A combination of acoustic and electrical stimulation reduces tinnitus by half
By Anton Benz
July 13, 2023
So the whistling and ringing in the ears caused by tinnitus is not purely a disease of the brain’s auditory system. Up to 80 percent of people with the condition have the so-called somatic form, in which the disturbing noises are generated or altered by head or neck movements. In a recent clinical trial, Susan Shore of the University of Michigan and her colleagues used a new procedure to significantly alleviate the symptoms of tinnitus. “I think the study represents hope for all sufferers,” says tinnitus expert Berthold Langguth of the University of Regensburg in Germany, who was not involved with the research.
Shore’s team developed a “bisensory” treatment consisting of an in-ear headphone and two externally attached electrodes that delivered a combination of acoustic and electric stimuli to reduce activity in the DCN. The level of stimulation was individualized to each person’s tinnitus. The study involved 99 people with somatic tinnitus, each of whom were given a prototype device for home treatment over the course of the study.
Participants in the experimental group underwent the procedure for 30 minutes daily for six weeks during the study’s first phase. Those in the control group also attached the electrodes near their ear and on their neck, but the electrical impulse was absent—they received a purely acoustic treatment. Because the electrical impulses were not perceptible, none of the participants knew who belonged to which group.
After a six-week break, which was the second phase of the study, the protocol shifted for phase three: each of the two groups received the opposite treatment for another six weeks. After the first phase, the tinnitus in the experimental group was already reduced significantly, and the treatment provided meaningful clinical benefits. The participants’ tinnitus was perceived as only half as loud on average after phase one. Even during the treatment break, the situation continued to improve. The effect lasted up to 36 weeks. “In my estimation, this is a very promising procedure,” Langguth says. Shore now wants to move the new method quickly through the approval process and then onto the market.
First successful robotic liver transplant performed in the US
By Bronwyn Thompson
July 18, 2023
In an exciting step forward in surgery advances, the first liver transplant performed by a robot has successfully taken place in the US, as clinics plan to ramp up wider use of this innovative procedure.
The man in his 60s, who required a critical transplant due to liver cancer and cirrhosis caused by hepatitis C, underwent surgery performed by the advanced machinery while the head surgeon controlled the robot’s movements from a console nearby.
“The transplant was a success: The operation went smoothly, the new liver started working right away, and the patient recovered without any surgical complications,” said transplant surgeon Dr Adeel Khan, who led the team of surgeons from Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis by at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
As life expectancy increases worldwide, age-associated diseases such as osteoporosis are having an increasing impact.
Although early detection could help physicians intervene as soon as possible—when treatment might offer the greatest benefit—this type of detection is not yet possible with current osteoporosis diagnostic tests. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have developed a biosensor that could someday help identify those most at risk for osteoporosis using less than a drop of blood.
Early intervention is critical to reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with osteoporosis, a condition characterized by an elevated risk of bone fractures and which affects about 54 million people in the U.S., according to the International Osteoporosis Foundation. The most common technique used to measure changes in bone mineral density (BMD)—dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry—is not sufficiently sensitive to detect BMD loss until a significant amount of damage has already occurred.
Researchers have developed a groundbreaking method of storing and handling valuable biological materials that removes the limitations of refrigerated storage. The novel method has potential applications in healthcare and scientific research.
Biological materials that come from human cells, like enzymes, mRNA, proteins, and antibodies, are crucial to developing new medicines and diagnostic tests. And they’re fragile. Extremely temperature-sensitive, they require a constant ambient temperature during storage, handling, and transportation. If not stored or handled correctly, these materials can degrade and become inactive, which can be costly.
Most biological materials are stored as liquids or freeze-dried powders and kept at low temperatures for the duration of their shelf life. This is achieved through a complex, integrated system of refrigerators and freezers known as the cold chain. This requires a significant investment in equipment and infrastructure, making it expensive to maintain, and makes the cold chain prone to shipping delays, power outages, equipment failure and human error.
One of the beneficial gut bacteria residing in the human gut, which normally cannot survive in an environment with oxygen, can now be made oxygen-tolerant. This is a key finding in the development of future probiotic treatment that is now being explored to improve glucose control in individuals with prediabetes.
Our intestines are home to trillions of bacteria, the gut microbiota, which are important for functions such as digesting food and educating and activating the immune system. During the past decade it has been clarified that changes in the bacterial composition can be linked to various diseases.
Significant expectations have been attributed to the next generation probiotics, or live bacteria products, which can replace the missing bacteria in individuals with increased risk of developing diseases. However, a significant problem has been to overcome the bacteria's oxygen sensitivity, since the vast majority are strictly anaerobic. With bacteria dying just seconds after being exposed to oxygen in the air, it has been hard to develop live bacterial cultures of extremely oxygen sensitive bacteria.
