Category Health/Medical

Prior AIEC colonization leads to heightened cellular and proinflammatory cytokine responses.

People who retain a particular bacterium in their gut after a bout of food poisoning may be at an increased risk of developing Crohn’s disease later in life, according to a new study led by researchers at McMaster University. Using a mouse model of Crohn’s disease, the researchers discovered that acute infectious gastroenteritis caused by common food-poisoning bacteria accelerates the growth of adherent-invasive E. coli (AIEC) – a bacterium that has been linked to the development of Crohn’s.

Even after the mice had eliminated the food-poisoning bacteria, researchers still observed increased levels of AIEC in the gut, which led to worsened symptoms over a long period of time...

Those mothers who had taken Vitamin D, and had a vitamin D level (25OHD) in their umbilical blood over 25 nmol/L, had children with lower ADHD score

Children of mothers who took vitamin D during pregnancy with resultant high levels of the vitamin in the umbilical blood have fewer symptoms of ADHD at the age of 2½ years. “And for every 10 nmol/L increase in the vitamin D concentration in umbilical blood, the risk of a being among the 10% highest score on the ADHD symptom scale fell by 11%,” explains one of the study’s initiators, Professor Niels Bilenberg.

1,233 children from Odense Municipality were monitored in the study. Vitamin D was measured in umbilical blood, and mothers completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) when their child was 2½ years old...

The eEFSec elongation factor. Credit: Miljan Simonovic

Humans need 8 essential trace elements for good health, and one of them is selenium – a powerful antioxidant important for thyroid and brain function as well as metabolism. But trace elements can’t be used by the body until they are integrated into a protein molecule. Selenium is unique because it is folded into its protein while the protein molecule is still being made. All other trace elements are added to their respective protein molecules after the cell has finished synthesizing the protein. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered exactly how selenium is incorporated into selenoproteins.

Proteins are made by linking amino acids together, one at a time, in a chain...

Nucleus of a cell undergoing parthanatos. Credit: Yingfei Wang and I-Hsun Wu/Johns Hopkins Medicine

Common culprit may cause damage in stroke, brain injury, neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s. Researchers at Johns Hopkins say they have pinpointed the protein at the end of that chain of events, one that delivers the fatal strike by carving up a cell’s DNA. The find, they say, potentially opens up a new avenue for the development of drugs to prevent, stop or weaken the process.

The new experiments, conducted in laboratory-grown cells, build on earlier work by research partners Ted Dawson, M.D., Ph.D., and Valina Dawson, Ph.D., professor of neurology...