Category Archives: Physiology

Physiology

Luke Heckmann, UT21 Senior – UT News – UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

Going up to the hives was always a thrilling, but also exhaustingly hot, experience, Heckmann says. We would wear those big white beekeeper suits with the meshed veil to protect ourselves, and we would use smoke canisters to get the bees to fly into the hive and make it simpler to open and remove frames.

As an undergraduate, Heckmann was part of the Moran Lab, which was investigating ways to protect honeybee health for thriving ecosystems. Researchers focused on studying a particular species of bacteria living within the bees guts.

While working directly with and gathering data from the bees, Heckmann edited circular rings of bacterial DNA known as plasmids. Ultimately, Heckmann and the group discovered a way to genetically modify that gut bacteria to enable the cells of bees to fight off deadly viruses and mites.

It was his biggest and proudest accomplishment yet, taking multiple years of work and an enormous number of hours from many different people, Heckmann says. So it was just a huge, huge achievement for all of us really after so many years.

Later, Heckmann even received funding from a Undergraduate Research Fellowship to further expand upon that research. And even after COVID-19 hit, he was able to continue that work remotely.

Research has formed his undergraduate experience, but Heckmann says his ultimate goal is to become a doctor. Never boxed in, he actually aspired to be an engineer growing up. He was always interested in the mechanics and moving parts of anything and everything, but in high school, Heckmann took a transformative anatomy and physiology course, opening his eyes to a future in medicine.

It wasnt until that anatomy class I took, where I really started seeing things from a different perspective. You sort of see that the body is almost like the most finely tuned machine, Heckmann says.

Heckmann, born in Oklahoma but basically an Austin native after having moved here when he was 2, says it was a no-brainer applying and committing to UT Austin for its academic rigor and great location. Upon arrival, he quickly combined his interests in engineering and the natural sciences to pursue biomedical engineering.

Heckmann says some of his favorite courses were Organic Chemistry I and II, which focused on studying carbon, the building block of life, and Tumor Biology, which investigated core aspects of cancer pathology, treatment and epidemiology with molecular biosciences professor Jon Huibregtse.

Glancing over at a whiteboard in his room, he says it is filled with notes from that course. I still have a bunch of diagrams because theyre just so satisfying to look at, he says, laughing. That class was incredible and really pertinent because cancer is unfortunately so common.

As a graduating senior, Heckmann cannot recommend doing research as an undergraduate enough. Id honestly encourage everyone to try and seek out a research opportunity. He says: I learned a ton from conducting research and being a part of a lab and a group of people, or a community, if you will. A lot of things I learned in the lab werent even research-related, but just related to life in general.

Looking past graduation, Heckmann is ready to bring his skills to medical school. The great thing about UT is that it does a really good job at equipping us with different skills and different opportunities that are life-lasting. When experiments fail, I had to adapt over and over again in the face of new information, and that adaptability will be vital for me as a future physician.

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Physiology

The Answer to the Andorians Blue Skin is in Their Blood – Heavy.com

YouTubeAndorians from "Star Trek: Enterprise"

The blue-skinned Andorians are one of the most distinctive species in the Star Trek universe. Though the appearance of the species has changed significantly from show to show, a few characteristics have remained consistent. Andorians have small forehead ridges, a pair of antennae, white hair and bright blue skin.

The Andorians were first introduced in the episode Journey to Babel from Star Trek: The Original Series. Veteran Star Trek writer Dorothy Fontana created the species specifically for the episode.

Her original notes revealed little about the species, though they did reveal why they were blue. However, her explanation is very different than the reason that became part of the Star Trek canon.

Albert L. Ortega / Getty Images

When Star Trek was brand new in the 1960s, the writers got the opportunity to create new species all the time. Each of the different species that fans are familiar with today was created from scratch by the writers. In fact, many of them were created by Fontana herself.

Often, these new species were born from an interesting concept or makeup idea. This was the case with the Andorians.

A makeup and costume memo Fontana wrote for Journey to Babel stated, Andorians are pale blue. Because.

Fontana didnt include much more information about the Andorian physiology, other than their antennae, or provide a further reason for their distinctive appearance. Few details were included about their culture either, with the exception of the fact that they were fierce warriors.

