New research may help scientists locate immature cells in the central nervous system that could shed light on the causes of neurodegenerative diseases like multiple sclerosis—and autoimmune disease that affects the brain and nervous system—and allow for the development of better therapeutic treatments.
University of Utah Health researchers are leading a five-year, $22-million nationwide clinical trial for NMDA receptor encephalitis––a type of autoimmune encephalitis that prompts the immune system to mistakenly attack the brain, causing confusion, memory loss, seizures, and symptoms similar to bipolar disorder and other psychiatric conditions.
Scientists have identified a molecule released from the fruit fly gut after a protein-rich meal that switches their focus from eating to courtship. The discovery of Dh31, a type of chemical messenger, opens the door to unexplored areas of gut-to-brain communication.
A new study published Jan. 13 in Science reports that Epstein-Barr virus infection – known for causing mononucleosis or “mono,” could be a primary cause for multiple sclerosis.
Oxygen-deprived newborns who undergo cooling therapy to protect their brains are at an elevated risk of seizures and brain damage during the rewarming period, which could be a precursor of disability or death, a new study by a team of researchers led by a UT Southwestern pediatrician suggests. The finding, published online in JAMA Neurology, could lead to better ways to protect these vulnerable patients during an often overlooked yet critical period of cooling – or hypothermia – therapy.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) of McGill University have received a five-year grant expected to total $35.1 million for an extension of a study designed to develop biomarkers that indicate which people with the sleep disorder will go on to develop neurodegenerative diseases.
People with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder act out their dreams. While sleeping safely in bed, for example, they might throw up their arms to catch an imaginary ball or try to run from an illusory assailant.
A common mutation in gliomas sensitizes them to immunotherapy, a finding which researchers believe could have broader therapeutic implications for all glioma patients.
A recent Cleveland Clinic study found that patients who regularly use steroid nasal sprays are less likely to develop severe COVID-19-related disease, including a 20 to 25% lower risk of hospitalization, ICU admission and mortality. The study was published in Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.
A NIH study co-led and designed by Michigan Medicine researchers found that using convalescent plasma to treat newly infected #COVID-19 patients demonstrated no significant benefit. The trial was stopped in February 2021 due to lack of efficacy based on planned interim analysis
NIH-funded researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated the potential of a neuromodulation approach that uses low-intensity ultrasound energy, called transcranial focused ultrasound—or tFUS.
A new method of gene therapy is helping children born with a rare genetic disorder called AADC deficiency that causes severe physical and developmental disabilities. The study was led by researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and The Ohio State University College of Medicine.
In a new study on mice, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report that using MRI scans to measure blood volume in the brain can serve as a noninvasive way to potentially track the progress of gene editing therapies for early-stage Huntington’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that attacks brain cells. The researchers say that by identifying and treating the mutation known to cause Huntington’s disease with this type of gene therapy, before a patient starts showing symptoms, it may slow progression of the disease.
University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) researchers identified a new gene that may be linked to certain neurodevelopmental disorders and intellectual disabilities.
In a new study led by Yale Cancer Center, researchers show the nucleoside transporter ENT2 may offer an unexpected path to circumventing the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and enabling targeted treatment of brain tumors with a cell-penetrating anti-DNA autoantibody.
With preseason football training on the horizon, a new study shows that head impacts experienced during practice are associated with changes in brain imaging of young players over multiple seasons.
Scientists have identified a novel form of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, that affects children, according to an international collaborative study, “Childhood Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Caused by Excess Sphingolipid Synthesis,” published May 30, 2021, in Nature Medicine. This is the first example of a mutation that perturbs a specific metabolic pathway as causative for ALS.
As people with long-haul COVID-19 continue to recover from their illness, neurocognitive symptoms may persist or even worsen over time, as reported in new findings from researchers at DePaul University.
News release about the follow-up data from the landmark SPRINT study of the effect of high blood pressure on cardiovascular disease have confirmed that aggressive blood pressure management — lowering systolic blood pressure to less than 120 mm Hg -- dramatically reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, and death from these diseases, as well as death from all causes, compared to lowering systolic blood pressure to less than 140 mm Hg.
Black and Hispanic women may be more likely than white women to have a brain pressure disorder called idiopathic intracranial hypertension, according to a study published in the May 12, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The disorder may also be more common in women who live in low-income areas or in areas with more fast-food restaurants and convenience stores than grocery stores, also known as “food swamps.”
New study from Joshua Jacobs (Columbia Engineering) and Itzhak Fried (UCLA) demonstrates the existence of phase precession in the human brain for the first time, and shows that this neural code not only links sequential positions, as in animals, but also abstract progression towards specific goals. Says lead author Salman Qasim, “We were convinced that phase precession held a lot of promise as a widespread neural code that could be used for learning and cognition.”
Researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities College of Science and Engineering and Medical School have developed a unique head-mounted mini-microscope device that allows them to image complex brain functions of freely moving mice in real time over a period of more than 300 days. The groundbreaking study provides new insight into fundamental research that could improve human brain conditions such as concussions, autism, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease, as well as better understanding the brain’s role in addiction.
A new study used head impact sensors in four different sports and studied male and female athletes to determine which of these sports put students at the highest risk for head impacts that could lead to concussions.
