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Category: health – Page 2

RisingAttacK: New technique can make AI ‘see’ whatever you want

Researchers have demonstrated a new way of attacking artificial intelligence computer vision systems, allowing them to control what the AI “sees.” The research shows that the new technique, called RisingAttacK, is effective at manipulating all of the most widely used AI computer vision systems.

At issue are so-called “adversarial attacks,” in which someone manipulates the data being fed into an AI system to control what the system sees, or does not see, in an image. For example, someone might manipulate an AI’s ability to detect , pedestrians or other cars—which would cause problems for . Or a hacker could install code on an X-ray machine that causes an AI system to make inaccurate diagnoses.

“We wanted to find an effective way of hacking AI vision systems because these vision systems are often used in contexts that can affect human health and safety—from autonomous vehicles to health technologies to ,” says Tianfu Wu, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University.

Rerouted bile acid thwarts tumor spread in colorectal cancer mouse model

Research led by the Department of General and Visceral Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Freiburg, Germany has found that bile acid diversion in Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) reduces colorectal tumor growth and metastasis independent of weight loss, potentially reshaping future cancer treatment approaches.

More than 2 billion adults worldwide are now overweight or obese, a condition marked by chronic low-grade inflammation and metabolic disruption that can promote tumor growth, increasing the risk of developing at least 15 types of cancer. In the United States alone, more than a third of adults face obesity, presenting an urgent public-health crisis.

Among various weight-loss interventions, , specifically RYGB, is not only effective in promoting sustained weight reduction but has intriguingly been linked to reduced cancer incidence. Whether these changes alone can slow or prevent colorectal cancer remains a question with critical implications for prevention and treatment.

Low-intensity brain stimulation may restore neuron health in Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative condition that affects a significant proportion of older people worldwide. Synapses are points of communication between neural cells that are malleable to change based on our experiences. By adding, removing, strengthening, or weakening synaptic contacts, our brain encodes new events or forgets previous ones.

In AD, , the brain’s ability to regulate the strength of synaptic connections between neurons, is significantly disrupted. This worsens over time, reducing cognitive and memory functions and leading to reduced quality of life. To date, there is no effective cure for AD, and only limited treatments for managing the symptoms.

Studies have shown that (rTMS), a noninvasive brain stimulation technique that uses electromagnetic pulses to target specific brain regions, has therapeutic potential to manage dementia and related diseases. From previous studies, we know that rTMS can promote synaptic plasticity in healthy nervous systems. Moreover, it is already used to treat certain neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric conditions. However, individual responses to rTMS for AD management are variable, and the underlying mechanisms are not clearly understood.

Highly Scalable, Wearable Surface‐Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy

The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic growth of wearable sensor technology, mainly represented by flexible, stretchable, on-skin electronic sensors that provide rich information of the wearer’s health conditions and surroundings. A recent breakthrough in the field is the development of wearable chemical sensors based on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) that can detect molecular fingerprints universally, sensitively, and noninvasively. However, while their sensing properties are excellent, these sensors are not scalable for widespread use beyond small-scale human health monitoring due to their cumbersome fabrication process and limited multifunctional sensing capabilities. Here, a highly scalable, wearable SERS sensor is demonstrated based on an easy-to-fabricate, low-cost, ultrathin, flexible, stretchable, adhesive, and biointegratable gold nanomesh. It can be fabricated in any shape and worn on virtually any surface for label-free, large-scale, in situ sensing of diverse analytes from low to high concentrations (10–106 × 10−9 m). To show the practical utility of the wearable SERS sensor, the sensor is tested for the detection of sweat biomarkers, drugs of abuse, and microplastics. This wearable SERS sensor represents a significant step toward the generalizability and practicality of wearable sensing technology.

Two classes of FOXA1 mutations found to drive prostate cancer and therapy resistance

A new study from the University of Michigan Rogel Health Cancer Center, published in Science, sheds light on how two distinct classes of mutations in the FOXA1 gene—commonly altered in prostate cancer—drive tumor initiation formation and therapeutic resistance.

FOXA1, a key transcription factor that facilitates binding to DNA, is mutated in 10–40% of hormone-dependent prostate cancers. While common, the exact ways these mutations alter cancer cells have remained elusive—until now.

Rogel researchers, including Arul Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D., S.P. Hicks Endowed Professor of Pathology and Urology, and Abhijit Parolia, Ph.D., Rogel Fellow and Assistant Professor of Pathology, used mouse models to understand the mechanisms underlying two major classes of FOXA1 mutations.

SGLT-2 Inhibitors and Serious Liver Events in Patients With Cirrhosis

This retrospective cohort study was conducted using data from TriNetX, a multi-institutional health research network. Using the TriNetX platform, we accessed deidentified electronic health records from over 212 million patients across 120 major health care organizations.9 The built-in analytic functions of TriNetX enable patient-level analyses while ensuring that only population-level data are reported.

This study was approved by WCG Clinical, which granted a waiver to TriNetX as a federated network and was deemed exempt from informed consent owing to the use of existing, non–human participant data that were deidentified per the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act privacy rule. The study followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) reporting guideline.

We included patients with cirrhosis (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision [ICD-10] codes K74.6 and K74.69), who were taking furosemide (RxNorm [National Library of Medicine] code 4603) and spironolactone (RxNorm code 9997) between January 2013 and July 2021. For patients receiving an SGLT-2 inhibitor (Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical code A10BK), the index event was defined as the date on which they were concurrently prescribed spironolactone, furosemide, and an SGLT-2 inhibitor. For the control group, the index event was the date on which they were prescribed concurrent spironolactone and furosemide but not an SGLT-2 inhibitor. Each patient was followed up for 3 years from the index event, with follow-up ending on July 11, 2024.

Intestinal bacterium allows microbiome-mediated protection against pathogens

The totality of bacteria, viruses and fungi that exist in and on a multicellular organism forms its natural microbiome. The interactions between the body and these microorganisms significantly influence both, the functions and health of the host organism. Researchers assume that the microbiome plays an important role in the defense against pathogens, among other things.