A group of University of Chicago scientists announced a groundbreaking study that explores the role of a small molecule, called IP6, in building the HIV-1 virus capsid.

The genetic information of the HIV virus is surrounded by a layer of proteins called a capsid, which works as the armor of the virus. Figuring out how this capsid is formed provides an important avenue to developing treatments, yet researchers have struggled for decades to recreate stable capsids in the laboratory.

“The HIV capsid has a very unique conical shape that needs to be closed to contain the viral genetic material,” said postdoctoral fellow and lead author of the study Alvin Yu, which was published Sept. 16 in Science Advances.

Part of the secret to assembling the capsid is the incorporation of defects into the lattice. The majority of the capsid is composed of hexameric protein arrangements that consist of six subunits. However, there are twelve points on the capsid that are pentameric—consisting of five protein subunits.

“Without these pentamers, the HIV capsid protein would just assemble into long tubes open on two ends,” explained Professor Gregory Voth, an expert in multiscale computer simulation studies of biomolecules.

Recent experiments had shown that once IP6 was added, the capsids would enclose and create the correct conical structure that would persist for hours rather than minutes. However, little was known about why and how this occurred or the specific molecular role of IP6.

To explore what was happening on a molecular level, the researchers used a highly specialized computer called Anton, specifically built for molecular dynamics simulations. This allowed the scientists to see how IP6 binds to the capsid, which is difficult to see experimentally.

The researchers analyzed the physical movements of the molecules over a period of time, giving a view of how the system changes. Their analysis showed that IP6 energetically prefers binding with pentamers to stabilize these conformations, even though there are far fewer of them than the hexamers. This is important because whatever interaction is energetically favorable and most stable is the most likely to happen, and to last.

“This study is the smoking gun that shows exactly why IP6 prefers to bind to pentamers and the mechanisms behind it,” said Voth.

Understanding these mechanisms creates a deeper grasp of how small molecules can regulate protein assembly. When it comes to HIV, further understanding of how the virus builds its armor could open the door to new treatments. One of the binding spots of IP6 is already a known target of drug inhibitors.

“The stability of the capsid is essential to whether the virus can deliver its payload into host cells. Understanding how to modulate capsid stability, could lead to a new route for inhibitors to disrupt the virus,” said Yu.

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Source – https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/

Researchers have uncovered new clues to the mystery of how the gut’s nervous system affects glucose metabolism in the rest of the body. Their findings could lead to new treatments for type 2 diabetes.

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Cardiovascular and hematological risk factors increased the risk for in-hospital mortality by 613% and 336%, respectively, in pediatric patients who had an ischemic stroke.

These findings, which were obtained through an analysis of a nationwide inpatient sample from 2010 to 2014, were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Neurological Association.

While pediatric ischemic stroke (PIS) is rare, it is “one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in young patients,” according to the researchers.

“The prevalence of PIS increased by 35% from 1990 to 2013,” the researchers wrote. “Understanding mortality risk associated with risk factors is important.”

Nitya Beriwal, MBBS, of Lady Hardinge Medical School in New Delhi, and Rikinkumar S. Patel, MD, MPH, of Griffin Memorial Hospital in Oklahoma, performed a cross-sectional study of pediatric patients aged 1 to 17 years who had a primary diagnosis of ischemic stroke. The researchers stratified the sample by cardiovascular risk factors, hematological risk factors and no risk factors.

The total sample consisted of 4,036 inpatients. This included 1,321 patients with cardiovascular risk factors, 1,161 patients with hematological risk factors and 1,554 patients with no cardiovascular/hematological risk factors.

Beriwal — who presented the findings— and Patel used logistic regression to examine the effect of hematological risk factors and cardiovascular risk factors on the odds ratio (OR) association with in-hospital mortality, after controlling for demographics and potential risk factors. One limitation noted was that they did not include infants or cases of cerebral sinovenous thrombosis.

