness tracker. A 2021 Australian-based survey reported 24 percent used fitness trackers and 23 percent used smartwatches.
Some use them to track their steps, others their sleep, but few understand the potential of these devices to transform our understanding of how everyday activity influences health.
“If you ask someone how much exercise they did today they will answer none if they missed the gym at lunchtime, but their fitness tracker may tell a very different story,” said Emmanuel Stamatakis, Professor of Physical Activity, Lifestyle and Population Health at the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre, who co-led the editorial series.
“The device will pick up the short bursts of physical activity, for example when they run for the train or powerwalk to work.
“The use of wearable devices in research, paired with rapidly developing AI, allows us to unlock how these micropatterns of daily activity relate to a person’s risk of premature death, cardiovascular disease and even cancer.
“It’s an exciting time to be working in this area of research.”
“We now understand that the relationship between physical activity and health is much stronger than previous studies based on self-reported data suggested,” adds series co-lead Jason Gill, Professor of Cardiometabolic Health at the University of Glasgow.

The world of at-home stroke rehabilitation is growing near, incredible news for the 795,000 people in the United States who annually suffer a stroke. A new low cost, portable brain-computer interface that connects the brain of stroke patients to powered exoskeletons for rehabilitation purposes has been validated and tested at the University of Houston.
“We designed and validated a wireless, easy-to-use, mobile, dry-electrode headset for scalp electroencephalography (EEG) recordings for closed-loop brain-computer (BCI) interface and internet-of-things (IoT) applications,” reports professor Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of electrical and computer engineering, in the journal Sensors. Contreras-Vidal is an international pioneer in noninvasive brain-machine interfaces and robotic device inventions.
An EEG-based brain-computer interface (BCI) is a system that provides a pathway between the brain and external devices by interpreting EEG. In other words, the device reads your mind, interpreting the brain’s activity to initiate robotic movement. Brain-machine interfaces based on scalp EEG also have the potential to promote cortical plasticity following stroke, which has been shown to improve motor recovery outcomes. The adjustable headset, designed from commercial off-the-shelf components, can accommodate 90% of the population. There is a patent-pending on both the BCI algorithm and the self-positioning dry electrode bracket allowed for vertical self-positioning while parting the user’s hair to ensure contact of the electrode with the scalp.
“We used a multi-pronged approach that balanced interoperability, cost, portability, usability, form factor, reliability and closed-loop operation,” said Contreras-Vidal.
In the current prototype, five EEG electrodes were incorporated in the electrode bracket spanning the sensorimotor cortices and three skin sensors were included to measure eye movement and blinks. An inertial movement unit, measuring head motion, allows for a portable brain-body imaging system for BCI applications.
“Most commercial EEG-based BCI systems are tethered to immobile processing hardware or require complex programming or set-up, making them difficult to deploy outside of the clinic or laboratory without technical assistance or extensive training. A portable and wireless BCI system is highly preferred so it can be used outside lab in clinical and non-clinical mobile applications at home, work, or play,” said Contreras-Vidal.
The invention solves an array of needs.
“Current commercial EEG amplifiers and BCI headsets are prohibitively expensive, lack interoperability, or fail to provide a high signal quality or closed-loop operation, which are vital for BCI applications,” said Contreras-Vidal.

