SARS-CoV-2 detection in 30 minutes using gene scissors

Multiplex chip of a Freiburg research team: On this chip, the viral load in the nasal swab and, if necessary, the antibiotic concentration in the blood of COVID-19 patients could be measured simultaneously.
Photo Credit: AG Disposable Microsystems/University of Freiburg

Researchers of the University of Freiburg introduce biosensor for the nucleic acid amplification-free detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA

CRISPR-Cas is versatile: Besides the controversial genetically modified organisms (GMOs), created through gene editing, various new scientific studies use different orthologues of the effector protein ‘Cas’ to detect nucleic acids such as DNA or RNA.

In its most recent study, the research group headed by microsystems engineer Dr. Can Dincer of the Department of Microsystems2 Engineering, University of Freiburg introduces a microfluidic multiplexed chip for the simultaneous measurement of the viral load in nasal swabs and (if applicable) the blood antibiotic levels of COVID-19 patients.

Rapid test or PCR?

The market launch of rapid antigen test kits has significantly changed the way in which society handles the effects of the pandemic: Individuals suspecting an infection with SARS-CoV-2 can now test themselves at home with kits that are readily available at most drug stores, pharmacies and supermarkets, instead of making an, oftentimes difficult to acquire, appointment for PCR testing, that requires 1 to 3 additional days to receive the result. This convenience is, however, paid for with test sensitivity. This issue became flagrantly apparent during the wave of infections last winter, when the ‘lateral flow devices’ frequently failed to detect infections with the Omicron-variant until after the onset of symptoms. “The trade-off between sensitivity and sample-to-result time could potentially be bridged using our method,” says Midori Johnston, first author of the study, that is now being published in the journal Materials Today.

Vitamin D fails to reduce statin-associated muscle pain

Study is the first placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial to study this
Photo Credit: PublicDomainPictures

Patients who take statins to lower high cholesterol levels often complain of muscle pains, which can lead them to stop taking the highly effective medication and put them at greater risk of heart attack or stroke.

Some clinicians have recommended vitamin D supplements to ease the muscle aches of patients taking a statin, but a new study from scientists at Northwestern University, Harvard University and Stanford University shows the vitamin appears to have no substantial impact.

The study was published Nov. 23 in JAMA Cardiology.

Although non-randomized studies have reported vitamin D to be an effective treatment for statin-associated muscle symptoms, the new study, which is the first randomized clinical trial to look at the effect of vitamin D on statin-associated muscle symptoms, was large enough to rule out any important benefits.

In the randomized, double-blind trial, 2,083 participants ingested either 2,000 units of vitamin D supplements daily or a placebo. The study found participants in both categories were equally likely to develop muscle symptoms and discontinue statin therapy.

New study on morphine treatment in people with COPD and severe, long-term breathlessness

Magnus Ekström, researcher at Lund University and Chief Physician in Pulmonary Medicine at Blekinge Hospital in Karlskrona
Photo Credit: Curtsey of Lund University

Sometimes healthcare professionals treat patients with opioids such as morphine to relieve symptoms, but there has been a lack of evidence as to whether this helps with severe chronic breathlessness. A randomized Phase 3 study conducted by Swedish and Australian researchers now finds that morphine does not reduce worst breathlessness.

The study is published in JAMA.

Long term shortness of breath is a common cause of ongoing suffering that often occurs with advanced serious illness and at the end of life. COPD can cause breathlessness by damaging the lungs and airways and for seriously ill people with severe long-term breathlessness, physical activity is often a challenge.

"Many people live with shortness of breath. It is distressing that no better treatment exists, but based on the results we’ve seen, we cannot generally recommend giving morphine to people with chronic breathlessness", says Magnus Ekström, a researcher in Palliative Medicine and Pulmonary Medicine at Lund University in Sweden and Chief Physician in Pulmonary Medicine at Blekinge Hospital.

New study reveals high rates of iron deficiency in women during late-stage pregnancy

Photo Credit: Juan Encalada

Pregnant women may need to take more supplemental iron than current Health Canada guidelines recommend, after two UBC researchers found high rates of iron deficiency in a recent study.