The most frequent cardiovascular risk factors in PIS included congenital abnormalities, hypertension, obesity and cardiomyopathy, according to the study findings. Prevalent hematological risk factors included systemic lupus erythematosus, sickle cell anemia, deficiency anemias and coagulation disorders.

Researchers reported a total mortality rate of 3.6%. Of this, a mortality rate of 3.1% was accounted for by individuals with hematological and cardiovascular risk factors. The individual mortality rate in the cardiovascular risk factor cohort was 57.4%; the individual mortality rate in the hematological risk factor cohort was 29.7%. When compared with no risk factors, hematological and cardiovascular risk factors correlated with four times (95% CI, 2.36-8.03) and seven times (95% CI, 4.03-12.61) greater odds for in-hospital mortality, Beriwal and Patel found.

Specifically, significant risk factors for in-hospital mortality included cardiomyopathy (OR = 15.6; 95% CI, 9.19-26.56), diabetes (OR = 11.2; 95% CI, 5.01-24.86), blood cancers (OR = 4.7; 95% CI, 2.24-10.09), hypertension (OR = 2.39; 95% CI, 1.31-4.37), coagulation disorders (OR = 2.23; 95% CI, 1.28-3.89) and deficiency anemias (OR = 1.94; 95% CI, 1.13-3.34).

“[Cardiovascular] and [hematological] risk factors increased the risk [for] in-hospital mortality in PIS by 613% and 336%, respectively,” the researchers wrote. “Strategies should be developed for effective management of potential risk factors to improve survival.”

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In another setback in the long quest to prevent HIV infection, a trial in South Africa has been shut down because an experimental vaccine was not working, federal health officials announced Monday.

The trial, which began in 2016, followed one in Thailand that ended in 2009. That vaccine offered only modest protection against infection. Experts argued over how much, but the vaccine was no more than 30% protective.

Nonetheless, it was the only vaccine that had appeared to work at all.

“We hoped this vaccine candidate would work — regrettably, it does not,” said Dr Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which conducted the trial.

A vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is sorely needed. Even now, nearly 40 years after the start of the epidemic, 1.7 million people are newly infected each year — most of them in Africa, especially southern Africa, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations’ AIDS-fighting agency.

The trial — known as HVTN 702 but nicknamed Uhambo, which means “journey” in Zulu — included 5,407 young adult men and women in South Africa.

Last month, a safety-monitoring panel looked at early results and found there were 123 infections among participants who got a placebo injection and 129 among those who got the vaccine.

That clearly indicated that the vaccine was not protective but did not mean it was making participants more vulnerable to HIV, scientists said. A difference of just six infections in so large a pool of participants could have been due to chance.

The Uhambo vaccine had to be significantly changed from the one tested in Thailand because South Africa has a different dominant strain of HIV.

The vaccine used canarypox, a bird virus that can infect human cells but cannot multiply in them, to deliver into the body a protein found on the outer envelope of HIV The immune system learns to recognize the protein and to make protective antibodies to it.

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HIV patients who self-identify as religious or spiritual, pray daily, attend religious services regularly and say they feel God’s presence, tend to have better emotional and physical well-being, according to a new study published online in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.

In contrast, “privately religious” HIV patients — potentially turning away from organized religion due to fears about being stigmatized or ostracized — had the lowest levels of quality of life and more mental health challenges.

“These findings are significant because they point to the untapped potential of encouraging patients living with HIV who are already religious to attend religious services regularly,” says Maureen E. Lyon, Ph.D., FABPP, a clinical health psychologist at Children’s National Hospital, and senior study author.

“Scientific evidence suggests that religions that present God as all-powerful, personal, responsive, loving, just and forgiving make a difference in health-related quality of life,” Lyon said. “By contrast, belief systems and religions that see God as punishing, angry, vengeful and distant and isolate members from their families and the larger community do not have health benefits or contribute to health-related quality of life. People who identify as spiritual also benefit from improved overall health-related quality of life.”