For decades, the Andorians were rarely seen in Star Trek shows. They made a couple of appearances in Star Trek: The Animated Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation but were completely absent from both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager.One likely reason for the lack of Andorians was the complicated makeup, which was both costly and time-consuming.

Because the Andorians appeared so rarely, there werent any opportunities to learn about their physiology or culture until Star Trek: Enterprise. Showrunners Rick Berman and Brannon Braga decided that they wanted to bring the Andorians back in the prequel show and make them a major part of the series. They worked with the visual effects department to completely redesign the makeup and antennae. The result was a much more believable and striking species.

Bringing the Andorians back also meant expanding their backstory and making them a more complex species. According to The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, the Enterprise writing staff, with Fred Dekker taking the creative lead, was tasked with creating all the details about the Andorians that were left out of the previous series. They fleshed out the Andorian physiology, psychology, and culture episode by episode.

In one of the Andorian-centric episodes, United, the Andorians blue skin was finally given a canonical explanation. During that episode, Lieutenant Talas was fatally wounded. The blood from her wounds was the same shade of blue as her skin. This suggests that the Andorians skin is somewhat translucent, allowing the pigment of the blood to show through.

This canonical explanation doesnt fit with the physiology of other alien species in the Trekverse. The Vulcans and Romulans have green blood, but their skin doesnt reflect the color of their blood. Klingons usually have red blood, though in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, they inexplicably have pink blood. Klingon skin color is almost always brown, with the exception of the Albino in DS9 and the albinos in Star Trek: Discovery. So, their skin doesnt reflect their blood color either.

In humans, skin color has nothing to do with the color of the blood. According to the Smithsonian, human pigmentation is the result of melanin. The more melanin, the darker the skin, the less melanin the lighter the skin. Since Vulcans, Romulans, and Klingons all have skin colors that have nothing to do with the color of their blood, it follows that their skin color is the result of an alien equivalent of melanin. If the Andorians really do get the color of their skin from their blood, it follows that their skin doesnt have its own pigmentation.

However, this explanation doesnt even make sense within the canon created by Enterprise. In the episode The Aenar, a subspecies of Andorians called Aenar were discovered by Shran and Archer. They were considered a myth by most Andorians since they were isolated to the harshest environments of the planet.

The Aenar have white skin with just a hint of blue in it. They were described as albino Andorians, which implies that their skin lacked pigmentation entirely. Since the Aenar evolved from the Andorians, this suggests that the Andorians do, in fact, have pigmented skin. So, the color of their blood shouldnt impact the color of their skin.

Whether it makes sense or not, the established in world canon is that Andorians blue blood makes their skin blue. Of course, the real reason is that Fontana just felt like making a blue alien.

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Physiology

Still hesitant to get the shot? 7 COVID vaccine concerns addressed – CU Boulder Today

Image caption:Osvaldo Villagrana, 24, an integrativephysiology major at CUBoulder gets his first dose of the Moderna vaccine.

Nearly a third of the U.S. population is now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and 44% have gotten shot one of a two-dose regimen. In Colorado, nearly half of eligible residents have gotten their first jab.

But vaccine efforts have begun to plateau in some areas of the country, with hesitant Coloradans including some college students expressing concerns about the pace of the vaccines development and potential side effects and uncertainty about whether benefits outweigh risks.

Teresa Foley, a teaching professor of distinction in the Department of Integrative Physiology, has heard it all in her classes.

I tell my students, This is a no judgment zone. Ask me any question you want, says Foley, who teaches immunology and epidemiology at CU Boulder. If you are not a science major or dont completely understand how the vaccine works, I can understand how you could be hesitant. Its all about education. To help inform the students, I show data about vaccine safety and efficacy and I explain how vaccines work in lay terms.

Heres a look at the most common reasons she hears for people expressing hesitancy, and what she tells them:

Teresa Foley

A lot of individuals are concerned about how quickly the vaccines were developed. They feel like it was a rushed process, as it typically takes about 73 months to develop a vaccine and this was done in 14 months. I ask them to think about it in terms of a group project. Yes, it may seem it was developed faster than usual. But never before has the entire world been working on the same group project at the same time.

Out of 326 trials and 111 vaccine candidates worldwide, only 14 have been approved by at least one country.That shows the process is working. As a scientist myself, I trust it.