The research investigated iron deficiency prevalence among 60 pregnant women in Metro Vancouver and found that over 80 per cent of them were likely iron-deficient in late pregnancy despite taking daily prenatal supplements that provided 100 per cent of the daily iron recommendation in pregnancy.

“This was much higher than I expected to see, which worries us because a woman who is iron-deficient in pregnancy is at higher risk for having an infant with iron deficiency,” said faculty of land and food systems professor Dr. Crystal Karakochuk (she/her), the study’s principal investigator.

Iron is an important nutrient during pregnancy and infancy as it supports optimal growth and development for the fetus and, eventually, the baby.

Kelsey Cochrane (she/her), a PhD candidate in the faculty of land and food systems and the study’s first author, explains that, for the first six months of their lives, babies rely on iron stores they built throughout gestation.

Intestinal microorganisms influence white blood cell levels in blood

Under normal conditions (steady state) neutrophils regulate the gut microbiota. When the number of neutrophils drops (neutropenia), the composition of the gut microbiota changes, stimulating T cells to produce IL-17A. IL-17-A in turn stimulates the production of neutrophils in the bone marrow (reactive granulopoiesis).
Illustration Credit: Daigo Hashimoto

White blood cells, or granulocytes, are cells that are part of the innate immune system. The most common type of granulocyte is the neutrophil, a phagocyte that destroys microbes in the body. Low neutrophil counts in the blood is called neutropenia; this condition is commonly seen in cases of leukemia or following chemotherapy. It is known that neutropenia induces granulopoiesis, the process formation of granulocytes. However, the exact mechanisms by which neutropenia drives granulopoiesis are not fully understood.

A team of researchers led by Associate Professor Daigo Hashimoto and Professor Takanori Teshima at Hokkaido University’s Faculty of Medicine have discovered that the gut microbiome plays a critical role in driving granulopoiesis in mice models. Their findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lung infections caused by soil fungi are a problem nationwide

The fungus Histoplasma, which causes lung infections, was concentrated in the Midwest in the 1950s and '60s (top map), but now causes significant disease throughout much of the country (bottom). Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis discovered that the three main kinds of soil fungi that cause lung infections have all expanded their ranges in recent decades. Reliance on outdated maps could be causing delayed or missed diagnoses.
Image Credit: Patrick Mazi and Andrej Spec

Fungi in the soil cause a significant number of serious lung infections in 48 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia, including many areas long thought to be free of deadly environmental fungi, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Studies from the 1950s and ’60s indicated that fungal lung infections were a problem only in certain parts of the country. The new study, available online in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, shows that is no longer the case. Doctors who rely on outdated maps of disease-causing fungi may miss the signs of a fungal lung infection, resulting in delayed or incorrect diagnoses, the researchers said.

“Every few weeks I get a call from a doctor in the Boston area — a different doctor every time — about a case they can’t solve,” said senior author Andrej Spec, MD, an associate professor of medicine and a specialist in fungal infections. “They always start by saying, ‘We don’t have histo here, but it really kind of looks like histo.’ I say, ‘You guys call me all the time about this. You do have histo.’”

How the body's own cannabinoids far-range the bronchi

The research team led by Prof. Dr. Daniela Wenzel, Dr. Michaela Matthey, Alexander Seidinger and Annika Simon (from left) want to know how the bronchi can be set far.
Photo Credit: RUB, Marquard

Narrowing the bronchi makes many lung diseases like asthma so dangerous. Researchers have discovered a new signaling pathway that leads to the expansion of the respiratory tract.

Inhalation drugs against asthma and other obstructive pulmonary diseases often decrease in their effects after prolonged use. A research team led by Prof. Dr. Daniela Wenzel from the Department of Systems Physiology at the Ruhr University Bochum was now able to show an alternative signal path through which the body's own cannabinoids lead to the bronchi being expanded. This raises hopes for alternative treatment options. Asthma also appears to be associated with a lack of these cannabinoids in the bronchi, which could be one of the causes of the disease. The research team reports in the journal Nature Communications.