In general, patients living with HIV have reported that they wished their health care providers acknowledged their religious beliefs and spiritual struggles. Additional research is needed to gauge whether developing faith-based interventions or routine referrals to faith-based programs that welcome racial and sexual minorities improve satisfaction with treatment and health outcomes.”

More than 1 million people in the U.S. live with HIV, and in 2018, 37,832 people received an HIV diagnosis in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2017, the Washington, D.C. region was recorded as one of the nation’s highest rates of new cases of HIV: 46.3 diagnoses per 100,000 people, according to the CDC.

For the study, the researchers wanted to better understand the degree of religiousness and spirituality reported by people living with HIV and the interplay between religion and health-related quality of life. The research team recruited HIV patients in Washington, D.C., to participate in a clinical trial about family-centered advance care planning and enrolled 223 patient/family pairs in this study.

Of the participants, 56 percent were male; 86 percent were African-American; 75 percent Christian; and the mean age was 50.8 years.

The researchers identified three distinct classes of religious beliefs:

• Class 1 (35 percent of the patients) had the highest level of religiousness/spirituality. These were more likely to attend religious services in person each week, to pray daily, to “feel God’s presence” and to self-identify as religious and spiritual. They tended to be older than 40.
• Class 2 (47 percent of patients) applied to privately religious people who engaged in religious activities at home, like praying, and did not attend services regularly.
• Class 3 (18 percent of patients) self-identified as spiritual but were not involved in organized religion. They had the lowest overall level of religiousness/spirituality.

Class 1 religiousness/spirituality was linked to increased quality of life, mental health and improved health status.

“Being committed to a welcoming religious group provides social support, a sense of identity and a way to cope with stress experienced by people living with HIV,” Lyon said.

“We encourage clinicians to capitalize on patients’ spiritual beliefs that improve health — such as prayer, meditation, reading spiritual texts and attending community events — by including them in holistic treatment programs in a non-judgmental way.”

In addition, the researchers encourage clinicians to appoint a member of the team who is responsible for handling religiousness/spirituality screening and providing referrals to welcoming hospital-based chaplaincy programs or community-based religious groups.

“This is particularly challenging for HIV-positive African-American men who have sex with men, as this group faces discrimination related to race and sexual orientation. Because HIV infection rates are increasing for this group, this additional outreach is all the more important,” she added.

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(HealthDay)—Suvorexant improves total sleep time (TST) in patients with probable Alzheimer disease (AD) dementia and insomnia, according to a study published online Jan. 15 in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

W. Joseph Herring, M.D., Ph.D., from Merck & Co., in Kenilworth, New Jersey, and colleagues randomly assigned patients with both probable AD dementia and insomnia to four weeks of suvorexant 10 mg (136 patients; could be increased to 20 mg based on clinical response) or placebo (141 patients). Overnight polysomnography in a sleep laboratory was used to assess TST.

The researchers found that at week 4, the mean improvement from baseline in TST was 73 minutes for the suvorexant group and 45 minutes for the placebo group. Patients taking suvorexant were twice as likely to show an improvement of ≥60 minutes in TST compared with those taking placebo. In suvorexant-treated patients, somnolence was reported by 4.2 percent of participants versus 1.4 percent of placebo-treated patients.

“Suvorexant did not appear to impair next-day cognitive or psychomotor performance as assessed by objective tests, although these assessments do not constitute a comprehensive assessment of cognition,” the authors write.

Several authors disclosed financial ties to pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, which manufactures suvorexant and funded the study.

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Obese people who have bariatric surgery may have an easier time breathing afterward, a small study suggests.

To assess changes in lung function associated with the surgery, researchers examined results from lung CT scans for 51 obese individuals before their operations and again six months later.

“Weight loss as a result of bariatric surgery improves the appearances of the lungs and airways on CT scans and this corresponds with an improvement in breathlessness and lung function,” said lead study author Susan Copley of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London.

