IgA nephropathy (IgAN) is a chronic kidney disease occurring in young adults and is one of the most common reasons for kidney transplantation in this age group. IgAN is the most common form of glomerulonephritis (GN), i.e., immunologically induced inflammation of the renal glomeruli. It is characterized by glomerular deposition of immune complexes containing immunoglobulin A (IgA), and by a complex inflammatory response and progressive loss of kidney function. For many decades, IgAN has therefore been treated with anti-inflammatory or strong immunosuppressive agents. ...

Wider clean chemistry applications of the extraordinary Vortex Fluidic Device - invented by Flinders University's Professor Colin Raston - are likely in the wake of new research that has been published outlining the seemingly endless possible uses. The defining paper on understanding fluid flow in the Vortex Fluidic Device has just been comprehensively explained in an article published in Nanoscale Advances (DOI: 10.1039/D1NA00195G). This took more than 100,000 experiments to work out - and Professor Raston hopes this publication will encourage more researchers to embrace the VFD and explore yet more innovative applications for this ingenious device. "How fluid flows is one of the grand challenges of science," says Professor Raston. "What we have been ...

A world-first international study led by the University of South Australia has identified a new drug to stop athletes developing dementia after sustaining repeated head injuries in their career. The link between concussion and neurogenerative diseases is well established, but new research findings could halt the progression of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in sportspeople who sustain repeated blows to the head. CTE is a progressive and fatal brain disease associated with the accumulation of a protein known as hyperphosphorylated tau which affects cognition and behaviour. In a paper published in Scientific Reports, ...

LA JOLLA, CALIF. - June 7, 2021 - A preclinical study led by scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys has established that AAV8-TNAP-D10--a gene therapy that replaces a key enzyme found in bone--may be a safe and effective single-dose treatment for hypophosphatasia (HPP). The study, published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research and performed in a murine model of the disease, further supports advancing the therapy toward human clinical trials. "This is the most promising gene therapy study to date demonstrating a successful increase in life span, and improvement ...

Monash University researchers have provided a fundamental advance regarding how T cells become activated when encountering pathogens such as viruses. The recent study published in Science, co-led by Professor Nicole La Gruta, Professor Jamie Rossjohn and Professor Stephanie Gras with first author Dr Pirooz Zareie from the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, have found that T Cells need to recognise pathogens in a particular orientation in order to receive a strong activating signal. T cells play a key role in the immune system by eliminating invading pathogens, such as viruses, and it is crucial to understand ...

When we inhale isolated coronavirus particles, more than 65% reach the deepest region of our lungs where damage to cells can lead to low blood oxygen levels, new research has discovered, and more of these aerosols reach the right lung than the left. Lead author of the study Dr Saidul Islam, from the University of Technology Sydney, said while previous research has revealed how virus aerosols travel through the upper airways including the nose, mouth and throat - this study was the first to examine how they flow through the lower lungs. "Our ...

Finding the hypothetical particle axion could mean finding out for the first time what happened in the Universe a second after the Big Bang, suggests a new study published in Physical Review D on June 7. How far back into the Universe's past can we look today? In the electromagnetic spectrum, observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background -- commonly referred to as the CMB -- allow us to see back almost 14 billion years to when the Universe cooled sufficiently for protons and electrons to combine and form neutral hydrogen. The CMB has taught us an inordinate amount about the evolution of the cosmos, but photons in the CMB were released 400,000 years after the Big Bang making it extremely challenging to learn about the history of ...

TAMPA, Fla. (June 4, 2021) — Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease in which a misdirected immune system gradually destroys healthy pancreatic islet β cells, resulting in a lack of insulin. The exact cause of T1D remains unknown. However, β cell-reactive autoantibodies can be detected in circulating blood months to years before diagnosis, raising the possibility of intervening to stop or delay T1D before children develop the disease. Monitoring the number, type, and concentration of autoantibodies appearing in the blood can help predict the long-term risk of progression from autoimmunity to symptomatic T1D. Now new findings suggest that measuring how patterns ...

A research team from the University of Copenhagen and University of Helsinki demonstrates it is possible to predict individual preferences based on how a person's brain responses match up to others. This could potentially be used to provide individually-tailored media content -- and perhaps even to enlighten us about ourselves. We have become accustomed to online algorithms trying to guess our preferences for everything from movies and music to news and shopping. This is based not only on what we have searched for, looked at, or listened to, but also on how these activities compare to others. Collaborative filtering, as the technique is called, uses hidden ...

