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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2024 at 1:10pm

Bright Light at Night May Raise Type 2 Diabetes Risk, Study Suggests

The glow of a lightbulb or smartphone at night can mess with the body's circadian rhythm. Now, a new study suggests that exposure to artificial light after midnight may raise the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The research was conducted among nearly 85,000 people, between the ages of 40 and 69, who wore devices on their wrists, day and night for one week, to track their exposure to different levels of light.

As part of the UK Biobank experiment, the health of the cohort was tracked for as long as nine years. Those volunteers who later went on to develop type 2 diabetes were more likely to have been exposed to light between 12:30 am and 6:00 am, during the week-long study period.

The results do not prove cause and effect, but they do reveal a dose-dependent relationship between brighter light in the middle of the night and the risk of a metabolic disorder, which bolsters the association.

Those participants in the top 10 percent for light exposure at night had as much as a 67 percent higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those in the bottom 50th percentile.

Research suggests that exposure to artificial light at night, whether it be yellow light from your reading lamp or blue light from your smartphone or TV, can make it harder to fall asleep. But even when researchers accounted for sleep patterns and duration in the current study, the results held, which suggests another mechanism is at play.
Other possible contributing factors, like a person's sex, their genetic risk for diabetes, their diet, physical activity, daylight exposure, smoking, or alcohol use, also had no impact on the results.

Advising people to avoid night light is a simple and cost-effective recommendation that may ease the global health burden of type 2 diabetes," conclude the authors of the study.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2024 at 1:06pm

Longest Cyclone on Record Crossed The Entire Southern Indian Ocean in 2023

Cyclone Freddy, which crossed the entire southern Indian Ocean before wreaking devastation on southeastern Africa last year, was the longest-lasting tropical cyclone ever recorded at 36 days, the UN confirmed Tuesday.

A panel of experts has been poring over the data surrounding the storm since its remarkable journey in February and March last year.

The United Nations' weather and climate agency concluded it had indeed broken the previous record.

The extreme weather evaluation committee "recognised Tropical Cyclone Freddy's duration of 36.0 days at tropical storm status or higher as the new world record for the longest tropical cyclone duration", the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a statement.

• Freddy crossed the Indian Ocean basin in February-March 2023.
• Madagascar and southeastern Africa bore brunt of human and economic losses.
• Freddy was 36 days at tropical storm status or higher, beating record of John (1994)
• Freddy was 2nd longest in terms of distance travelled
• Monitoring of extremes increases understanding of weather and climate impacts.

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2024 at 11:13am

In tibia injuries, the flow of the hemolymph was less impeded, meaning bacteria could enter the body faster. While in femur injuries the speed of the blood circulation in the leg was slowed down.

You may expect, then, if tibia damage results in faster infections, amputating the full leg would be most appropriate, but the opposite is observed. It turns out the speed at which the ants can amputate a leg makes a difference.

An ant-assisted amputation takes at least 40 minutes to complete. Experimental testing demonstrated that with tibia injuries, if the leg was not immediately removed post-infection, the ant would not survive.

"Thus, because they are unable to cut the leg sufficiently quickly to prevent the spread of harmful bacteria, ants try to limit the probability of lethal infection by spending more time cleaning the tibia wound.

The fact that the ants are able to diagnose a wound, see if it's infected or sterile, and treat it accordingly over long periods of time by other individuals—the only medical system that can rival that would be the human one.

And they can do it without studying medicine and learning surgery! It's really all innate behaviour!

Ant behaviors change based on the age of an individual, but there is very little evidence of any learning.

"When you look at the videos where you have the ant presenting the injured leg and letting the other one bite off completely voluntarily, and then present the newly made wound so another one can finish cleaning process—this level of innate cooperation  is quite striking", say the researchers.

Erik Frank et al, Wound-dependent leg amputations to combat infections in an ant society, Current Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.06.021. www.cell.com/current-biology/f … 0960-9822(24)00805-4

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2024 at 11:08am

Doctor ants: Ants too perform amputations to save injured nestmates!

Saving lives through surgery is no longer exclusive to humans. In a study published July 2 in the journal Current Biology, scientists detail how Florida carpenter ants, a common, brown species native to its namesake, selectively treat the wounded limbs of fellow nestmates—either by wound cleaning or amputation.

When experimentally testing the effectiveness of these "treatments," not only did they aid in recovery, but the research team found the ants' choice of care catered to the type of injury presented to them.

The researchers found that this mechanical care involves one of two routes. The ants would either perform wound cleaning with just their mouthparts or perform a cleaning followed by the full amputation of the leg. To select which route they take, the ants appear to assess the type of injury to make informed adjustments on how best to treat.

In this study, two types of leg injuries were analyzed, lacerations on the femur and those on the ankle-like tibia. All femur injuries were accompanied by initial cleaning of the cut by a nestmate, followed by a nestmate chewing off the leg entirely. In contrast, tibia injuries only received the mouth cleaning. In both cases, intervention resulted in ants with experimentally infected wounds having a much greater survival rate.