Actually, when you look at the number of people enrolled in previous vaccine trials, those numbers are miniscule compared to the clinical trials for the COVID-19 vaccines. For instance, there were 8,884 participants in the clinical trial for the influenza vaccine and 5,803 for the chicken pox (Varicella) vaccine. In contrast, The Moderna trial included 30,000, Pfizer included 43,448, and Johnson & Johnson (which uses a different technology) included more than 44,000.

This is not possible with the mRNA vaccines, as the vaccine does not contain the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The vaccine only contains the instructions for how to make the spike protein on the virus so your body can recognize it and mount an immune response against it.

If someone does test positive for COVID-19 right after getting the vaccine, it may be that they were exposed to the virus before they got the shot or before they were fully protected (which is two weeks after the last dose). It was just a case of bad timing.

This is true, but exceedingly rare. These are called breakthrough cases. For instance, of 21,720 trial participants who got the Pfizer vaccine, eight got infected with COVID-19. In the placebo group, which was about the same size, 162 got infected. That brings the efficacy rate of the COVID-19 vaccine to about 95%. The efficacy of the flu vaccine, by comparison, is about 50% on a good year.

And if you were to get sick after being fully vaccinated for COVID-19, your antibodies would be built up so your symptoms would likely be mild.

Every time you get re-exposed to the same virus, your immune system builds a memory response to the virus, creating antibodies to protect you. If you get the COVID-19 vaccine after having been previously infected, your body will develop a bigger, faster and stronger antibody response to the virus. You may have some immunity against the virus if you already had COVID-19, but the vaccine will give you even more.

College students tend to think they are invincible. But they dont quite think about the idea of herd immunity, in that when we get vaccinated, we are protecting not only ourselves but also others who cant get the vaccine. The more everyone can develop immunity against the virus, the more we can protect the younger, older and immune-compromised population.

For things to return to normal, some research says at least 70% of the population must be vaccinated. If you can get the vaccine, you should.

The side effects are real but typically mild, including pain and swelling at the injection site, fever and chills and in some cases, tiredness and headache. The side effects only last a few days and mean your immune system is mounting a response and the vaccine is working. I ask students to compare this to the potential consequences of actually getting COVID-19, where symptoms can sometimes persist for monthseven in those who had a mild version of the disease.

Learn more about vaccines and how to get them.

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Still hesitant to get the shot? 7 COVID vaccine concerns addressed - CU Boulder Today

Physiology

3-month, 6-month, 9-month, and 12-month respiratory outcomes in patients following COVID-19-related hospitalisation: a prospective study – DocWire…

Lancet Respir Med. 2021 May 5:S2213-2600(21)00174-0. doi: 10.1016/S2213-2600(21)00174-0. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The consequences of COVID-19 in those who recover from acute infection requiring hospitalisation have yet to be clearly defined. We aimed to describe the temporal trends in respiratory outcomes over 12 months in patients hospitalised for severe COVID-19 and to investigate the associated risk factors.

METHODS: In this prospective, longitudinal, cohort study, patients admitted to hospital for severe COVID-19 who did not require mechanical ventilation were prospectively followed up at 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 12 months after discharge from Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China. Patients with a history of hypertension; diabetes; cardiovascular disease; cancer; and chronic lung disease, including asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; or a history of smoking documented at time of hospital admission were excluded at time of electronic case-note review. Patients who required intubation and mechanical ventilation were excluded given the potential for the consequences of mechanical ventilation itself to influence the factors under investigation. During the follow-up visits, patients were interviewed and underwent physical examination, routine blood test, pulmonary function tests (ie, diffusing capacity of the lungs for carbon monoxide [DLCO]; forced expiratory flow between 25% and 75% of forced vital capacity [FVC]; functional residual capacity; FVC; FEV1; residual volume; total lung capacity; and vital capacity), chest high-resolution CT (HRCT), and 6-min walk distance test, as well as assessment using a modified Medical Research Council dyspnoea scale (mMRC).