A team of astronomers from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune, and the Raman Research Institute (RRI), in Bangalore, has used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to measure the atomic hydrogen gas content of galaxies 9 billion years ago, in the young universe. This is the earliest epoch in the universe for which there is a measurement of the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies. The new result is a crucial confirmation of the group's earlier result, where they had measured the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies 8 billion years ago, and pushes our understanding of galaxies to even earlier in the universe. ...

Decades of research has revealed the remarkable morphological adaptations of sea snakes to aquatic life, which include paddle-shaped tails, salt-excreting glands, and the ability to breathe through their skin. In a new study published in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, researchers at the University of Adelaide detail the enlarged touch receptors that evolved in male turtle-headed sea snakes (Emydocephalus annulatus), to help them locate and court females in aquatic environments. Lead author, Jenna Crowe-Riddell, PhD graduate at the University of Adelaide's School of Biological Sciences, says on land, snakes use tongue-flicking ...

Older people need digital skills training to learn to use digital technology more independently, but they also seek digital training opportunities because of the social benefits they offer, according to a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland. Published in International Journal of Lifelong Education, the study examined perceived benefits of digital skills training among older adult learners, their teachers and peer tutors. Data for the study were collected in liberal adult education organisations, such as community colleges, as well as in peer tutoring sessions organised by third sector actors. New skills and friendships The coronavirus pandemic has, for its part, highlighted inequalities in the availability and ...

The Amami, Okinawa region of Japan may be designated a World Heritage Site in July of 2021 based on the recent recommendation from the IUCN. The Iriomote wild cat is a symbolic species of the region, having evolved independently on the island. The area is home to many other highly endemic and unique evolutionary species. A research group comprised mostly of former students of Professor Koji Tojo's Faculty of Science lab of Shinshu University focused on the study of dragonflies, continuing from their previous study of their comparative embryogenesis. About 5,000 species of insects belonging to 26 families of the order Dragonfly are known ...

A long-standing basic question in biology relates to how life satisfies the fundamental constraints put on it by physics and chemistry. Darwin's warm pond hypothesis for the origin of primordial cells is a familiar one. Advances have been made in mapping out the organic molecules that likely existed on the early Earth, and recently candidate prototypic pathways in early cells have been formulated. But how did these candidates' early biochemistry actually function as a system, on which subsequent cellular life is based? A team of bioengineers at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, DTU, has now defined ten overarching classes of constraints on early metabolic ...

A minimally-invasive procedure that targets the nerves near the kidney has been found to significantly reduce blood pressure in hypertension patients, according to the results of a global multicentre clinical trial led in the UK by researchers at Queen Mary University of London and Barts Health NHS Trust. The study, published in The Lancet and presented at the American College of Cardiology meeting, suggests that the procedure could offer hope to patients with high blood pressure who do not respond to recommended treatments (resistant hypertension), and are at greatly increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, including stroke and heart attack. The international clinical trial tested a one-hour procedure called 'renal denervation', which uses ultrasound energy to ...

The fluorescence dyes were dominant species of the near-infrared (NIR) dyes, but the energy gap of the NIR dyes between S1 state and S0 state is generally small to induce the ultrafast internal conversion dynamics to quench the NIR emission of the fluorescence dyes. Therefore, the quantum yield of the fluorescence NIR dyes is usually low. On the other hand, the organic dyes with room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) in the NIR region could prevent the ultrafast internal conversion dynamics quenching because of the T1 state and S0 state the organic molecules are spin forbidden. Recently, scientists in China reported a new assumption to construct ...

The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) has presented this week at the headquarters of the National Science and Technology Museum in Madrid the main results of the 10th Social Perception of Science Survey carried out in 2020. The presentation was attended by Pedro Duque, Minister of Science and Innovation, Josep Lobera, Professor of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and scientific co-director of the Survey and the subsequent study, and Rosa Capeáns, Director of the Scientific Culture and Innovation Department of FECYT. Pampa García, Editor-in-Chief of the SINC Agency, moderated a debate in which the results were presented in six blocks: Interest in ...

