- Exposure-response associations between chronic exposure to fine particulate matter and risks of hospital admission for major cardiovascular diseases: population based cohort study The BMJ
- ‘Safe’ air-quality levels in US, UK and EU still harmful for health, study says The Guardian
- Air pollution linked to increased hospital admission for major heart and lung diseases Medical Xpress
- Understanding the Impact of PM2.5 on Non-Respiratory Infections: A Deep Dive into Recent Research Medriva
- ‘No safe threshold’: Air pollution increases risk for hospitalization among older adults Healio
Tag Archives: Diseases
Body mass index and cancer risk among adults with and without cardiometabolic diseases: evidence from the EPIC and UK Biobank prospective cohort studies – BMC Medicine – BMC Medicine
- Body mass index and cancer risk among adults with and without cardiometabolic diseases: evidence from the EPIC and UK Biobank prospective cohort studies – BMC Medicine BMC Medicine
- Obesity linked to prostate cancer risk: New study uncovers inherited dangers from fathers News-Medical.Net
- People with excess weight, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases are at higher risk of cancer IARC
- Gaining Weight Linked To Rise In Cancer Risk Extra.ie
- New study reveals increased cancer risk linked to higher BMI in adults with cardiovascular diseases News-Medical.Net
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FDNY first responder deaths from 9/11-related diseases now equal deaths from attacks – CNN
- FDNY first responder deaths from 9/11-related diseases now equal deaths from attacks CNN
- 343rd FDNY member dies from 9/11 illness — matching number killed during attack: officials New York Post
- 9/11 illness deaths among first responders is now EQUAL to number of firefighters killed on day of tragedy aft Daily Mail
- Number of FDNY members who died of 9/11 illnesses now matches how many were lost at Ground Zero SILive.com
- FDNY’s Ground Zero-related illness deaths reach 343, same death toll as number who died on 9/11 New York Daily News
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New Vaccine Can Completely Reverse Autoimmune Diseases Like Multiple Sclerosis, Type 1 Diabetes, and Crohn’s Disease – SciTechDaily
- New Vaccine Can Completely Reverse Autoimmune Diseases Like Multiple Sclerosis, Type 1 Diabetes, and Crohn’s Disease SciTechDaily
- COVID vaccine pill that kills virus before it infects the body could be coming New York Post
- “Inverse vaccine” shows promise to reverse autoimmune diseases without shutting down rest of the immune system News-Medical.Net
- Get ready for Covid vaccine PILLS! Researchers develop oral shot that kills virus BEFORE it infects the body Daily Mail
- Rapid acting, oral vaccines could be coming soon Medical Xpress
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Humoral immunity to an endemic coronavirus is associated with postacute sequelae of COVID-19 in individuals with rheumatic diseases – Science
- Humoral immunity to an endemic coronavirus is associated with postacute sequelae of COVID-19 in individuals with rheumatic diseases Science
- SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, can infect sensory neurons Medical Xpress
- Review identifies future research directions for the study of a SARS-CoV-2 reservoir in PASC News-Medical.Net
- Study characterizes SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.2.86: New variant under watch News-Medical.Net
- Researchers characterize new SARS-CoV-2 BA.2.86 variant neutralization by monoclonal antibodies News-Medical.Net
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Federal jury convicts 4 Florida men for selling bleach solution as ‘miracle’ cure for diseases – Miami Herald
- Federal jury convicts 4 Florida men for selling bleach solution as ‘miracle’ cure for diseases Miami Herald
- ‘Church of Bleach’ family found guilty of selling fake COVID-19 cure through online church ABC7
- 4 members of a Florida family are convicted of selling a fake COVID-19 cure through online church The Associated Press
- A Florida family that allegedly sold bleach as a COVID-19 cure is on trial in Miami NBC 6 South Florida
- Church of Bleach: Florida family found guilty of selling fake COVID-19 cure through online church KABC-TV
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The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health Announces Selection of Eight Rare Diseases for the Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium Clinical Trial Portfolio – The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health
- The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health Announces Selection of Eight Rare Diseases for the Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium Clinical Trial Portfolio The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health
- NIH foundation adds 8 rare diseases to clinical trial portfolio FierceBiotech
- Nemours Children’s Health selected to conduct first gene therapy clinical trial for Morquio A syndrome News-Medical.Net
- ASGCT News: Eight Rare Diseases Selected for New Gene Therapy Clinical Trial Portfolio Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News
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Could a New Test That Detects Dopamine Levels Help Diagnose Neurological Diseases?