FINDINGS: Between Feb 1, and March 31, 2020, of 135 eligible patients, 83 (61%) patients participated in this study. The median age of participants was 60 years (IQR 52-66). Temporal improvement in pulmonary physiology and exercise capacity was observed in most patients; however, persistent physiological and radiographic abnormalities remained in some patients with COVID-19 at 12 months after discharge. We found a significant reduction in DLCO over the study period, with a median of 77% of predicted (IQR 67-87) at 3 months, 76% of predicted (68-90) at 6 months, and 88% of predicted (78-101) at 12 months after discharge. At 12 months after discharge, radiological changes persisted in 20 (24%) patients. Multivariate logistic regression showed increasing odds of impaired DLCO associated with female sex (odds ratio 861 [95% CI 283-262; p=00002) and radiological abnormalities were associated with peak HRCT pneumonia scores during hospitalisation (136 [113-162]; p=00009).

INTERPRETATION: In most patients who recovered from severe COVID-19, dyspnoea scores and exercise capacity improved over time; however, in a subgroup of patients at 12 months we found evidence of persistent physiological and radiographic change. A unified pathway for the respiratory follow-up of patients with COVID-19 is required.

FUNDING: National Natural Science Foundation of China, UK Medical Research Council, and National Institute for Health Research Southampton Biomedical Research Centre.

TRANSLATION: For the Chinese translation of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section.

PMID:33964245 | DOI:10.1016/S2213-2600(21)00174-0

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Physiology

New grant-funded research could help improve therapies for sepsis – Newswise

Newswise A University of Kentucky College of Medicine professor has been awarded a $1.9 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for his research on the bodys immune response to sepsis, which could potentially help to improve therapies for the common disease.

Xiangan Li, a professor in the Department of Physiology and the Saha Cardiovascular Research Center, received the prestigious R35 grant from the NIHs National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), which will fund sepsis research in his lab over the next five years.

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that occurs when an infection triggers a chain reaction throughout the body. Without timely treatment, it can quickly lead to tissue damage, organ failure and death. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that nearly 270,000 Americans die as a result of sepsis every year, and one in three patients who die in a hospital has sepsis.

Li studies how hormones called glucocorticoids regulate the bodys immune system in response to sepsis. Glucocorticoids are released by the adrenal glands and help to reduce certain aspects of immune function such as inflammation. They are often supplemented as a therapy to treat sepsis and other diseases caused by an overactive immune system. However, not all sepsis patients may benefit from additional glucocorticoids, Li says.

Thirty to 60% of sepsis patients have an impaired adrenal stress response and cannot produce enough glucocorticoids, said Li. But for the others, supplementing glucocorticoids may not be necessary or beneficial.

Research conducted in Lis lab provides a proof of concept that it could actually be harmful. Septic mice were treated with glucocorticoids and those with impaired adrenal stress responses had better outcomes, but those with normal adrenal stress responses experienced increased mortality as a result of the therapy.

Li says the findings provide an explanation for why the current glucocorticoid therapy for sepsis is controversial, as the therapy is given to patients without considering the status of adrenal insufficiency. Li proposes that before giving glucocorticoids to septic patients, a precision medicine approach should be taken to identify whether or not they have an adrenal insufficiency.

Research in Lis lab will continue to give scientists a better understanding of the role glucocorticoids play in immune function, which could ultimately lead to improved patient outcomes for sepsis.

The mechanisms behind glucocorticoids and immune regulation may be different than previously understood, Li said. The ongoing research funded by this grant will answer questions that we hope will improve the overall efficacy of sepsis therapy and save many lives.

The NIGMS aims to support basic research that increases the understanding of biological processes and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnoses and prevention. The NIGMS R35 grant, also called the Maximizing Investigators Research Award (MIRA), increases the efficiency of NIGMS funding by providing researchers with greater stability and flexibility, thereby enhancing scientific productivity and the chances for important breakthroughs.

Research reported in this publication was supported by theNational Institute of General Medical Sciencesof the National Institutes of Healthunder Award NumberR35GM141478. The content is solely the responsibilityof the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes ofHealth.

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New grant-funded research could help improve therapies for sepsis - Newswise

Physiology

Signs in the blood predict when labor will begin – Futurity: Research News

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For the first time, researchers have found a way to predict when a pregnant woman will go into labor by analyzing immune and other biological signals in a blood sample, according to a study.

