Is there a link between viral infection and ALS?

Researchers have made a potentially game-changing discovery about the development of devastating motor neuron diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

The team identified a specific type of mouse—the CC023 strain—that responds to a viral infection in a way that looks remarkably similar to humans with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

“This is exciting because this is the first animal model that affirms the long-standing theory that a virus can trigger permanent neurological damage or disease—like ALS—long after the infection itself occurred,” says Candice Brinkmeyer-Langford, a neurogenerative disease expert with the Texas A&M University School of Public Health.

The CC023 strain provides a unique “test track” for scientists to identify early warning signs for ALS through the biomarkers that appear after infection, she says. In addition, it could lead to testing and new treatments, especially for sporadic ALS, which makes up more than 90% of cases and is not hereditary.

For its study in the Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology, the team used Theiler’s murine encephalomyelitis virus (TMEV) to infect five strains of genetically diverse animal models. They then assessed how the unique DNA of the different strains affected their responses to the virus during acute, subacute, and chronic phases of infection.

The researchers tracked changes over time and between the different mice strains using five methods:

• Comparing spinal cord inflammation between infected and healthy mice at different times.
• Comparing levels of inflammation among the five mouse strains.
• Determining if higher levels of inflammation were directly linked to more paralysis and other severe physical symptoms.
• Measuring the amount of virus present.
• Testing whether higher amounts of the virus led to higher levels of spinal cord inflammation.

There were four key findings:

• Early damage. Within the first two weeks, all mouse strains showed nerve damage in the lumbar spine. Some strains showed signs of illness as early as four days after infection.
• Muscle loss. Over the long-term phase of the illness, the virus was eliminated from the spinal cord, but the CC023 mice experienced permanent muscle wasting.
• ALS similarities. The CC023 mice showed physical symptoms and lesions very similar to those seen in humans with ALS.
• Immune response. While the immune cells of the mice were very active early on to fight the virus, this activity stopped once the virus was cleared.

In short, the initial viral infection spread and infected the lumbar spinal cord early on, triggering an immune reaction, lesions, and signs of illness. The virus was cleared over time, but the lesions and clinical symptoms persisted, and in the CC023 strain these signs resembled ALS-like disease.

The bottom line, according to Brinkmeyer-Langford? Genetics matter.

“This study gives us a new way to understand the various types of damage caused by a viral infection to the spinal cord and its nerves and muscles, especially since we now know that the initial viral infection triggers lasting, damaging reaction in susceptible individuals,” she says.

Support for this work came from the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Source: Texas A&M University

The post Is there a link between viral infection and ALS? appeared first on Futurity.

from Futurity https://ift.tt/1xDIJp3

Light reflecting on leaves may help identify dying forests

The way light reflects on leaves may help researchers identify dying forests.

Early detection of declining forest health is critical for the timely intervention and treatment of droughted and diseased flora, especially in areas prone to wildfires.

Obtaining a reliable measure of whole-ecosystem health before it is too late, however, is an ongoing challenge for forest ecologists.

“This has the potential to revolutionize forest health monitoring.”

Traditional sampling is too labor-intensive for whole-forest surveys, while modern genomics—though capable of pinpointing active genes—is still too expensive for large-scale application. Remote sensing offers a high-resolution solution from the skies, but currently limited paradigms for data analysis mean the images obtained do not say enough, early enough.

A new study from researchers at the University of Notre Dame uncovers a more comprehensive picture of forest health. Funded by NASA, the research shows that spectral reflectance—a measurement obtained from satellite images—corresponds with the expression of specific genes.

Reflectance is how much light reflects off of leaf material, and at which specific wavelengths, in the visible and near-infrared range. Calculated as the ratio of reflected light to incoming light and measured using special sensors, reflectance data reveals a unique signature specific to the leaf’s composition and condition.

“This has the potential to revolutionize forest health monitoring,” says Nathan Swenson, the Gillen Director of the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center (UNDERC) who led the study.

“By connecting reflectance with gene expression, we can get a real-time measure of forest health at the genomic level that picks up the early indicators of declining forest health and connects them back to real changes happening on the cellular level.”

The study appears in Nature: Communications Earth & Environment.

While reflectance is a strong indicator of both physical and chemical leaf properties, the utility of knowing these features is limited without the ability to determine their molecular origin.

“We now have the ability to fly an airplane over a whole forest and rapidly document the traits of every tree’s canopy, but what we can actually say about a certain tree’s condition is still quite simple,” says Swenson, professor in the biological sciences department.

“So, we wanted to go beyond that, asking: Is there a significant relationship between the reflectance of a leaf and its gene expression?”