A scientific journey decades in the making at Duke University has found a new antibiotic strategy to defeat gram-negative bacteria like Salmonella, Pseudomonas and E. coli, the culprits in many urinary tract infections (UTIs). The synthetic molecule works fast and is durable in animal tests.
It works by interfering with a bacterium's ability to make its outer lipid layer. "If you disrupt the synthesis of the bacterial outer membrane, the bacteria cannot survive without it," said lead investigator Pei Zhou, a professor of biochemistry in the Duke School of Medicine. "Our compound is very good and very potent."
A Drug for Regrowing Teeth Could Be Available Within The Next Decade by David Nield
August 10, 2023
Introduction:
(Science Alert) Teeth don't grow back once we become adults: any wear and tear is permanent – as those of us with fillings will know – which is why it's important to keep them as clean and healthy as we can.
However, this is something scientists are now looking to change.
It's been announced that clinical trials for a potential tooth regrowth treatment are set to begin in July 2024, building on decades of research in the field. If those trials are successful, therapeutic drugs could be available by 2030.
A team from the Medical Research Institute at Kitano Hospital in Japan is in charge of the trial, which is targeting people with anodontia, a rare genetic condition that prevents baby teeth and adult teeth from growing in the normal way.
The treatment would initially target young children with the condition, but further down the line, the researchers think it could also be used more broadly – with people who have more common dental problems, such as gum disease, for example.
Molecules That Died With Neanderthals and Denisovans Recreated In "Molecular De-Extinction" by Stephen Luntz
August 11, 2023
Introduction:
(IFL Science) Molecules produced by extinct branches of the human family have been recreated for the first time since the species they came from went extinct. The work might help us in our quest to understand our long-lost cousins, but there is also a more practical concern: fighting pathogens to which others may have been immune.
De-extinction, the process of resurrecting lost lifeforms has attracted great controversy in recent times, with the idea of bringing back the woolly mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger gaining particular attention. Both the ethics and the practicality of the projects have been heavily criticized. After all, there are some extremely popular films about how this could go very, very wrong.
Resurrecting molecules exclusive to lost species might be a step on that path, but there are reasons to do it even if you never plan to bring back the whole animal. “Molecular de-extinction is motivated by the hypothesis that molecules that conferred benefits to extinct organisms could be beneficial in the current global environment,” a team led by Professor Cesar de la Fuente of the University of Pennsylvania writes.
With ancient species arising from the tundra as permafrost melts, it’s probably not going to be long before we are faced with diseases the human race hasn’t encountered since the last Ice Age. In some cases, it is likely that our ancestors, or their nearest relatives, evolved defenses against these threats, but these were lost when they ceased to be evolutionarily useful. Restoring some of the nucleic acids or proteins used in these ancient battles could be a shortcut to combatting them in the modern world, a scientific equivalent of fantasy figures reviving the dead to combat their old enemy once more.
Modern humans with some Neanderthal ancestry are more likely to have retained their gene variants associated with the immune system than any other part of the body. This suggests that whatever their other weaknesses compared to modern humans, Neanderthals had strong immune systems. That may include some components we didn’t inherit, but should have.
A new study, "Sensitive poliovirus detection using nested PCR and nanopore sequencing: a prospective validation study," published 17 August 2023 in Nature Microbiology, proves that using DDNS to detect polio outbreaks can save public health authorities crucial time and money.
This research was jointly conducted by researchers at the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale in Kinshasa who implemented DDNS in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for the detection of polio outbreaks in collaboration with the MHRA, Imperial College London, the University of Edinburgh and various laboratories of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Polio Laboratory Network (GPLN).
This is the first time that this type of scientific technique has been used to detect polio. Similar techniques have previously been used to detect COVID-19, Ebola, measles and monkeypox.
By enabling samples to be tested in the country where the outbreak originated rather than being sent to specialist laboratories abroad, the costs and delays of transport and testing can be reduced from an average of 42 days to an average of 19 days.
Various medical circumstances, including heart attacks and extreme cases of COVID-19, necessitate the use of anticoagulants, medicines that prevent blood clots. But the most commonly used, heparin, can induce potentially fatal side effects by making the blood clots worse rather than better. This only happens in a minority of patients so effective treatments are not commonly explored.
For the first time, researchers, including those from the University of Tokyo, have proposed a side effect–free anticoagulating treatment that has so far proved effective in test mice and could be ready for human trials in just a few years. The research is published in the journal Molecular Therapy—Nucleic Acids.
