Sarah Okonkwo
325 stories · Page 9 of 14
The Juice Industry Paid for the Study Telling You a Daily Glass Lowers Depression Scores
In a 42-person trial, the group that added a daily glass of juice improved on depression scores while the group that added only whole fruits and vegetables didn't, and the European juice trade body paid for the whole thing.
Autoimmune & InflammationOne Protein Keeps Your Immune System's Peacekeeper Cells From Switching Sides
Regulatory T cells are supposed to be the immune system's off switch. Strip out a protein called TIF1γ and, under inflammation, they lose that identity, start producing an inflammatory cytokine, and join the attack.
InvestigationsOne Irish Plant Releases Both of Sanofi's Pompe Enzymes. In June, the FDA Called Its Drugs 'Adulterated.'
One Irish plant runs the final release for both of Sanofi's lifelong Pompe enzymes. It just failed an FDA inspection on that exact step, and now the company says the fix could take months while patients confirm their next shipments.
InvestigationsFeed These Bacteria a Splash of Glycerol, and 95% of the Uranium Leaves the Water
Microbes in a flooded German uranium mine turned 95 percent of the dissolved metal into an iron compound that held together when oxygen returned, the exact failure that has always defeated standard cleanup.
Metabolic & WeightA Brown-Fat Gene Turns Out to Be the Dial Between a Heart Cell Dividing and Growing Up
Turn PRDM16 down and lab-grown heart cells start dividing again but stay weak. Turn it up and they mature but quit the cell cycle. It's the same gene that decides whether a cell becomes calorie-burning brown fat.
Nutrition & FoodThe Study Telling You Not to Bother Cutting Sweet Foods Was Co-Funded by the Soda and Sweetener Industry
The Sweet Tooth Trial found no reason to reduce sweet-tasting foods. Its private funders include the soda industry's trade group and the International Sweeteners Association.
Autoimmune & InflammationThe Body's Own Brake on Inflammation: Mapped in 2015, Still Not in a Pill
A kinase called MST4 rides the brake on TRAF6, the protein that lets inflammation spiral, doing gently from inside the cell what broad autoimmune drugs force from the outside. Researchers mapped it in 2015. No pill uses it yet.
Brain & AgingEurope's Wildfire Smoke Has a Second Blast Radius: Stopped Hearts and Mood-Disorder ER Visits Far From the Flames
When California's wildfire PM2.5 climbed, depression ED visits rose 15 percent and mood-disorder visits 29 percent up to a week later, and per microgram that smoke was tied to larger health effects than ordinary city smog.
Brain & AgingChemists Cracked Unsorted Plastic Into Hydrogen With Lye, and Trapped Three-Quarters of the Carbon Instead of Torching It
Most plastic never gets recycled. It gets burned or buried, and polyethylene keeps turning up in human brain tissue. A UCLA and Ewha team cracked mixed, unsorted trash into more than 90 percent pure hydrogen at low heat and trapped 75 percent of the carbon instead of letting it escape.
Metabolic & WeightThey Gave PTSD Patients THC Drops at Bedtime. More Than a Third Stopped Having Nightmares Entirely.
Dronabinol beat placebo on the nightmare symptom the VA's longtime standby flunked, and the company that sells dronabinol helped fund the trial that found it worked.
Nutrition & FoodCancer Drugs Starve Tumors of Arginine. A Rockefeller Lab Says the Immune System May Need It to See Them.
Some cancer therapies deliberately strip arginine from the body to starve tumors. Rockefeller researchers found that in mice the same depletion can hide tumors, flu, and SARS-CoV-2 from the immune system.
Autoimmune & InflammationA Map of 1.1 Million Lung Immune Cells Finds the Genetic Risk for Autoimmune Disease in Tissue, Not Blood
Researchers at La Jolla mapped genetic activity in 1.1 million lung immune cells and found about 1,000 genes whose activity is tuned by disease-risk variants only inside tissue, plus 1,700 that read differently in women than in men.
Brain & AgingChristof Koch Bet a Case of Wine That Science Would Find Consciousness in the Brain by 2023. He Lost.
At a symposium in Portugal, the neuroscientist who spent 25 years hunting consciousness inside the brain conceded the field's central promise is still unpaid, and floated that consciousness might be fundamental to reality rather than manufactured by neurons.
Metabolic & WeightThe Prescription Vitamin D Added to Protect Failing Kidneys Made Them Decline Four Times Faster
Chasing a parathyroid-hormone target, doctors added active vitamin D to a kidney drug. The hormone dropped 35 percent, and the kidneys declined four times faster.
Autoimmune & InflammationThe Lungs May Be Where Rheumatoid Arthritis Actually Starts
Across Italy, South Korea, and California, higher fine-particle pollution tracks more RA flares and more new cases, and the biology keeps pointing at the airway, not the knee.
Metabolic & WeightThe Fat Rebound Pediatricians Watch For at Age Six: Measure the Waist, and It Turns Out to Be Muscle and Bone
Waist-to-height ratio tracks body fat with about 90 percent accuracy. In 2,410 American kids it kept falling straight through the age when BMI says the fat comes roaring back.
Metabolic & WeightYour Fat Cells Remember Being Fat, and That Memory Outlasts the Weight Loss
Your body defends its heaviest weight for years after you lose it, which is why the rebound isn't weak willpower and why the injection only works while you keep paying for it.
Drugs & FDAU.S. Special Operators Carried French Freeze-Dried Plasma for 15 Years Before the FDA Licensed an American One
Allied militaries and U.S. commandos have relied on freeze-dried plasma for years. Washington licensed its own version this week, decades after an American doctor first invented the powder.
Nutrition & FoodThey Doubled the Recommended Protein This Year. 350 Studies Say That's Backwards for Sedentary Adults.
Federal guidance now tells you to eat nearly twice the protein it used to. A University of Wisconsin review of more than 350 studies argues that for people who don't train hard, the extra may be speeding up the aging they're trying to outrun.
InvestigationsMIT Put an AI Skin Doctor in Front of 776 People. Its Friendliest Feature Fooled the Ones Who Needed Help Most.
623 lay people and 153 doctors used the same AI to read skin conditions. The doctors shrugged off its bad advice. Everyone else trusted it more the more fluently it explained itself.
Brain & AgingThe Fat Molecule That Rides From Your Waistline to Your Brain, and Feeds Alzheimer's Once It Gets There
In obese mice, a membrane fat called phosphatidylethanolamine packed into tiny vesicles, rode to the brain, and sabotaged the immune cells that clear amyloid. An investigational drug reversed it, in mice.
Infectious DiseaseIn Tuberculosis, the Cell We Called 'Neutral' Is the One Torching the Lung
In the people whose latent TB roared into active disease, the airways filled with neutrophils, half of them flipping on an interferon alarm, while their T cells were pushed to exhaustion and death.
CancerGlioblastoma Craves Sugar. Oregon State Coated a Gene Therapy in It and Rode Straight Past the Blood-Brain Barrier.
Glioblastoma overexpresses the same sugar transporter that guards the brain. Oregon State researchers used that greed to smuggle a tumor-suppressor gene into tumors, and mouse survival rose 50 percent.
InvestigationsThe Phone-Radiation Study Everyone Called a Debunking Was Too Small to Find the Tumor
Japan and Korea spent two years 'validating' the NIH finding that cell-phone radiation gave rats heart tumors. They used one dose, one sex, and too few animals to detect it. Korea's rats grew the tumor anyway.