PROTIME-FITNESS HOLISTIC HEALTH AND WELLNESS

  New drug form may help treat osteoporosis, calcium-related disorders. A novel form of a drug used to treat osteoporosis that comes with the potential for fewer side effects may provide a new option for patients. The work is supported by the National Institutes of Health and is published in  Biophysical Journal . Purdue University innovators developed a stabilized form of human calcitonin, a peptide drug already used for osteoporosis people. Researchers at Purdue created a prodrug form of the peptide hormone to increase its effectiveness as an osteoporosis treatment. In humans, calcitonin is the hormone responsible for normal calcium homeostasis. When prescribed to osteoporosis patients, calcitonin inhibits bone resorption, resulting in increased bone mass. Unfortunately, human calcitonin undergoes fibrillation in an aqueous solution, leading to reduced efficacy when used as a therapeutic. As a substitute, osteoporosis patients have been prescribed salmon calcitonin. It does ...

  EXERCISING MUSCLES MAY COMBAT INFLAMMATION Exercising lab-grown human muscle autonomously blocks the damaging effects of interferon-gamma Biomedical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated that human muscle has an innate ability to ward off chronic inflammation's damaging effects when exercised. The discovery was made possible through the use of lab-grown, engineered human muscle, demonstrating the potential power of the first-of-its-kind platform in such research endeavors. The results appear online on January 22 in the journal  Science Advances . "Lots of processes are taking place throughout the human body during exercise, and it is difficult to tease apart which systems and cells are doing what inside an active person," said Nenad Bursac, professor of biomedical engineering at Duke. "Our engineered muscle platform is modular, meaning we can mix and match various types of cells and tissue components if we want to. But in this case, we discovered that the ...

  Fatty acids may help combat multiple sclerosis, study finds According to a new Yale study, the abnormal immune system response that causes multiple sclerosis (MS) by attacking and damaging the central nervous system can be triggered by the lack of a specific fatty acid in fat tissue. The finding suggests that dietary change might help treat some people with autoimmune diseases. The study was published on Jan. 19 in  The Journal of Clinical Investigation . Fat tissue in patients diagnosed with MS lack normal levels of oleic acid, a monounsaturated fatty acid found at high levels in, for instance, cooking oils, meats (beef, chicken, and pork), cheese, nuts, sunflower seeds, eggs, pasta, milk, olives, and avocados, according to the study. This lack of oleic acids leads to a loss of the metabolic sensors that activate T cells that mediate the immune system's response to infectious disease, the Yale team found. Without the suppressing effects of these regulatory T cells, the immu...

  The immune system mounts a lasting defense after recovery from COVID-19; researchers find As the number of people who have fought off SARS-CoV-2 climbs ever higher, a critical question has grown in importance: How long will their immunity to the novel coronavirus last? A new Rockefeller study offers an encouraging answer, suggesting that those who recover from COVID-19 are protected against the virus for at least six months and likely much longer. The findings, published in  Nature , provide the strongest evidence yet that the immune system "remembers" the virus and, remarkably, continues to improve the quality of antibodies even after the infection has waned. Antibodies produced months after the infection showed increased ability to block SARS-CoV-2 and its mutated versions, such as the South African variant. The researchers found that these improved antibodies are produced by immune cells that have kept evolving, apparently due to continued exposure to the virus's rem...

  Potential treatment for chronic pain Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have developed a new way to treat chronic pain, which has been tested in mice. With a compound designed and developed by the researchers themselves, they can achieve complete pain relief. Between seven and ten percent of the world's population suffers from chronic pain originating from nerves that have been damaged. A disease that can be severely debilitating. Now, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have found a new way to treat the pain. The treatment has been tested in mice, and the new results have been published in the scientific journal  EMBO Molecular Medicine . For more than a decade, the researchers have been working on designing, developing, and testing a drug that shall provide complete pain relief. "We have developed a new way to treat chronic pain. It is a targeted treatment. That is, it does not affect the general neuronal signaling, but only affects the nerve changes t...

  COVID-19 is dangerous for middle-aged adults, not just the elderly The study examines infection fatality rates for COVID-19 COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly over the past several months, and the U.S. death toll has now reached over 400,000. As evident from the age distribution of those fatalities, COVID-19 is dangerous not only for the elderly but for middle-aged adults, according to a Dartmouth-led study published in the  European Journal of Epidemiology . "For a person who is middle-aged, the risk of dying from COVID-19 is about 100 times greater than dying from an automobile accident," explains lead author Andrew Levin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College. "Generally speaking, very few children and young adults die of COVID-19. However, the risk is progressively greater for middle-aged and older adults. The odds that infection becomes fatal is only 1:10,000 at age 25, whereas those odds are roughly 1:100 at age 60, 1:40 at age 70, and 1:10 at age 80....

  The difference in blood pressure between arms linked to greater early death risk Robust evidence from a large international study confirms that a difference in blood pressure readings between arms is linked to a greater risk of heart attack, stroke, and death. Led by the University of Exeter, the global INTERPRESS-IPD Collaboration conducted a meta-analysis of all the available research, then merged data from 24 global studies to create a database of nearly 54,000 people. The data spanned adults from Europe, the US, Africa, and Asia for whom blood pressure readings for both arms were available. Funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and published today in  Hypertension , the study is the first to conclude that the greater the inter-arm blood pressure difference, the greater the patient's additional health risk. International blood pressure guidelines advise health professionals to measure blood pressure in both arms when assessing cardiovascular risk- ye...