Femur injuries, where they always amputated the leg, had a success rate around 90% or 95%. And for the tibia, where they did not amputate, it still achieved about the survival rate of 75%.

Part1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2024 at 11:02am

Treatment with a mixture of antimicrobial peptides found to impede antibiotic resistance

A common infection-causing bacteria was much less likely to evolve antibiotic resistance when treated with a mixture of antimicrobial peptides rather than a single peptide, making these mixtures a viable strategy for developing new antibiotic treatments. Researchers report these findings in a study published July 2 in PLOS Biology.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have become a major threat to public health. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.27 million people died directly from drug-resistant strains in 2019 and these strains contributed to 4.95 million deaths.
While bacteria naturally evolve resistance to antibiotics, misuse and overuse of these drugs has accelerated the problem, rendering many antibiotics ineffective. One emerging strategy to combat antibiotic resistance is the use of antimicrobial peptides, which are chains of amino acids that function as broad-spectrum antimicrobial compounds and are key components of the innate immune system in animals, fungi and plants.

In the new study, researchers investigated whether antimicrobial peptide mixtures synthesized in the lab could reduce the risk of the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa from evolving antimicrobial resistance, compared to exposure to a single antimicrobial peptide.

They found that using antimicrobial peptide mixtures carried a much lower risk of the bacteria developing resistance. The mixtures also helped prevent the bacteria from developing cross-resistance to other antimicrobial drugs, while maintaining—or even improving—drug sensitivity.

Overall, the findings suggest that the use of antimicrobial peptide mixtures is a strategy worth pursuing in the search for new, longer-lasting treatments for bacteria.

The researchers suspect that using a cocktail of multiple antimicrobial peptides creates a larger set of challenges for bacteria to overcome, which can potentially delay the evolution of resistance, compared to traditional antibiotics. Furthermore, these cocktails can be synthesized affordably, and previous studies have shown them to be non-toxic in mice.

Bernardo Antunes et al, The evolution of antimicrobial peptide resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa is severely constrained by random peptide mixtures, PLoS Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002692

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2024 at 10:50am

Due to this connection, the team set out to test if exercise could influence thermal age. They asked 23 participants to jump rope for at least 800 times daily for two weeks. To the team's surprise, these participants reduced their thermal age by five years after just two weeks of exercise.

Next, the team wants to explore if they can use thermal facial imaging to predict other diseases, such as sleeping disorders or cardiovascular problems.
Applying thermal facial imaging in clinical settings holds significant potential for early disease diagnosis and intervention.

Yu et al. Thermal Face Image Analyses Reveal Quantitative Hallmarks of Aging and Metabolic Diseases, Cell Metabolism (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2024.05.012. www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/f … 1550-4131(24)00188-8

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2024 at 10:48am

Doctors could soon use facial temperature for early diagnosis of metabolic diseases

A colder nose and warmer cheeks may be a telltale sign of rising blood pressure. Researchers discovered that temperatures in different face regions are associated with various chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and high blood pressure. These temperature differences are not easily perceptible by one's own touch but can instead be identified using specific AI-derived spatial temperature patterns that require a thermal camera and a data-trained model.

The results appeared July 2 in the journal Cell Metabolism. With further research, doctors could one day use this simple and non-invasive approach for early detection of diseases.

The researchers had previously used 3Dfacial structure to predict people's biological age, which indicates how well the body is aging. Biological age is closely related to the risk of diseases, including cancer and diabetes. They were curious if other features of the face, such as temperature, could also predict aging rate and health status.

They 

 analyzed facial temperatures of more than 2,800 Chinese participants between the ages of 21 and 88. Then, the researchers used the information to train AI models that could predict a person's thermal age. They identified several key facial regions where the temperatures were significantly related to age and health, including the nose, eyes and cheeks.

The research team found the temperature of the nose decreases with age at a rate faster than other parts of the face, meaning people with warmer noses have a younger thermal age. At the same time, temperatures around the eyes tend to increase with age.

The team also found that people with metabolic disorders such as diabetes and fatty liver disease had faster thermal aging. They tended to have higher eye area temperatures than their healthy counterparts of the same age. People with elevated blood pressure also had higher cheek temperatures.
By analyzing participants' blood samples, the team revealed that the increase in temperatures around the eyes and cheeks was mainly because of an increase in cellular activities related to inflammation, such as repairing damaged DNAs and fighting infections. The increase in these activities led to a rise in temperatures in certain facial regions.

The thermal clock is so strongly associated with metabolic diseases that previous facial imaging models were not able to predict these conditions.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2024 at 10:02am

How insulin-triggering nutrients vary from person to person, with implications for personalized nutrition

When it comes to managing blood sugar levels, most people think about counting carbs. But new research  shows that, for some, it may be just as important to consider the proteins and fats in their diet.