The findings shed light on how labor begins, a biological process that until now has been a mystery. They also lay the groundwork for a clinical blood test that could tell women with healthy, full-term pregnancies how close they are to delivery.

Current estimates are imprecise, with anything in a five-week windowfrom three weeks before to two weeks after the due dateconsidered a normal delivery time.

If we understand whats regulating labor, we might be able to do a better job of inducing labor.

The researchers expect their findings to yield a test within the next two to three years that doctors can use to predict labor onset in healthy pregnancies. The method narrows the predicted delivery time to a two-week window, and the researchers expect it will become even more precise as the technique is refined.

We found a transition from progressing pregnancy to a pre-labor phase that happens two to four weeks before the mom goes into labor, says lead author Ina Stelzer, a postdoctoral scholar in anesthesiology, perioperative, and pain medicine at Stanford University.

Weve identified a novel way to use the maternal blood to predict when a mother will go into labor. This prediction is independent from the duration of pregnancy.

The shift from ongoing pregnancy to the pre-labor phase was detected both in women who had full-term pregnancies and in women who delivered prematurely. The change to pre-labor maternal biology is characterized by changes in levels of steroid hormones, factors that control blood vessel growth and blood coagulation, and immune regulatory signals, the study shows.

The moms body and physiology start to change about three weeks before the actual onset of labor, says coauthor Virginia Winn, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology. Its not a single switch; theres this preparation that the body has to go through.

Currently, to estimate a womans due date, clinicians count 40 weeks from the first day of her last menstrual period, taking into account ultrasound data about the babys size.

Clinicians are good at estimating gestational age, which measures the development of the fetus. But there is a disconnect between this timing and when labor starts, because whether the baby is ready is only one factor in the onset of labor, says senior author Brice Gaudilliere, associate professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine. The other part of the equation is the mother.

Although women deliver around 40 weeks of pregnancy on average, going into labor anywhere from 37 to 42 weeks gestational age is considered normal. More precise prediction of when the baby will arrive could be helpful, for both planning and medical reasons. For instance, being able to test whether a woman with preterm contractions is in the pre-labor phase could help doctors decide whether to administer steroids, which mature the fetuss lungs before birth.

The study followed 63 women through the last 100 days of their pregnancies. They gave blood samples for analysis two to three times before delivery. All of them went into labor spontaneously, meaning none were artificially induced.

Researchers analyzed each blood sample for 7,142 metabolic, protein, and single-cell immune features. They then plotted the data against the number of days before labor that each blood sample had been taken, ensuring that the analysis would be sensitive to signals of impending labor, as opposed to signals tied primarily to pregnancy duration or the babys growth. The researchers identified, via mathematical modeling, which features in the blood best predicted labor onset.

Fifty-eight of the women gave birth after full-term pregnancies, meaning the baby did not arrive more than three weeks before the due date, and five gave birth after spontaneous preterm labor.

As they moved into the pre-labor phase, the womens blood showed surges in steroid hormones such as progesterone and cortisol, confirming prior findings about the biology of late pregnancy. The blood also showed decreasing levels of factors that help blood-vessel formation, likely a first step toward weakening the connection between the placenta and uterus, as well as increasing levels of factors needed for blood coagulation, which help prevent blood loss after delivery. Some placental proteins surged as well.

The study also found a fine-tuning of immune responses in the shift to labor preparation. The top predictive feature in the model was a regulatory immune protein, IL-1R4, that inhibits an inflammatory molecule called IL-33, the researchers say.

We were really interested in and excited about the finding that IL-33 seems to play a role in pregnancy and impending labor, Stelzer says. Near the end of pregnancy, placental material and fetal cells reach the moms blood, potentially causing an immune response. The body needs to carefully tailor the amount of inflammation that will occur during labor, Stelzer says.

The hypothesis has been that labor is an inflammatory reaction, and yes, there are signs of that, but we also found that aspects of this inflammation are toned down before labor starts, which we think may prepare the mothers immune system for the next phase, when the baby is born and healing and immune resolution begins, Gaudilliere says. It needs to be a regulated process.

The next steps in the research are to validate the findings in more pregnant women and to narrow the number of biological markers needed to predict labor onset, Stelzer says, adding that the team has already made progress on the latter.

