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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Confronting trauma alleviates chronic pain among older veterans, study shows

Our soap operas and movies say as some  people cannot bear pain from trauma, it is better to hide things from them.

However, science has a different view on this. A new study found chronic pain among older adults could be significantly reduced through a newly developed psychotherapy that works by confronting past trauma and stress-related emotions that can exacerbate pain symptoms.

Published in JAMA Network Open on June 13, the study compared the newer therapy, known as emotional awareness and expression therapy, or EAET, to traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, in treating chronic pain as well as mental health symptoms such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among older veterans.

The study found that 63% of veterans who underwent EAET reported at least a 30% reduction in pain—a clinically significant reduction—after treatment compared to only 17% of veterans who underwent cognitive behavioral therapy.

Pain reduction was sustained among 41% of EAET participants six months after treatment compared to 14% of CBT patients. Additionally, EAET patients reported greater benefits for addressing anxiety, depression, PTSD and life satisfaction.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Scientists analyzed the video footage and compared how wildlife responded to various recreation noises as well as nature sounds and periods without any broadcasted noise. Key findings from the study:

• Increased fleeing and vigilance: Wildlife were 3.1 to 4.7 times more likely to flee and exhibited vigilance behaviors for 2.2 to 3.0 times longer when exposed to recreation noise compared to natural sounds or no noise.
• Reduced wildlife presence: The local relative abundance of wildlife was observed to be 1.5 times lower in the week following the deployment of recreation noise.
• Impact of group size and activity type: Larger groups, particularly vocal hikers and mountain bikers, caused the highest probability of wildlife flight, with 6 to 8 times greater likelihood.
• Species sensitivity: Elk and black bears were the most sensitive to recreation noise, fleeing from the recreationist sounds most consistently, while large carnivores were the least affected.

Outdoor recreation activities like hiking, mountain biking, and motorized vehicle use are steadily increasing, both in numbers of people recreating and number of days spent participating in these activities.

Noise from recreation can carry far beyond a trail system, so understanding how noise alone can affect wildlife is important for management.

Experimental recreationist noise alters behavior and space use of wildlife, Current Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.05.030. www.cell.com/current-biology/f … 0960-9822(24)00673-0

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

New study shows outdoor recreation noise affects wildlife behaviour and habitat use

We may go to the woods seeking peace and quiet, but are we taking our noise with us? A study published in the journal, Current Biology, led by scientists from the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station indicates that the answer is yes—and that this noise can trigger a fear response, as if escaping from predators.

This new science calls into question whether otherwise high-quality habitat truly provides refugia for wildlife when recreationists are present and underscores the challenges land managers face in balancing outdoor recreational opportunities with wildlife conservation.

This new study is the first to quantify responses to human-produced recreation noise based on recreation type, group size, group vocalizations, and wildlife species. Information like this can help managers balance recreation opportunities with wildlife management, which is critical as outdoor recreation continues to grow in popularity.

The study was conducted in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming. Researchers used a novel experimental setup to isolate and investigate the effects of recreation noise on several mammal species.

Scientists placed wildlife cameras and speakers on wildlife trails throughout the study areas. Animals that entered study areas triggered speakers to broadcast different types of noise, and nearby cameras captured video of the animals' behavioral responses to the sounds.

The broadcasted noises were associated with different types of recreation such as hiking, mountain biking, and off highway vehicle use, as well as different-sized groups, and both with and without human voices. This setup allowed the researchers to observe both the immediate responses in animal behavior to recreation noise and changes in wildlife presence at the study areas.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

To find the answer, the researchers re-analyzed data from trials of the newest EGFR inhibitor, osimertinib, developed by AstraZeneca. They looked at baseline scans and first follow-up scans taken a few months into treatment for patients with either EGFR-only or with EGFR and p53 mutations.

The team compared every tumor on the scans, far more than were measured in the original trial. They found that for patients with just the EGFR mutations, all tumors got smaller in response to treatment. But for patients with both mutations, while some tumors had shrunk, others had grown, providing evidence of rapid drug resistance. This pattern of response, when some but not all areas of a cancer are shrinking in response to a drug treatment within an individual patient, is known as a "mixed response" and is a challenge for oncologists caring for patients with cancer.
To investigate why some tumors in these patients might be more prone to drug resistance, the team then studied a mouse model with both the EGFR and p53 mutation. They found that within resistant tumors in these mice, far more cancer cells had doubled their genome, giving them extra copies of all their chromosomes.

The researchers then treated lung cancer cells in the lab, some with just the single EGFR mutation and some with both mutations, with an EGFR inhibitor. They found that within five weeks of exposure to the drug, a significantly higher percentage of cells with both the double mutation and double genomes had multiplied into new drug-resistant cells.
Once we can identify patients with both EGFR and p53 mutations whose tumors display whole genome doubling, we can then treat these patients in a more selective way now.

