Philadelphia, January 26, 2021 - Addiction, or substance use disorder (SUD), is a complex neurological condition that includes drug-seeking behavior among other cognitive, emotional and behavioral features. Synaptic plasticity, or changes in the way neurons communicate with one another, drives these addictive behaviors. These lasting brain changes are at the crux of why addiction is so hard to treat. A new study in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier, now shows that players in the extracellular environment - not just at neuronal interfaces - contribute to addiction plasticity. Neurons in a brain area called the nucleus accumbens are known to undergo addiction-related plasticity. Specifically, changes at synapses of medium spiny neurons (MSN), which sense the ...

By 2020, massive losses of large populations of corals have been observed throughout Florida and into the greater Caribbean basin. Taking into account the high mortality and the large number of susceptible species affected, this is likely the most lethal case of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) ever recorded in modern history. However, for too long, the tremendous decline in coral reefs has wrongly been attributed to the local dredge project, which had been ongoing at the time of the initial reports. In a recent Perspectives paper, END ...

Philadelphia, January 26, 2021 - Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania found female and male collegiate athletes take approximately the same amount of time to recover from a concussion, with subtle differences in recovery time depending on the type of sports being played and the division level of the sport. The findings suggest that equity in access to sports medical care among college athletes may be contributing to these similar outcomes. The findings, derived as part of the CARE (Concussion Assessment, Research and Education) Consortium, ...

New research coming out of UBC's Okanagan campus may take the current 'gold standard' for heart valves to a new level of reliability. A team of researchers at UBCO's Heart Valve Performance Lab (HVPL) has developed a way to improve overall blood flow through the valves, so the design of mechanical heart valves will more closely match the real thing. "Despite more than 40 years of research, we are still chasing the goal of creating mechanical heart valves that perform consistently and seamlessly inside the human body," explains Dr. Hadi Mohammadi, an associate professor ...

Researchers with the Fatty Acid Research Institute (FARI) and collaborators at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and in Orange County, CA, have published the first direct evidence that higher omega-3 blood levels may reduce risk for death from COVID-19 infection. The report was published in the journal Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids on January 20, 2021. There are several papers in the medical literature hypothesizing that omega-3 fatty acids should have beneficial effects in patients with COVID-19 infection, but up until now, there have been no published peer-reviewed studies supporting that hypothesis. This study included ...

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), Tohoku University, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Nippon Institute of Technology, demonstrated by experiment that a clean electrolyte/electrode interface is key to realizing high-capacity solid-state lithium batteries. Their findings could pave the way for improved battery designs with increased capacity, stability, and safety for both mobile devices and electric vehicles. Liquid lithium-ion batteries are everywhere, being found in the majority of everyday mobile devices. While they possess a fair share of advantages, liquid-based batteries carry notable risks as well. This has become clear to the public in recent years after ...

Air pollution is linked to a heightened risk of progressive and irreversible sight loss, known as age related macular degeneration (AMD), reveals a large long term study led by UCL researchers. They found that people in the most polluted areas were at least 8% more likely to report having AMD, according to the findings published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. Lead author Professor Paul Foster (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology) said: "Here we have identified yet another health risk posed by air pollution, strengthening the evidence that improving the air we breathe should ...

DES PLAINES, IL -- In patients matched on complexity and acuity presenting to the emergency department with chest pain and abdominal pain, the care delivered by advanced practice providers (APPs) and emergency physicians is largely similar with respect to diagnostic test ordering and admission decisions. That is the finding of a study just published in the January 2021 issue of Academic Emergency Medicine (AEM), a journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM). The lead author of the study is Jesse M. Pines, MD, MBA, MSCE of US Acute Care Solutions, Canton, Ohio and the Department of Emergency Medicine, Allegheny Health Network, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ...

An analysis undertaken by Faculty of Law professors and a physician-researcher from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa feels provincial and territorial governments should set clear rules for vaccinating health care workers against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in public and private settings. Mandatory vaccination for health care workers: an analysis of law and policy, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), describes legal precedents from attempts to mandate influenza vaccines for health care workers and ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - There could be an intervention on the horizon to help prevent heart damage caused by the common chemotherapy drug doxorubicin, new research suggests. Scientists found that this chemo drug, used to treat many types of solid tumors and blood cancers, is able to enter heart cells by hitchhiking on a specific type of protein that functions as a transporter to move a drug from the blood into heart cells. By introducing another anti-cancer drug in advance of the chemo, the researchers were able to block the transporter protein, effectively stopping the delivery of doxorubicin to those cardiac ...

