By Katherine J. Wu Getty; The Atlantic JANUARY 21, 2022 Even before Omicron hit the United States in full force, most of our bodies had already wised up to SARS-CoV-2’s insidious spike—through infection, injection, or both. By the end of October 2021, some 86.2 percent of American immune systems may have glimpsed the virus’s most infamous protein, according...
by University of Rochester Medical Center Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain First, there was alpha, then delta, then omicron. And now there’s the so-called “son of omicron,” a subvariant that was flagged by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday as a new variant to track. Officially called omicron BA.2, it shares most of its mutations...
by Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University Dr. Ravindra Kolhe. Credit: Michael Holahan, Augusta University The search to better understand the tremendous range of responses to infection with the COVID-19 virus—from symptom free to critically ill—has uncovered in some of the sickest patients a handful of rare structural gene variants involved in body processes,...
by Dirk Hoffman, University at Buffalo Classifiers derived from baseline fecal microbiota profiles outperformed those based on clinical/demographic and neuroimaging data to predict CBT response. A Receiver operating characteristic curves of random forest classifiers for CBT response constructed from differentially abundant microbial genera, baseline clinical/demographic data (left panel), or brain data (right panel). The 95%...
by Laura Ungar and Lindsey Tanner Nancy Rose, center in mirror, speaks with her mother, Amy Russell, right, who both contracted COVID-19 in 2021, in their dining room surrounded by pictures of relatives and family, Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022, in Port Jefferson, N.Y. More than a third of COVID-19 survivors by some estimates develop lingering...
by Mark Fleming, University of Kentucky Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Early recognition and treatment of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) can prevent leg amputations, but it can also reduce a patient’s risk of stroke, heart attack and death. PAD is the development of blockage in the arteries of the legs. These are very similar to blockages...
by The Scripps Research Institute Scripps Research scientists tracked proteins tagged with biotin (black areas of this electron microscopy image) from retinal cells (pictured) to the visual cortex of the brain. Credit: The Scripps Research Institute Scientists at Scripps Research have discovered hundreds of proteins that are constantly transported throughout the healthy brain in small...
by Hans-Knöll-Institut Resident T cells (purple) survive radiation and chemotherapy in some patients. Donor cells (pink and green) are thus primarily found in the bloodstream. Credit: Daniela Leitner When pathogens enter the human body, a large number of immune cells are quickly on hand to recognize and destroy the invaders. Among them are T cells,...
A newly developed technology platform has the potential to treat diseases like diabetes, IBS, and obesity by using enteroendocrine (EE) cells found in human intestinal cells, according to a recent study. Although enteroendocrine cells make up only about 1% of intestinal cells, they produce around fifteen different hormones that play a role in regulating digestion...
BY KELLY SERVICK A microbiome-altering therapy cleared recurrent infections with the potentially deadly bacterium Clostridium difficile. BIOMEDICAL IMAGING UNIT/SOUTHAMPTON GENERAL HOSPITAL/SCIENCE SOURCE For people fighting repeat infections of the diarrhea-causing bacterium Clostridium difficile, fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) offers a proven—if unappetizing—solution. Stool from a healthy donor, usually delivered via colonoscopy, can help restore a balanced community...