 Sebastijan Hobor, Heterogeneous responses to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibition in non-small cell lung cancer result from chromosomal instability facilitated by whole genome doubling and TP53 co-mutation, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-47606-9

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Why many lung cancer patients who have never smoked have worse outcomes
The reason targeted treatment for non-small cell lung cancer fails to work for some patients, particularly those who have never smoked, has been discovered by researchers.
The study, published in Nature Communications, shows that lung cancer cells with two particular genetic mutations are more likely to double their genome, which helps them to withstand treatment and develop resistance to it.
The most common genetic mutation found in NSCLC is in the epidermal growth factor receptor gene (EGFR), which enables cancer cells to grow faster. It is found in 10-15 % of patients who have never smoked.
Survival rates vary depending on how advanced the cancer is, with only around a third of patients with Stage IV NSCLC and an EGFR mutation surviving for up to three years.
Lung cancer treatments that target this mutation, known as EGFR inhibitors, have been available for over 15 years. However, while some patients see their cancer tumors shrink with EGFR inhibitors, other patients, particularly those with an additional mutation in the p53 gene (which plays a role in tumor suppression), fail to respond and experience far worse survival rates.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Permanent gene edits to tardigrades help shed light on their amazing resilience

Some species of tardigrades are highly and unusually resilient to various extreme conditions fatal to most other forms of life. And we need to know the genetic basis of this resilience to use the knowledge. 

For the first time, researchers successfully edited genes using the CRISPR technique in a highly resilient tardigrade species previously impossible to study with genome-editing tools. The work has been published in PLoS Genetics.

The successful delivery of CRISPR to an asexual tardigrade species directly produces gene-edited offspring. The design and editing of specific tardigrade genes allow researchers to investigate which are responsible for tardigrade resilience and how such resilience can work.

If you've heard about tardigrades, then you've no doubt heard about their uncommon abilities to survive things like extreme heat, cold, drought, and even the vacuum of space, which different members of the species possess. So naturally, they attract researchers keen to explore these novelties, not just out of curiosity, but also to look at what applications might one day be possible if we learn their secrets.

To understand tardigrades' superpowers, we first need to understand the way their genes function. 

Researchers have developed a method to edit genes—adding, removing or overwriting them—like you would do on computer data, in a very tolerant species of tardigrade, Ramazzottius varieornatus. This can now allow researchers to study tardigrade genetic traits as they might more established lab-based animals, such as fruit flies or nematodes.

The team used a recently-developed technique called direct parental CRISPR (DIPA-CRISPR), based on the now-famous CRISPR gene-editing technique, which can serve as a genetic scalpel to cut and modify specific genes more efficiently than ever before. DIPA-CRISPR has the advantage of being able to affect the genome of a target organism's offspring and had previously been shown to work on insects, but this is the first time it's been used on the non-insect organisms that include tardigrades.

Single-step generation of homozygous knockout/knock-in individuals in an extremotolerant parthenogenetic tardigrade using DIPA-CRISPR, PLoS Genetics (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1011298

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Thursday

Chronic Insomnia Linked to Ultra-Processed Foods

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have been linked to health problems such as heart disease and diabetes, and a new study suggests they might also be contributing to chronic insomnia in some people. These UPFs can be any foodstuffs that are heavily modified to improve their taste, or produce them on a mass scale, or help them to last longer. They contrast with foods like fruit or vegetables, that come mostly as they are.

Researchers led by a team from Sorbonne Paris Nord University in France looked at data collected on 38,570 adults as part of the NutriNet-Santé research project, mapping diet information against sleep variables.
Researchers found a statistically significant association between higher UPF consumption and increased chronic insomnia risk, after allowances were made for sociodemographic, lifestyle, diet quality, and mental health factors.
Overall, the study participants got 16 percent of their daily energy from UPFs, while 19.4 percent of the cohort reported symptoms of chronic insomnia – and this group tended to have more UPFs in their dietary intake.

The data also showed a slightly stronger association in men. The study only assessed single points in time, and relied on self reporting, but the large number of people involved suggests this is a link that's worthy of future investigation.
https://www.jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(24)00094-7/fulltext

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Thursday

Imaging techniques peek into the placenta
Researchers are finding ways to monitor an understudied human organ: the placenta. Defects in the placenta might be responsible for many miscarriages and stillbirths. The mysterious organ has proven difficult to study, largely because of the risks to pregnant women and their historical exclusion from clinical trials. Magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasounds help researchers to visualize the placenta and its blood flow in a non-invasive way, and spot potential problems before they lead to pregnancy loss. But progress remains slow. We’re dealing with a paradigm change, and there’s a lot of resistance to changing the paradigm now.  

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/06/placenta-stillbi...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Thursday

Drug that ‘melts away’ tumours hailed as ‘gamechanger’ for some bowel cancer patients
Pembrolizumab triples chance of survival for the 10-15% of patients with the 'right genetic makeup', study finds
A “gamechanger” immunotherapy drug that “melts away” tumours dramatically increases the chances of curing some bowel cancers and may even replace the need for surgery, doctors have said.

Pembrolizumab targets and blocks a specific protein on the surface of immune cells that then seek out and destroy cancer cells.

Giving the drug before surgery instead of chemotherapy led to a huge increase in patients being declared cancer-free, a clinical trial found. The results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the world’s largest cancer conference.

https://meetings.asco.org/abstracts-presentations/234190?utm_source...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Thursday

A glass that builds and heals itself

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