Researchers from the United Kingdom hope that a new, publicly available database they have created will shrink, not grow, over time. That’s because it is a compendium of the thousands of understudied proteins encoded by genes in the human genome, whose existence is known but whose functions are mostly not. The database, dubbed the “unknome,” is the work of Matthew Freeman of the Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, England, and Sean Munro of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, and colleagues, and is described in the open access journal PLOS Biology. Their own investigations of a subset of proteins in the database reveal that a majority contribute to important cellular functions, including development and resilience to stress.
The sequencing of the human genome has made it clear that it encodes thousands of likely protein sequences whose identities and functions are still unknown. There are multiple reasons for this, including the tendency to focus scarce research dollars on already-known targets, and the lack of tools, including antibodies, to interrogate cells about the function of these proteins. But the risks of ignoring these proteins are significant, the authors argue, since it is likely that some, perhaps many, play important roles in critical cell processes, and may both provide insight and targets for therapeutic intervention.
To promote more rapid exploration of such proteins, the authors created the unknome database (www.unknome.org), that assigns to every protein a “knownness” score, reflecting the information in the scientific literature about function, conservation across species, subcellular compartmentalization, and other elements. Based on this system, there are many thousands of proteins whose knownness is near-zero. Proteins from model organisms are included, along with those from the human genome. The database is open to all and is customizable, allowing the user to provide their own weights to different elements, thereby generating their own set of knownness scores to prioritize their own research.
To test the utility of the database, the authors chose 260 genes in humans for which there were comparable genes in flies, and which had knownness scores of 1 or less in both species, indicating that almost nothing was known about them. For many of them, a complete knockout of the gene was incompatible with life in the fly; partial knockdowns or tissue-specific knockdowns led to the discovery that a large fraction contributed to essential functions influencing fertility, development, tissue growth, protein quality control, or stress resistance.
The results suggest that, despite decades of detailed study, there are thousands of fly genes that remain to be understood at even the most basic level, and the same is clearly true for the human genome. “These uncharacterized genes have not deserved their neglect,” Munro said. “Our database provides a powerful, versatile and efficient platform to identify and select important genes of unknown function for analysis, thereby accelerating the closure of the gap in biological knowledge that the unknome represents.”
Munro adds, “The role of thousands of human proteins remains unclear and yet research tends to focus on those that are already well understood. To help address this we created an Unknome database that ranks proteins based on how little is known about them, and then performed functional screens on a selection of these mystery proteins to demonstrate how ignorance can drive biological discovery.”

Published33 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Laura FosterHealth, Science and Environment ReporterA weight-loss drug has been proven to also reduce the risk of a stroke or heart attack, according to a new trial.The makers of Wegovy say it cuts risk of a cardiovascular event in overweight people with heart disease by a fifth.The injection is popular in places like the US and was approved for weight loss in the NHS in England in June.The findings still need to be reviewed, and the drug would need to be passed by regulators again before it could be prescribed in a new capacity.But the company behind the drug, Novo Nordisk, says it has a clear medical benefit, as well as being able to help people lose weight.Executive vice-president, Martin Holst Lange, called it a landmark trial.”People living with obesity have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, but to date there are no approved weight management medications proven to deliver effective weight management while also reducing the risk of heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular death.”He said it had the potential to change how obesity is “regarded and treated”.Results ‘do not disappoint’Wegovy is a weight-loss injection that is taken once a week.It tricks people into thinking they’re already full, so they end up eating less and losing weight.Wegovy was approved for NHS use after research suggested users could shed more than 10% of their body weight.But in trials, users often put weight back on after stopping treatment.This new study, which looked at more than 17,600 adults aged 45 and older, took place over a five-year period.Each patient had a body mass index of 27 or over and established cardiovascular disease, with no history of diabetes.Image source, Getty ImagesThe trial found that patients given a 2.4mg once-weekly dose of Wegovy, plus standard care for the prevention of heart attacks or strokes, saw their risk of a heart attack or a stroke reduce by 20% compared with those given a placebo drug.The full details of the trial will be released later in the year.Prof Stephen O’Rahilly, from the University of Cambridge, said the long-awaited results “do not disappoint”.”The obvious conclusion of these findings is that we should view obesity as a medical condition, like high blood pressure, where effective and safe drug therapy can contribute to reducing serious adverse health outcomes.”Novo Nordisk says it plans to take its new research to regulators in the US and the European Union before the end of the year.It would also need to be approved by regulators in the UK, and then experts would decide whether it is something that should be offered on the NHS.More on this storyCelebrity weight loss jab to be sold by chemistsPublished13 FebruaryWeight loss drug semaglutide approved for NHS usePublished8 MarchAre weight-loss injections the answer to obesity?Published19 March