In the present study, Dr. Hidetoshi Hayashi (Professor, Nagoya City University) and collaborators screened small-molecule compounds that suppress UPR, using Myanmar wild plant extracts library. The screening system to track X-box binding protein 1 (XBP1) splicing activity revealed that the ethanol extract of the Periploca calophylla stem inhibited the inositol-requiring enzyme 1 (IRE1)-XBP1 pathway. They isolated and identified periplocin as a potent inhibitor of the IRE1-XBP1 axis. Periplocin also suppressed other UPR axes, protein kinase R-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (PERK), and activating transcription ...

Researchers from the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht (The Netherlands) and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster (Germany) used computer simulations to reveal in atomic detail how a short piece of DNA opens while it is tightly wrapped around the proteins that package our genome. These simulations provide unprecedented insights into the mechanisms that regulate gene expression. The results were published in PLOS Computational Biology on the 3rd of June, 2021. Every cell in the body contains two meters of DNA. In order to fit all the DNA ...

Health has always been affected by climate and weather, but is increasingly clear that the change in climate is a significant threat to human health. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 24% of global deaths are linked to environmental factors [1]. Climate change and pollution can lead to undernutrition, mental disorders, and noncommunicable diseases including chronic kidney disease and acute kidney injury [2]. The burden of addressing the death and disability associated with climate change falls to nephrologists and other healthcare professionals. At the same time, the healthcare sector makes a major ...

SGLT2 inhibitors (gliflozins) were developed as oral antidiabetics. They enhance urinary glucose excretion by inhibiting SGLT-2 (sodium-dependent glucose co-transporter-2) in the renal tubuli. The discovery of kidney benefits beyond the lowering of blood sugar has been made by Professor Christoph Wanner from Germany: The EMPA-REG OUTCOME study [2] initially showed that the rate of cardiovascular events in type 2 diabetic pa-tients is significantly reduced if the SGLT2 inhibitor empagliflozin is administered. Kidney function in diabetics who already had diabetic nephropathy was also found to benefit sig-nificantly from the treatment ...

HOUSTON - (June 7, 2021) - If identical versions of 20 people lived out their lives in dozens of different worlds, would the same people be popular in each world? If you substitute "fruit flies" for "people" in that question, you have a fair description of a Rice University study showing that the evolution of social structures and the positions of individuals within those structures are based partly on genetics. Cloned fruit flies played a starring role in the study that researchers jokingly likened to "The Truman Show," with video cameras observing how the flies behaved in a controlled environment. In the study published online this week in Nature Communications, Rice bioscientists Eric Wice and Julia Saltz ...

The kidneys are a target organ of COVID-19 and are affected very early in the course. However, this is precisely where there is strong prognostic potential: As early as last spring, COVID-19-associated nephritis was identified as an early warning signal for severe courses of the infectious disease and studies to that effect were published [1]. In that regard, the research group led by Professor Oliver Gross, Department of Nephrology and Rheumatology at Göttingen University Medical Center (UMG), screened 223 patients in a study and included 145 of them as a predictive cohort. Study endpoints were ICU admission or mortality. As a result, early urinary changes ...

It was clear at a relatively early stage of the pandemic that SARS-CoV-2 causes a wide range of symptoms; in addition to typical respiratory symptoms, patients also had neurological symptoms (starting with anosmia), gastrointestinal symptoms, elevated liver values, and renal, urinary or hematological changes, for example. The fact that such findings occurred not only in severely ill patients with general organ dysfunction suggested that the virus may potentially cause disorders in various organs directly, i.e. that it causes a multi-system disease. In spring 2020, at the very beginning of the pandemic, the authorities in Hamburg ordered autopsies be performed on all patients who had died with COVID-19. This resulted in one of the ...

Various viruses and bacteria have long been known to cause autoimmune diseases where there is such a predisposition. This phenomenon also seems to play a major role in SARS-CoV-2, especially in severe courses. The body's own immune cells are activated, with the formation of autoantibodies that attack the body's own healthy cell structures (proteins, autoantigens); deposits of immune complexes can then trigger severe inflammatory processes and cell destruction in the body. Some nephrological diseases are likewise of autoimmunological etiology, one example being systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a chronic, mostly relapsing-remitting inflammatory disease with life-threatening ...