A new study from the University of California, Irvine shows that compounds in both green and black tea relax blood vessels by activating ion channel proteins in the blood vessel wall. The discovery helps explain the antihypertensive properties of tea and could lead to the design of new blood pressure-lowering medications.
Five genes may play a key part in influencing if a person will contract Lewy body dementia, and possibly dementia from Parkinson's and Alzheimer’s diseases, according to a study published in Nature Genetics Feb. 15. The genes, BIN1, TMEM175, SNCA, APOE, and GBA, were identified by a team of scientists at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, and sequenced by The American Genome Center (TAGC), a series of state-of-the-art laboratories at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
The finding could lead to new ways to prevent cold sores and herpes-related eye disease from reoccurring, the researchers report.
Researchers identified spinal cord neurons responsible for an itchy sensation after an epidural morphine injection and found a drug that may fix the problem without reducing morphine’s pain-killing effects.
The National Institutes of Health is supporting a Wayne State University School of Medicine physician-researcher’s work at preventing and treating cerebral palsy in the form of two new five-year R01 grants worth a collective $5.59 million.
After years of paltry funding, research on the possible role of microbes in the causation of Alzheimer's disease will now get a major infusion of grants from the NIH's National Institute on Aging
Primary progressive aphasia is a rare neurodegenerative condition characterized by prominent language problems that worsen over time. About 40% of people with the condition have underlying Alzheimer’s disease. But a new study has found that people with the condition may not develop the memory problems associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The study is published in the January 13, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Research conducted at LSU Health New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence reports that a combination of an LSU Health-patented drug and selected DHA derivatives is more effective in protecting brain cells and increasing recovery after stroke than a single drug.
The uniquely human ability to read is the cornerstone of modern civilization, yet very little is understood about the effortless ability to derive meaning from written words. Scientists at UTHealth have now identified a crucial region in the temporal lobe, know as the mid-fusiform cortex, which appears to act as the brain’s visual dictionary.
This research helps illuminate the neural roots of emotions, and points to the possibility that a population of arousal-related neurons might be a target of future treatments for anxiety disorders and other illnesses involving abnormal arousal responses.
A novel drug called vamorolone may improve the efficacy of corticosteroid treatment for patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy — a rare form of inherited and progressive muscular dystrophy, according findings from a clinical trial published in the journal PLOS Medicine.
In a new medical records analysis of racial disparities in end-of-life care, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and three collaborating institutions report that Black patients voluntarily seek substantially more intensive treatment, such as mechanical ventilation, gastronomy tube insertion, hemodialysis, CPR and multiple emergency room visits in the last six months of life, while white patients more often choose hospice services.
Mayo Clinic researchers, along with national and global collaborators, have developed a potential test for Machado-Joseph disease, or spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3) ― a disease that has no cure. They also have clarified the role of a gene target associated with the disease.
New findings from scientists at Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago have revealed previously unknown information about the genetic basis for Armfield XLID syndrome, a rare intellectual disability linked to genetic defects in the X chromosome.
Scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine have recorded real time changes in dopamine and serotonin levels in the human brain that are involved with perception and decision-making. These same neurochemicals also are critical to movement disorders and psychiatric conditions, including substance abuse and depression.
A $53.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will aid brain scientists, including a researcher from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), in studying the role of incidental white matter lesions, or WMLs, in dementia among diverse people with cognitive complaints.
in a study with potential impacts on a variety of neurological diseases, Virginia Tech researchers have provided the first experimental evidence from a living organism to show that an abundant, star-shaped brain cell known as an astrocyte is essential for blood-brain barrier health.
UC San Diego researchers describe how the functional loss of a single gene negatively impacts neural development and promotes the growth of a particularly deadly form of pediatric brain cancer.
Researchers have long sought to explain precisely how the most common genetic mutation linked to both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia causes the death of nerve cells.
In mouse models of DIPG, simultaneously attacking two metabolic pathways led to significant improvements in survival.
DALLAS – Aug. 12, 2020 – In an animal model of multiple sclerosis (MS), decreasing the amount of a protein made in the liver significantly protected against development of the disease’s characteristic symptoms and promoted recovery in symptomatic animals, UTSW scientists report.
About 30% of stroke patients develop dementia, yet researchers understand very little about why. UChicago Medicine joins a NIH-led national network of institutions working to better understand the risk factors that lead to vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID), early stroke recovery and approaches to prevention.
Researchers at UC San Diego Health have joined a national research study called Hyperbaric Oxygen Brain Injury Treatment (HOBIT) to assess whether therapy involving 100 percent oxygen under pressure might also benefit patients with severe brain injuries.
The research focuses on axonal transport — the way in which vital materials travel along pathways called axons inside nerve cells, or neurons. Scientists found that HTT sometimes journeys along these roadways in cellular vehicles (called vesicles) that also carry freight including a protein called Rab4.
A compound commonly found in pickled capers has been shown to activate proteins required for normal human brain and heart activity, and may even lead to future therapies for the treatment of epilepsy and abnormal heart rhythms.
For decades, family caregiving has been thought to create a type of chronic stress that may lead to significant health risks or even death, alarming potential caregivers and presenting a guilt-ridden obstacle for those needing help.
For patients with brain arteriovenous malformations, not having surgery or getting radiation therapy can result in an almost 70-per-cent lower risk of having a stroke or dying, reseachers find.
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