Lifeboat Foundation

Osteoarthritis affects as many as 30 million Americans, but treatment has traditionally been limited to managing symptoms with pain relievers and lifestyle changes. In a new Nature study, YSM researchers identify a new therapeutic target that could help slow and reverse joint damage from osteoarthritis.

Yale researchers have identified a drug target that may alleviate joint degeneration associated with osteoarthritis, a debilitating condition that afflicts as many as 30 million people in the United States alone, they report Jan. 3 in the journal Nature.

Pain relievers and lifestyle changes, such as exercise and reduced excess weight, have long been the therapies most commonly used to treat the joint stiffness and pain caused by the degenerative disease, but there is a pressing need for therapies that can prevent joint breakdown that occurs in osteoarthritis.

Continue reading “Epilepsy drug shows promise in slowing joint degeneration in osteoarthritis” »

Scientists have developed a new class of polymers that may kill bacteria without causing antibiotic resistance.

Antibiotic-resistant microorganisms are one of the most serious risks to global public health.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, antibiotic-resistant bacteria cause as many as 2.8 million infections in the United States each year.

Recent studies by Zampaloni et al. and Pahil et al. published in the journal Nature describe a novel method of inhibiting the growth of Gram-negative bacteria such as Acinetobacter using antibiotics consisting of macrocyclic peptides that target the bacterial protein bridge machinery that transports lipopolysaccharides from the cytoplasm to the outer membrane.

The amphipathic lipopolysaccharides in the outer leaflet of the asymmetric outer membrane bilayer of Gram-negative bacteria block antibiotic entry, making the treatment of bacterial infections involving Gram-negative bacteria difficult. Furthermore, the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, especially Gram-negative bacteria such as Acinetobacter baumannii, is a rapidly increasing global health concern since antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections are becoming increasingly common among hospitalized and critically ill patients.

The lipopolysaccharide is synthesized inside the bacterial cell in the inner membrane, transported across the cell membrane, and assembled in the outer leaflet. The transportation of lipopolysaccharides occurs with the help of LptB₂FGC, a subcomplex in the inner membrane that enlists adenosine triphosphate (ATP) hydrolysis and a protein bridge to extract lipopolysaccharides from the inner membrane and transport it to the outer membrane. Targeting this transportation complex could effectively inhibit the lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis, making the Gram-negative bacteria susceptible to antibacterial activity.

The world’s first partial heart transplant has achieved what researchers have spent more than a year hoping for—functioning valves and arteries that grow along with the young patient, as hypothesized by the pioneering team behind the procedure at Duke Health.

The procedure was performed in the spring of 2022, in an infant who needed heart valve replacement. The previous standard of care—using valves that were non-living—would not grow along with the child, requiring frequent replacement, entailing surgical procedures that carry a 50% mortality rate.

A study led by Duke Health physicians, appearing online Jan. 2 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found that the new manner of valve procurement used during the partial heart transplant led to two well-functioning valves and arteries that are growing in concert with the child as if they were native vessels.

Sunlight provides so much more than just Vitamin D: learn from Dr. Seheult of https://bit.ly/44MTKR2 about the myriad of benefits from optimizing our exposure to light.

Roger Seheult, MD is the co-founder and lead professor at https://bit.ly/44MTKR2

Continue reading “Boost Health and Immunity with Sunlight: Light Therapy and Melatonin” »

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health have identified a protein in the visual system of mice that appears to be key for stabilizing the body’s circadian rhythms by buffering the brain’s response to light. The finding, published Dec. 5 in PLoS Biology, advances efforts to better treat sleep disorders and jet lag, the study authors say.

“If circadian rhythms adjusted to every rapid change in illumination, say an eclipse or a very dark and rainy day, they would not be very effective in regulating such periodic behaviors as sleep and hunger. The protein we identified helps wire the brain during neural development to allow for stable responses to circadian rhythm challenges from day to day,” says Alex Kolodkin, Ph.D., professor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Neuroscience and deputy director for the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences.

Kolodkin co-led the study with Samer Hattar, Ph.D., chief of the Section on Light and Circadian Rhythms at the National Institute of Mental Health.

The capacity to be creative, to produce new concepts, ideas, inventions, objects or art, is perhaps the most important attribute of the human brain. We know very little, however, about the nature of creativity or its neural basis. Some important questions include how should we define creativity? How is it related (or unrelated) to high intelligence? What psychological processes or environmental circumstance cause creative insights to occur? How is it related to conscious and unconscious processes? What is happening at the neural level during moments of creativity? How is it related to health or illness, and especially mental illness? This paper will review introspective accounts from highly creative individuals. These accounts suggest that unconscious processes play an important role in achieving creative insights. Neuroimaging studies of the brain during “REST” (random episodic silent thought, also referred to as the default state) suggest that the association cortices are the primary areas that are active during this state and that the brain is spontaneously reorganising and acting as a self-organising system. Neuroimaging studies also suggest that highly creative individuals have more intense activity in association cortices when performing tasks that challenge them to “make associations.” Studies of creative individuals also indicate that they have a higher rate of mental illness than a noncreative comparison group, as well as a higher rate of both creativity and mental illness in their first-degree relatives. This raises interesting questions about the relationship between the nature of the unconscious, the unconscious and the predisposition to both creativity and mental illness.

Keywords: Creativity, Complexity, Consciousness, Default mode, Functional imaging, Self-organising systems, The Unconscious, Resting state, REST

Creativity is one of our most valued human traits. It has given human beings the ability to change the world that they live in; and it has also, paradoxically, given them the ability to adapt to changes in the world over which they have no control. Our highly developed capacity to develop and implement new ideas arises from our highly developed human brain. Understanding how creative ideas arise from the brain is one of the most fascinating challenges of contemporary neuroscience.

Summary: Researchers identify a crucial protein, Tenm3, in mice’s visual system that stabilizes circadian rhythms by modulating the brain’s response to light. This discovery has significant implications for treating sleep disorders and jet lag.

Circadian rhythms play a vital role in regulating sleep, alertness, and other cyclic behaviors, and disruptions can lead to health problems.

By understanding Tenm3’s role, researchers aim to develop interventions for sleep disorders and jet lag, ultimately benefiting human health.

2024 will be the year the AI industry gets serious about trying to deliver results across a wide slice of business and life, moving beyond the hype surrounding the successes of ChatGPT and chipmaker Nvidia.

From health innovation to election misinformation, here’s what experts predict for AI in the coming year.