In short, the answer is yes.

Swenson, with the help of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, collected leaf samples from two common tree species—sugar maple and red maple—at the University’s UNDERC field site in northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

At the point of collection, reflectance data for the surface of each leaf was measured and recorded, before the sample was preserved and processed for gene expression analysis. This analysis focused on genes related to water response, drought, photosynthesis, and plant-pest or plant-pathogen interactions. The reflectance data was also processed to determine the wavelengths of light reflected or absorbed by a particular leaf.

For more than half of the genes analyzed, the researchers found a strong correlation with specific reflectance wavelengths. This means that across most of the trees surveyed, those whose leaves expressed a certain gene reflected or absorbed the same “signature” wavelengths of light as other leaves that expressed the same gene.

“We’ve done it here on just a small scale, but the potential for predicting the expression of hundreds to thousands of ecologically important genes from reflectance is immense,” Swenson says. “We could monitor whole forests on the genomic scale, via sensors on the international space station.”

To apply this newly-defined correlation to whole forests, Swenson is looking to scale previous research. A 2024 study published in PLOS Biology combined satellite images with artificial intelligence-enabled computational networks to create tree species maps for the National Ecological Observatory Network.

The AI model, developed by a multi-institutional team including Swenson, can be trained to identify particular trees by species using images of the whole forest’s canopy collected by sensors. When layered together with reflectance and gene expression data, the model has the potential to generate a complete profile for a single tree based on its species, reflectance signature and the gene expression map for that species. Doing so would allow researchers to single out struggling individuals or clusters more efficiently for intervention.

“You can take these models that we’re generating at the leaf level and apply them to those new data sets of reflectance whether that’s from an airplane or from a satellite. And then you can build a map of gene expression on the scale of a national forest,” Swenson says.

“The end goal here is using the right data to rapidly assess how trees are responding to stressors, so that we can intervene before the forest hits a crisis point.”

Source: University of Notre Dame

The post Light reflecting on leaves may help identify dying forests appeared first on Futurity.

from Futurity https://ift.tt/KjwuOrW

Risk of death due to pregnancy is vastly underestimated

Commonly cited statistics on the mortality risk of pregnancy when compared to abortion in the US are a vast undercount, according to a new study.

Amid national discussions of the importance of abortion access for maternal health, the goal of the study was to estimate risks using updated data to provide accurate information that could help inform decisions by patients, clinicians and policymakers.

“It is widely understood by scientists that continuing a pregnancy carries a much higher risk of death than having an abortion,” says lead study author Maria Steenland, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health.

“Our new analysis shows that it is far more dangerous to be pregnant than to have an abortion, and this gap in mortality risk is even larger than previously recognized.”

The findings suggest that abortion bans force pregnant people who otherwise would have sought abortion care to take on the substantially increased health risks associated with continued pregnancy, the researchers noted, including hemorrhage and high blood pressure.

“Our findings underscore how dangerous abortion bans are for pregnant people: forcing someone to continue a pregnancy puts them at a dramatically higher risk of death—along with so many other harms,” says study author Benjamin Brown, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School.

“The data also highlight the urgent need to lower mortality rates for all pregnant, birthing, and postpartum people.”

Steenland, whose research goal is to identify policy options to increase the equity and quality of women’s health services, and Brown, an OB-GYN with a subspecialty in complex family planning (including complex abortion and contraception care), connected while Steenland was an assistant professor of health services, policy and practice (research) at Brown University’s School of Public Health.

The new analysis found that the mortality risk from pregnancy (including up to one year postpartum) is 44 to 70 times higher than the mortality risk from abortion—three times higher than previously estimated. Prior to this study, a commonly cited statistic was that the risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that of abortion. This statistic was based on data from 1998 to 2005, and during that timeframe, mortality rates for people with ongoing pregnancies have been estimated to be between 8.8 and 14.5 per 100,000 live births. The current study, using data from 2018 to 2021, found an annual average of 32.3 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, with the highest rate of 43.9 occurring in 2021.

The study defined pregnancy-related deaths as occurring during pregnancy or within one year from the end of pregnancy. They were further identified by hundreds of specific underlying pregnancy-related causes such as hypertension disorders, obstetric hemorrhage, complications from chronic heart and kidney disease, and various infections occurring while pregnant.

One major factor involved in the new estimates was the availability of new data. In 2003, a pregnancy checkbox option was added to death certificates to indicate whether the deceased person was pregnant. When the checkbox was fully implemented in 2018, it addressed prior undercounting of maternal deaths but also led to a potential problem of overcounting, where the cause of death for the deceased person may have been misclassified as being related to pregnancy.

