Mom-to-Be ’ s High Blood Sugar May Raise Baby ’ s Odds for Heart Defects
The latest study on the effects of high blood sugar during pregnancy found that not only does diabetes in pregnancy raises the odds for congenital heart defects but the threat may also extend to women who simply have high blood sugar levels — not just full-blown diabetes.
Among women who did not have diabetes before or during pregnancy, the risk of having a child with a congenital heart defect rose 8 percent for every 10 milligrams-per-deciliter increase in blood sugar (glucose) levels in the early stages of pregnancy, the researchers found.
The study is a retrospective look at medical records — not the “...
Source: BHIC - December 20, 2017 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Michelle Burda Tags: Articles General Public Health Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 20th 2017
This study cohort is a healthy subset of the EpiPath cohort, excluding all participants with acute or chronic diseases. With a mediation analysis we examined whether CMV titers may account for immunosenescence observed in ELA.
In this study, we have shown that ELA is associated with higher levels of T cell senescence in healthy participants. Not only did we find a higher number of senescent cells (CD57+), these cells also expressed higher levels of CD57, a cell surface marker for senescence, and were more cytotoxic in ELA compared to controls. Control participants with high CMV titers showed a higher number of senes...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 19, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Mild Mitochondrial Stress Found to Prevent Some of the Age-Related Declines in Cellular Maintenance in Nematodes
Hormesis is a near ubiquitous phenomenon in living organisms and their component parts: a little damage, a short or mild exposure to damaging circumstances, can result in a net benefit to health and longevity. Cells respond to damage or stress by increasing their self-repair efforts for some period of time, maintaining their function more effectively than would otherwise have been the case. At the high level, the outcomes of hormesis have been measured for a wide variety of stresses and systems, from individual cells to entire organisms. At the low level of specific biochemical processes and interaction of components insid...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 17, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Battling the opiate crisis on the front lines
Jim Johnson is the director of the West Virginia Office of Drug Control Policy, and an advocate on the front lines of the opioid epidemic. During his previous job as the police chief from Huntington, WV he spearheaded a comprehensive initiative of education, syringe exchanges, and Naloxone distribution that has shown promising results in a community where up to 10 percent of the population is plagued with opioid dependence. His advocacy and programs have gained him national recognition, and he shared his experience at TEDMED where I met with him to speak further about the opioid epidemic.
How did you get involved in the fi...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 16, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/tom-fowler" rel="tag" > Tom Fowler, MD < /a > Tags: Meds Emergency Medicine Psychiatry Source Type: blogs
Digital Health Supports The Fight Against Opioids
The widespread U.S. opioid & overdose crisis is an ever-increasing tragic concern for everyone: writhing victims, family members being fain to see their relatives suffer or die, doctors prescribing opioid pain-killers what they thought before as safe, and regulators imposed to handle a tough situation. Addiction. It’s painful to even read about the skyrocketing numbers of people suffering, thus we decided to map how digital health could help tackle the opioid crisis.
Why is it so difficult to deal with the opioid crisis?
Once you become addicted, it sticks with you for a long time, if not for life, just as a chronic...
Source: The Medical Futurist - November 14, 2017 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Bioethics Mobile Health Virtual Reality in Medicine AI artificial intelligence data data analytics drugs future gc3 Innovation opioid opioid crisis pharma technology wearables Source Type: blogs
How Alzheimer's Affects the 4 Memory Systems of the Brain
The different memory systems of the brain -- episodic, semantic, procedural, and working -- and how they are affected by Alzheimer's disease.Seven Stages of Alzheimer's diseaseBy Alzheimer's Reading RoomThehuman brain contains an estimated 100 billion nerve cells (neurons).Chemical and electrical activity allows these neurons to perform their tasks and to communicate with one another.This elaborate communication system controls vital body functions and enables us to think, see, move, talk, remember, and experience emotions.What ’s the Difference Between Alzheimer’s and DementiaHow Memory Is Affected in Alzheimer'sNorma...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - November 3, 2017 Category: Neurology Tags: alzheimer's awareness alzheimer's care Alzheimer's Dementia care of dementia patients at home how does alzheimer's affect brain searches related to memory Source Type: blogs
How the pain scale and patient satisfaction leads to death
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re well aware that the United States is in the grip of a really big epidemic of opioid abuse. The epicenter of much of this has been my beloved Appalachia. My home-town, Huntington, WV, might as well be re-named “Oxycontin,” or maybe “Heroinville.” It’s ugly.
