Brain Tumour Develops

New York, Reading, writing letters and playing card games or puzzles even in advanced old age may help delay the onset of Alzheimer's dementia by up to five years. The research, published in the online issue of journal journal Neurology, looked at 1,978 people with an average age of 80 who did not have dementia at the start of the study and were followed for seven years. People with the highest levels of activity, on average, developed dementia at age 94. The people with the lowest cognitive activity, on average, developed dementia at age 89, a difference of five years. "The good news is that it's never too late to start doing the kinds of inexpensive, accessible activities we looked at in our study," said Robert S. Wilson, from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. "Our findings suggest it may be beneficial to start doing these things, even in your 80s, to delay the onset of Alzheimer's dementia," Wilson added. To test the idea that low cognitive activity may be an early sign of dementia, not the other way around, researchers also looked at the brains of 695 people who died during the study. Brain tissue was examined for markers of Alzheimer's like amyloid and tau protein deposits, but researchers found no association between how active they were cognitively and markers of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders in their brains. "It is important to note, after we accounted for late life level of cognitive activity, neither education nor early life cognitive activity were associated with the age at which a person developed Alzheimer's dementia. Our research suggests that the link between cognitive activity and the age at which a person developed dementia is mainly driven by the activities you do later in life," Wilson noted.   (IANS)

Chennai, July 12 (IANS) Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have developed an Artificial Intelligence-based mathematical model to identify cancer-causing alterations in cells.The algorithm uses a relatively unexplored technique of leveraging DNA composition to pinpoint genetic alterations responsible for cancer progression, which is difficult using present methodologies. The results are published in the peer-reviewed International Journal Cancers.Understanding the underlying mechanism of these alterations will help identify the most appropriate treatment strategy for a patient in an approach known as 'precision oncology'."One of the major challenges faced by cancer researchers involves the differentiation between the relatively small number of 'driver' mutations that enable the cancer cells to grow and the large number of 'passenger' mutations that do not have any effect on the progression of the disease,a said Prof B. Ravindran, Head, Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and AI (RBCDSAI), IIT Madras, in a statement.In this study, the researchers decided to look at this problem from a different perspective. The main goal was to discover patterns in the DNA sequences -- made up of four letters, or bases, A, T, G and C surrounding a particular site of alteration.The underlying hypothesis was that these patterns would be unique to individual types of mutations -- drivers and passengers, and therefore could be modelled mathematically to distinguish between the two classes.Using sophisticated AI techniques, the researchers developed a novel prediction algorithm, NBDriver and tested its performance on several open-source cancer mutation datasets."Our model could distinguish between well-studied drivers and passenger mutations from cancer genes with an accuracy of 89 per cent. Furthermore, combining the predictions from NBDriver and three others commonly used driver prediction algorithms resulted in an accuracy of 95 per cent, significantly outperforming existing models," Ravindran said.In addition,"NBDriver could accurately identify 85 per cent of the rare driver mutations from patients diagnosed with Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM), a particularly aggressive type of cancer affecting the brain or spine," said Karthik Raman, Associate Professor, Department of Biotechnology, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, IIT Madras.NBDriver is available publicly and can be used to obtain predictions on any user-defined set of mutations. In short, given a new mutation and its surrounding DNA makeup, one would be able to predict its class -- driver or passenger.--IANSrvt/in

Moscow, June 23 (IANS) Russia has developed a test system for identifying Covid-19 virus' antibodies in animal blood serum, according to the country's Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Control, media reports said on Wednesday."Only specific antibodies generated in the animal body against SARS-CoV-2 virus are trapped in the course of blood serum testing," the regulator was quoted as saying by TASS news agency."The Federal Centre for Animal Health subordinate to the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Control developed a test system for identification of SARS-CoV-2 virus antibodies on the basis of the widespread enzyme-linked immune-electrodiffusion assay (ELISA) technology," the regulator added.The procedure was tested during the research of biological materials of pets (cats and dogs), agricultural (pigs) and fur animals (ferrets, foxes, and minks). The test system is intended to analyse blood serum for all these animal species, the report said.Last month, Russia also started vaccinating animals against coronavirus -- with the Carnivak-Cov vaccine, Russia's veterinary watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor told local media.A Carnivak-Cov jab provides immunity for an estimated six months. The vaccine was earlier tested on dogs, cats, mink, foxes, and other animals and was proven to be effective, Rosselkhoznadzor had said.Russia started mass production of Carnivac-Cov in early May and the first batch of 17,000 doses was produced at Rosselkhoznadzor's subordinate institution, the Federal Centre for Animal Health.Russia is also negotiating for the fast registration of the vaccine abroad, particularly in the European Union.While currently there is no evidence that animals play a significant role in spreading the disease to humans, infections have been confirmed in various species worldwide on -- dogs, cats, apes, and minks.Covid-19 has been a serious problem for minks -- semi-aquatic mammals farmed for their fur. Multiple countries have reported infections in farmed mink which, in some cases, have fallen severely ill or died.The US veterinary pharmaceutical company Zoetis is also developing a vaccine for animals.--IANSrvt/vd

New York, June 23 (IANS) People who died of Covid-19 showed signs that were similar to the brains of individuals who died of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, according to a study.Both groups presented similar inflammation and impairment in brain circuits, said researchers from the Stanford School of Medicine and the Saarland University in Germany.The findings, published in the journal Nature, may help explain why about one-third of individuals hospitalised for Covid report symptoms of neurological problems like fuzzy thinking, forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating, and depression.The team analysed brain tissues from eight individuals who died of the disease, and brain samples from 14 people who died of other causes were used as controls for the study."The brains of patients who died from severe Covid-19 showed profound molecular markers of inflammation, even though those patients didn't have any reported clinical signs of neurological impairment," said Tony Wyss-Coray, Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford."Viral infection appears to trigger inflammatory responses throughout the body that may cause inflammatory signalling across the blood-brain barrier, which in turn could trip off neuroinflammation in the brain," he added.Further, the team found that the activation levels of many genes, associated with inflammatory processes, differed in the Covid-19 patients' brains versus the control group's brains.There also were signs of distress in neurons in the cerebral cortex, the brain region that plays a key role in decision-making, memory and mathematical reasoning.The outermost layers of the cerebral cortex of patients who died of Covid-19 showed molecular changes suggesting suppressed signalling by excitatory neurons, along with heightened signalling by inhibitory neurons, which act like brakes on excitatory neurons. This kind of signalling imbalance has been associated with cognitive deficits and neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, the researchers explained.In addition, the peripheral immune cells called T cells, were significantly more abundant in brain tissue from dead Covid-19 patients. In healthy brains, these immune cells are few and far between."It's likely that many Covid-19 patients, especially those reporting or exhibiting neurological problems or those who are hospitalised, have these neuroinflammatory markers we saw in the people we looked at who had died from the disease," Wyss-Coray said. It may be possible to find out by analysing these patients' cerebrospinal fluid, whose contents to some extent mirror those of the living brain."Our findings may help explain the brain fog, fatigue, and other neurological and psychiatric symptoms of long Covid," he noted.--IANSrvt/vd