Gait-related disturbances adversely affect the quality of life of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), a condition affecting millions worldwide. Although various pharmacological, surgical, and rehabilitative treatments exist, their effectiveness is limited. Now, a team of researchers from Japan has successfully addressed this limitation. Using a novel neuromodulation approach that incorporates gait-combined closed-loop transcranial electrical stimulation, the team demonstrated significant gait improvements in patients with various neurological disorders including PD.
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative disease characterized by motor function decline, particularly in relation to gait disorders. These gait disorders manifest as decreased step length, reduced arm swing, slow movements, rigidity, and postural instability, which are prevalent among patients with PD. While non-pharmacological approaches like transcranial direct current stimulation show promise in improving motor function, recent research focuses on gait-combined closed-loop stimulation, which synchronizes brain stimulation with the individual’s gait rhythm. A recent study published on 9 June 2023 in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry proposes a novel intervention for gait improvement, thus creating new hope for patients with PD.
“We recently developed a novel neuromodulation approach using gait-combined closed-loop transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) and demonstrated promising gait improvements in patients who are post-stroke. Here, we tested the efficacy of this intervention in patients with Parkinsonian gait disturbances,” explains lead author Ippei Nojima from Shinshu University and Nagoya City University, Japan.
To this end, the clinical researchers from Japan recruited twenty-three patients with PD or Parkinson’s syndrome. All study participants were randomly assigned to receive either the active treatment or a “sham” treatment that mimics the active treatment but does not offer any therapeutic benefit.
During the course of the trial, an electrode carrying a low current (up to 2 mA) was externally affixed to the occipital region of the head. A reference electrode was then placed in the neck region to establish a stable electrical reference point and to complete the electrical circuit. The treatment included performing tES on the cerebellum in a non-invasive manner. The brain side showing severe impact was specifically targeted during the electrotherapy.
“Gait disturbance lowers activities of daily living in patients with PD and related disorders. However, the effectiveness of pharmacological, surgical, and rehabilitative treatments is limited. Our novel intervention might be able to improve physical function for not just patients with PD but also for those with other disabilities,” comments senior author Yoshino Ueki from the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Nagoya City University.
The cerebellum plays a key role in gate control. Therefore, the electrical stimulation of this region is likely to exert therapeutic benefits. The therapy showed encouraging results after just ten repetitions. The treatment group showed a significant improvement in gait parameters including speed, gait symmetry, and stride length.

When it comes to college-aged adults who are glued to their smartphones, experts argue over whether texting while walking increases the risk of an accident. Some studies have shown that texting pedestrians are more likely to walk into oncoming traffic, while other studies suggest that young adults have mastered the art of multitasking and are able to text accurately while navigating obstacles. However, few studies have measured how texters respond to unpredictable hazard conditions. By simulating an environment with random slipping threats, researchers report in the journal Heliyon on August 8th that texting increases the risk of falling in response to walkway hazards.
“On any day it seems as many as 80% of people, both younger and older, may be head down and texting. I wondered: is this safe?” says senior author Matthew A. Brodie, a neuroscientist and engineer at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering. “This has made me want to investigate the dangers of texting while walking. I wanted to know if these dangers are real or imagined and to measure the risk in a repeatable way.”
The team recruited 50 UNSW undergraduate students from his “Mechanics of the Human Body” course for this experiment. Brodie and co-author Yoshiro Okubo invented a tiled hazard walkway at Neuroscience Research Australia’s gait laboratory, which halfway through had a tile that could be adjusted to slide out of place, so anyone who stepped on it would slip as if on a banana peel. Students wore a safety harness — preventing any slip from becoming a fall — and sensors that collected their motion data. They then were asked to go along the walkway either without texting or while typing “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
To better simulate the uncertainty of real life, students were only told that they may or may not slip. This allowed the researchers to study how texting pedestrians might anticipate and try to prevent a potential slip, such as by leaning forward.
“What surprised me is how differently people responded to the threat of slipping,” says Brodie. “Some slowed down and took a more cautious approach. Others sped up in anticipation of slipping. Such different approaches reinforce how no two people are the same, and to better prevent accidents from texting while walking, multiple strategies may be needed.”
Despite motion data showing that texting participants tried to be more cautious in response to a threat, this did not counteract their risk of falling. When participants went from leaning forwards (such as over a phone) to slipping backwards, their motion sensors showed an increase in the range of their “trunk angle.” Researchers used this number to measure whether the texting condition was making students more likely to fall, and they found that the average trunk angle range during a fall significantly increased if a student was texting.
Walking also caused the texters’ accuracy to decrease. The highest texting accuracy occurred when participants were seated, but accuracy decreased even as walking participants were cautioned about a potential slip that did not occur. The lowest accuracy, however, occurred in conditions where participants did slip.
The researchers note that young people may be more likely to take risks even if they are aware that texting and walking could increase their likelihood of falling. For that reason, the authors suggest that educational initiatives such as signs might be less effective in reaching this population. In addition to education, the researchers also suggest that phones could implement locking technology similar to what is used when users are driving. The technology could detect walking activity and activate a screen lock to prevent texting during that time. In future research, the team plans on looking into the effectiveness of this intervention.

