“Eat, Sleep, Console” reduces hospital stay and need for medication among opioid-exposed infants

Photo Credit: Fujikama

Researchers have found the “Eat, Sleep, Console” (ESC) care approach to be more effective than using the Finnegan Neonatal Abstinence Scoring Tool (FNAST) to assess and manage opioid-exposed newborns, according to a national, randomized controlled clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health. Newborns cared for with ESC were medically ready for discharge approximately 6.7 days earlier and 63% less likely to receive medication as part of their treatment, compared to newborns cared for with FNAST. ESC prioritizes non-pharmacologic approaches to care, such as a low-stimulation environment, swaddling, skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding. ESC also encourages parental involvement in the care and assessment of their infants. These findings are based on the hospital outcomes of a large and geographically diverse group of opioid-exposed infants. A two-year follow-up study of a subset of infants is ongoing. The current findings are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Medical care for newborns who were exposed to opioids during pregnancy varies widely across hospitals,” said Diana W. Bianchi, M.D., director of NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), which co-led the study with the NIH Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program. “These findings are an important step toward standard, evidence-based guidance for the care of these infants.”

iDNA from flies to track native species across Western Australian wheatbelt

Carrion Fly
Photo Credit: Ian Lindsay

Researchers from Curtin University have collected iDNA from flies to track the movements of Australia’s native species across the Western Australian wheatbelt, with hopes to improve future conservation efforts in the region.

Published in the Journal Conservation Biology, the research team found that native animals, such as the echidna, numbat, woylie and chuditch, were predominantly located in conservation reserves and not across the wider wheatbelt landscape, compared to invasive species like foxes and feral cats which were found across all areas.

Senior researcher and co-author Associate Professor Bill Bateman, from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said native mammal populations were declining at alarming rates and there was an urgent need to monitor and protect their wellbeing.

“It is essential to monitor the distribution and movements of animals so we can identify which populations are most at risk, which ones are declining, and which ones are on the brink of extinction. Tracking wildlife through alternative techniques, such as camera trapping and audio recording, can be difficult, costly and take several weeks to gather data,” Associate Professor Bateman said.

The Trumpet biocomputing platform heralds a new path for medicine

A biocomputing chip made of bacteria.
Image Credit: College of Biological Sciences / University of Minnesota

From early detection and internal treatment of diseases to futuristic applications like augmenting human memory, biological computing, or biocomputing, it has the potential to revolutionize medicine and computers. Traditional computer hardware is limited in its ability to interface with living organs, which has constrained the development of medical devices. Computerized implants require a constant supply of electricity, they can cause scarring in soft tissue that makes them unusable and they cannot heal themselves the way organisms can. Through the use of biological molecules such as DNA or proteins, biocomputing has the potential to overcome these limitations.

Biocomputing is typically done either with live cells or with non-living, enzyme-free molecules. Live cells can feed themselves and can heal, but it can be difficult to redirect cells from their ordinary functions towards computation. Non-living molecules solve some of the problems of live cells, but have weak output signals and are difficult to fine-tune and regulate. 

Urologists to perform world’s first bladder transplant

The Keck Medicine of USC surgical team evaluates the integrity of a bladder during the research and development stage of bladder transplantation.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of USC Urology

No one has ever performed a bladder transplant in humans. But that may be about to change.

Urologists with Keck Medicine of USC have launched a clinical trial to perform the world’s first human bladder transplant.

The trial is actively screening potential participants for this first-ever type of transplantation.

During the procedure, the patient’s diseased bladder will be removed and replaced with a healthy bladder from a deceased donor.

“Transplantation is a lifesaving treatment option for conditions affecting many major organs, and transplanting a bladder could be a historic step in improving lives,” said Inderbir Gill, MD, founding executive director for USC Urology, part of Keck Medicine. Gill is also the principal investigator of the clinical trial and leading the transplantation efforts. “We could be on the verge of a medical advance that has the potential to revolutionize how we treat terminally compromised bladders.”

Targeting mitochondria and related protein suggest new therapeutic strategy for treating Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS)

Researchers have discovered a receptor, sigma-1 receptor (green), and a protein, ATAD3A (red),  that are associated with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Image Credit: Yamanaka Laboratory

Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have discovered a receptor, sigma-1 receptor, and a protein, ATAD3A, that are associated with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Since there are drugs that specifically target the receptor, their findings suggest a new therapeutic strategy. They published the study in the journal Neurobiology of Disease. 

ALS causes degeneration of motor neurons and the resulting muscle atrophy. Some of this degeneration is the result of the dysfunction of mitochondria, the energy-generating organelles of the body. This dysfunction causes a lack of energy in neurons resulting in the characteristic symptoms of the disease.   

The integrity of the mitochondria-associated membrane (MAM) is important for the stability of the mitochondria. The MAM is especially important during the processes of division of mitochondria (called fission) and mitochondria fusing together (called fusion). Several proteins, including enzymes, are associated with these processes and accumulate in the MAM.  

Scientists Identify Antivirals that Could Combat Emerging Infectious Diseases

Aedes aegypti mosquito.
Photo Credit: Pixabay

A new study has identified potential broad-spectrum antiviral agents that can target multiple families of RNA viruses that continue to pose a significant threat for future pandemics. The study, led by Gustavo Garcia Jr. in the UCLA Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, tested a library of innate immune agonists that work by targeting pathogen recognition receptors, and found several agents that showed promise, including one that exhibited potent antiviral activity against members of RNA viral families.

The ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which has claimed nearly seven million lives globally since it began, has revealed the vulnerabilities of human society to a large-scale outbreak from emerging pathogens. While accurately predicting what will trigger the next pandemic, the authors say recent epidemics as well as global climate change and the continuously evolving nature of the RNA genome indicate that arboviruses, viruses spread by arthropods such as mosquitoes, are prime candidates. These include such as Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), Dengue virus, West Nile virus and Zika virus. The researchers write: “Given their already-demonstrated epidemic potential, finding effective broad-spectrum treatments against these viruses is of the utmost importance as they become potential agents for pandemics.”

In their new study, published in Cell Reports Medicine, researchers found that several antivirals inhibited these arboviruses to varying degrees. “The most potent and broad-spectrum antiviral agents identified in the study were cyclic dinucleotide (CDN) STING agonists, which also hold promise in triggering an immune defense against cancer,” said senior author Vaithi Arumugaswami, Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute.

Study unlocks potential breakthrough in Type 1 diabetes treatment

Omid Veiseh and Boram Kim. Kim is holding a medical-grade catheter similar to ones used in the study experiments.
Photo Credit: Gustavo Raskosky/Rice University

For the over 8 million people around the globe living with Type 1 diabetes, getting a host immune system to tolerate the presence of implanted insulin-secreting cells could be life-changing.

Rice University bioengineer Omid Veiseh and collaborators identified new biomaterial formulations that could help turn the page on Type 1 diabetes treatment, opening the door to a more sustainable, long-term, self-regulating way to handle the disease.

To do so, they developed a new screening technique that involves tagging each biomaterial formulation in a library of hundreds with a unique “barcode” before implanting them in live subjects.

According to the study in Nature Biomedical Engineering, using one of the alginate formulations to encapsulate human insulin-secreting islet cells provided long-term blood sugar level control in diabetic mice. Catheters coated with two other high-performing materials did not clog up.

“This work was motivated by a major unmet need,” said Veiseh, a Rice assistant professor of bioengineering and Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas scholar. “In Type 1 diabetes patients, the body’s immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. As those cells are killed off, the patient loses the ability to regulate their blood glucose.”

The world’s first wood transistor

Isak Engquist, senior associate professor and Van Chinh Tran, PhD student at the Laboratory for Organic Electronics at Linköping University.
Photo Credit: Thor Balkhed

Researchers at Linköping University and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed the world’s first transistor made of wood. Their study, published in the journal PNAS, paves the way for further development of wood-based electronics and control of electronic plants.

Transistors, invented almost one hundred years ago, are considered by some to be an invention just as important to humanity as the telephone, the light bulb or the bicycle. Today, they are a crucial component in modern electronic devices, and are manufactured at nanoscale. A transistor regulates the current that passes through it and can also function as a power switch.

Researchers at Linköping University, together with colleagues from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, have now developed the world’s first electrical transistor made of wood.

“We’ve come up with an unprecedented principle. Yes, the wood transistor is slow and bulky, but it does work, and has huge development potential,” says Isak Engquist, senior associate professor at the Laboratory for Organic Electronics at Linköping University.

Perovskite solar cells' instability must be addressed for global adoption

Photo Credit: Chelsea

Mass adoption of perovskite solar cells will never be commercially viable unless the technology overcomes several key challenges, according to researchers from the University of Surrey. 

Perovskite-based cells are widely believed to be the next evolution of solar energy and meet the growing demand for clean energy. However, they are not as stable as traditional solar-based cells.  

The Surrey team found that stabilizing the perovskite "photoactive phases" – the specific part of the material that is responsible for converting light energy into electrical energy – is the key step to extending the lifespan of perovskite solar cells.  

The stability of the photoactive phase is important because if it degrades or breaks down over time, the solar cell will not be able to generate electricity efficiently. Therefore, stabilizing the photoactive phase is a critical step in improving the longevity and effectiveness of perovskite solar cells. 

‘Spectacular’ new find: Roman military camps in desert found by Oxford archaeologists using Google Earth

An aerial view of the western camp
Photo Credit: APAAME

Three new Roman fortified camps have been identified across northern Arabia by a remote sensing survey by the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology.  Their paper, published today in the journal Antiquity, reports the discovery may be evidence of a probable undocumented military campaign across south east Jordan into Saudi Arabia.

The camps were identified using satellite images. According to the research team, they may have been part of a previously undiscovered Roman military campaign linked to the Roman takeover of the Nabataean Kingdom in AD 106 CE, a civilization centered on the world-famous city of Petra, located in Jordan.

"These camps are a spectacular new find and an important new insight into Roman campaigning in Arabia."

Dr Mike Bishop

Dr Michael Fradley, who led the research and first identified the camps on Google Earth, suggests there is little doubt about the date of the camps. He says, ‘We are almost certain they were built by the Roman army, given the typical playing card shape of the enclosures with opposing entrances along each side. The only notable difference between them is that the westernmost camp is significantly larger than the two camps to the east.’