Summary: A new test that measures dopamine levels in biological fluids could help with the detection of depression, Parkinson’s disease, and other disordered marked by abnormal dopamine levels.
Source: Wiley
Altered levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine are apparent in various conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease and depression.
In research published in ChemistrySelect, investigators describe a quick, sensitive, and simple test to determine dopamine levels in biological fluids.
The method could help clinicians spot abnormal blood levels of dopamine in patients, potentially allowing for earlier disease detection.
The method relies on what are called carbon quantum dots, a type of carbon nanomaterial with photoluminescence properties, and ionic liquid, which is comprised of several mineral anions and organic cations existing in liquid form at room temperature.
“The proposed electrochemical sensor could be an exceptional step forward in dopamine detection and pave the way for the molecular diagnosis of neurological illnesses,” the authors wrote.
About this dopamine research news
Author: Sara Henning-Stout
Source: Wiley
Contact: Sara Henning-Stout – Wiley
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access.
“An Electrochemical Sensor Based on Carbon Quantum Dots and Ionic Liquids for Selective Detection of Dopamine” by Zahra Nazari et al. ChemicalSelect
Abstract
An Electrochemical Sensor Based on Carbon Quantum Dots and Ionic Liquids for Selective Detection of Dopamine
See also
Dopamine (DA) as a neurotransmitter has a pivotal role in the central nervous system. Because of altered levels of DA in various neuroscience diseases, development of a quick, sensitive, and simple analytical approach to determine DA in biological fluids could be very applicable.
In this research, a novel electrochemical sensor based on a carbon paste electrode (CPE) modified with ionic liquid (IL) and carbon quantum dots (CQDs) for measuring DA with uric acid and ascorbic acid was developed. IL and CQDs were synthesized and characterized for their specific properties such as composition, emission, size distribution, and morphology structure.
Then, the modified CPE and different DA concentration was determined via cyclic voltammetry. The modified electrode exhibited great electrocatalytic activity for DA oxidation.
Under optimal conditions, the calibration diagram for DA was linear within the range of 0.1–50 μM in phosphate buffer (pH=7.4) and limit of detection was 0.046 μM. The electrode was successfully used in the determination of DA in real samples and generated acceptable outputs.
The proposed electrochemical sensor could be an exceptional step forward in DA detection and pave the way for the molecular diagnosis of neurological illnesses.
One of The Deadliest Human Diseases Is Far Older Than We Ever Realized : ScienceAlert
Smallpox has left an unmistakable mark on human history, killing at least 300 million people in the 20th century alone. In spite of its notoriety, the virus’s origins still remain elusive.
Now, a team of scientists in Italy has pushed our best estimates for the emergence of smallpox back by another 2,000 years, verifying historical sources that suggested the disease has plagued human societies since ancient times, back when pharaohs ruled.
Advances in genetic sequencing technologies have enabled researchers to undertake increasingly detailed analyses on fragments of ancient viral DNA in recent years, inching them closer to knowing where and when smallpox emerged.
Thanks to a lucky find in Lithuania in 2016, scientists traced smallpox as far back as the 1500s using viral DNA lifted from the remains of a young boy. In 2020, viral DNA from Viking Age skeletons pushed genetic evidence for the latest emergence of smallpox back another few years, to some time before 1050 CE.
However, historical records have suggested something like smallpox plagued ancient societies even earlier than this. Descriptions of symptoms resembling those of the disease have been found in 4th-century texts from China, and Egyptian mummies with pockmark scarring also suggest smallpox was circulating some 3,000 to 4,000 years ago.
But definitive genetic evidence – akin to the molecular fingerprint of a virus – to support this theory has been hard to find.