Leesburg, VA, January 25, 2021--According to an open-access article in ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), in lumbar spine MRI, presumptive pain generators diagnosed using symptom information from brief electronic questionnaires showed almost perfect agreement with pain generators diagnosed using symptom information from direct patient interviews. "Using patient-reported symptom information from a questionnaire, radiologists interpreting lumbar spine MRI converged on diagnoses of presumptive pain generators and distinguished these from incidental abnormalities," wrote Rene Balza of the ...

Restricting eating to an eight-hour window, when activity is highest, decreased the risk of development, growth and metastasis of breast cancer in mouse models, report researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, Moores Cancer Center and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System (VASDSH). The findings, published in the January 25, 2021 edition of Nature Communications, show that time-restricted feeding -- a form of intermittent fasting aligned with circadian rhythms -- improved metabolic health and tumor circadian rhythms in mice with obesity-driven postmenopausal breast cancer. "Previous research has shown that obesity increases the risk of a variety of cancers by negatively affecting how the body ...

Corals, like all animals, must eat to live. The problem is that most corals grow in tropical waters that are poor in nutrients, sort of like ocean deserts; it's this lack of nutrients that makes the water around coral reefs so crystal clear. Because food is not readily available, corals have developed a remarkable feeding mechanism that involves a symbiotic relationship with single-celled algae. These algae grow inside the corals, using the coral tissue as shelter and absorbing the CO2 that the corals produce. In exchange, the algae provide corals with nutrients they produce through photosynthesis. These algae contain a variety of pigments, which give the coral reefs the ...

Scientists conducted the first study to examine the fetal health impact of light pollution based on a direct measure of skyglow, an important aspect of light pollution. Using an empirical regularity discovered in physics, called Walker's Law, a team from Lehigh University, Lafayette College and the University of Colorado Denver in the U.S., found evidence of reduced birth weight, shortened gestational length and preterm births. Specifically, the likelihood of a preterm birth could increase by approximately 1.48 percentage points (or 12.9%), according to the researchers, as a result of increased nighttime brightness. Nighttime brightness is characterized by being able to see only one-fourth ...

WASHINGTON (Jan. 25, 2021) - The majority of dermatology patients surveyed find telehealth appointments to be a suitable alternative to in-person office visits, according to a survey study from researchers at the George Washington University (GW) Department of Dermatology. The results are published in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology. The COVID-19 pandemic changed many aspects of everyday life, including how patients interact with the health care system and seek medical care. Social distancing and stay-at-home orders have led to a move from in-office to virtual visits. While many specialties had to shift to the virtual format because ...

The Special Issue, Volume 10, of Inter Faculty takes up the theme of resonance in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and its ensuing societal shifts. For, the pandemic this year (2020) reminded us more than ever that we live in 'VUCA' - volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Many things that used to be taken for granted up until a year ago crumbled abruptly and globally. The pandemic struck many aspects or our societies such as public health, economy and social bonds thereby uncovering the vulnerability of the modern society. Universities are no exception to this. Just as one nation by itself cannot tackle these global challenges, neither can these challenges be solved ...

Using machine learning, researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute have identified several patterns of maternal autoantibodies highly associated with the diagnosis and severity of autism. Their study, published Jan. 22 in Molecular Psychiatry, specifically focused on maternal autoantibody-related autism spectrum disorder (MAR ASD), a condition accounting for around 20% of all autism cases. "The implications from this study are tremendous," said Judy Van de Water, a professor of rheumatology, allergy and clinical immunology at UC Davis and the lead author of the study. "It's the first time that machine learning has been used to identify with 100% accuracy MAR ASD-specific patterns as potential biomarkers of ASD risk." Autoantibodies are immune proteins ...