To calculate pregnancy-related death rates, the research team analyzed data on deaths and births (live and stillbirth) from the US National Vital Statistics System, as well as abortion-related deaths from the Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System between 2018 to 2021. Data on the number of abortions during that time came from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan research nonprofit that monitors abortion surveillance data in the US and globally.

To account for possible overcounting of maternal deaths, the study removed nonspecific causes of pregnancy-related mortality, such as “other specified pregnancy-related conditions,” which prior research showed was likely to be misclassified. The study also excluded deaths from COVID-19 and deaths of people whose pregnancy ended because of miscarriage or self-induced abortion.

“Even with this conservative approach to calculating maternal mortality, we found the risk of dying from pregnancy and childbirth far exceeded the risk of dying from abortion,” says study author Marie Thoma, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist and an associate professor at the University of Maryland.

“People deserve access to updated information about these comparative risks and policies that reflect these realities.”

The risk of death due to abortion has decreased since previous studies were conducted, most likely because more people who have an abortion have it earlier in the pregnancy, which is generally safer, the researchers say. They note that increased restrictions to abortion access will likely affect maternal health going forward.

The research appears in JAMA Network Open.

Source: Brown University

The post Risk of death due to pregnancy is vastly underestimated appeared first on Futurity.

from Futurity https://ift.tt/Yi4Ua2M

Watch: These metal tubes don’t sink in water

Scientists have engineered unsinkable metal tubes.

The superhydrophobic design could lead to resilient ships, floating platforms, and renewable energy innovations.

More than a century after the Titanic sank, engineers still have hopes of someday creating “unsinkable” ships. In a step toward reaching that lofty goal, researchers at the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics have developed a new process that turns ordinary metal tubes unsinkable—meaning they will stay afloat no matter how long they are forced into water or how heavily they are damaged.

Chunlei Guo, a professor of optics and of physics and a senior scientist at URochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, and his team describe their process for creating aluminum tubes with remarkable floating abilities in a study published in Advanced Functional Materials. By etching the interior of aluminum tubes, the researchers create micro- and nano-pits on the surface that turn it superhydrophobic, repelling water and staying dry.

When the treated tube enters water, the superhydrophobic surface traps a stable bubble of air inside the tube, which prevents the tube from getting waterlogged and sinking. The mechanism is similar to how diving bell spiders trap an air bubble to stay buoyant underwater or how fire ants form floating rafts with their hydrophobic bodies.

“Importantly, we added a divider to the middle of the tube so that even if you push it vertically into the water, the bubble of air remains trapped inside and the tube retains its floating ability,” says Guo.

Guo and his lab first demonstrated superhydrophobic floating devices in 2019, featuring two superhydrophobic disks that were sealed together to create their buoyancy. But the current tube design simplifies and improves the technology in several key areas. The disks that the researchers previously developed could lose their ability to float when turned at extreme angles, but the tubes are resilient against turbulent conditions like those found at sea.

“We tested them in some really rough environments for weeks at a time and found no degradation to their buoyancy,” says Guo.

“You can poke big holes in them, and we showed that even if you severely damage the tubes with as many holes as you can punch, they still float.”

Multiple tubes can be linked together to create rafts that could be the basis for ships, buoys, and floating platforms. In lab experiments, the team tested the design using tubes of varying lengths, up to almost half a meter, and Guo says the technology could be easily scaled to the larger sizes needed for load-bearing floating devices.

The researchers also showed how rafts made from superhydrophobic tubes could be used to harvest water waves to generate electricity, offering a promising renewable energy application.

This project was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and URochester’s Goergen Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.

Source: University of Rochester

The post Watch: These metal tubes don’t sink in water appeared first on Futurity.

from Futurity https://ift.tt/rNWM1Jp

1 week in a foster home makes shelter dogs’ lives better

A new study shows that a week away from the kennel may be one of the best stress-relievers a shelter dog can get—and pairing them with a familiar canine buddy when they return helps even more.

Millions of dogs enter US animal shelters each year, and while many eventually find new homes, the experience can be deeply stressful. Loud kennels, erratic routines, and isolation all take a toll on their well-being.

The new study led by Virginia Tech’s School of Animal Sciences identifies one of the simplest and most effective ways to ease that strain: Give dogs a break in a foster home.

Conducted in partnership with Arizona State University and two animal shelters, one in Arizona and one in Virginia, the study found that a week in a foster home significantly reduced cortisol, a key hormone linked to stress. Wearable sensors showed the dogs spent more time resting.