Spending on mental health services among Americans with private health insurance has surged since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing to rise even as the use of telehealth has plateaued, according to a new study.
Spending on mental health services rose by 53% from March 2020 to August 2022 among a large group of people with employer-provided insurance, according to researchers from the RAND Corporation and Castlight Health. During the same period, use of mental health services increased by 39%.
The researchers say it is uncertain if the trend will continue since some rules that expanded payment for telehealth services expired when the nation's public health emergency ended in May. The findings are published by the journal JAMA Health Forum.
"If greater utilization of health services drives higher health care spending, insurers may begin pushing back on the new status quo," said Jonathan Cantor, lead author of the study and a policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "Insurers may look for ways to curb costs and that could mean less flexibility about using telehealth for mental health services."
Modern medicine depends on antibiotics to treat infections by disabling targets inside bacterial cells. Once inside these cells, antibiotics bind to certain sites on specific enzyme targets to stop bacterial growth. Randomly occurring changes (mutations) in the genes for these targets occur naturally, in some cases making the target harder for the antibiotic to attach to, and that bacterial version resistant to treatment.
For this reason, the more antibiotics have been used over time, the greater the chances that bacterial populations will evolve to have mutants resistant to existing antibiotics, and the more urgent the call for new approaches to keep the treatments from becoming obsolete.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The leading decongestant used by millions of Americans looking for relief from a stuffy nose is likely no better than a dummy pill, according to government experts who reviewed the latest research on the long-questioned drug ingredient. Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on Tuesday against the effectiveness of the ingredient found in popular versions of Sudafed, Allegra, Dayquil and other medications stocked on store shelves.
“Modern studies, when well conducted, are not showing any improvement in congestion with phenylephrine,” said Dr. Mark Dykewicz, an allergy specialist at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine.
The FDA assembled its outside advisers to take another look at phenylephrine, which became the main drug in over-the-counter decongestants when medicines with an older ingredient — pseudoephedrine — were moved behind pharmacy counters. A 2006 law had forced the move because pseudoephedrine can be illegally processed into methamphetamine.
Those original versions of Sudafed and other medicines remain available without a prescription, but they're less popular and account for about one-fifth of the $2.2 billion market for oral decongestants. Phenylephrine versions — sometimes labeled “PE” on packaging — make up the rest.
Golden Orb Found at The Bottom of The Ocean Mystifies Scientists by Michele Starr
September 8, 2023
Introduction:
(Science Alert) At around 3,300 meters (2 miles) below the surface off the coast of Alaska, where the warm light of the Sun never penetrates, an NOAA Ocean Exploration remotely operated underwater vehicle came across a strange, golden orb.
It was "tightly adhered" to a rock dotted with white sponges, measuring around 10 centimeters (4 inches) across with a hole in one side.
It's not entirely clear what the mysterious orb might be. Initial suggestions from the researchers conducting the livestream of the dive included an egg casing from a mystery species, a dead sponge, or a coral.
"I don't know what to make of that," said one of the researchers on the 30 August livestream.
"It's definitely got a big old hole in it, so something either tried to get in or tried to get out," another speculated.
UCI researchers have found that a simple sugar, N-acetylglucosamine, reduces multiple inflammation and neurodegeneration markers in people who suffer from multiple sclerosis (MS). In addition, they also found this dietary supplement improved neurological function in 30% of patients.
According to the World Health Organization, MS affects more than 1.8 million people, and while there are treatments to prevent relapses and improve quality of life, there is no cure.
The study, N-acetylglucosamine inhibits inflammation and neurodegeneration markers in multiple sclerosis: a mechanistic trial, was published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation. Michael Demetriou, MD, Ph.D., Chief of the Division of Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology at UCI, is the lead investigator of the study. Michael Y. Sy, MD, Ph.D., Director of the Neuroimmunology Fellowship at UCI School of Medicine, is the first author, and Barbara Newton, MD, Project Scientist at UCI, is the second author.
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust have characterized a specialized type of immune cell, which plays a key role in protecting and repairing the cells in the healthy human gut.
These protective immune cells are depleted in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), leaving patients vulnerable to disease progression and severe complications. The findings could lead to better clinical management and treatment options for people living with these conditions.
IBD is the collective term for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, two currently incurable conditions which involve excessive inflammation in the gut, causing debilitating symptoms like pain and diarrhea. IBD is common, affecting 1 in 125 people in the UK, and its incidence is growing globally. Often starting in childhood and early adult life, it impacts some of the most socially and economically important periods of a person's life.
