Sticky tape eczema test for newborns

 Italian researchers have developed a simple test using sticky tape that can predict whether newborns will go on to to develop childhood eczema.

Their research showed that newborns with higher levels of the compound thymus and activation-regulated chemokine were more than twice as likely to to have developed eczema two years later.

The condition affects up to one in five children, causing cracked and itchy skin which can become infected. Discovering the risk early on would help doctors to treat and prevent the skin problem.

Source: Sticky tape eczema test for newborns gives medics an early warning about the painful skin disease. Daily Mail Health Notes: 14 Sept. 2022.

New Discovery on Causes of Dementia

Researchers at bio-tech firm Neuro-Bio, based in Oxford, have made a significant discovery about the causes of dementia. Almost 900,000 people in the UK suffer from dementia, and nearly 70,000 die from it every year. The number of suffers has been projected to rise to 1.6 million by 2040.

Research to date has focused on developing drugs to destroy amyloid plaques (protein deposits) that build up in the brain, affecting memory and cognitive function. However, recent studies show no improvement in symptoms after taking these drugs. 

Research by a team led by Dr Susan Greenfield's on the causes of Alzheimer's dementia has led to the hypothesis that something else could be the initial cause and that amyloid plaques build up well after brain degeneration has begun.

New studies have shown that cells at the centre of the brain, in the isodendritic core, are the first to begin dying in the brain of someone with Alzheimer's disease (the most common form of dementia) often ten to 15 years before they experience symptoms. When these cells die, it sets off a snowball effect, causing more and more cells to die.

While scientists are still unsure why this process begins, Neuro-Bio claims to have found a molecule responsible for causing the damage, called T14. They have developed a drug to limit the cell damage caused by T14 and initial trials on mice show this is effective. 

Human trials are expected to follow, to investigate whether it is safe and effective in humans. The treatment is given as a nasal spray. 

T14 can also be measured in blood and Neuro-Bio is also developing this biomarker as a companion diagnostic.

Source: Oxford scientists hail major breakthrough which could provide relief to 900,000 Britons with dementia by Ethan Ennals, Daily Mail, 2nd April 2022.

Air Pollution and Cancer

 Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London have shown that air pollution does not cause cell damage directly but 'wakes up' old damaged cells. This transforms our understanding of how tumours develop and it may now be possible to develop drugs that stop cancers forming.

The classical view of cancer is that it starts with a healthy cell, which over time acquires more and more mutations in its genetic code, or DNA, until it reaches a point where is becomes a cancer and grows uncontrollably. However it is also known that cancerous mutations are also found in seemingly healthy tissue, and many substances known to cause cancer, including air pollution, don't seem to damage people's DNA.

Research has now produced evidence of a different idea. The damage is already there in our cell's DNA, as we grow and age, but there needs to be a trigger to make it cancerous. The research focused on exploring why non-smokers get lung cancer. While the vast majority of lung cancers are caused by smoking, one in ten cases is due to air pollution.

Focusing on a form of pollution called particulate matter 2.5 (known as PM2.5), which of far smaller than the diameter of a human hair, they carried out a series of detailed human and animal experiments which showed the following.

• Places with higher levels of air pollution had more lung cancers not caused by smoking.
• Breathing in PM2.5 leads to the release of a chemical alarm (interleukin-1-beta) in the lungs.
• This causes inflammation and activates cells in the lungs to help repair any damage.
• But around one in every 600,000 cells in the lungs of a 50-year-old already contains potentially cancerous mutations.
• These are acquired as we age but appear completely healthy until they are activated by the chemical alarm and become cancerous.

And crucially, the researchers were able to stop cancers forming in mice exposed to air pollution by using a drug that blocks the alarm signal.

People who had never smoked but developed lung cancer often had no idea why. To give them clues about how this might work is important, since 99% of people in the world live in places where air pollution exceeds the WHO guidelines, so it impacts everyone.

The results also showed that mutations alone are not always enough to cause cancer. It can need another element. We even need to rethink how smoking causes cancer - is it just the known DNA damage caused by the chemicals in tobacco or is the smoke causing inflammation too? The idea that mutated DNA is not enough to cause cancers and that they need another trigger to grow was first proposed by Isaac Berenblaum in 1947.

Source: Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules. By James Gallagher, Health and science correspondent, BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-62797777