Brain disease research reveals differences between sexes
Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease impact men and women differently, affecting cure, treatment
2021-03-16
(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON, March 16, 2021 -- Men and women are impacted differently by brain diseases, like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Researchers are urging their colleagues to remember those differences when researching treatments and cures.
In APL Bioengineering, by AIP Publishing, University of Maryland scientists highlight a growing body of research suggesting sex differences play roles in how patients respond to brain diseases, as well as multiple sclerosis, motor neuron disease, and other brain ailments.
That is progress from just a few years ago, said Alisa Morss Clyne, director of the university's Vascular Kinetics Laboratory.
"I have worked with vascular cells for 20 years and, up until maybe about five years ago, if you asked if the sex of my cells mattered at all, I would have said no," Clyne said. Then, she worked on a difficult study in which data appeared "all over the place."
"We separated the cell data by sex, and it all made sense," Clyne said. "It was an awakening for me that we should be studying this."
As of 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans were diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, another 1 million with Parkinson's disease, 914,000 with multiple sclerosis, and 63,000 with motor neuron disease. These diseases happen when nerve cells in the brain and nervous system quit working and, ultimately, die.
The changes are associated with the breakdown of what is called the blood-brain barrier -- a border of cells that keeps the wrong kind of molecules in the bloodstream from entering the brain and damaging it.
Published research has shown differences in the blood-brain barriers of men and women. Some of the research suggests the barrier can be stronger in women than men, and the barriers in men and women are built and behave differently.
That could factor into known differences in the sexes, such as Alzheimer's disease being more prevalent in older women than men, while Parkinson's impacts men more frequently and tends to do so more severely.
The authors said they hope their article will serve as a reminder to researchers not just in their own field, but across the sciences, that accounting for sex differences leads to better results.
"I think there is an awakening in the past 10 years or so that you cannot ignore sex differences," Clyne said. "My goal is to inspire people to include sex differences in their research, no matter what research they are doing."
INFORMATION:
The article "Sex differences in the blood-brain barrier and neurodegenerative diseases" is authored by Alisa Morss Clyne and Callie M. Weber. The article will appear in APL Bioengineering on Mar. 16, 2021 (DOI: 10.1063/5.0035610). After that date, it can be accessed at https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0035610.
ABOUT THE JOURNAL
APL Bioengineering is an open access journal publishing significant discoveries specific to the understanding and advancement of physics and engineering of biological systems. See http://aip.scitation.org/journal/apb.
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-03-16
Stem-cell-derived organoids that swell up with tears could shed light on the biology of crying and dry-eye disease, suggests a study publishing March 16 in the journal Cell Stem Cell. Although regenerative therapies using human tear-gland organoids will not be possible anytime soon, these researchers have demonstrated that the organoids can engraft, integrate, and produce mature tear products upon transplantation into mouse tear glands.
"We hope that scientists will use our model to identify new treatment options for patients with tear-gland disorders by either testing new drugs on a patient's organoids or expanding healthy cells and, one day, using them for transplantation," says senior study author Hans Clevers (@HansClevers) of the Hubrecht Institute.
The ...
2021-03-16
Wealthier northeastern US states and Western European countries tended to have significantly lower mortality rates during second-wave COVID-19 infections, new research from the University of Sydney and Tsinghua University has shown. However, the pattern was not as general as expected, with notable exceptions to this trend in Sweden and Germany.
Researchers say mortality change could have several explanations:
European first-wave case counts were underestimated;
First-wave deaths disproportionately affected the elderly;
Second-wave infections tended to affect younger people;
With some ...
2021-03-16
WASHINGTON, March 16, 2021 -- Cancerous cells exhibit several key differences from healthy cells that help identify them as dangerous. For instance, the pH -- the level of acidity -- within a cancerous cell is not the same as the pH within a healthy cell.
Researchers from the National University of Singapore developed a method of using machine learning to determine whether a single cell is cancerous by detecting its pH. They describe their work in the journal APL Bioengineering, from AIP Publishing.
"The ability to identify single cells has acquired a paramount importance in the field of precision and personalized medicine," ...
2021-03-16
What The Study Did: The findings of this study suggest that, based on a sample from an otherwise healthy population, the overall number of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the U.S. may be substantially higher than estimates based on public health case reporting.
Authors: Robert L. Stout, Ph.D., of Clinical Reference Laboratory Inc. in Lenexa, Kansas, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.1552)
Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, ...
2021-03-16
What The Study Did: Researchers examined nursing homes in communities with the highest COVID-19 prevalence to identify characteristics associated with resident infection rates.
Authors: Hye-Young Jung, Ph.D., of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.1555)
Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including ...
2021-03-16
The first systematic study of its kind describes how human viruses including SARS-CoV-2 are better adapted to infecting certain types of tissues based on their ability to hijack cellular machinery and protein synthesis.
Carried out by researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the findings could help the design of more effective antiviral treatments, gene therapies and vaccines. The study is published today in the journal Cell Reports.
Living organisms make proteins inside their cells. Each protein consists of single units of amino acids which are stitched together according to instructions encoded within DNA. The basic units of these instructions are known as a codons, each of which corresponds ...
2021-03-16
When scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria looked at developing zebrafish embryos, they observed an abrupt and dramatic change: within just a few minutes, the solid-like embryonic tissue becomes fluid-like. What could cause this change and, what is its role in the further development of the embryo? In a multidisciplinary study published in the journal Cell, they found answers that could change how we look at key processes in development and disease, such as tumor metastasis.
To learn more about how a tiny bunch of cells develops into complex systems ...
2021-03-16
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- In the past few years, several medications have been found to be contaminated with NDMA, a probable carcinogen. This chemical, which has also been found at Superfund sites and in some cases has spread to drinking water supplies, causes DNA damage that can lead to cancer.
MIT researchers have now discovered a mechanism that helps explain whether this damage will lead to cancer in mice: The key is the way cellular DNA repair systems respond. The team found that too little activity of one enzyme necessary for DNA repair leads to much higher cancer rates, while too much activity can produce tissue damage, especially in the liver, which can be fatal.
Activity ...
2021-03-16
Several oceans' worth of ancient water may reside in minerals buried below Mars' surface, report researchers. The new study, based on observational data and modeling, shows that much of the red planet's initial water - up to 99% - was lost to irreversible crustal hydration, not escape to space. The findings help resolve the apparent contradictions between predicted atmospheric loss rates, the deuterium to hydrogen ratio (D/H) of present-day Mars and the geological estimates of how much water once covered the Martian surface. Ancient Mars was a wet planet - dry riverbeds and relic shorelines record a time when vast volumes of liquid water flowed across the surface. Today, ...
2021-03-16
Birds breathe with greater efficiency than humans due to the structure of their lungs--looped airways that facilitate air flows that go in one direction--a team of researchers has found through a series of lab experiments and simulations.
The findings will appear Fri., March 19 in the journal Physical Review Letters (to be posted between 10 and 11 a.m. EDT).
The study, conducted by researchers at New York University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, also points to smarter ways to pump fluids and control flows in applications such as respiratory ventilators.
"Unlike the air flows deep in the branches of our lungs, which oscillate back and forth as we breathe in and out, the flow moves in a single direction in ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Brain disease research reveals differences between sexes
Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease impact men and women differently, affecting cure, treatment
