Category Health/Medical

Researchers found that brain age decreases by 0.95 years for each year of education, and by 0.58 years for every daily flight of stairs climbed. Credit: © lzf / Fotolia

In a study recently published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, researchers led by Jason Steffener, a scientist at Concordia University’s Montreal-based PERFORM Centre, show that the more flights of stairs a person climbs, and the more years of school a person completes, the “younger” their brain physically appears. Brain age decreases by 0.95 years for each year of education, and by 0.58 years for every daily flight of stairs climbed – i.e., the stairs between 2 consecutive floors in a building.

“There already exist many ‘Take the stairs’ campaigns in office environments and public transportation centres,” says Steffe...

Highlights • Inducible CRISPRi iPSCs provide a valuable resource for rapid gene knockdown • CRISPRi knockdown is efficient, tunable, and reversible in iPSCs • CRISPRi knockdown is highly specific • CRISPRi enables disease modeling in iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes

CRISPR interference system inhibits rather than cuts the genome to suppress genes in stem cells, improving efficiency and precision of CRISPR-Cas9. Combining the 2 most powerful biological tools of the 21st century, scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have modified how the genome of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) is read for the first time using a variation of the CRISPR-Cas9 system. The development offers a major technological advance in creating cell models of genetic diseases.

The researchers used a modified ve...

HDL, or ‘good’ cholesterol, can remove cholesterol from arteries and shuttle it to the liver where it is eliminated, but this process can be disrupted in certain circumstances (such as deficiency of SCARB1). Credit: The lab of Daniel Rader, MD, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

The medical maxim that elevated HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) is “good” has been overturned by a multi-center, international study, led by Perelman School of Medicine researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. They show that a certain genetic cause of increased HDL-C may actually be “bad,” noting that a specific mutation in a gene which encodes a cell receptor protein that binds to HDL prevents the receptor from functioning...

Highlights •Elevated TMAO levels predict incident risk for thrombotic events in human subjects •TMAO enhances sub-maximal stimulus-dependent platelet activation •Dietary choline, gut microbes, and TMAO are linked to thrombotic potential in vivo •Microbial transplantation shows that thrombosis potential is a transmissible trait

TMAO – gut byproduct of animal-rich diets – encourages over-reactive platelet function, increasing thrombosis risk. In a combination of both clinical studies of over 4,000 patients and animal model studies, Cleveland Clinic researchers have demonstrated – for the first time – that gut microbes alter platelet function and risk of blood clot-related illnesses like heart attack and stroke.

When the nutrient choline –which is abundant in animal products like meat...