The study, published in Cell Metabolism, is the first large-scale comparison of how different people produce insulin in response to each of the three macronutrients: carbohydrates (glucose), proteins (amino acids) and fats (fatty acids).

The findings reveal that production of the blood sugar-regulating hormone insulin is much more dynamic and individualized than previously thought, while showing for the first time a subset of the population who are hyper-responsive to fatty foods.

Glucose is the well-known driver of insulin, but it is surprising to see such high variability, with some individuals showing a strong response to proteins, and others to fats, which had never been characterized before.

Insulin plays a major role in human health, in everything from diabetes, where it is too low, to obesity, weight gain and even some forms of cancer, where it is too high. These findings lay the groundwork for personalized nutrition that could transform how we treat and manage a range of conditions.

For the study, the researchers conducted tests on pancreatic islets from 140 deceased male and female donors across a wide age range. The islets were exposed to each of the three macronutrients, while the researchers measured the insulin response alongside 8,000 other proteins.

Although most donors' islet cells had the strongest insulin response to carbohydrates, approximately 9% responded strongly to proteins, while another 8% of the donor cells were more responsive to fats than any other nutrient—even glucose.

This research challenges the long-held belief that fats have negligible effects on insulin release in everyone. With a better understanding of a person's individual drivers of insulin production, we could potentially provide tailored dietary guidance that would help people better manage their blood sugar and insulin levels.

The research team also examined a subset of islet cells from donors who had type 2 diabetes. As expected, these donor cells had a low insulin response to glucose. However, the researchers were surprised to see that their insulin response to proteins remained largely intact.

"This really bolsters the case that protein-rich diets could have therapeutic benefits for patients with type 2 diabetes and highlights the need for further research into protein-stimulated insulin secretion.

In the future, the researchers say it could be possible use genetic testing to determine which macronutrients are likely to trigger a person's insulin response.

 Proteomic predictors of individualized nutrient-specific insulin secretion in health and disease, Cell Metabolism (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2024.06.001. www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/f … 1550-4131(24)00226-2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 2, 2024 at 11:28am

Incredible Hydrothermal Environment Discovered Deep Beneath The Ocean

A stunning new wonderland has been discovered, hidden deep beneath the ocean waves of the Arctic Circle. Off the coast of Svalbard, in Norway, more than 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) down, a field of hydrothermal vents unfolds along the Knipovich Ridge, an underwater mountain range previously thought to be fairly unremarkable. Instead, like underfloor heating, volcanic activity below the seafloor causes heat to seep through, creating havens of warmth and chemical reactions where life can gather and thrive. The field, measuring at least a kilometer in length and 200 meters in width, has been named Jøtul, for the giants of Norse mythology that live beneath mountains. In this case, the giant is Earth's internal processes, released through cracks in the seafloor. Water penetrates into the ocean floor where it is heated by magma. The overheated water then rises back to the sea floor through cracks and fissures. On its way up the fluid becomes enriched in minerals and materials dissolved out of the oceanic crustal rocks. These fluids often seep out again at the sea floor through tube-like chimneys called black smokers, where metal-rich minerals are then precipitated. Hydrothermal vent fields are some of the most interesting undersea environments. They're usually very deep beneath the ocean surface, so far down that light from the Sun can't penetrate the vast volume of water above them. At these depths, conditions are permanently dark, freezing cold, and surrounded by crushing pressures. This environment isn't exactly conducive to life, but hydrothermal vents act as strange oases. The minerals seeping out and dissolving in the water provide the basis for a food web reliant, not on photosynthesis as most life closer to the surface is, but chemosynthesis – harnessing chemical reactions for energy, rather than sunlight. These environs make for a much more dynamic and thriving deep seafloor than might be expected, giving us a clue about how life might emerge on worlds very different from our own.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-60802-3

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 2, 2024 at 11:09am

Scientists discover a new set of cells that control the blood-brain barrier

Researchers have discovered a new set of cells that can protect blood vessel structure in the central nervous system (CNS) known as the blood-brain barrier. Their findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.

They identified a new set of astrocytes (type of brain cells) that can control the integrity of the blood-brain barrier.

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a selective semi-permeable membrane between the blood and the interstitium of the brain, allowing cerebral blood vessels to regulate molecule and ion movement between the blood and the brain.

With age, or in brain disorders, the function of the blood-brain barrier is reduced.

This newly discovered subset of astrocytes expressed a protein found in bone tissue called dentin matrix protein 1 (DMP-1). These cells generate 'endfeet' and transfer mitochondria (energy generating cells) to endothelial cells which line the blood vessels of the CNS.

Reduction in the function of these astrocytes inhibited mitochondrial transfer and caused leakage of the blood-brain barrier. Mitochondrial transfer from astrocytes to blood vessel cells was identified as crucial to the maintenance of the blood-brain barrier.

Delin Liu et al, Regulation of blood-brain barrier integrity by Dmp1 -expressing astrocytes through mitochondrial transfer, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk2913

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