Obesity can make it harder for people to breathe, weakening respiratory muscles and requiring people to work harder to get air in and out of their lungs, the researchers note in Radiology. Few previous studies have examined the impact of obesity on breathing by looking at CT scans of the lungs and trachea, or windpipe, they note.

All but one patient in the current study underwent a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass procedure, which reduces the stomach to a pouch the size of an egg. Before surgery, patients’ average body mass index (BMI) was 44.5, making them extremely obese; afterwards they typically remained obese with an average BMI of 34.

Before surgery, and again six months later, researchers used CT scans to measure the size and shape of the trachea and assess air trapping – in which excess air remains in the lungs after exhaling, reducing lung function. Air trapping is an indirect sign of obstruction in the small airways of the lung.

Surgery and weight loss were associated with structural changes to the lung and trachea, the study found.

Post-surgery CT scans showed reductions in air trapping and a lower incidence of tracheal collapse, or blockage in the windpipe that makes it harder to breathe.

People who had the biggest reductions in air trapping on CT scans also had more improvement in shortness of breath.

The results suggest that some breathing problems related to obesity may improve after bariatric surgery, the authors conclude.

Beyond its small size, another limitation of the study is that researchers only took CT scans of small portions of the lung to minimize radiation doses, Copley said by email. This means the study may have underestimated the extent of abnormalities in the airways.

Even so, the results suggest improved respiratory function might be an added benefit of weight loss surgery, said Dr. Ninh Nguyen of the University of California Irvine Medical Center.

Breathing is harder for obese people because the fat tissue around the rib cage and abdomen leads to obstructions in the large and small airways, Nguyen, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

The current study demonstrated objective evidence of increase in trachea diameter and less air trapping with weight loss after bariatric surgery, Nguyen said. “Additionally, (shortness of breath) symptoms improved after bariatric surgery, which was likely related to the improvement of respiratory mechanics and less air trapping” when patients exhaled.

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At the start of the new year, many consumers pledge to lose weight as a way to boost their health; however, keeping the weight off can be very difficult. 

Now, researchers from California Polytechnic State University have found that the key to keeping weight off is to be strategic about the process. Their study proved that maintaining weight loss is easier when consumers choose healthier foods, track their food intake, and allow themselves to feel encouraged by their progress.

“People who maintained their successful weight loss the longest reported greater frequency and repetition in healthy eating choices,” said researcher Suzanne Phelan. “Healthier choices also became more automatic the longer people continued to make those choices. These findings are encouraging for those working at weight loss maintenance. Over time, weight loss maintenance may become easier, requiring less intentional effort.”  

Putting strategies into practice

The researchers went straight to the source for this study by evaluating the habits of those who have successfully lost weight and kept it off. The team compared these consumers to those who have struggled to lose a significant amount of weight for over five years. 

Participants completed surveys tracking their typical weight loss behaviors, as well as what they did to try to keep the weight off. 

After tracking over 50 behaviors and strategies for weight loss maintenance, the researchers found that three were the most common among the participants who were successful in their weight loss process: tracking food, choosing healthy foods, and maintaining a positive attitude. 

Keeping a record of food eaten throughout the day helps keep consumers accountable for their choices. With a countless number of free apps available on smartphones, tracking food has become easier than ever. 

Healthy eating and a positive attitude go hand-in-hand, as recent studies have found that when consumers make healthier choices, it benefits them both physically and mentally. 

Staying on track

Losing weight can be a difficult process, but the researchers want to encourage consumers to stay the course. The longer these habits are put into practice, the more natural they become in day-to-day life. When that happens, consumers will see better weight loss outcomes. 

“Successful weight loss is associated with a variety of health benefits,” said Phelan. “The improved quality of life observed among the successful weight losers in this study may serve as an important motivator for people working at long-term weight management.” 

