Lifeboat Foundation

A bitter divorce battle in Russia has led to cryogenically frozen bodies being seized in an extraordinary day-time raid.

Staff of a company set up by Valeria Udalova, 59 grabbed the remains of people — including from Britain and the US — who paid thousands of pounds hoping to be brought back to life when science advances to allow this.

She and her team raided the company run by her ex-husband Danila Medvedev, 41 near Moscow, which is home to Russia’s leading cryo-storage facility, say reports.

Continue reading “Cryogenically frozen bodies and brains of rich people are SNATCHED” »

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy improved cerebral blood flow by up to 23%, alleviating vascular dysfunction and amyloid burden in elderly patients. The treatment also improved memory by 16.5%.

“Identification of these compounds means that we are one step closer to being able to molecularly diagnose dementia,” said senior author of the study, Professor Mitsuhiro Yanagida, who leads the G0 Cell Unit at OIST.

Summary: Researchers identified 33 metabolic compounds in blood samples that differed between those with dementia and cognitively healthy older adults. 7 of the metabolites were elevated in dementia patients, while 26 were at lower levels compared to samples of those without dementia. Elevating levels of those metabolites could have a neuroprotective effect against dementia.

Source: OIST

Continue reading “Signs of Dementia Are Written in the Blood” »

Many human diseases can differ between males and females in their prevalence, manifestation, severity or age of onset. Examples include Lupus, where more than 80% of patients are females; Alzheimer’s disease, where females have higher incidence and tend to suffer quicker cognitive decline; and COVID-19 infections that are frequently more severe in males.

These sex differences may have a genetic basis that is attributable to the sex chromosomes. The X chromosome—one of the two sex chromosomes—is known to play an important role in human development and disease. New research led by Penn State College of Medicine reveals for the first time that sex-biased diseases can be attributable to genes that escape X chromosome inactivation (XCI), a process that ensures that females do not overexpress genes on their X-chromosomes.

The team developed a genetic tool that can identify these XCI escape genes, and it may also help in determining whether a female will develop a sex-biased disease and if the disease will become progressively worse over time. The tool may even be useful in understanding the sex differences in immune responses to COVID-19, as the disease is thought to produce more severe symptoms and higher mortality in men than in women.

Summary: A new study on aging reveals a surprising discovery about the connection between protein shape and mitochondrial health.

Source: Buck Institute.

Every cell in the body goes through thousands of chemical reactions each day, and each reaction involves tiny protein molecules folded into precise shapes to perform their functions. Misfolded proteins underlie some of the most common and devastating diseases of aging, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. A major focus of aging research is discovering ways to maintain protein shape and prevent misfolded proteins from wreaking havoc on cellular function.

New photo-oxygenation catalyst targets amyloid structure, recruits brain immune system cells.

A small, light-activated molecule recently tested in mice represents a new approach to eliminating clumps of amyloid protein found in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients. If perfected in humans, the technique could be used as an alternative approach to immunotherapy and used to treat other diseases caused by similar amyloids.

Researchers injected the molecule directly into the brains of live mice with Alzheimer’s disease and then used a specialized probe to shine light into their brains for 30 minutes each day for one week. Chemical analysis of the mouse brain tissue showed that the treatment significantly reduced amyloid protein. Results from additional experiments using human brain samples donated by Alzheimer’s disease patients supported the possibility of future use in humans.

Continue reading “Power of Light and Oxygen Clears Alzheimer’s Disease Protein in Brains of Live Mice” »

Exploring The Gut Microbiota-Brain Axis In Health, Disease, and Aging — Dr. Marina Ezcurra, Ph.D. University of Kent.

Dr. Marina Ezcurra (https://marinaezcurralab.com/) is a Lecturer in the Biology of Aging, and NeuroBiology, at the School of BioSciences, at the University of Kent, UK (https://www.kent.ac.uk/biosciences/people/2081/ezcurra-marina).

Continue reading “Dr. Marina Ezcurra, Ph.D. — Exploring The Gut Microbiota-Brain Axis In Health, Disease, and Aging” »

Common medications can accumulate in gut bacteria, a new study has found, altering bacterial function and potentially reducing the effectiveness of the drug. These interactions—seen for a variety of medications, such as depression, diabetes, and asthma drugs—could help researchers to better understand individual differences in drug effectiveness and side-effects, according to the study published in Nature.

It is known that bacteria can chemically modify some drugs, a process known as biotransformation. This study, led by researchers from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Toxicology Unit at the University of Cambridge and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Germany, is the first to show that certain species of gut bacteria accumulate human drugs, altering the types of bacteria and their activity.

This could change the effectiveness of the drug both directly, as the accumulation could reduce the availability of the drug to the body, and indirectly, as altered bacterial function and composition could be linked to side-effects.

This makes sense, as we believe that inflammation in the central nervous system can start the autoimmune process (when a person’s immune system attacks part of their body) that causes MS.

Summary: A new study links viral infections including mononucleosis and pneumonia experienced during adolescence with an increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis.

Source: The Conversation

Continue reading “Multiple Sclerosis Linked to Infection in Adolescence” »