A 50-year-old man presented with headache. Examination showed left sided ataxic hemiparesis and elevated blood pressure. Brain imaging revealed an acute intracerebral hemorrhage in the right lentiform nucleus, deep and periventricular white matter hyperintensities, and predominantly deep cerebral microbleeds. Fundus examination showed important arteriolar tortuosity involving several blood vessels. In this young patient, we explain the diagnostic approach to intracerebral hemorrhage, the causes of cerebral small vessel disease, and the interpretation of biomolecular tests.
The brain’s white matter comprises areas of the central nervous system made up of myelinated axons. Its name is derived from the pale appearance of the lipids that comprise myelin. Myelin is a segmented sheath that insulates axons, ensuring the conduction of neural signals. The loss of myelin is documented in a number of neurodegenerative pathologies, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and perhaps most notably, multiple sclerosis. As people age, demyelination becomes more likely.
Researchers have long suspected a relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness and the integrity of the brain’s white matter as people age. However, a lack of specific evidence has led researchers at the National Institutes of Health to conduct a study examining the strength of this correlation, now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
To establish a correlation between cardiovascular fitness and cerebral myelination, the researchers recruited a cohort of 125 participants from age 22 to 94 years old. The cardiovascular fitness of the participants was quantified as the maximum rate of oxygen consumption, popularly and succinctly known as VO2max. Myelin content was defined as the myelin water fraction, which the researchers estimated through an advanced multicomponent relaxometry MRI method.
Shan C, Gong YL, Zhuang QQ, Hou YF, Wang SM, Zhu Q, et al. Protective effects of β- nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide against motor deficits and dopaminergic neuronal damage in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease. Prog Neuro Psychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry 2019, 94: 109670.
Nanobots are tiny, ~50–100 nm wide robots that perform a single, highly specialized task. They work incredibly well for administering drugs. Drugs typically act throughout the body before entering the diseased area. The medication can be precisely targeted with nanotechnology, increasing its effectiveness and lowering the possibility of negative side effects. Special sensor nanobots can be inserted into the blood under the skin where microchips, coated with human molecules and designed to emit an electrical impulse signal, monitor the sugar level in the blood.
Current osteoarthritis treatment manages symptoms rather than addressing the underlying disease, but a new University of Adelaide study has shown the condition may be treatable and reversible. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.
Osteoarthritis is the degeneration of cartilage and other tissues in joints and is the most common form of arthritis in Australia, with one in five people over the age of 45 having the condition.
It is a long-term and progressive condition which affects people’s mobility and has historically had no cure. Its treatment cost the Australian health system an estimated $3.9 billion in 2019–20.
Innovative Diagnostic Solutions To Enhance Patient Experiences And Health Provider Decisions — Dr. Deborah Sesok-Pizzini, MD, MBA — Chief Medical Officer & Senior Vice President, Labcorp Diagnostics; Global Head of Quality And Discipline Director, Immunohematology.
Dr. Deborah Sesok-Pizzini, MD, MBA, is Chief Medical Officer And Senior Vice President, Labcorp Diagnostics, and Global Head of Quality And Discipline Director, Immunohematology, Labcorp (https://www.labcorp.com/deborah-sesok…), where she is involved in furthering the company’s initiatives to enhance the patient experience, enable health provider decisions and develop innovative testing solutions.
Dr. Sesok-Pizzini joined Labcorp with over two decades of experience in healthcare, holding multiple appointments with The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, including Patient Safety Officer, Chief of the Division of Transfusion Medicine and Vice-Chief of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. She was also a professor of clinical pathology and laboratory medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA.
Dr. Sesok-Pizzini earned her medical degree from the Penn State College of Medicine and did her residency and fellowship at The University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. She also graduated from Villanova University, with a Master of Business Administration degree with a concentration in finance.
Dr. Sesok-Pizzini holds certifications in clinical pathology and blood bank and transfusion medicine. She is a member of the College of American Pathology, the American Society of Clinical Pathology, and the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies. She is a board member of the Intersociety Council for Pathology Information and serves as an adjunct professor with the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
For years, scientists have fabricated small, high-quality lasers that generate red and blue light. However, the method they typically employ — injecting electric current into semiconductors — hasn’t worked as well in building tiny lasers that emit light at yellow and green wavelengths. Researchers refer to the dearth of stable, miniature lasers in this region of the visible-light spectrum as the “green gap.” Filling this gap opens new opportunities in underwater communications, medical treatments and more.
Compact laser diodes can emit infrared, red and blue wavelengths, but are highly inefficient at producing green and yellow wavelengths, a region known as the ‘green gap’. (Image: S. Kelley, NIST)
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have uncovered new insights into the fundamental mechanisms of RNA polymerase II (Pol II), the protein responsible for transcribing DNA into RNA. Their study shows how the protein adds nucleotides to the growing RNA chain. The results, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, have potential applications in drug development.
