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Two new yardsticks, Clinical Guidance for the Use of Dupilumab in Eosinophilic Esophagitis: and

Giving children the nasal flu vaccine may help protect them against strep A, according to analysis by the UK Health Security Agency.

UKHSA pilot scheme shows strep A infections lower in areas where nasal vaccine offered to all young children.

Alexandra Topping

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Researchers discovered a new daily rhythm in a kind of synapse that dampens brain activity using a mouse model. These neural connections, known as inhibitory synapses, are rebalanced as we sleep to allow us to consolidate new information into lasting memories. The results, which were published in the journal PLOS Biology, may help explain how subtle synaptic changes improve memory in humans. Researchers from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, led the study.

“Inhibition is important for every aspect of brain function. But for over two decades, most sleep studies have focused on understanding excitatory synapses,” said Dr. Wei Lu, senior investigator at NINDS. “This is a timely study to try to understand how sleep and wakefulness regulate the plasticity of inhibitory synapses.”

Kunwei Wu, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Lu’s lab, investigated what occurs at inhibitory synapses in mice during sleep and wakefulness. Electrical recordings from neurons in the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory formation, revealed a previously unknown pattern of activity. During wakefulness, steady “tonic” inhibitory activity increased but fast “phasic” inhibition decreased. They also discovered a far larger activity-dependent enhancement of inhibitory electrical responses in awake mouse neurons, suggesting that wakefulness, rather than sleep, might strengthen these synapses to a greater extent.

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A new machine learning model will help scientists identify small molecules, with applications in medicine, drug discovery and environmental chemistry. Developed by researchers at Aalto University and the University of Luxembourg, the model was trained with data from dozens of laboratories to become one of the most accurate tools for identifying small molecules.

Thousands of different small molecules, known as metabolites, transport energy and transmit cellular information throughout the human body. Because they are so small, metabolites are difficult to distinguish from each other in a blood sample analysis—but identifying these molecules is important to understand how exercise, nutrition, alcohol use and metabolic disorders affect well-being.

Metabolites are normally identified by analyzing their mass and retention time with a separation technique called liquid chromatography followed by mass spectrometry. This technique first separates metabolites by running the sample through a column, which results in different flow rates—or retention times—through the measurement device.

Winter and rainy season is worst for those who have low immunity. Antibiotics have many side effects. But there high fever due to viral infection is also risky.

A cold is an infection caused by a virus. It’s a common and usually mild illness that affects the nose and throat. Find out more here: http://bit.ly/KV8y1c.

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MONDAY, Dec. 19, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Patients with a high-risk bladder cancer now have a new option to treat it.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a gene therapy called Adstiladrin, which is designed to work for patients who have what’s called high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) that hasn’t responded to the standard treatment, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), but hasn’t spread. BCG is a vaccine typically used for tuberculosis.

“This approval provides health care professionals with an innovative treatment option for patients with high-risk NMIBC that is unresponsive to BCG therapy,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in an agency news release. “Today’s action addresses an area of critical need. The FDA remains committed to facilitating the development and approval of safe and effective cancer treatments.”

Researchers at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University have engineered the first-ever “Vagina on a Chip” in the world that replicates the human vaginal tissue microenvironment in vitro, Scientific American reported on Wednesday.

It is composed of the human vaginal epithelium and underlying connective tissue cells and it replicates many of the physiological features of the vagina, according to Harvard.

Best of all, it can be inoculated with different strains of bacteria allowing researchers to study their effects on the organ’s health.

Many investors are jumping to inject money into the startup.

Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos-backed foundations (Gates Frontier and Bezos Expeditions) have joined other companies in investing $75 million in Synchron, the endovascular brain-computer interface (BCI) company, according to a press release by the organization published on Thursday. This is a Series C financing round led by ARCH Venture Partners that brings the total amount raised since inception to $145 million.

Many investors on board.

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