The findings could have other important clinical implications, Winn says. If we understand whats regulating labor, we might be able to do a better job of inducing labor, she says.

The study appears in Science Translational Medicine.

Funding came from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the German Research Foundation, the Stanford Maternal and Child Health Research Institute, the Prematurity Research Fund, the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Stanford University, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Center for Human Systems Immunology, the Charles B. and Ann L. Johnson Research fund, the Christopher Hess Research Fund, the Providence Foundation Research Fund, the Roberts Foundation Research Fund, the Charles and Mary Robertson Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, the Stanford Maternal and Child Health Research Institute Harmon Faculty Scholar Award, the H&H Evergreen Faculty Scholar Award, and the Stanford Metabolic Health Center.

Source: Stanford University

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Signs in the blood predict when labor will begin - Futurity: Research News

Physiology

Nobel Laureate, Leading Physiologists to Give Distinguished Award Lectures at Experimental Biology – Newswise

Newswise Rockville, Md. (April 20, 2021)Four esteemed researchers will present the American Physiological Societys (APS) most distinguished award lectures at the APS annual meeting at Experimental Biology (EB) 2021. The meeting will be held virtually April 2730. APS is pleased to recognize this years remarkable honorees, who will present their lectures throughout the EB meeting, culminating with the APS Nobel Prize Award Lecture on Friday, April 30.

Virginia Miller, PhD, FAPS, of the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, will give the 2021 Physiology in Perspective: The Walter B. Cannon Award Lecture. This lectureship is the most prestigious award that APS bestows and recognizes the lifetime achievement of an outstanding physiological scientist and APS member. Miller will present Physiology of the 70 kg (Wo)man on Tuesday, April 27, at 10 a.m.

Eric Belin de Chantemle, PhD, of Augusta University in Georgia, is this years recipient of the Henry Pickering Bowditch Award Lectureship for early-career achievement. The Bowditch award recognizes original and outstanding accomplishments in the field of physiology and is given to an APS member younger than 42 or who is fewer than eight years from the start of the first faculty or staff research scientist position beyond postdoctoral training. Belin de Chantemles lecture, Obesity-associated Cardiovascular Disease: The Exposed Secret of the Sexes, will be on Wednesday, April 28, at 10 a.m.

Scott K. Powers, EdD, PhD, FAPS, of the University of Florida in Gainesville, is the 2021 winner of the Bodil M. Schmidt-Nielsen Distinguished Mentor and Scientist Award. This award honors an APS member who has made outstanding contributions to physiological research and demonstrated dedication and commitment to mentorship. Powers will share his thoughts on mentoring in his lecture, The Process of Becoming a Good Mentor, on Thursday, April 29, in an on-demand virtual session.

Mario R. Capecchi, PhD, of the University of Utah School of Medicine, will give the 2021 APS Nobel Prize Award Lecture. Capecchi won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on targeted gene modification (creating knockout mice). He will present his lecture, The Making of a ScientistAn Unlikely Journey, on Friday, April 30, at 2 p.m.

Read more about these and other recipients of 2021 distinguished lectureships on the APS website.

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: To schedule an interview with a member of the research team, please contact the APS Communications Office or call 301.634.7314. Find more research highlights in the APS Newsroom.

About Experimental Biology 2021

Experimental Biology is the annual meeting of five societies that explores the latest research in physiology, anatomy, biochemistry and molecular biology, investigative pathology and pharmacology. With a mission to share the newest scientific concepts and research findings shaping clinical advances, the meeting offers an unparalleled opportunity for global exchange among scientists who represent dozens of scientific areas, from laboratory to translational to clinical research.

About the American Physiological Society

Physiology is a broad area of scientific inquiry that focuses on how molecules, cells, tissues and organs function in health and disease. The American Physiological Society connects a global, multidisciplinary community of more than 10,000 biomedical scientists and educators as part of its mission to advance scientific discovery, understand life and improve health. The Society drives collaboration and spotlights scientific discoveries through its 16 scholarly journals and programming that support researchers and educators in their work.

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Physiology

Neuroscience research identifies a new target for the treatment of alcohol-withdrawal induced depression – PsyPost

Maintaining abstinence from alcohol can be exceptionally challenging. A main goal of addiction research has been to find out exactly why its tough to give up the drink. InFrontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience,a team of researchers investigating how alcohol withdrawal leads to changes in the brain have now identified a possible new target for the treatment of depression related to alcohol withdrawal a key predictor of relapse.