The study also found that upon returning to the shelter, dogs housed with a familiar companion had a more restful re-entry.

“This is the longest foster period we’ve studied and the effects were even stronger than what we saw with shorter stays,” says Lisa Gunter, an animal behavior and welfare expert in Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and lead author of the study.

“This is especially encouraging. We have yet to find the beneficial limits of a stay in a foster home for dogs in shelters.”

How one week at home affects shelter dogs

Unlike earlier research focused on fostering stays of just a couple nights, this study looked at what happens when dogs spend a full week in a home.

Researchers tracked 84 shelter dogs across 17 days: five in the shelter, seven in a foster home, and five more back in the shelter. They collected over 1,300 urine samples to measure cortisol and used collar-mounted activity monitors to track rest and their movements.

The results showed clear changes in both hormone levels and the dogs’ behavior. During the foster stay, cortisol levels dropped significantly—an effect that was twice as large as that seen in shorter stays. Sensor data showed dogs spent more time resting in homes. Importantly, cortisol levels weren’t higher when dogs returned to the shelter as compared with their pre-fostering period.

“While these improvements in dogs’ welfare were temporary in the foster home, dogs were no more stressed in the shelter following foster care as they were before it,” Gunter says.

“That’s encouraging because that’s often a concern. Instead, foster care is a chance for dogs to rest and recharge in a home.”

Why familiar kennelmates matter

The study also examined whether returning to the shelter and living with a familiar companion helped dogs cope more effectively.

Before the foster stay, dogs housed with a compatible kennelmate showed no major differences in stress or activity levels. But after the week away, those reunited with a familiar dog rested more and engaged in less high activity than dogs housed alone or with a new companion.

“For dogs, familiar relationships provide stability—like a best friend in a stressful situation,” says Erica Feuerbacher, associate professor and coprincipal investigator on the study. “Being kenneled with a known companion helped them settle faster and rest more easily.”

Feuerbacher’s previous research has shown that cohousing familiar dogs not only reduces stress but can also increase adoption rates.

Improving shelter dog welfare and adoption

The findings build on years of work by Gunter and Feuerbacher aimed at improving the lives and adoptability of shelter dogs.

In an earlier study across 51 shelters and nearly 28,000 dogs, Gunter and colleagues found that short outings of as little as one to four hours increased dogs’ likelihood of adoption by five times. Dogs who spent one or two nights in foster care were over 14 times more likely to find permanent homes.

“Those adoptions weren’t usually by the foster families,” Gunter says. “Instead, these dogs were out in the community, walking in a neighborhood, or being seen in a home on social media. That visibility makes a real difference.”

Together, these studies suggest that foster stays and cohousing can meaningfully improve dogs’ experiences in the shelter and how quickly they get adopted.

Gunter says these are practical, low-cost strategies shelters can implement now.

“We keep finding that when dogs leave the kennel and go into a home, they do better,” Gunter says. “These are the types of interventions shelters can use to improve the lives of dogs in their care.”

The full study appears in PeerJ.

Source: Virginia Tech

The post 1 week in a foster home makes shelter dogs’ lives better appeared first on Futurity.

from Futurity https://ift.tt/Cu80Wtw

Lead exposure as a kid tied to depression symptoms later

A new analysis finds that increased concentrations of lead in the blood during childhood were associated with increased depressive symptoms in adolescence.

While lead exposure in children has been associated with cognitive and behavioral problems, few studies have examined later psychiatric symptoms.

The new research in JAMA Network Open underscores the long-term behavioral outcomes associated with early environmental exposures, the researchers says. Exposure levels at age 8 seemed to be particularly significant.

“We found compelling associations suggesting that lead exposure throughout childhood is associated with depressive symptoms,” says study author Christian Hoover, a student in the PhD program in epidemiology at Brown University’s School of Public Health.

“In addition, it appeared, based on our results, that there was a pattern where age 8 was a really consequential time in terms of a child’s exposure and an association with developing onset and severity of depressive symptoms.”

Lead is a neurotoxicant affecting cognitive and behavioral functioning, and research has shown that any exposure is associated with adverse health outcomes in children and adults. Despite the reduced uses of lead in the US, children are still exposed through environmental sources like dust, soil, and drinking water from aging pipes. Few studies have evaluated relatively low blood-lead measures throughout childhood in association with child depression and anxiety. This is concerning, the researchers say, given that these psychiatric conditions are prevalent among US adolescents.