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 25, 2021 -- Scientists at the University of California, Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have for the first time quantified how warming coastal waters are impacting individual glaciers in Greenland's fjords. Their work is the subject of a study published recently in Science Advances. Working under the auspices of the Oceans Melting Greenland mission for the past five years, the researchers used ships and aircraft to survey 226 glaciers in all sectors of one of Earth's largest islands. They found that 74 glaciers situated in deep, steep-walled valleys accounted for nearly half of Greenland's total ice loss between 1992 and 2017. Such fjord-bound glaciers were discovered to be the ...

Epilepsy, a neurological disease that causes recurring seizures with a wide array of effects, impacts approximately 50 million people across the world. This condition has been recognized for a long time -- written records of epileptic symptoms date all the way back to 4000 B.C.E. But despite this long history of knowledge and treatment, the exact processes that occur in the brain during a seizure remain elusive. Scientists have observed distinctive patterns in the electrical activity of neuron groups in healthy brains. Networks of neurons move through states of similar behavior (synchronization) and dissimilar behavior (desynchronization) ...

A new study demonstrates that antibodies generated by the novel coronavirus react to other strains of coronavirus and vice versa, according to research published today by scientists from Oregon Health & Science University. However, antibodies generated by the SARS outbreak of 2003 had only limited effectiveness in neutralizing the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Antibodies are blood proteins that are made by the immune system to protect against infection, in this case by a coronavirus. The study published today in the journal Cell Reports. "Our finding has some important implications concerning immunity toward different strains of coronavirus infections, ...

Astrocytes are the most abundant type of cells within the central nervous system (CNS), but they remain poorly characterized. Researchers have long assumed that astrocytes' primary function is to provide nutrients and support for the brain's more closely scrutinized nerve cells; over the years, however, increasing evidence has shown that astrocytes can also actively promote neurodegeneration, inflammation, and neurological diseases. Now, a team led by researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital, has shown that a specific astrocyte sub-population can do the opposite, instead serving a protective, anti-inflammatory function within the brain based on signals regulated by the bacteria that reside in ...

-Data demonstrate ADG2 binds to all known variants of SARS-CoV-2 and is not impacted by known circulating resistance mutations- -Company expects to begin clinical studies for a half-life extended version of ADG2 for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19 in early 2021- Waltham, MA - January 25, 2021- Adagio Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company developing best-in-class antibodies to broadly neutralize coronaviruses, today published in vitro and in vivo data in Science on its lead antibody candidate, ADG2, which demonstrated similar or higher potency against SARS-CoV-2 compared to other monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) in clinical development and strong binding to all known ...

Working in preclinical models, researchers report that plitidepsin, a drug with limited clinical approval for the treatment of multiple myeloma, is more potent against SARS-CoV-2 than remdesivir, an antiviral that received FDA emergency use authorization for the treatment of COVID-19 in 2020. The results suggest plitidepsin should be further evaluated as a COVID-19 therapy, the authors say; because it targets a host protein rather than a viral protein, if treatment proves successful in humans, the SARS-CoV-2 virus won't be easily able to gain resistance ...

A new approach to mapping viral mutations that "escape" leading clinical antibodies has revealed mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus that allow it to evade treatments, including a single amino-acid mutation that fully escapes Regeneron's antibody cocktail. These maps, say the authors, demonstrate that prior characterization of escape mutations was incomplete. They will also help to enable immediate interpretation of the effects of the mutations cataloged by viral genomic surveillance, say the authors. Several antibodies are in use or under development as therapies to treat COVID-19. As new SARS-CoV-2 variants emerge, it ...

Researchers have engineered an antibody that neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 with a potency that "rivals" current lead SARS-CoV-2 clinical neutralizing antibodies, and that also broadly neutralizes a range of clade 1 sarbecoviruses. Their antibody, ADG-2, studied in mice, represents a "promising candidate" for the prevention and treatment of not only COVID-19, they say, but also of future respiratory diseases caused by SARS-related coronaviruses. Although two vaccines and two monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapies have been authorized for emergency use by the FDA, it is unknown whether these vaccines and treatments will provide broad protection against new emerging SARS-CoV-2 strains that originate in humans or animal reservoirs; this is partly ...