The bronchi are far from the body's own cannabinoids

Obstructive lung diseases are the third leading cause of death worldwide. These include, for example, the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease COPD, from which many smokers suffer, but also bronchial asthma. In an asthma attack, the bronchi contracts so strongly that exhalation is no longer possible - this can be life-threatening. "Asthma is an inflammatory process, but the narrowing of the bronchi is fatal," explains Annika Simon, first author of the study. “That is why we are particularly interested in regulating this narrowing."

Newly Developed Gene Classifier Identifies Risk of Breast Pre-Cancer Progression

Photo Credit: Angiola Harry

A team of researchers mapping a molecular atlas for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) has made a major advance toward distinguishing whether the early pre-cancers in the breast will develop into invasive cancers or remain stable.

Analyzing samples from patients who had undergone surgery to remove areas of DCIS, the team identified 812 genes associated with cancer progression. Using this gene classifier, they were then able to predict the risk of cancer cells recurring or progressing.

The study, which was published this week in the journal Cancer Cell, was led by E. Shelley Hwang, M.D., of the Duke Cancer Institute, and Rob West, M.D., Ph.D., of the Stanford University Medical Center. Their work is part of the Human Tumor Atlas Network under the Moonshot Initiative funded by the National Cancer Institute.

“There has been a long-standing debate over whether DCIS is cancer or a high-risk condition,” Hwang said. “In the absence of a way to make that determination, we currently treat everyone with surgery, radiation, or both.

“DCIS is diagnosed in more than 50,000 women a year, and about a third of those women have a mastectomy, so we are increasingly concerned that we might be overtreating many women,” Hwang said. “We need to understand the biology of DCIS better, and that’s what our research has been designed to do.”

Are Covid-19 “comas” signs of a protective hibernation state?

Caption:When the painted turtle hibernates it essentially sedates its brain to survive in its low-oxygen environment. Authors of a new paper in PNAS hypothesize that the same dynamic may be occurring in severe Covid-19 patients who underwent sedation and ventilation.
Photo Credit: Wayne

Many Covid-19 patients who have been treated for weeks or months with mechanical ventilation have been slow to regain consciousness even after being taken off sedation. A new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers the hypothesis that this peculiar response could be the effect of a hibernation-like state invoked by the brain to protect cells from injury when oxygen is scarce.

A very similar kind of state, characterized by the same signature change of brain rhythms, is not only observed in cardiac arrest patients treated by chilling their body temperature, a method called “hypothermia,” but also by the painted turtle, which has evolved a form of self-sedation to contend with long periods of oxygen deprivation, or “anoxia,” when it overwinters underwater.

“We propose that hypoxia combined with certain therapeutic maneuvers may initiate an as-yet-unrecognized protective down-regulated state (PDS) in humans that results in prolonged recovery of consciousness in severe Covid-19 patients following cessation of mechanical ventilation and in post-cardiac arrest patients treated with hypothermia,” wrote authors Nicholas D. Schiff and Emery N. Brown. “In severe Covid-19 patients we postulate that the specific combination of intermittent hypoxia, severe metabolic stress and GABA-mediated sedation may provide a trigger for the PDS.”

Researchers may have found a new biomarker for covid-19

Patients with acute COVID-19 infection have increased levels of the cytokine IL-26 in their blood.
Photo Credit: Louis Reed

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have shown that patients with acute COVID-19 infection have increased levels of the cytokine IL-26 in their blood. Moreover, high IL-26 levels correlate with an exaggerated inflammatory response that signifies severe cases of the disease. The findings, which are presented in Frontiers in Immunology, indicate that IL-26 is a potential biomarker for severe COVID-19.

Vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 have proved effective at reducing the number of cases of severe COVID-19. However, the emergence of new viral variants, limited distribution of the vaccine and declining immunity are problems that drive scientists to find more efficacious treatments for the disease.