Scientists can still infer a lot about a virus’s past and its evolutionary history when they have enough samples to compare. They can see how a virus has changed over time and work out how fast or slow a virus picks up genetic mutations. From there, scientists can wind the ‘molecular clock’ back to estimate when an ancestral version of the virus likely existed.
In the case of smallpox, the disease is caused by the variola virus or VARV. In this new study, bioinformatician Diego Forni of the Scientific Institute for Research, Hospitalization and Healthcare (IRCCS) in Italy led a team into taking another look at the genetic sequences of 54 VARV samples, retrieved from previously published works or a research database.
This included four ancient VARV genomes from the Viking Age and two historic VARV genomes from the 17th and 18th centuries, along with 48 modern VARV sequences from before smallpox was eradicated in 1980.
Using this set of viral sequences, the researchers reconstructed the evolutionary history of the smallpox virus, showing how it branched out from a single common ancestor into different strains that either spread around the world, or petered out.
In their models, they adjusted for the way the rate of viral evolution appears to slow down when looking at longer time spans and speed up over shorter time periods. The most recent common ancestor of all the VARV genomes, they found, dates back to around 3,800 years ago or earlier.
Comparing the VARV sequences to those of two related orthopoxviruses – taterapox (which infects gerbils) and camelpox – the analysis also showed that the smallpox virus ancestor split off from its relatives around 7,700 years ago.
That still leaves a pretty wide window for when smallpox may have spilled over into humans, somewhere roughly between 8,000 and 4,000 years ago, the researchers say. But even so, it adds to evidence suggesting smallpox has been with us for millennia longer than previous analyses of viral DNA samples had suggested.
“Variola virus may be much, much older than we thought,” says Forni. “This is important because it confirms the historical hypothesis that smallpox existed in ancient societies.”
While these new dating estimates put smallpox in the right timeframe to match historical accounts of Egyptian pharaohs bearing smallpox scars, some skepticism remains as to whether the disease was widespread back then, as contemporary written documents contain few mentions of smallpox-like symptoms.
“A number of other infectious diseases cause a rash similar to smallpox and only the sequencing of archaeological specimens will provide information on which ancient societies were affected by the disease,” Forni and colleagues conclude in their paper.
The study was published in Microbial Genomics.
Two Separate Eye Diseases May Contribute to Common Blinding Eye Condition AMD
Summary: Study demonstrates two different types of deposits in the retina that appear to contribute to age-related macular degeneration.
Source: Mount Sinai Hospital
Two separate eye diseases may contribute to age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness in the United States, according to a new study from New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai.
The research, published January 9 in Eye is the first to demonstrate that two different types of deposits in the retina may contribute to early AMD, which can progress to advanced AMD and blindness.
These two diseases could be diagnosed, studied, and treated separately with appropriate early intervention to prevent vision loss and other complications.
Age-related macular degeneration results from damage to the central area of the retina called the macula, which is responsible for reading and driving vision for driving Nearly 20 million Americans age 40 and older are living with some form of AMD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
AMD in its early form is currently considered to be a single disease with cholesterol-containing deposits. These deposits are known as drusen and subretinal drusenoid deposits (SDDs).
Early AMD may progress to blindness in two advanced forms, commonly called wet and dry AMD. The advanced dry form is also called geographic atrophy (GA) by eye specialists.
“An amazing fact is that the retina can generate a fluorescent light, similar to that of a light fixture, but a million times dimmer.
“For the first time, we were able to measure this dim light, called autofluorescence (AF), with ultra-sensitive detectors to study advanced AMD.
“We found it was consistently twice as bright in the patients with SDDs as those with drusen when they reached advanced AMD, and came from a unique diseased layer,” explains lead author R. Theodore Smith, MD, Ph.D., Professor of Ophthalmology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
“Combined with our prior research, this provides conclusive evidence that two different disease processes in AMD are taking place, one with darker fluorescence and drusen, and one with brighter fluorescence and SDDs, and they need to be treated differently.”
Drusen formation can be slowed by appropriate vitamin supplements to prevent vision loss. Currently, there is no known treatment for SDDs, and they pose a greater threat of advanced AMD.