Approximately 65% of adults in the United States consume sugar sweetened beverages daily. Chronic liver disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and can result in liver cancer and liver disease-related mortality. Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, led one of the first studies to look at the association between intake of sugar-sweetened beverages, artificially sweetened beverages, and incidence of liver cancer and chronic liver disease mortality. Results are published in JAMA.
“To our knowledge, this is the first study to report an association between sugar sweetened beverage intake and chronic liver disease mortality,” said first author Longgang Zhao, PhD, of the Brigham’s Channing Division of Network Medicine. Zhao is a postdoctoral researcher who works with senior author Xuehong Zhang, MBBS, ScD, in the Channing Division. “Our findings, if confirmed, may pave the way to a public health strategy to reduce risk of liver disease based on data from a large and geographically diverse cohort.”
This observational study included nearly 100,000 postmenopausal women from the large, prospective Women’s Health Initiative study. Participants reported their usual soft drink, fruit drink (not including fruit juice) consumption, and then reported artificially sweetened beverage consumption after three years. Participants were followed for a median of more than 20 years. Researchers looked at self-reported liver cancer incidence and death due to chronic liver disease such as fibrosis, cirrhosis, or chronic hepatitis, which were further verified by medical records or the National Death Index.
A total of 98,786 postmenopausal women were included in the final analyses. The 6.8 percent of women who consumed one or more sugar-sweetened beverages daily had an 85 percent higher risk of liver cancer and 68 percent higher risk of chronic liver disease mortality compared to those who had fewer than three sugar sweetened beverages per month.
The authors note that the study was observational, and causality cannot be inferred, and relied on self-reported responses about intake, sugar content and outcomes. More studies are needed to validate this risk association and determine why the sugary drinks appeared to increase risk of liver cancer and disease. Furthermore, more research is needed to elucidate the potential mechanisms by integrating genetics, preclinical and experimental studies, and -omics data.
Funding: The Women’s Health Initiative program is funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services through contracts HHSN268201600018C, HHSN268201600001C, HHSN268201600002C, HHSN268201600003C and HHSN268201600004C. Zhang is supported by NIH/NCI grants (R21 CA238651, R21 CA252962, R37 CA262299, U01 CA259208, and U01 CA272452), an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant (RSG-17-190-01-NEC), and an American Cancer Society Interdisciplinary Team Award (PASD-22-1003396-01-PASD).

Cambridge scientists have shown that the hypothalamus, a key region of the brain involved in controlling appetite, is different in the brains of people who are overweight and people with obesity when compared to people who are a healthy weight.
The researchers say their findings add further evidence to the relevance of brain structure to weight and food consumption.
Current estimations suggest that over 1.9 billion people worldwide are either overweight or obese. In the UK, according to the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities, almost two-thirds of adults are overweight or living with obesity. This increases an individual’s risk of developing a number of health problems, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke, cancer and poorer mental health.
A large number of factors influence how much we eat and the types of food we eat, including our genetics, hormone regulation, and the environment in which we live. What happens in our brains to tell us that we are hungry or full is not entirely clear, though studies have shown that the hypothalamus, a small region of the brain about the size of an almond, plays an important role.
Dr Stephanie Brown from the Department of Psychiatry and Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, said: “Although we know the hypothalamus is important for determining how much we eat, we actually have very little direct information about this brain region in living humans. That’s because it is very small and hard to make out on traditional MRI brain scans.”
The majority of evidence for the role of the hypothalamus in appetite regulation comes from animal studies. These show that there are complex interacting pathways within the hypothalamus, with different cell populations acting together to tell us when we are hungry or full.
To get around this, Dr Brown and colleagues used an algorithm developed using machine learning to analyse MRI brain scans taken from 1,351 young adults across a range of BMI scores, looking for differences in the hypothalamus when comparing individuals who are underweight, healthy weight, overweight and living with obesity.