Abdominal aortic aneurysm is a life-threatening cardiovascular disease characterized by chronic inflammation and irreversible dilatation of the abdominal aorta and is asymptomatic at the early stages of the disease, with diagnosis usually relying on imaging techniques and surgery being the main approach for treating it.
Muscle fatigue associated with brain inflammation could be prevented by modulating certain cytokines. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) have studied inflammation in the CNS in infection models of Escherichia coli, SARS-CoV-2 and amyloid-β toxicity, unveiling its impact on motor function, the role of IL-6 in this process and how to mitigate it in chronic disease.
Research led by investigators at Ghent University in Belgium showed dysregulation of the complement part of the immune system, regulated by the pro-inflammatory protein interleukin (IL)-6, is a key driver of severe COVID-19 and a good target for drugs to treat the effects of the disease. Writing in the Aug. 23, 2023, issue of Science Translational Medicine, the researchers also described a cellular map of the alterations seen in the complement system during COVID-19 related respiratory deterioration for use in future research.
A study from Weill Cornell Medicine and The Jackson Laboratory has described the epigenetic mark SARS-CoV-2 left on immune system stem cells in the most severe cases of COVID-19 early in the pandemic, before the development of vaccines. In their work published in Cell on Aug. 18, 2023, the researchers presented a new methodology to analyze the epigenetic changes in monocytes and circulating hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) that give rise to monocytes. That allowed corresponding author Steven Josefowicz and his colleagues to see if there were already changes induced by COVID-19 before HSPCs differentiated into monocytes.
A study comprising a total of 406 subjects, including both healthy individuals (n=54) and patients with dry eye (DE) disease was performed with the aim of discovering basal tear cytokine markers for disease diagnosis and severity. Based on guidelines, patients with DE were classified as predisposed DE (pDE, n=136), mild-moderate DE (mDE, n=185), and severe DE (sDE, n=31).
The mechanisms behind the mortality associated with early antiretroviral therapy (ART) treatment in children infected perinatally with HIV are poorly understood. Researchers sought to find potential biomarkers associated with the increased mortality. They created three groups of subjects: deceased (dead HIV+, n=20), nondeceased HIV+ (HIV+, n=59) and healthy controls (n=13).
Cachexia, Teresa Zimmers told the audience at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), is "woefully understudied for the outsized impact it has on cancer patients." The condition, which is currently defined as weight loss and muscle wasting, is the direct cause of death in an estimated 25% to 30% of cancer patients. But it is the main subject of only 0.1% of research papers and 0.2% of clinical trials.
LONDON – The largest study of its kind to date has identified new biomarkers of inflammation that are both indicators of severe COVID-19 infection and distinguish it from severe influenza.
LONDON – After a number of equivocal small studies, the U.K. Recovery trial has applied its heft to turn in statistically significant evidence that the rheumatoid arthritis treatment Roactemra (tocilizumab) reduces mortality in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
DUBLIN – Genentech has succeeded where Sanofi SA and its partner, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., have failed, in obtaining some sort of a positive signal from a clinical trial of an interleukin-6 (IL-6) inhibitor in COVID-19.