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After 40 years, despite breakthroughs in the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, Canadian scientists working in Kenya are still up against a stubborn roadblock: How do you encourage people to get tested for HIV?

“On paper, we have the means of dealing with the epidemic. But in practice, it is very different,” said Larry Gelmon, an associate professor at the University of Manitoba and director of the university’s program in Kenya. “We have the solutions. The research issues [now] are how do you get those solutions to the people who need them?”

Scientists from Winnipeg are gathering in Nairobi this week, marking the 40th anniversary of a research partnership, initially established between the University of Manitoba and the University of Nairobi before the world became aware of HIV/AIDS to try to control sexually transmitted infections in Kenya. That partnership, called the University of Manitoba-University of Nairobi Collaborative Research Program, grew to include researchers from the United States, Belgium and other Canadian universities, and it turned its attention to HIV/AIDS as the disease swept Africa in the 1980s.

The group’s work is far from over. In 2018, 25.7 million people were living with HIV in Africa and 1.1 million were infected that year, accounting for two-thirds of new HIV infections globally, according to the World Health Organization.

Over the decades, Dr. Gelmon said, the focus of the research collaborative has shifted from learning about HIV in the 1980s to trying to find a way to create a vaccine in the 1990s, which was unsuccessful. Since then, he said, it has focused on the social and cultural issues hindering the prevention and treatment of infection.

With the right medications, people with HIV can now live long lives. Although the death toll has plunged in Africa and around the world, the WHO estimates 470,000 people in Africa died of HIV-related causes in 2018 – more than 60 per cent of the estimated 770,000 deaths globally that year.

“A lot of the stigma and prejudice that prevented people from getting tested 30 years ago is still happening,” Dr. Gelmon said, adding that even though treatment is now available, many are hesitant to be treated because they do not want others to know they are HIV-positive.

For sex workers, anti-retroviral medications can be taken before having sex as a pre-exposure prophylactic to protect themselves, he added, but they are often reluctant to carry the pills for fear others will assume they are infected.

“So, to a large extent, the research that we’re doing now is how do you get people to get tested? How do you encourage them, if they’re on treatment, to stay on their treatment?” he said.

This involves various qualitative, operational research projects aimed at trying to figure out the best way to implement treatments and preventative measures beyond the laboratory and clinical settings. For instance, the group is working with sex workers in Nairobi to provide peer education, conduct HIV testing and hand out condoms in the places where they work, such as bars, clubs, hotels and bus stops.

Researchers are also working on new methods to prevent infection that are accessible and could be readily adopted. For example, building upon decades of the group’s research, Keith Fowke, head of the University of Manitoba’s department of medical microbiology and infectious diseases, is testing the use of a low daily dose of aspirin to block inflammation, as a way of preventing HIV target cells from getting into the genital tract.

Taking a pill every day would not be ideal for everyone, Dr. Fowke said. But for women at high risk of exposure to the virus, particularly sex workers, the common anti-inflammatory drug could turn out be an affordable, socially acceptable prevention tool they could add to their arsenal, he said.

Meanwhile, researchers have not abandoned their efforts to develop a vaccine or a cure.

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Researchers working to overcome the reservoir of dormant HIV within CD4 T cells have discovered two methods with which to stimulate HIV to re-emerge from latency into the blood stream. Two separate papers, both published in Nature, detail the differing techniques which could lead to a cure for HIV in future.

The research papers, both funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), show promising results disrupting viral latency. While not a cure, the researchers claim combining this therapy with existing antiretrovirals could be the future of HIV treatment.

Both approaches were tested at Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University in monkeys infected with SIV, the primate form of HIV and treated with antiretroviral drugs. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), tests were also conducted in mice transplanted with human immune cells.

One paper describes how AZD5582 activates an intracellular pathway that leads to HIV and SIV reactivation. The drug showed minimal toxicity in non-human primates – just one of twelve treated monkeys experienced a temporary fever and loss of appetite.