Somatostatin neurons are inhibitory brake type neurons that are capable of silencing other neurons. They have recently emerged as a strong candidate for treatments of psychiatric disorders. Lead author of the study,Nigel Dao, of Pennsylvania State University in the USA, stated that little work has focused on somatostatin neurons role in addiction and we were excited to explore this uncharted territory and bring forth discoveries of new therapeutic options.

The researchers randomly assigned mice to alcohol drinking or non-alcohol drinking groups. After 6 weeks, all mice then underwent forced abstinence where they had access to water only. The mice were then tested for anxiety and depression like behaviors using the elevated plus maze, open field test, sucrose preference test and the forced swim test. The brains were then analyzed using fluorescence immunochistochemistry and electrophysiology.

The results showed that withdrawal from alcohol resulted in emotional disturbances that mimic some of the symptoms of depression seen in people, including a lack of interest in rewarding things, as well as a heightened response to stressful events.

When studying the brains of the mice, the researchers found that alcohol withdrawal produced divergent effects on the physiology of somatostatin neurons in the prefrontal cortex and ventral bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. Both brain regions are well known for their role in emotional processing and addiction.

Dao states that the effects of alcohol withdrawal appeared more pronounced in females, underscoring the complex relationship between addiction and emotional disorders seen in men and women.

The study is limited as it was conducted in mice; it therefore remains to be determined if these results can be replicated in human patients. Furthermore, the results of the study only revealed what alcohol withdrawal combined with stress exposure could do to the physiology of somatostatin neurons. Senior author of the study,Dr. Nicole Crowleyof Pennsylvania State University in the USA, stated that there is much more to do uncover how it brings about these changes on a synaptic and molecular level, adding that she wants to understand how to activate or silence these neurons as a potential treatment.

The results of this research shed light on the possibility that targeting the somatostatin neurons in the brain, might be a viable candidate for treating depression particularly related to alcohol withdrawal.

Crowley adds that if we can help people cope with the negative emotions that they feel during alcohol withdrawal, both short term and long term, we can help them maintain their abstinence.

This work was funded by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (NARSAD Young Investigator Award), The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (R21AA028008) and Pennsylvania State Universitys Social Science Research Institute (all awards to Crowley).

The study, Forced Abstinence From Alcohol Induces Sex-Specific Depression-Like Behavioral and Neural Adaptations in Somatostatin Neurons in Cortical and Amygdalar Regions, was authored by Nigel C. Dao, Malini Suresh Nair, Sarah N. Magee, J. Brody Moyer, Veronica Sendao, Dakota F. Brockway, and Nicole A. Crowley.

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Physiology

Hospital-Level Variation in Death for Critically Ill Patients with COVID-19 – DocWire News

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Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2021 Apr 23. doi: 10.1164/rccm.202012-4547OC. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

RATIONALE: Variation in hospital mortality has been described for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), but the factors that explain these differences remain unclear.

OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to utilize a large, nationally representative dataset of critically ill adults with COVID-19 to determine which factors explain mortality variability.

METHODS: In this multicenter cohort study, we examined adults hospitalized in intensive care units with COVID-19 at 70 United States hospitals between March and June 2020. The primary outcome was 28-day mortality. We examined patient-level and hospital-level variables. Mixed-effects logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with interhospital variation. The median odds ratio (OR) was calculated to compare outcomes in higher- vs. lower-mortality hospitals. A gradient boosted machine algorithm was developed for individual-level mortality models.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: A total of 4,019 patients were included, 1537 (38%) of whom died by 28 days. Mortality varied considerably across hospitals (0-82%). After adjustment for patient- and hospital-level domains, interhospital variation was attenuated (OR decline from 2.06 [95% CI, 1.73-2.37] to 1.22 [95% CI, 1.00-1.38]), with the greatest changes occurring with adjustment for acute physiology, socioeconomic status, and strain. For individual patients, the relative contribution of each domain to mortality risk was: acute physiology (49%), demographics and comorbidities (20%), socioeconomic status (12%), strain (9%), hospital quality (8%), and treatments (3%).

