Can we, as adults, grow new neurons? Neuroscientist Sandrine Thuret says that we can, and she offers research and practical advice on how we can help our brains better perform neurogenesis—improving mood, increasing memory formation and preventing the decline associated with aging along the way.
Alzheimer’s doesn’t have to be your brain’s destiny, says neuroscientist and author of “Still Alice,” Lisa Genova. She shares the latest science investigating the disease — and some promising research on what each of us can do to build an Alzheimer’s-resistant brain.
What is Alzheimer’s disease? Alzeimer’s (Alzheimer) disease is a neurodegenerative disease that leads to symptoms of dementia. Progression of Alzheimer’s disease is thought to involve an accumulation of beta-amyloid plaque and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain.
The FDA approved Biogen’s Aducanumab after its own independent recommended that it be rejected.
There is breaking news today from the FDA, which has approved the first new medication in 18 years for the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease. Dr. Natalie Azar joins Geoff Bennett to discuss.
The FDA on Monday approved the first new drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease in nearly two decades. Federal health officials said it may help slow the brain-destroying disease’s progression, but the approval goes against the agency’s independent advisers who said the treatment wasn’t effective in clinical trials. Pam Belluck, health reporter for The New York Times, joins Amna Nawaz to discuss.
Germany’s most senior cleric has offered his resignation to Pope Francis. Munich’s Cardinal Reinhard Marx said that he wanted to share responsibility for what he called the “catastrophe of sexual abuse” by members of the Catholic church. Marx has long been a leading voice in the call for church reforms.
Those calls have been growing louder as sex abuse investigations revealed a decades-long cover-up by the clergy. Marx said investigations and reports of the past 10 years showed him there had not only been “a lot of personal failure and administrative errors,” but “also institutional and systemic failure” within the Catholic Church.
Recent discussions had shown “that some in the church do not want to acknowledge this element of co-responsibility and thus also complicity of the institution and are therefore opposed to any reform and renewal dialogue in connection with the abuse crisis,” he wrote in a letter to the pope dated May 21 and published on Friday by his archdiocese in Munich.
The archdiocese said in its press release on the issue that Pope Francis had since responded to Cardinal Marx, telling him that he could make the letter public, and to remain in his role until he received an answer.
Luis Elizondo, the former Director of Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program at the Pentagon, discusses the Pentagon’s new task to investigate UFOs that have been observed by US military aircraft.
Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson reacts to videos of alleged UFOs and explores the possibility of whether humans on Earth are alone in the universe.
NASA’s new chief is setting up an effort to further study unidentified flying objects within his first month in office. Bill Nelson, the former Florida senator and spaceflight veteran, told CNN Business’ Rachel Crane during a wide-ranging interview on Thursday that it’s not clear to anyone — even in the upper echelons of the US space agency — what the high-speed objects observed by Navy pilots are. Nelson added that he does not believe the UFOs are evidence of extraterrestrials visiting Earth.
“I think I would know” if that were the case, Nelson said. But, he acknowledged, it’d be premature to rule that out as a possibility. Nelson’s comments echo the findings of a new Pentagon report expected to be released later this month. Five sources familiar with the results of that study told CNN that US intelligence officials found no evidence that the UFOs are alien spacecraft, but investigators also have not reached a definitive assessment as to what these mysterious objects might be.
“We don’t know if it’s extraterrestrial. We don’t know if it’s an enemy. We don’t know if it’s an optical phenomenon,” Nelson said. “We don’t think [it’s an optical phenomenon] because of the characteristics that those Navy jet pilots described … And so the bottom line is, we want to know.”
“By Dr. Natalie S. Rosen 10 June 2021, 10:52 • 5 min read
Why some develop type 1 diabetes after suffering severe COVID-19Two new studies explain how the virus damages cells that help produce insulin, but it is not know…Read More
There is troubling news for those infected with the COVID-19 virus. New studies have found that the virus may cause diabetes in addition to pneumonia and other health problems.
Most people will recover from COVID without longer-term problems, but doctors have noticed that some patients go on to develop diabetes.
Now, new research is finding that the virus may infect and destroy certain cells that are crucial for keeping diabetes at bay. Armed with this new knowledge, scientists are now racing to understand how to best prevent this from happening in patients with COVID-19.
Diabetes already contributes to 10-15% of deaths in the United States. In 2017, nearly 34.2 million people, or 10.5% of the U.S. population, had diabetes. Per data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1.5 million Americans are diagnosed with diabetes every year. Of those with diabetes, nearly 1.6 million Americans have type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that attacks pancreatic beta cells to reduce insulin production.
“There is a difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes,” said Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News’ chief medical correspondent and a board-certified OBGYN, who was not involved in the studies. “[In] type 1 diabetes, the body does not make enough insulin. In type 2, there is enough insulin but it is not working properly.”
As insulin causes cells to take up sugar in the blood, a decrease in insulin production or a resistance to insulin causes high levels of sugars or glucose in the blood. This high level of glucose, termed hyperglycemia, is the hallmark of diabetes.
“Earlier lab studies had suggested that [the COVID-19 virus] can infect human beta cells,” said Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said in a recent blog post. “They also showed that the dangerous virus can replicate in these insulin-producing beta cells to make more copies of itself and spread to other cells.”
New research from Stanford University School of Medicine and Weill Cornell Medicine confirmed the association between COVID-19 and diabetes. By analyzing autopsy samples from people who died of COVID-19, both studies illustrated the virus’s ability to infect pancreatic beta cells, decrease insulin secretion and effectively yield type 1 diabetes.
“The virus actually destroys the cells in the pancreas that make insulin,” said Ashton. “[This] decreases insulin levels and then leads directly to high sugar and type 1 diabetes.”
Experts say these particular cells may be especially vulnerable to being attacked by the virus as they contain certain receptors known to bind to COVID-19.
Once invaded, these cells were transformed into different types of cells with a lower expression of insulin. According to experts, this shows that SARS-CoV-2 could change the fate of a cell.
Encouragingly, one study showed that specific drugs might be able to reverse this fate. Those findings will need to be confirmed in larger, more rigorous studies, researchers say.
Unfortunately, the virus might damage the pancreas and cause diabetes in ways that aren’t as easily reversed with medication. Due to the destruction of pancreatic cells, patients could potentially become dependent on diabetes medications, such as insulin, long after they finish their battle with COVID-19.
“More study is needed to understand how SARS-CoV-2 reaches the pancreas and what role the immune system might play in the resulting damage,” said Collins.
Both works highlight the possibility of COVID-19-induced diabetes and stress the need for awareness in those infected with the virus.
“The key is if you are diagnosed with COVID-19 and have any classic signs or symptoms of type 1 diabetes, get tested for diabetes,” said Ashton.
Anyone who has recovered from COVID-19 should be on the lookout for symptoms of diabetes, Ashton added.
“We’re talking about extreme thirst and increase in urination, unintentional, significant weight loss, or fatigue, just to name a few,” she said.
Added Collins: “This work provides yet another reminder of the importance of protecting yourself, your family members, and your community from COVID-19 by getting vaccinated if you haven’t already — and encouraging your loved ones to do the same.”
Natalie S. Rosen, M.D., is an internal medicine resident physician at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
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