“AZD5582 was remarkable in its ability to reactivate latent SIV from resting CD4+ T cells and to induce continued virus production in the blood when monkeys were still receiving daily antiretroviral therapy,” said Dr Ann Chahroudi, co-senior author on both papers, associate professor of paediatrics and director of the Center for Childhood Infections & Vaccines at Emory and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

In the other study, researchers stimulated the cells that are the main viral hosts (CD4+ T cells) while depleting CD8+ T cells, which normally fight the virus.

This combination was especially potent according to the study; however, both components were necessary to see SIV re-emerge.

“The old paradigm is that you need CD8 cells to clear other infected cells,” said Dr Guido Silvestri, paper senior author, interim chair of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and chief of microbiology and immunology at Yerkes National Primate Research Center. “We’re showing that CD8 cells are also involved in repressing latency reversal.”

The main obstacle to a cure for HIV infection is the immune cell reservoir of the dormant virus following treatment with antiretroviral drugs. No interventions have been proven to reduce the size of the reservoir, because once the animals were taken off antiretroviral drugs, viral levels rebounded. The scientists think that post re-emergence, the virus needs to be treated with other targeted modes of treatment, such as antibodies.

“The exciting thing about these papers being published together are the concordance of the results in two animal models with both approaches and the opening up of new avenues for research towards the goal of an HIV cure,” said Chahroudi.

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A ketogenic diet — which provides 99% of calories from fat and protein and only 1% from carbohydrates — produces health benefits in the short term, but negative effects after about a week, Yale researchers found in a study of mice.

The results offer early indications that the keto diet could, over limited time periods, improve human health by lowering diabetes risk and inflammation. They also represent an important first step toward possible clinical trials in humans.

The keto diet has become increasingly popular as celebrities, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Lebron James, and Kim Kardashian, have touted it as a weight-loss regimen.

In the Yale study, published in the Jan. 20 issue of Nature Metabolism, researchers found that the positive and negative effects of the diet both relate to immune cells called gamma delta T-cells, tissue-protective cells that lower diabetes risk and inflammation.

A keto diet tricks the body into burning fat, said lead author Vishwa Deep Dixit of the Yale School of Medicine. When the body’s glucose level is reduced due to the diet’s low carbohydrate content, the body acts as if it is in a starvation state — although it is not — and begins burning fats instead of carbohydrates. This process in turn yields chemicals called ketone bodies as an alternative source of fuel. When the body burns ketone bodies, tissue-protective gamma delta T-cells expand throughout the body.

This reduces diabetes risk and inflammation, and improves the body’s metabolism, said Dixit, the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Comparative Medicine and of Immunobiology. After a week on the keto diet, he said, mice show a reduction in blood sugar levels and inflammation.

But when the body is in this “starving-not-starving” mode, fat storage is also happening simultaneously with fat breakdown, the researchers found. When mice continue to eat the high-fat, low-carb diet beyond one week, Dixit said, they consume more fat than they can burn, and develop diabetes and obesity.

“They lose the protective gamma delta T-cells in the fat,” he said.

Long-term clinical studies in humans are still necessary to validate the anecdotal claims of keto’s health benefits.

“Before such a diet can be prescribed, a large clinical trial in controlled conditions is necessary to understand the mechanism behind metabolic and immunological benefits or any potential harm to individuals who are overweight and pre-diabetic,” Dixit said.

There are good reasons to pursue further study: According to the Centers for Disease Control, approximately 84 million American adults — or more than one out of three — have prediabetes (increased blood sugar levels), putting them at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. More than 90% of people with this condition don’t know they have it.

“Obesity and type 2 diabetes are lifestyle diseases,” Dixit said. “Diet allows people a way to be in control.”

With the latest findings, researchers now better understand the mechanisms at work in bodies sustained on the keto diet, and why the diet may bring health benefits over limited time periods.