However, in a recent previous study, Dr. Smith and a team of Mount Sinai researchers found that patients with SDDs are likely to have heart damage from heart failure and heart attacks, or advanced heart valve disease, or strokes associated with carotid artery disease.
“We think the SDDs result from deficient blood flow to the eye caused by these vascular diseases. We therefore believe that patients with SDDs should be warned they may have life-threatening undetected heart conditions that should be evaluated and treated.
“Further research needs to be done in women and disadvantaged groups where neglected heart disease is a serious issue. Eye scans for SDDs and routine cholesterol blood tests could address this. Additionally, treating the cardiovascular condition and restoring the eye’s blood supply may also help the SDDs.”
This work should prompt retinal specialists to look for both drusen and SDDs with optical coherence tomography (OCT), a standard retinal imaging technique, to best counsel patients.
The new research measured the autofluorescence and evaluated OCT scans in 18 patients (32 eyes) with advanced AMD and geographic atrophy (GA). Because GA can happen in multiple regions of the retina, investigators analyzed 52 GA regions overall.
They also selected only patients who had OCT scans over the three previous years so they could determine whether the diseased regions started with drusen, SDDs, or both. 18 of these regions originated from drusen, 12 originated from SDDs, and 22 originated from mixtures of drusen and SDDs.
The team then measured the brightness of the fluorescent light coming from these regions with a very sensitive light meter. They found it was twice as bright in patients with SDDs when compared to those with drusen. Specifically, the brightness readings averaged 72 in SDD subjects and 36 in drusen subjects, with values in the mixed group falling in between.
See also
“All these numbers translate into one basic fact—there are two different diseases in AMD, one with drusen and one with SDDs,” says Dr. Smith.
“The good news for patients and eye specialists is that in the clinic, we will not need advanced AF measurements to know which form of AMD the patient has. As our research showed, the two forms are associated with drusen and SDDs, and those deposits can be identified by standard retinal imaging. It therefore becomes important to diagnose which form of AMD the patient has for treatment and prevention of disease.”
About this age related macular degeneration research news
Author: Press Office
Source: Mount Sinai Hospital
Contact: Press Office – Mount Sinai Hospital
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Closed access.
“Two potentially distinct pathways to geographic atrophy in age-related macular degeneration characterized by quantitative fundus autofluorescence” by Wei Wei et al. Eye
Abstract
Two potentially distinct pathways to geographic atrophy in age-related macular degeneration characterized by quantitative fundus autofluorescence
Background/Aims
To demonstrate two distinct pathways to geographic atrophy (GA) that originate from soft drusen/ pigment epithelial detachments (PEDs) and subretinal drusenoid deposits (SDDs), respectively, and are characterized by their final quantitative autofluorescence (qAF) levels.
Methods
23 eyes of 18 patients with GA underwent spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and qAF imaging on the qAF-ready Heidelberg Spectralis. 52 GA Regions-of-interest (ROIs), or clusters of adjacent lesions, were selected, and the ROIs were divided into groups by the dominant iAMD precursors on prior serial tracked SD-OCT scans. Mean qAF values and structural SD-OCT findings of groups were compared.
Results
Group 1 lesions (soft drusen/PED precursors, 18/52) were isolated, with lower mean qAF (35.88 ± 12.75 units); group 3 lesions (SDD precursors, 12/52) were multilobular, with significantly higher mean qAF (71.62 ± 12.12 units, p < 0.05). Group 2 lesions, (mixed precursors, 22/52) had intermediate mean qAF (58.13 ± 67.92 units). Significantly greater prevalence of split RPE/ Bruch’s membrane complex in SDD-associated GA, suggesting basal laminar deposit (BLamD), than in drusen-associated lesions was the major structural difference.
Conclusion
Quantitative autofluorescence (qAF) of GA lesions may reflect two distinct pathogenic pathways and structural outcomes, originating from soft drusen/PED and subretinal drusenoid deposits (SDDs), with the final qAF values lower or higher, respectively. Basal laminar deposit specifically in and adjacent to SDD-associated lesions may account for their greater autofluorescence. The potential importance of this paradigm is that it could direct, simplify and facilitate research on geographic atrophy by dividing the disease into two components that may be studied separately.