To address that knowledge gap, the researchers analyzed the data of 218 pairs of caregivers and children in the Health Outcomes and Measures of Environment Study, which followed children and their families from the second trimester of pregnancy to age 12 years, assessing associations of environmental toxicant exposures with various health outcomes, and at around age 12, assessing anxiety and depression. The researchers also measured blood lead concentrations at the ages of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, and 12 years.

They found that each doubling in mean childhood blood lead concentrations was associated with increased risk of elevated child-reported depressive symptoms. Low levels of childhood blood lead concentrations were associated with self-reported depressive symptoms in later childhood, with particularly large increases in risk when exposures occurred in late childhood and early adolescence.

The researchers hypothesized that several biological mechanisms could explain how lead exposure may be associated with psychiatric illness, including through altered neurotransmitter function, reduced neurogenesis, and disrupted synaptic plasticity, particularly in brain regions associated with mood regulation. Other proposed mechanisms include oxidative stress, inflammation, and genetic modifications that may contribute to the onset and persistence of mental health symptoms after lead exposure.

“These findings suggest that low-level lead exposure during childhood and adolescence is associated with mental health in later childhood, highlighting the need for continued efforts to prevent lead exposure and the need to reduce lead exposure in older children,” says study author Joseph Braun, a professor of epidemiology and the director of Brown’s Center for Climate, Environment, and Health.

Future studies should continue to explore how to prevent cumulative or later-childhood lead exposure and whether distinct long-term patterns of lead exposure may be associated with child mental health outcomes, the researchers concluded.

Funding for this research came from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences.

Source: Brown University

The post Lead exposure as a kid tied to depression symptoms later appeared first on Futurity.

from Futurity https://ift.tt/P5HsZ2U

How vines search for and attach to other plants

A new study unlocks a formula that explains vines’ ability to search for and attach to host plants.

Twisting upwardly on trees and other plants—along with houses and even lampposts—vines are a wonder of nature. However, their marvels mask their parasitic behavior: in attaching to other life forms, vines block sunlight necessary for growth and strangle their hosts, preventing the flow of water and other nutrients.

While these threats were widely known, less clear is what gives vines their searching, attaching, and climbing capabilities.

An international team of scientists has now unlocked a formula that enables vines to search for and attach to host plants—rapid elongation, directional movement, and the production of specialized contacting cells—and identified the gene family that engineers this formula.

“Our research shows how molecular mechanisms are linked to plant movement—something we haven’t clearly understood,” explains Joyce Onyenedum, an assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University and an author of the study, which appears in the journal the New Phytologist.

“Crucially, it gives us greater insight into these ropey parasites. They pose an ongoing menace to trees and other plants—among nature’s best tools for storing atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

It has been well-established that large tree branches bend through the production of fiber cells, called “G-fibers”, which are specialized cells that contract. In a study published last year, Onyenedum and her colleagues reported that G-fibers were common within the stems of vines. But the actual role of these cells was unclear.

In the New Phytologist study, Onyenedum and her colleagues, who included Lena Hunt, an NYU postdoctoral researcher, and Charles Anderson, a Penn State biologist, sought to address this question.

To do so, the scientists studied common bean vines, which are cultivated globally, often seen in home gardens, and grow vertically. Specifically, they studied the role of a particular hormone, brassinosteroid, which is known to regulate plants’ developmental processes, including elongation, by comparing growth in a normal bean vine to one that was engineered to produce an excess amount of this hormone.

These excess hormones repressed the development of G-fiber cells and produced “lazy vines” that elongate too fast and move in directionless manner.

The below timelapse video shows the two bean vines—the left plant has hormone levels typically found in vines and climbs normally; the right plant, by contrast, has an excess amount of hormones, creating an imbalance that stifles climbing:

Video courtesy of the Onyenedum Lab/New York University

The researchers also identified a candidate gene, XTH5, which is fundamental in plants’ structural growth and is specifically expressed during G-fiber development—thus potentially spotting the key actor supporting the coiling and gripping of vines.

“Genes like XTH5 allow plants to remodel their cell walls, which are complex structures that provide strength and flexibility to plants. This study demonstrates that cell wall remodeling is a critical component of plant movements such as twining,” says Anderson.

“Our work shows that rapid elongation, directional movement, and the production of certain cells facilitates the maneuvering and eventual attachment of vines upon their host, thus unlocking the secrets to their behavior,” concludes Onyenedum.

The study also included researchers from the New York Botanical Garden, Brazil’s Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, and the University of Michigan.

This research was supported by an CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (240167).

Source: NYU

The post How vines search for and attach to other plants appeared first on Futurity.

from Futurity https://ift.tt/Okxy75F