There are currently 8 million patients with Parkinson’s disease in the world. In 2021, Professor Per Saris’s group published results demonstrating that bacteria of the Desulfovibrio bacterial genus correlate with Parkinson’s disease, and that their higher number also correlates with the severity of the symptoms of the disease. Replicating the same study, Chinese researchers came to the same conclusion. “Our findings are significant, as the cause of Parkinson’s disease has gone unknown despite attempts to identify it throughout the last two centuries. The findings indicate that specific strains of Desulfovibrio bacteria are likely to cause Parkinson’s disease. The disease is primarily caused by environmental factors, that is, environmental exposure to the Desulfovibrio bacterial strains that cause Parkinson’s disease. Only a small share, or roughly 10%, of Parkinson’s disease is caused by individual genes,” says Professor Per Saris from the University of Helsinki. The goal of Professor Saris’s research group ...
By Max Matza BBC News The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) – an illness that kills thousands of Americans each year. The vaccine still needs approval from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before it can be rolled out to the public. Officials say the vaccine, named Arexvy by the manufacturer GSK, is a major breakthrough that will save many lives. It could be available to people over 60 within months, officials say. “Today’s approval of the first RSV vaccine is an important public health achievement to prevent a disease which can be life-threatening,” said Dr Peter Marks, who leads the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). RSV is a respiratory illness that typically results in cold-like symptoms for adults, but can be dangerous for young children, the elderly, and those with ...
Systems will support millions of patients with chronic respiratory conditions throughout Europe Kry – a company focused on digital healthcare – is launching a number of digital care pathways to transform treatment approaches for chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) such as asthma, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The new pathways will help early diagnosis, prevention and wider management of the conditions. It is also hoped that integrated digital healthcare can complement and enhance primary care access. An estimated 235 million people suffering from asthma, while more than 200 million people are living with COPD across the world. Currently, in Sweden, improving access to national screening programs for lung cancer is vital, especially when encouraging better prevention through early detection and establishing treatments. With this considered, Kry is developing a testing and diagnostic solution which uses track and trace in order to assist patients. This enables them be assessed ...
In order to carry out a seamless joint replacement, surgeons must create a customized preoperative plan for each patient. However, surgeons having to perform multiple operations per day are often too busy to dedicate adequate time to this step. Formus Labs, a New Zealand-based medical technology startup, is on a mission to make the preoperative planning process much quicker. On Wednesday, the company received 510(k) clearance from the FDA for Formus Hip, its fully automated 3D software for hip replacement preoperative planning. The company announced its plans to expand into the U.S. last year. Wednesday’s FDA clearance represents a major milestone, as Formus can now begin to sell its product to surgeons and healthcare providers across the country. Founded in 2017, Formus seeks to solve the problem of patient dissatisfaction and unsustainable costs in joint replacement surgery, said CEO Ju Zhang in a recent interview. “Our approach to solving this ...
People who perceived that they had cognitive difficulties such as memory problems during COVID were more likely to have lingering physical manifestations of the disease than people who did not report cognitive issues, new UCLA research suggests. More than one in three people experiencing long COVID symptoms perceived such cognitive deficits, which have been found to be related to anxiety and depression. The findings indicate that psychological issues such as anxiety or depressive disorders may play a part in some people who are experiencing long COVID, technically known as post-COVID-19 condition, or PCC. “This perception of cognitive deficits suggests that affective issues—in this case anxiety and depression—appear to carry over into the long COVID period,” said senior author Dr. Neil Wenger, professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “This is not to say ...
By Sean Whooley Leave a Comment [Screenshot from video provided by Nortwestern Medicine] Northwestern Medicine shared results from a first-in-human clinical trial for a skull-implantable ultrasound device that supports chemotherapy delivery. The device opened the blood-brain barrier to repeatedly permeate large, critical regions of the human brain. This enabled the delivery of chemotherapy injected intravenously. With the patient awake, a four-minute procedure opens the blood-brain barrier and patients go home after a few hours. Results from the Northwestern study demonstrated both a safe and well-tolerated treatment. Some patients even reached up to six cycles of chemotherapy treatment. The paper published on May 2 in The Lancet Oncology. More about the chemotherapy study The researchers say this marks the first study to successfully quantify the effect of ultrasound-based blood-brain barrier opening on the concentrations of chemotherapy in the human brain. Opening the blood-brain barrier led to approximately a four-to-six-fold increase in drug concentrations ...
In an 11-year study, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have further characterized idiopathic CD4 lymphocytopenia (ICL), a rare immune deficiency that leaves people vulnerable to infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases and cancers. Researchers observed that people with the most severe cases of ICL had the highest risk of acquiring or developing several of the diseases associated with this immune deficiency. This study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, was led by Irini Sereti M.D., M.H.S. and Andrea Lisco, M.D., Ph.D. of the HIV Pathogenesis Section in the Laboratory of Immunoregulation at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases (NIAID), part of NIH, and conducted at the NIH Clinical Center. ICL is a condition marked by too few CD4+ T-cells, which are a type of white blood cell. The clinical definition of ICL is a CD4+ T-cell count of less than 300 cells per cubic ...
Janssen Biotech, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, has entered into a worldwide collaboration and licensing agreement with Cellular Biomedicine Group (CBMG) for a pair of CAR T-cell therapy candidates. Under the terms of the agreement, Janssen will pay CBMG an upfront fee of $245m, with the Chinese biotech also eligible for certain milestone payments, as well as tiered royalties. In exchange, CBMG will grant Janssen a worldwide licence to develop and commercialise the CAR-T assets, except in Greater China, with the companies set to negotiate an option for the pharma to commercialise the products in the China territory. The investigational CAR-Ts have shown promising early-stage results in patients with relapsed/refractory non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), the companies said, with the majority of patients in the studies having diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). DLBCL is the most common type of aggressive lymphoma, accounting for approximately one-third of ...
Adding long-chain fatty acids can thicken cell membranes and alter the activity of a key enzyme, as LMU scientists have demonstrated in cell cultures. A characteristic feature of Alzheimer’s disease are deposits of the amyloid-β protein, which clumps together to form plaques in the brain. The amyloid-β protein is produced by an enzyme which resides in cellular membranes. A team lead by Prof. Harald Steiner and Dr. Edgar Dawkins from the Biomedical Center Munich at LMU has now shown that the production of amyloid-β is influenced by the membrane thickness. Cellular membranes consist of lipid bilayers. By externally adding further lipids, they can be thickened, which alters their properties. In earlier studies, Steiner’s team had already demonstrated in cell-free model systems that such changes affect the production of amyloid-β. This effect arises because the key enzyme for the production of amyloid-β, the so-called γ-secretase, is localized inside ...
Some types of epilepsy medicine taken during pregnancy are associated with an increased risk of severe psychiatric disorders in children. This is the conclusion of a comprehensive study of 38,000 children of mothers with epilepsy by researchers from Aarhus University. The research is published in the journal JAMA Neurology. While it has long been known that some forms of epilepsy medicine used during pregnancy are associated with a risk of birth defects, this new study is the most comprehensive study of children’s mental health so far. Among other things, the researchers found a worrying link between the antiseizure medication valproat and the child’s risk of developing a number of different psychiatric disorders. “Our study shows that four out of ten children born to mothers with epilepsy who had used valproat during pregnancy were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder before the age of 18, and that the drug was particularly associated with an ...
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