“We need to understand more about underlying immunological mechanisms in order to find better treatments. There is also a need for improved diagnostics in COVID 19-patients,” says Eduardo Cardenas, postdoc researcher at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, and principal author of the new pilot study.

Uterine fibroid growth activated by chemicals found in everyday products

Uterine fibroids
Credit: Hic et nunc CC BY-SA 3.0

For the first time, scientists at Northwestern Medicine have demonstrated a causal link between environmental phthalates (toxic chemicals found in everyday consumer products) and the increased growth of uterine fibroids, the most common tumors among women.

"These toxic pollutants are everywhere, including food packaging, hair and makeup products, and more, and their usage is not banned.”

Dr. Serdar Bulun

Corresponding study author, chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine physician

Manufacturers use environmental phthalates in numerous industrial and consumer products, and they’ve also been detected in medical supplies and food. Although they are known to be toxic, they are currently unbanned in the U.S.

“These toxic pollutants are everywhere, including food packaging, hair and makeup products, and more, and their usage is not banned,” said corresponding study author Dr. Serdar Bulun, chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine physician. “These are more than simply environmental pollutants. They can cause specific harm to human tissues.”

Researchers discover immunity genetics leading to worse COVID outcomes for men

Olga Troyanskaya 
Photo bySameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy

Why do men have worse outcomes than women from COVID-19? A new study suggests it’s not something wrong with males, it’s something right with females. Specifically, females’ innate immune systems.

A team of researchers from Princeton University, Flatiron Institute of the Simons Foundation, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Naval Medical Research Center had begun studying a group of nearly 3,000 members of the U.S. Marine Corps before a COVID-19 outbreak during their training in 2020, and continued to follow them through the infections and afterwards. The results of their study appear in the current issue of the journal Cell Systems.

Using RNA sequencing and clinical measure analysis, the research team found that even though infected females had higher rates of symptoms, their average viral load was 2.6 times lower than that of the males. They also identified molecular signatures that pointed to a sex-specific genetic basis for the difference. “Sex-specific responses to COVID-19 are notoriously challenging to study, due to the many confounding variables, including comorbidities, differences in environment, fitness, etc,” said Olga Troyanskaya, a professor of computer science and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics (LSI) and director of Princeton Precision Health at Princeton University, the associate director for genomics at the Flatiron Institute of the Simons Foundation, and one of two co-senior authors of the study.

Repeat COVID-19 infections increase risk of organ failure, death

Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care system, examines data from a new study. Researchers led by Al-Aly found that repeat SARS-CoV-2 infections contribute significant additional risk of adverse health conditions in multiple organ systems.
Photo Credit: Matt Miller/School of Medicine

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began almost three years ago, scientists have learned that an initial infection can lead to short- and long-term health risks affecting nearly every organ system in the body. They’ve also determined that people can get COVID-19 a second or a third time, despite acquiring natural antibodies after the first infection and receiving vaccination and booster shots.

Now, a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care system shows the health consequences of reinfection. The researchers found that repeat SARS-CoV-2 infections contribute significant additional risk of adverse health conditions in multiple organ systems.

Such outcomes include hospitalization; disorders affecting the lungs, heart, brain, and the body’s blood, musculoskeletal and gastrointestinal systems; and even death. Reinfection also contributes to diabetes, kidney disease and mental health issues.

The findings are published in Nature Medicine.

Key cause of type 2 diabetes uncovered

Oxford Research reveals high blood glucose reprograms the metabolism of pancreatic beta-cells in diabetes.
Photo Credit: Steve Buissinne

Glucose metabolites (chemicals produced when glucose is broken down by cells), rather than glucose itself, have been discovered to be key to the progression of type 2 diabetes. In diabetes, the pancreatic beta-cells do not release enough of the hormone insulin, which lowers blood glucose levels. This is because a glucose metabolite damages pancreatic beta-cell function.