Enormous amounts of ink have been spilled on this topic, and I don’t intend to explain the genesis of it in detail. In short, however, about 20 years ago some doctors thought we weren’t being kind enough in our treatment of pain. Some articles were published to draw attention to th...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 9, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/edwin-leap" rel="tag" > Edwin Leap, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Emergency Medicine Hospital-Based Medicine Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Dysfunctional Golgi Apparatus Implicated in Some Forms of Neurodegeneration
Researchers have shown that dysfunction in Golgi apparatus organelles in brain cells is important in some forms of neurodegenerative disease, and identified a controlling protein that might be used in order to partially reverse this dysfunction. The Golgi apparatus is involved in the later stages of production and deployment of protein machinery in the cell; it packages up proteins for dispatch to their destination inside the cell, or for secretion outside the cell. Some past research has suggested relevance for Golgi apparatus failure in Alzheimer's disease, and there are indications that Golgi function might be one of th...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 11, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
CRISPR critters
I suppose I should say something about the recently announced work ofShoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University, who claims to have successfully edited the genome of human embryos, in this case to eliminate a disease causing mutation. This work is as yet unpublished and not peer reviewed, but let ' s assume it is sound.The technique, which has been much in the news, is calledCRISPR/Cas9.I ' m not going to go into the technical details here but you can certainly look it up if you are interested,the Wikipedia article is actually reasonably accessible if you have some basic understanding of genetics. But gett...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 7, 2017 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 29th 2017
In this study, we utilized an imaging-based assay to monitor the ability of disease-associated amyloid assemblies to rupture intracellular vesicles following endocytosis. We observe that the ability to induce vesicle rupture is a common feature of α-synuclein (α-syn) assemblies, as assemblies derived from wild type (WT) or familial disease-associated mutant α-syn all exhibited the ability to induce vesicle rupture. Similarly, different conformational strains of WT α-syn assemblies, but not monomeric or oligomeric forms, efficiently induced vesicle rupture following endocytosis.
The ability to induce vesicle rupt...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 28, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Are there Commonalities Between Neurodegenerative Conditions that can be Targeted to Produce General Therapies?
In this study, we utilized an imaging-based assay to monitor the ability of disease-associated amyloid assemblies to rupture intracellular vesicles following endocytosis. We observe that the ability to induce vesicle rupture is a common feature of α-synuclein (α-syn) assemblies, as assemblies derived from wild type (WT) or familial disease-associated mutant α-syn all exhibited the ability to induce vesicle rupture. Similarly, different conformational strains of WT α-syn assemblies, but not monomeric or oligomeric forms, efficiently induced vesicle rupture following endocytosis.
The ability to induce vesicle rupt...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 24, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Nature vs Nurture
By, SAURABH JHA MD
My wife chooses sides in the nature-versus-nurture war expeditiously. When our children are polite, she credits her nurture. When they’re rowdy, she blames my genes. But the nature-nurture war won’t be resolved anytime soon.
The gene played a significant role in the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata. Karna, abandoned by his mother, Kunti, and raised by a charioteer, was taught warfare by Parashurama, a gifted teacher with a fiery temperament, who despised warriors and only taught Brahmins.
One day, Parashurama was asleep with his head on Karna’s lap. Karna was bitten by a scorpion but d...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 29, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 3rd 2017
Fight Aging! provides a weekly digest of news and commentary for thousands of subscribers interested in the latest longevity science: progress towards the medical control of aging in order to prevent age-related frailty, suffering, and disease, as well as improvements in the present understanding of what works and what doesn't work when it comes to extending healthy life. Expect to see summaries of recent advances in medical research, news from the scientific community, advocacy and fundraising initiatives to help speed work on the repair and reversal of aging, links to online resources, and much more.
This content is...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 2, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A Set of Recent Papers on Aspects of Cellular Quality Control in Aging
Autophagy is a prominent topic in aging research. This is also the case for other forms of cellular maintenance processes, but autophagy is by far the most studied and understood at this time. Here when I say autophagy I mean macroautophagy. There other other, less well cataloged forms, but it is usually the case that when someone refers to autophagy without qualification, then they are talking about macroautophagy. In this type of autophagy, damaged molecules and cell structures are isolated inside a specially constructed membrane, and that then fuses with one of the cellular recycling system known as lysosomes. A lysosom...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 31, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Investigating Retrotransposons in Alzheimer's Disease
This study builds on an alternative hypothesis. First proposed in 2004, the "mitochondrial cascade hypothesis" posits that changes in the cellular powerhouses, not amyloid buildup, are what cause neurons to die. Like most human cells, neurons rely on mitochondria to stay healthy. But unlike other cells, most neurons stop dividing after birth, so they can't be replaced if they're damaged. In Alzheimer's patients, the thinking goes, the mitochondria in neurons stop working properly. As a result they are unable to generate as much energy for neurons, which starve and die with no way to replenish them. But how mitochondria in ...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 9, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