“Our findings highlight the interplay between metabolism and the immune system, and how it coordinates maintenance of healthy tissue function,” said Emily Goldberg, the postdoctoral fellow in comparative medicine who discovered that the keto diet expands gamma-delta T cells in mice.

If the ideal length of the diet for health benefits in humans is a subject for later studies, Dixit said, discovering that keto is better in small doses is good news, he said: “Who wants to be on a diet forever?”

The research was funded in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

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Despite the emergence of new diseases, scientists all over the world are still as determined to find a cure for the existing life-threatening conditions like HIV/AIDS. Nowadays, scientists are looking into other ways to end the disease on a global scale.

Research is still heavily underway to be able to develop a cure, and MedicalXpress reports that three experts in the field of infectious diseases are currently assessing potential drug candidates in the hopes that they can determine why and where a cure is needed the most and how they can deliver. The researchers; Dr. Steven G. Deeks from the University of California San Francisco, Dr. Thumbi Ndung’u from the African Research Institute in South Africa, and Dr. Joseph M. McCune from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, all found that majority of HIV/AIDS research is found in countries where the disease is not as prevalent but are high in resources.

The three researchers all explain that the breakthroughs made in the research of HIV/AIDS should also factor in the economies and needs of those who need it the most. The disease is especially prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, where the World Health Organization states, has the majority of the HIV/AIDS cases in the world. This is where 65 percent of new infections and 75 percent of deaths occur as well. They also point out that there has not been a lot of discussion regarding the practicalities of product development for the region that needs it the most. “Failure early on to define a target product profile risks developing a strategy that fails to be effective.”

Meanwhile, MedicalXpress also reports that a study conducted using animal models found a possible method for eradicating HIV/AIDS from the body. Researchers from the Yerkes National Primary Research Center of Emory University and the University of North Carolina found that the “shock and kill” strategy, which involves waking up the dormant virus from within the immune cells and killing it, may indeed be the way to go in eliminating HIV/AIDS.

The researchers conducted two studies using animal models of HIV/AIDS infection. Both studies had different approaches, but the results of both studies were promising. They found that both approaches disrupted viral latency at levels that exceeded expectations. However, their findings do not suggest a cure just yet as more tests are needed with human subjects should be in the plans.

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New York: Researchers have found that when a mother experiences both gestational diabetes and preeclampsia, the child has a growth trajectory that leads to an increased risk of high childhood body mass index (BMI) over time.

Published in the journal Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics, the study shows link between multiple metabolic disorders in mothers during pregnancy and children’s BMI later in life.

“Diet, exercise, and genetics are familiar risk factors in childhood obesity. Prenatal origins also play a role, yet they are underexplored,” said study researcher Yonglin Melissa Huang from The Graduate Centre in the US.

Childhood obesity is a growing problem in the US. For children, obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) at or above the 95th percentile, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 18.5 per cent of children between the ages of 2 and 19 meet this criteria.

For the findings, the research team asked how pregnancy conditions can play a role in childhood obesity.

The researchers have previously studied the associations of gestational diabetes and preeclampsia, independently, with children’s BMI.

According to the researchers, when a pregnant woman has gestational diabetes, a hormone produced by the placenta stops the body from effectively using insulin, causing blood sugar to rise.

Preeclampsia is a more serious and potentially life-threatening complication in which the mother experiences high blood pressure and often damage to the kidneys or liver, the study said.

In the new study, the team explored what happens when a pregnant mother has both conditions at once since those two illness are relatively common and often comorbid.

The team monitored the children of 356 mothers from 18 to 72 months.

The results showed that the combination of both gestational diabetes and preeclampsia during pregnancy was especially effective in driving high BMI during early childhood — more so than either condition alone.

Confirming previous findings, the researchers also saw that children born from mothers with only one of these conditions are also at risk for a higher BMI, though the trend for gestational diabetes was not as strong.

