Algae in the brain

I take most news out of the ACS with a grain of salt, but this one is cool enough that I hope it’s legit.

Researchers at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan-yes-that-Wuhan, China, have a stroke treatment so crazy it just … might … work: They’re using blue-green algae and nanoparticles to create photosynthesis in the brains of stroke victims. Well, assuming the victims are mice. (It’s proof-of-concept at the moment.)

The logic is … well, logical. Blocked blood vessels prevent oxygen reaching the brain, and algae photosynthesize oxygen, so why not implant that algae in the brain?

I know what you’re thinking: “But it’s dark in there!” That’s where the nanoparticles come in: They convert near-infrared light, which can penetrate the skull, into visible light for the algae. Holy moly.

* There are always nanoparticles.

And then there were … nine?

There are seven coronaviruses that can infect people, plus an eighth that might. But now, researchers looking at kids who had pneumonia in Malaysia have found number nine. So far only those kids had it, and it could just be a one-off and not reappear.

It’s an odd chimera — it could have come from “a cat, pig, dog, ‘or some wild carnivores’,” say the people who looked at it. But that’s not a wild guess — different parts of the spike protein resemble different animals’ coronaviruses: canine coronavirus type I, transmissible gastroenteritis virus (from pigs), and a feline coronavirus.

This chimera is unlikely to have arisen at once, but instead involved repeat genetic reshuffles between different coronaviruses over time. “This is a mosaic of several different recombinations, happening over and over, when nobody’s watching. And then boom, you get this monstrosity.”

The goodest of bois

Dogs aren’t just good at sniffing out Covid-19 infections, they’re better than lateral-flow tests and on par with PCR testing.

The dogs detected 97% of the 109 people whose PCR test subsequently proved positive, and 91% of those whose PCR test was negative.

Skipping their meds

A study out of Britain found that “Nearly half of people with bipolar disorder do not take their medication as prescribed” — and also found the biggest reasons why. They’re just about all issues that pharmacists can help with.

Topping the list were side effects (either real or fear of what those effects might be). Also up there: not realizing how important the medications were, and lack of encouragement from family or clinicians. (Forgetting to take them, fear of addiction, and preferring “alternative” treatment were less common.)

Low D might be OK, at least for Covid

Early in the pandemic, some study or other (they’re all a blur at this point) indicated that low levels of vitamin D might be associated with higher coronavirus risk. That was then.

Now it seems that low levels of vitamin D might not increase your risk for contracting Covid-19. At least not by much, overall. That comes from Quest Diagnostics (the laboratory chain) which looked at the Covid antibody and vitamin D levels of more than 18,000 patients.

Participants with extremely low levels of vitamin D were 4% more likely to test positive for coronavirus antibodies. Those with moderately low levels, however, actually were 7% less likely to test positive, the researchers said.

Alcohol and the “important bits”

The latest on the question of whether alcohol is good or bad comes courtesy of Oxford University researchers. And the answer is [shakes Magic 8-Ball] … “Drinking any amount of alcohol causes damage to the brain.”

The researchers noted that drinking had an effect on the brain’s gray matter — regions in the brain that make up “important bits where information is processed,” according to lead author Anya Topiwala, a senior clinical researcher at Oxford. “The more people drank, the less the volume of their gray matter.”

A year’s head start on TB

A new blood test can predict tuberculosis in infants a year before it develops, by finding teeny-tiny* traces of a protein secreted by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. It only uses a drop of blood, which is a lot easier to get than a respiratory sample.

Tulane University biotechnology researchers developed the test, which is not only better than the “gold standard” breath test, it can detect the infection long before any symptoms develop.

Next up: “The researchers are working to develop an inexpensive, portable instrument to read the test to allow it to be more easily used in resource-limited settings.”

* aka “itsy-bitsy”