Biology & Medicine News and Discussions

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Paralyzed rats walk again, thanks to breakthrough spinal cord implants
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
July 06, 2025

Researchers in New Zealand have demonstrated a minimally invasive technology that has effectively aided in restoring movement in paralyzed rats. This breakthrough could mean we're a big step closer to treating spinal cord injuries in humans and pets – which are presently incurable and often lead to a loss of motor function.

The University of Auckland team's tech takes the form of an ultra-thin implant designed to fit right on the injury site of a rat's spinal cord, to deliver controlled zaps of electricity.

Injuries to the spinal cord disrupt communication between the brain and body. The idea was spurred on from the fact that this column of nerve tissue does not regenerate effectively on its own. So with the implant, “the aim is to stimulate healing so people can recover functions lost through spinal-cord injury,” said Professor Darren Svirskis.

https://newatlas.com/biology/paralyzed- ... -implants/

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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89e872jdjxo

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Simple scan lets you slow down aging and even prevent chronic disease
By Bronwyn Thompson
July 09, 2025

A single, freely available, noninvasive brain scan done in just a few minutes during midlife can predict what chronic diseases are most likely to appear in the future, empowering people to make diet and lifestyle changes that mitigate their risk even decades before symptoms begin to show. Getting the jump on degenerative conditions like Alzheimer's disease could have a huge impact on health outcomes later in life.

Scientists at Duke and Harvard Universities and the University of Otago have developed the Dunedin Pace of Aging Calculated from NeuroImaging (DunedinPACNI) scan, which as the name suggests, scans the brain to determine how fast it is aging. It didn't just predict cognitive impairment, accelerated brain atrophy and conversion to diagnosed dementia, it could also provide a risk factor for physical frailty, poor health, other future chronic diseases and mortality.

https://newatlas.com/brain/alzheimers-d ... -mri-scan/

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Large-scale study adds to mounting case against notion that boys are born better at math

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-large-sca ... notion.amp

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Autonomous robot surgeon removes organs with 100% success rate
By Bronwyn Thompson
July 10, 2025

We're a step closer to entering an operating theater without any human life besides ours, following the world's first surgery performed by a robot responding and learning in real time. Its precision and skill matched that of experienced surgeons.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University trained a robot on videos of operations, and then had it conduct a gallbladder removal on its own – with no mechanical help, just voice commands, like a theater team assisting the lead surgeon. Named SRT-H (Surgical Robot Transformer-Hierarchy), the robot absorbed its training and converted it to practice, with the ability to extract the gallbladder time and time again, and adjusting in real-time when needed.

https://newatlas.com/robotics/worlds-fi ... t-surgery/

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Integrated bionic knee enables natural movement in amputees
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
July 15, 2025
https://newatlas.com/medical-tech/mit-b ... -amputees/

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a method to restore astoundingly natural movement in people who have had leg amputations above the knee. Rather than fit an artificial limb into a socket, the team has created a bionic knee that can be integrated with a patient's muscle and bone – enabling them to move much more easily than with previous prostheses.

The new bone-integrated system, dubbed e-OPRA (enhanced Osseointegrated Prostheses for the Rehabilitation of Amputees), is said to not only help patients walk faster, climb stairs, and avoid obstacles with ease, but also provide greater stability and control over movements.

In the video below, you can see a patient – with just a few inches of upper thigh and femur connected to the new prosthetic limb – demonstrating motion that's surprisingly fluid as they walk and kick a ball.

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No link between childhood vaccines and 50 health conditions
By Paul McClure
July 15, 2025
https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/c ... onditions/

A massive study of over 1.2 million children has found no link between aluminum-containing vaccines and 50 chronic childhood conditions, including autism, ADHD, asthma, and diabetes, delivering a reassuring message about vaccine safety.

While childhood vaccination has been hailed as a global success story, keeping us safe from disease by building protection using the body’s immune system, there are sceptics. Vaccine hesitancy has risen in some countries due to a variety of factors, including a belief that vaccines contribute to other health conditions.

A large new study led by researchers at Statens Serum Institut (SSI), under the auspices of Denmark’s Ministry of Health, has investigated if aluminum-containing childhood vaccines are associated with an increased risk of developing 50 different conditions, including autism, ADHD, asthma, and type 1 diabetes.

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Fourteen Republican Senators Urge White House to Release Delayed NIH Funds
By Katherine Tully-McManus
July 25, 2025

Introduction:

(Politico) Republican Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama is sounding the alarm about “the slow disbursement rate” of National Institutes of Health funding included in the March spending bill signed by President Donald Trump.