An estimated 415 million people globally are living with diabetes. With nearly 5 million people diagnosed with the condition in the UK, it costs the NHS some £10 billion each year. Around 90% of cases are type 2 diabetes (T2D), which is characterized by the failure of pancreatic beta-cells to produce insulin, resulting in chronically elevated blood glucose. T2D normally presents in later adult life, and by the time of diagnosis, as much as 50% of beta cell function has been lost. While researchers have known for some time that chronically elevated blood sugar (hyperglycemia) leads to a progressive decline in beta-cell function, what exactly causes beta-cell failure in T2D has remained unclear.

Now a new study led by Dr Elizabeth Haythorne and Professor Frances Ashcroft of the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford has revealed how chronic hyperglycemia causes beta-cell failure. Using both an animal model of diabetes and beta-cells cultured at high glucose, they showed, for the first time, that glucose metabolism, rather than glucose itself, is what drives the failure of beta-cells to release insulin in T2D. Importantly, they also demonstrated that beta-cell failure caused by chronic hyperglycemia can be prevented by slowing the rate of glucose metabolism.

Ruptured ACLs can heal without surgery

A new study challenges the common notion that an ACL injury cannot heal.
Photo Credit:  kinkate

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) ruptures can heal without surgery and this could be key to better patient outcomes, according to new findings challenging the common notion that an ACL injury cannot heal.

Published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the study analysed trial data and found some ruptured ACLs healed after exercise-based rehabilitation, and that this healing was associated with better patient-reported outcomes compared with ACL reconstruction surgery.

The study, led by physiotherapist and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Dr Stephanie Filbay, undertook a secondary analysis of data from the KANON randomized controlled trial - the first to randomize people with ACL rupture to either management with early ACL reconstruction, or rehabilitation and optional delayed surgery. Participants in the trial were active adults – not professional athletes - aged 18-35 years.

The study found 53 per cent of trial participants whose ACL ruptures were managed with rehabilitation only, and did not decide to have surgery, had a healed ACL on MRI two years after injury. Signs of ACL healing were observed as early as three months after injury on MRI in this group.

Participants in this group reported better sport and recreational function and quality of life two years post-injury, compared to the non-healed, early ACL reconstruction surgery and delayed ACL reconstruction surgery groups.

Altered cell behavior behind resistance in neuroblastoma

Credit: National Cancer Institute

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have identified one of the reasons why the childhood cancer neuroblastoma becomes resistant to chemotherapy. The findings are significant for how future treatments should be designed. The results have been published in Science Advances.

Neuroblastoma is an aggressive cancer of the sympathetic nervous system, especially of the adrenal gland. Despite intense treatment with chemotherapy, the disease can be difficult to cure and the prognosis is poor for children who have the aggressive variant. One of the reasons is that the tumor often develops resistance to drugs. In order to understand what happens when the tumor becomes resistant, good disease models are needed that can mimic the complex drug treatment given to patients today:

“Tumors from patients with neuroblastoma look very different, and it is difficult to produce a model that is representative of many patients. This type of challenge often limits medical research”, explains the study's first author, Adriana Mañas, child cancer researcher at Lund University.

Probiotic ‘backpacks’ show promise for treating inflammatory bowel diseases

Probiotic bacteria (teal) coated in a layer of biomaterial as they travel through a human intestine. Attached to the bacteria are reactive oxygen species nano-scavengers.
Image Credit: Quanyin Hu

Like elite firefighters headed into the wilderness to combat an uncontrolled blaze, probiotic bacteria do a better job quelling gut inflammation when they’re equipped with the best gear.

A new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison demonstrates just how much promise some well-equipped gut-friendly bacteria hold for improving treatments of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.

Led by Quanyin Hu, a biomedical engineer and professor in the UW–Madison School of Pharmacy, the research builds on technology the team had previously designed. That prior technology encases beneficial bacteria within a very thin protective shell to help them survive an onslaught of stomach acids and competing microbes long enough to establish and multiply in the guts of mice.

While the technology makes orally administered probiotics more effective, IBD is a complex disease that usually involves more than gut microbial communities that are out of whack.

