Lifeboat Foundation

The child required a specific nutrient blend to optimize health and reduce kidney strain.

Prescription drugs helped a toddler born with a rare and chronic kidney disease receive a kidney transplant and escape the net of repeated dialysis sessions, all due to the efforts of his mother and the team of doctors.

The toddler, Dinero Motton, had been diagnosed with a lower urinary tract obstruction and enlarged bladder when he was still in his mother’s womb.

In a global research effort, scientists have uncovered a relationship between metabolism problems in the brain and a range of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, from autism to Alzheimer’s disease and more.

Despite their diverse symptoms, these conditions – as well as depression, epilepsy, schizophrenia, intellectual disability, and bipolar disorder – all involve a degree of cognitive impairment and often share genetic or metabolic features, hinting at a common biological basis.

The extensive collaboration by the International Brain pH Project Consortium, involving 131 scientists from 105 labs in seven countries, identified changes in brain acidity and lactate levels in animals as key signs of this metabolic dysfunction.

The medical breakthrough will have to wait a bit longer.

The idea of growing functioning human brain-like tissues in a dish has always sounded far-fetched, even to researchers in the field. Towards the future goal, a Japanese and French research team has developed a technique for connecting lab-grown brain-mimicking tissue in a way that resembles circuits in our brain.

The work appears in Nature Communications.

It is challenging to study exact mechanisms of the brain development and functions. Animal studies are limited by differences between species in brain structure and function, and brain cells grown in the lab tend to lack the characteristic connections of cells in the human brain. What’s more, researchers are increasingly realizing that these interregional connections, and the circuits that they create, are important for many of the brain functions that define us as humans.

A first-ever dataset bridging molecular information about the poplar tree microbiome to ecosystem-level processes has been released by a team of Department of Energy scientists led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The project aims to inform research regarding how natural systems function, their vulnerability to a changing climate, and ultimately how plants might be engineered for better performance as sources of bioenergy and natural carbon storage.

The data, described in Nature Publishing Group’s Scientific Data, provides in-depth information on 27 genetically distinct variants, or genotypes, of Populus trichocarpa, a poplar tree of interest as a bioenergy crop. The genotypes are among those that the ORNL-led Center for Bioenergy Innovation previously included in a genome-wide association study linking genetic variations to the trees’ physical traits. ORNL researchers collected leaf, soil and root samples from poplar fields in two regions of Oregon — one in a wetter area subject to flooding and the other drier and susceptible to drought.

Details in the newly integrated dataset range from the trees’ genetic makeup and gene expression to the chemistry of the soil environment, analysis of the microbes that live on and around the trees and compounds the plants and microbes produce.

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In a recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers explored how changes in daily step counts and variability affect cognitive function in older adults during a 10-week physical activity intervention.

Study: Association between changes in habitual stepping activity and cognition in older adults. Image Credit: SibRapid / Shutterstock.

Continue reading “Step steady: Consistent walking improves brain function in older adults” »

Researchers have identified new variations in neuroblastoma that could lead to a more accurate prognosis and better-targeted treatments for this devastating childhood cancer.

For many of these individuals, the response to repotrectinib lasted for several years.

“Repotrectinib can lead to long-term responses for patients with ROS1 fusion–positive lung cancers, including those who have and have not received prior targeted therapy,” said Alexander Drilon, M.D., of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who led the TRIDENT-1 study.

Treatment with repotrectinib also shrank tumors that had spread to the brain, a common location for lung metastases, the researchers reported.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) and the Leviev Cardiothoracic and Vascular Center at the Sheba Medical Center have found a mechanism responsible for increasing the risk of developing cancer among patients with heart disease: Small extracellular bubbles, or vesicles (sEVs), secreted from the sick heart to heal itself, are released into the bloodstream and promote the growth of cancer cells throughout the body.