CONCLUSION: There is considerable interhospital variation in mortality for critically ill patients with COVID-19, which is mostly explained by hospital-level socioeconomic status, strain, and acute physiologic differences. Individual mortality is driven mostly by patient-level factors. This article is open access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

PMID:33891529 | DOI:10.1164/rccm.202012-4547OC

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Newest American Academy of Arts and Sciences members – Stanford Today – Stanford University News

Ten Stanford faculty members are among the 252 new members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which honors exceptional scholars, leaders, artists and innovators engaged in advancing the public good.

From left to right starting from the top: Axel Brunger, Tirin Moore, Chang-rae Lee, Robert Byer, Fei-Fei Li, John Etchemendy, Zhenan Bao, Yakov Eliashberg, Teresa Meng and James Mattis. (Image credit: Andrew Brodhead)

The new Stanford members to join the Class of 2021 are as follows:

Zhenan Bao, the K.K. Lee Professor in Chemical Engineering, is the department chair of Chemical Engineering. She is also a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy, a fellow at Stanford ChEM-H, an affiliate of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and a principal investigator with the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Research areas in the Bao Group include synthesis of functional organic and polymer materials, organic electronic device design and fabrication and applications development for organic electronics.

Axel Brunger is a professor of molecular and cellular physiology and of neurology in the Stanford School of Medicine and professor of photon science at Stanford and SLAC. He is also a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. Brungers research focuses on studying the molecular mechanisms of neurotransmitter release and how these mechanisms relate to physiological function.

Robert Byer, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor, is a professor of photon science at Stanford and SLAC and of applied physics in the School of Humanities and Sciences. He is also a member of Stanford Bio-X. Byer has conducted research and taught classes in lasers and nonlinear optics at Stanford since 1969. His current research includes precision laser measurements in support of the detection of gravitational waves and laser accelerator on a chip technology.

Yakov Eliashberg, the Herald L. and Caroline L. Ritch Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, is a professor of mathematics. He is one of the founders of symplectic and contact topology, a field that arose in part from the study of various classical phenomena in physics that involve the evolution of mechanical systems, such as springs and planetary systems.

John Etchemendy is the Denning Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and the Patrick Suppes Family Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences. As a philosopher, Etchemendys scholarship research interests include logic, semantics and the philosophy of language. Etchemendy also served as Stanfords 12th provost.

Chang-rae Lee, the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor in the Department of English, is the author of six novels. His most recent book, My Year Abroad (Riverhead Books) was published earlier this year and has received much critical acclaim. Lees novels have won numerous awards and citations, including the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the American Book Award and the American Library Association Notable Book of the Year Award. He has also written stories and articles for the New Yorker, the New York Times, Time (Asia), Conde Nast Traveler and many other publications.

Fei-Fei Li is the Sequoia Capital Professor in the Department of Computer Science and co-director of the Stanford Institute For Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). She is also a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. Her current research interests include cognitively inspired AI, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision and the intersection of AI and healthcare. In the past, Li has also worked on cognitive and computational neuroscience.

General Jim Mattis, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.), is the Davies Family Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution, after having served as the nations 26th Secretary of Defense. His expertise is in national security, military history, military strategy, Iran and the Middle East. At Hoover, he is a participant in two research teams: Military History/Contemporary Conflict Working Group and the National Security Task Force.

Teresa Meng is the Reid Weaver Dennis Professor of Electrical Engineering, emerita, and a member of Stanford Bio-X. Her research has focused on low-power circuit and system design, video signal processing, wireless communications, and applying signal processing and integrated circuit design to biomedical engineering. Meng retired from Stanford in 2013.

Tirin Moore, a professor of neurobiology in the Stanford School of Medicine, is also a member of Bio-X, the Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI) and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. The Moore lab studies the activity of single neurons and populations of neurons in areas of the brain that relate to visual and motor functions. They explore the consequences of changes in that activity and aim to develop innovative approaches to fundamental problems in systems and circuit-level neuroscience.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences serves the nation as a champion of scholarship, civil dialogue and useful knowledge. The academy is committed to interdisciplinary, nonpartisan research that provides pragmatic solutions for complex challenges.

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Newest American Academy of Arts and Sciences members - Stanford Today - Stanford University News