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The conventional wisdom has been that when heart disease shows up in women, it simply arrives more slowly, generally lagging about 10 to 20 years behind men. But a review of blood pressure measures for nearly 32,800 people collected over four decades casts doubt on that view—and suggests, once again, the health system must do more to recognize men and women are different, and thus, diseases act differently.

A study published recently in JAMA Cardiology found certain vascular diseases not only develop earlier but progress quickly, which the authors said can set women up for late-life heart problems “that tend to present differently, not simply later” than those in men.

The authors—who came from Harvard, Cedars-Sinai Los Angeles, and Turku University in Finland—reached their conclusions by shedding old assumptions of the past. Instead of assuming that men and women are basically the same physically, this team assumed they are different, and by looking for gender-specific differences in the blood pressure data, they uncovered new insights.

The researchers used data from 144,599 separate blood pressure readings taken between 1971 and 2014 from patients aged 5 to 98, which were recorded in four different studies.

Compared with men, women “clearly exhibit a steeper increase in [blood pressure] that begins as early as the third decade and continues throughout the life course” they wrote.

What causes gender-related differences in blood pressure? The authors say there could be a host of reasons, including hormonal factors, chromosomal factors, and differences in gene expression. Women are smaller, and their organs—including the heart—are smaller, too. The most differences are those associated with when women begin menstruating and having children; beyond the hormonal changes, blood volume increases, and so does the heart rate.

The differences beyond biology can matter, too. “Importantly, complex social, economic, and structural environmental factors lead to differences in the lived experience between men and women that can affect physiology as well as vascular biology,” the authors write.

Such differences are important because of studies of drugs developed for type 2 diabetes are now being shown to be effective in some forms of heart failure. More studies are expected that may show whether these drugs, called SGLT2 inhibitors, are effective in the form of heart failure associated with stiffness in the heart’s left ventricle. As the authors note, this dangerous condition is more likely to affect women, especially if they have high blood pressure. Right now, no drugs have been shown to prevent early death from this condition.

More work is needed, the authors said, to understand how the differences between men and women affect cardiovascular risk, so that prevention and management efforts can be tailored for each.

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New York: Parents, please take note. Researchers have revealed that less active infants may accumulate more fat, which in turn may put them at risk for obesity later in life.

For the study, published in the journal Obesity, researchers tracked the physical activity levels of 506 infants using small ankle-worn accelerometers for four days per tracking period at ages 3, 6, 9, and 12 months.

For each tracking period after 3, average physical activity increased by about four per cent, in line with infants becoming generally more mobile and active over the course of their first year.

Among infants, higher physical activity measured by the accelerometer was associated with lower central adiposity, a measure of lower-torso fat accumulation, the study said.

“This is the first study to demonstrate an association over time between higher levels of objectively measured physical activity and lower central adiposity in infancy,” said study lead author Sara Benjamin-Neelon from Johns Hopkins University in US.

The study was part of a larger study of infant growth and obesity, called the Nurture study, which covered 666 mothers and their infants from the greater Durham, North Carolina, area during 2013 to 2016.

Of this group, the research team were able to get adequate accelerometer data for 506 infants.

“Some evidence suggests that the earlier you can get infants crawling and walking, and providing them with opportunities to move freely throughout the day, the more you can help protect them against later obesity,” Benjamin-Neelon said.

The study found that among the infants in the study, an increase in recorded activity by one “standard deviation”–essentially a standard proportion of the range of the data–was associated with a small but significant decrease in central adiposity.

The researcher noted that larger, longer-term studies will be necessary to determine the sustained effect of infant physical activity, but that preventing extended periods of inactivity for infants will almost certainly be good for them.

“These days, infants are spending more and more sedentary time in car seats, high chairs, strollers–and perhaps we haven’t thought enough about the developmental ramifications of these types of restrictive devices,” Benjamin-Neelon concluded.

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