Britt, who serves as chair of the Senate Appropriations homeland subcommittee, led a letter Friday with 13 of her GOP colleagues to White House Budget Chief Russ Vought, urging the Office of Management and Budget to “fully implement” the stopgap government funding package enacted earlier this year.

“Suspension of these appropriated funds — whether formally withheld or functionally delayed — could threaten Americans’ ability to access better treatments and limit our nation’s leadership in biomedical science,” Britt and her colleagues warned. “It also risks inadvertently severing ongoing NIH-funded research prior to actionable results.”

It’s the latest example of Republican pushback against the Trump administration’s pattern of withholding money for any variety of programs that lawmakers have previously approved for a specific purpose.

The Republican senators stressed in their letter that they shared Vought’s “commitment to ensuring NIH funds are used responsibly and not diverted to ideological or unaccountable programs.”

Read more here: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/ ... 0476872

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The quest to detect consciousness — in all its possible forms

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02349-5

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Scientists think they found two key bacteria that cause multiple sclerosis



For decades scientists have combed the gut looking for bacteria in the microbiome that push the immune system toward multiple sclerosis (MS). New evidence from a rare twin study now points a clear finger at two species of bacteria that hide in the small intestine.

The study, which compared 81 pairs of genetically identical siblings, singled out Eisenbergiella tayi and Lachnoclostridium as the most likely triggers of the nerve‑damaging disorder.

Dr. Anna Peters, who runs the lab in the Institute of Clinical Neuroimmunology of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) steered the international team that linked these bacteria to disease in both people and mice.

Nearly one million Americans live with MS, and existing drugs only slow its progress. Targeting a pair of bacteria offers a simpler aim than re‑engineering the whole gut microbiome.

Researchers already use narrow antibiotics, phage cocktails, and engineered probiotics to chase single species in the gut. Similar tools could curb E. tayi or Lachnoclostridium before they spark immune trouble.

Another route involves adding fiber to keep mucus eaters occupied with safer food. Early trials of high‑propionate diets have shown modest symptom relief and could complement microbe‑directed therapies.

https://www.earth.com/news/scientists-t ... sclerosis/

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How ancient viruses could help fight antibiotic resistance

If bacteria had a list of things to fear, phages would be at the top. These viruses are built to find, infect and kill them – and they have been doing it for billions of years. Now that ancient battle is offering clues for how we might fight back against antibiotic-resistant infections.

As more bacteria evolve to withstand our antibiotics, previously treatable infections are becoming harder – and in some cases, impossible – to cure. This crisis, known as antimicrobial resistance (AMR), already causes over a million deaths a year globally, and the number is rising fast. The World Health Organization has named AMR one of the top ten global public health threats.

Phage therapy – the use of phages to treat bacterial infections – is gaining attention as a potential solution. Phages are highly specific, capable of targeting even drug-resistant strains. In some compassionate-use cases in the UK, they have cleared infections where every antibiotic had failed.

https://theconversation.com/how-ancient ... nce-261970

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"Every Species On The Planet Self-Medicates in Some Way": How Wild Animals Use Medicine
By Maddy Chapman
August 2, 2025

Introduction:

(IFL Science) When we’re feeling peaky, we might pop to the pharmacy for a remedy to help get us back on our feet, or visit a doctor for an expert opinion – we may even make ourselves a hearty bowl of chicken soup (there’s more science behind it than you might think). Other animals don’t have the same luxuries, but that’s not to say that they’re not hiding a few tricks up their sleeves to help with healing.

Of course, no monkey is making for the medical center, nor are lions sipping Lemsip or alpacas popping Advil, but a rudimentary form of medicine may be common – ubiquitous even, some argue – in the animal kingdom.

Do animals use medicine?

“Every species on the planet self-medicates in some way or another,” Michael Huffman, a primatologist now at the Institute of Tropical Medicine at Nagasaki University, told IFLScience, highlighting the myriad examples of the practice in primates and other mammals, as well as bird species.

Often referred to as zoopharmacognosy, this self-medication in animals tends to involve plants or other non-nutritional substances – such as soils and insects – being ingested or applied topically to combat disease. Think of the natural world as a fully stocked medicine cabinet at any animal’s disposal.
Self-medication, or at least what appears to be self-medication, has been observed in the animal kingdom – particularly among the great apes – for decades. However, there was some initial skepticism as to whether these species were truly medicating themselves and if so, whether it was effective. After all, a chimp swallowing a leaf could be doing it just because, and not in some ingenious attempt to treat a parasite.

Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/every-speci ... ne-80222

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Low-intensity ultrasound emerges as key tool in regenerative medicine

Announcing a new article publication for BIO Integration journal. As a mechanical wave capable of transmitting thermal and mechanical energy, ultrasound has emerged as a pivotal tool in regenerative medicine due to its non-invasive nature.

Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS), a mechanoregulatory technique independent of thermal effects, delivers controlled mechanical stimuli to activate endogenous mechanotransduction pathways, such as ion channels, transmembrane proteins, and cytoskeleton-mediated signaling cascades.

These pathways regulate critical cellular processes, such as proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis, positioning LIPUS as a promising modality for targeted modulation of cell fate. Precl-inical and clinical studies have demonstrated the therapeutic efficacy of LIPUS across diverse applications, including bone repair, neural regeneration, and soft tissue rehabilitation. However, optimizing stimulation parameters and advancing clinical translation remain key challenges.

This article summarizes the central role of LIPUS in promoting tissue regeneration through non-thermal regulation of cellular homeostasis and explores strategies to accelerate clinical adoption of LIPUS. By integrating mechanistic insights with translational perspectives, this review provides a roadmap for advancing LIPUS-driven regenerative medicine in the era of precision bioengineering.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/technology/bi ... r-AA1JM673

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These Super-Resolution Microscopes Are Revealing the Inner Lives of Cells

Now, however, optics engineers and physicists have developed sophisticated tricks to overcome the diffraction limit of light microscopes, opening up a new world of detail. These “super-resolution” light microscopy techniques can distinguish objects down to 100 nanometers and sometimes even less than 10 nanometers. Scientists attach tiny, colored fluorescent tags to individual proteins or bits of DNA, often in living cells where they can watch them in action. As a result, they are now filling in key knowledge gaps about how cells work and what goes wrong in neurological diseases and cancers, or during viral infections.


“We can really see new biology—things that we were hoping to see but hadn’t seen before,” says molecular cell biologist Lothar Schermelleh, who directs an imaging center at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Here’s some of what scientists are learning in this new age of light microscopy.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medica ... r-AA1JzWsM

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FDA approves breakthrough eye drops that fix near vision without glasses
By Bronwyn Thompson
August 06, 2025
https://newatlas.com/aging/age-related- ... rops-vizz/

The first aceclidine-based eye drop to improve near vision in adults with presbyopia, which affects more than 100 million adults in the US alone, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and will be available within three months.

Known as VIZZ, from pharmaceutical company LENZ, the drops are an aceclidine ophthalmic solution that effectively treats presbyopia in adults. The once-daily drops offer relief from blurry near. vision for up to 10 hours.

"The FDA approval of VIZZ is a defining moment for LENZ and represents a transformative improvement in the available treatment options for the 128 million adults living with blurry near vision in the United States," said Eef Schimmelpennink, President and Chief Executive Officer of LENZ Therapeutics. "This significant milestone is the result of tremendous commitment and collaboration by the LENZ team and our partners, the dedication of our clinical investigators, and the contributions of hundreds of participants in our clinical trials."

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New Term for Systematic, Deliberate Attacks on Healthcare as Acts of War: ‘Healthocide’
August 5, 2025

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) The deliberate destruction of health services and systems as an act of war should be termed ‘healthocide’ and medical practitioners should call out and stand firm against this weaponisation of healthcare, insists a thought-provoking commentary published in the open access journal BMJ Global Health.

Silence implies complicity and approval, and undermines international humanitarian law as well as medical and professional ethics, say Dr Joelle Abi-Rached and colleagues of the American University of Beirut, Lebanon.

Although they refer to other conflicts in El Salvador, Ukraine, Sudan, and Syria, the authors focus primarily on the impact of armed conflict on healthcare in Lebanon and Gaza.

Data from Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health show that between 8 October 2023 and 27 January 2025, 217 healthcare workers were killed by the Israel Defense Forces; 177 ambulances were damaged; 68 attacks on hospitals were recorded; and 237 attacks on emergency medical services took place, they say.

Israel’s military operations in Gaza since October 7, 2023 have resulted in at least 986 medical workers’ deaths: 165 doctors; 260 nurses; 184 health associates; 76 pharmacists; 300 management and support staff; and 85 civil defence workers, they add.

Read more of the Eurekalert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1093342

To read the article published in BMJ Global Health: https://gh.bmj.com/content/10/8/e018656