At least eight babies have been born to patients who underwent the procedure.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 31
Can medical AI lie? Large study maps how LLMs handle health misinformation
Medical artificial intelligence (AI) is often described as a way to make patient care safer by helping clinicians manage information. A new study by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and collaborators confronts a critical vulnerability: when a medical lie enters the system, can AI pass it on as if it were true?
Analyzing more than a million prompts across nine leading language models, the researchers found that these systems can repeat false medical claims when they appear in realistic hospital notes or social-media health discussions.
The findings, published in The Lancet Digital Health, suggest that current safeguards do not reliably distinguish fact from fabrication once a claim is wrapped in familiar clinical or social-media language. The paper is titled “Mapping LLM Susceptibility to Medical Misinformation Across Clinical Notes and Social Media.”
The role of the Cer1 transposon in horizontal transfer of transgenerational memory
Could a hybrid biohardware using neural orgamoids and silicon make minduploading easier.
Animals face both external and internal dangers: pathogens threaten from the environment, and unstable genomic elements threaten from within. C. elegans protects itself from pathogens by “reading” bacterial small RNAs, using this information to both induce avoidance and transmit memories for four generations. Here, we found that memories can be transferred from either lysed animals or from conditioned media to naive animals via Cer1 retrotransposon-encoded virus-like particles. Moreover, Cer1 functions internally at the step of transmission of information from the germline to neurons and is required for learned avoidance. The presence of the Cer1 retrotransposon in wild C. elegans strains correlates with the ability to learn and inherit small-RNA-induced pathogen avoidance. Together, these results suggest that C.
Plasma Proteome Profiling of Centenarian Across Switzerland Reveals Key Youth‐Associated Proteins
The full list of differentially expressed proteins was compared to the list of aging biomarkers in blood determined by the TAME working group (Justice et al. 2018), see full list of APs in Table S2d. Of the seven aging biomarkers selected by TAME as gold standard, five proteins (CST3, GDF15, IL6, NPPB, TNF) were available and significantly differentially expressed when comparing healthy controls with centenarians or with geriatric patients; two proteins (CRP, IGF1) were unavailable from the Olink panels (Cardiometabolic I and Inflammation I).
On the expanded list of blood-based biomarkers (74 total) selected by TAME, when comparing healthy controls with centenarians, 47 biomarkers were not available in both panels (63.5%). Of the available markers, 23 were significantly differentially expressed in centenarians (85.2%) and 4 were not significantly differentially expressed in centenarians (14.8%). When comparing healthy controls with geriatric patients, 47 biomarkers were not available in both panels (63.5%); 25 were significantly differentially expressed in the geriatric group (92.6%), and only 2 were not significantly differentially expressed in hospitalized geriatric patients (7.4%). Only 2 proteins (SERPINE1, SOD1) among the 25 proteins available in the SWISS100 dataset demonstrated different results in both comparisons (Healthy2Cent and Healthy2Geriatric). Thus, both the short and expanded list of blood-based biomarkers proposed by TAME as APs are highly reproducible in the SWISS100 study based on proximity extension assay. Table S2d contains the complete list of DEPs in blood with age that overlap between both studies.
‘Remnant’ Cholesterol Cut by More Than 60 Percent in New Drug Trial
Hopes are high for a powerful new compound aimed at lowering blood fat levels responsible for potentially fatal heart disease. In a recent trial, the oral drug, TLC-2716, lowered blood triglycerides by almost 40 percent and remnant cholesterol by more than 60 percent.
The drug was tested in a clinical trial involving 100 healthy adults to assess its effects on a metabolic switch that is active in the liver and gut, and involved in making and handling fats. The trial was the first of its kind on humans, and more testing is required.
Researchers initially isolated the switch, called Liver X Receptor ⍺ (LXR⍺), through analysis of large human genetics databases. Then they linked it to blood-fat-related metabolic disorders using Mendelian randomization, a powerful technique for linking gene expression and outcomes.
DNA-protein cross-links promote cGAS-STING–driven premature aging and embryonic lethality
Unrepaired DNA-protein crosslinks—highly toxic tangles of protein and DNA—cause a process that leads to premature aging and embryonic lethality in mice.
The findings in Science reveal a previously unrecognized link between defective DNA repair and immune-driven inflammatory disease.
DNA-protein cross-links (DPCs) are highly toxic DNA lesions that block replication and transcription, but their impact on organismal physiology is unclear. We identified a role for the metalloprotease SPRTN in preventing DPC-driven immunity and its pathological consequences. Loss of SPRTN activity during replication and mitosis lead to unresolved DNA damage, chromosome segregation errors, micronuclei formation, and cytosolic DNA release that activates the cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS)–stimulator of interferon genes (STING) pathway. In a Sprtn knock-in mouse model of Ruijs-Aalfs progeria syndrome, chronic cGas-Sting signaling caused embryonic lethality through inflammation and innate immune responses. Surviving mice displayed aging phenotypes beginning in embryogenesis, which persisted into adulthood.
Restoring the Strength of Natural Killer Cells
In Aging Cell, researchers have described why older natural killer (NK) cells lose their ability to eliminate harmful cells and a potential treatment for this decline.
Judgment and ability
At the cellular level, there is no due process. Natural killer (NK) cells judge other cells’ guilt or innocence by their surface proteins. They ruthlessly exterminate any foreign cells they find, which is what causes organ rejection; when they mistakenly attack the body’s own functional cells, autoimmune disorders are the result.
Blood test can identify cancer in patients with non-specific symptoms
A simple blood test can help detect cancer in patients with non-specific symptoms such as fatigue, pain or weight loss. This is according to a Swedish study from Karolinska Institutet, Danderyd Hospital and others, published in Nature Communications.
When patients seek care for non-specific symptoms such as fatigue, pain or weight loss, it is often difficult to determine whether the cause is cancer, another serious condition or something completely harmless.
In a new study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital, together with Örebro University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SciLifeLab at Uppsala University, have investigated whether proteins in the blood can provide early clues.
Modifiable Risk Factors Suggest Potential for Improving Cancer Prevention
Approximately 4 of 10 cancer cases in 2022 may have been averted by avoiding exposure to key preventable risk factors, according to findings from a global analysis study published in Nature Medicine.1
Of 18.7 million cancer cases recorded in 2022, approximately 7.1 million (37.8%) were linked to modifiable risk factors. Cancer cases due to modifiable risk factors were reported in 29.7% of women with cancer compared with 45.4% of men. The highest cancer burden for female populations was observed in sub-Saharan Africa, where 38.2% of cases were linked to modifiable risk factors; male populations experienced the highest burden in East Asia, where 57.2% of cases were associated with such risk factors.
Across the world, new cancer cases in women were typically linked to infections (11.5%), smoking (6.3%), and high body mass index (BMI; 3.4%). Among men, the most common risk factors associated with cancer cases included smoking (23.1%), infections (9.1%), and alcohol consumption (4.6%).