“IBD is a complicated disease, and you need to attack it at different angles,” says Hu.

So, Hu and his colleagues devised specialized nanoparticles to neutralize molecules implicated in IBD. They’ve also figured out a way of attaching these nanoparticle “backpacks” to beneficial bacteria after encasing them in the protective coating.

Alzheimer's disease can be diagnosed before symptoms emerge

Oskar Hansson, Professor of Neurology Lund University 
Photo Credit: Kennet Ruona

A large study led by Lund University in Sweden has shown that people with Alzheimer's disease can now be identified before they experience any symptoms. It is now also possible to predict who will deteriorate within the next few years. The study is published in Nature Medicine, and is very timely in light of the recent development of new drugs for Alzheimer's disease.

It has long been known that there are two proteins linked to Alzheimer’s – beta-amyloid, which forms plaques in the brain, and tau, which at a later stage accumulates inside brain cells. Elevated levels of these proteins in combination with cognitive impairment have previously formed the basis for diagnosing Alzheimer's.

“Changes occur in the brain between ten and twenty years before the patient experiences any clear symptoms, and it is only when tau begins to spread that the nerve cells die and the person in question experiences the first cognitive problems. This is why Alzheimer's is so difficult to diagnose in its early stages”, explains Oskar Hansson, senior physician in neurology at Skåne University Hospital and professor at Lund University.

He has now led a large international research study that was carried out with 1,325 participants from Sweden, the US, the Netherlands and Australia. The participants did not have any cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study. By using PET scans, the presence of tau and amyloid in the participants' brains could be visualized. The people in whom the two proteins were discovered were found to be at a 20-40 times higher risk of developing the disease at follow-up a few years later, compared to the participants who had no biological changes.

Scientists Created Model to Determine Risks of Sudden Cardiac Arrest

According to Maksim Kashtanov, Sverdlovsk doctors perform 20-30 operations a year for this genetic disease.
Photo Credit: from Maksim Kashtanov's personal archive

European and Russian scientists have developed a model for predicting the risks of sudden cardiac arrest after alcohol septal ablation (ASA) for hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM). In other words, after surgery to remove a hypertrophic fragment of the left ventricular septum, which prevents normal blood flow to the aorta. The created model is a new word in science: before that the regularities of sudden cardiac arrest after ASA have not been investigated, the modern system of risk assessment for postoperative patients was absent. Meanwhile, HOCM is the cause of 30% of cases of sudden cardiac arrest.

The researchers' recommendations will contribute to the timely identification of patients at risk of sudden cardiac arrest after alcohol septal ablation and to the most effective treatment of hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy. An article about the research was published in the American Journal of Cardiology.

The researchers analyzed the medical histories of more than 1,830 patients seen in clinics in Germany, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Russia. The analysis covered the period from 1996 to 2021. The study is the most extensive and in-depth to date. In developing the model, the authors used Russian statistics that have been forming since 2001. Data from Russia - Ekaterinburg and St. Petersburg - accounted for one-third of the statistical base of the study.

Injections for diabetes, cancer could become unnecessary

Young woman injecting insulin
Photo Credit: Pavel Danilyuk

Researchers at UC Riverside are paving the way for diabetes and cancer patients to forget needles and injections, and instead take pills to manage their conditions.

Some drugs for these diseases dissolve in water, so transporting them through the intestines, which receive what we drink and eat, is not feasible. As a result, these drugs cannot be administered by mouth. However, UCR scientists have created a chemical “tag” that can be added to these drugs, allowing them to enter blood circulation via the intestines.

The details of how they found the tag, and demonstrations of its effectiveness, are described in a new Journal of the American Chemical Society paper.

The tag is composed of a small peptide, which is like a protein fragment. “Because they are relatively small molecules, you can chemically attach them to drugs, or other molecules of interest, and use them to deliver those drugs orally,” said Min Xue, UCR chemistry professor who led the research.

Xue’s laboratory was testing something unrelated when the researchers observed these peptides making their way into cells.