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A slow-release form of semaglutide could allow people who use Wegovy or Ozempic to get shots once a month, instead of the weekly injections they now take, a new study demonstrates. The new formulation encases semaglutide in a hydrogel that slowly releases the drug as the gel dissolves, researchers said. “A small dollop of gel, known as a ‘depot,’ of the semaglutide-laden hydrogel is injected under the skin,” said lead researcher Dr. Claire Megret, director of clinical and preclinical development for the French biotech company ADOCIA, which developed the gel. The hydrogel successfully released a smooth, steady stream of semaglutide to six lab rats, researchers said in a presentation at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes’ annual meeting in Madrid. “Next we will be testing the hydrogel platform in pigs, whose skin and endocrine systems are most similar to those in humans,” Megret said in a meeting news release. “If that goes well, we will move forward the platform development by expecting clinical trials within the next few years.” Semaglutide promotes weight loss and helps control diabetes by mimicking the GLP-1 hormone, which is released in the gut in response to eating. The drug helps suppress appetite, slows down digestion and prompts the body to produce more insulin in response to elevated blood sugar levels. Unfortunately, semaglutide now must be given in weekly… read on > read on >

Getting older tends to go hand in hand with failing vision, but eye experts say there are things you can do to preserve your sight as you age. The risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy increases among seniors, but vision loss and blindness aren’t a foregone conclusion, according to the American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS). Not only is healthy vision key to staying active, but studies have shown that older adults with vision issues face a higher risk of developing dementia. What can you do to avoid that fate? Here are some tips from the ASRS: Learn the signs of common retinal conditions. AMD affects 19.8 million Americans and is the leading cause of vision loss among older Americans. Another retinal condition, diabetic retinopathy, strikes 9.6 million Americans and is the leading cause of blindness in working-age adults. Hallmark symptoms of AMD include warping of straight lines, a decrease in the brightness of colors, gradual or sudden loss of central vision and dark, blurry areas in the center of vision. Diabetic retinopathy symptoms include blurry central vision, seeing spots, floaters or a shadow across the field of vision, difficulty reading, eye pressure and difficulty with color perception. Know your family history. Ask older family members if they have had vision issues. Retinal conditions may have a genetic component that runs in families. Other common risk factors… read on > read on >

It seems like a kind of superpower, but scientists say they’ve used a common food dye to render the skin of a mouse transparent, revealing the workings of blood vessels and organs underneath. It’s not yet clear if the procedure could work on human skin, which is thicker than that of a mouse. But the prospect is tantalizing, researchers said. ″Looking forward, this technology could make veins more visible for the drawing of blood, make laser-based tattoo removal more straightforward, or assist in the early detection and treatment of cancers,″ said study co-leader Guosong Hong, a Stanford University assistant professor of materials science and engineering. ″For example, certain therapies use lasers to eliminate cancerous and precancerous cells, but are limited to areas near the skin’s surface,” he explained in a news release from the U.S. National Science Foundation. “This technique may be able to improve that light penetration.″ The Foundation helped fund the new study, which was published Sept. 5 in the journal Science. Dr. Zihao Ou, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Texas (UT) at Dallas, helped lead the research. In a UT news release, he explained that living skin can’t normally be seen through because its various components — fats, cellular fluids, proteins — scatter light waves. But when the researchers applied a mix of water and a safe,… read on > read on >

An epidemic of high blood pressure is occurring in young adults and children in the United States, a pair of new studies show. Nearly a quarter of people ages 18 to 39 have high blood pressure, with readings above the healthy level of 130/80, the first study found. Blood pressure is even a problem for school-age children, according to the second study. Nearly 14% of children ages 8 to 19 have elevated or high blood pressure, researchers found. Both studies were presented Friday at the American Heart Association (AHA) scientific sessions in Chicago. Such research should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal. “The prevalence of hypertension in young adults is stark, and social determinants of health amplify the risk for hypertension and subsequent premature cardiovascular disease,” said Dr. Bonita Falkner, chair of the writing committee for the AHA’s 2023 scientific statement on pediatric hypertension. In both studies, researchers used data gathered from 2017 to 2020 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of its National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The first study looked at young adults’ blood pressure readings, as well as five factors that can influence health — poor education, low income, lack of health insurance, food insecurity and little to no employment. “Social determinants of health are the social conditions arising from where people are… read on > read on >

PFAS “forever chemicals” could cause pregnant women to experience long-term weight gain, increasing their risk of obesity in middle age, a new study warns. Women with higher levels of PFAS in their blood during early pregnancy weighed more at the age of 50 than those with low levels, researchers reported Sept. 5 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. These women also carried more body fat at age 50, potentially making them more susceptible to obesity and heart problems later in life, researchers found. “Our study supports the idea that pregnancy may be a sensitive period of PFAS exposure as it may be associated with long-term weight gain and subsequent adverse cardio-metabolic health outcomes in women,” said lead investigator Jordan Burdeau, a graduate research assistant with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “Our findings may improve understanding of the effects of PFAS on cardio-metabolic health during pregnancy, which in turn may improve early prevention or detection of adverse cardio-metabolic health outcomes in women,” Burdeau added in a journal news release. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) can be found in 99% of Americans, according to the Environmental Working Group. There are thousands of different PFAS chemicals, the Environmental Protection Agency says. They can be found in drinking water as well as a wide range of consumer products including paper fast food… read on > read on >

People are encouraged to monitor their blood pressure at home, but many folks will find that household blood-pressure cuffs are literally a bad fit, a new study warns. For as many as 18 million U.S. adults — nearly 7% of adults — at-home blood pressure cuffs are either too small or too large to provide reliable results, according to findings presented at the American Heart Association’s Hypertension Scientific Sessions in Chicago this week. “Most popular blood pressure devices we tested had the same cuff size coverage — to fit arms with a circumference from 8.7 to 16.5 inches,” said senior researcher Dr. Kunihiro Matsushita, a professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “We estimate that these one-size cuffs would not properly fit approximately 18 million U.S. adults, potentially providing inaccurate blood pressure measures,” Matsushita added. Nearly half of U.S., adults have been diagnosed with high blood pressure, according to the AHA. Uncontrolled high blood pressure increases risk of heart attack, stroke, heart failure and other illnesses. The AHA recommends that all people with high blood pressure track it at home using an at-home blood pressure monitor. Upper arm cuff devices are preferred over wrist monitors, the AHA says. For this study, researchers reviewed 10 of the most popular blood pressure monitors sold through a large online retailer. Nine of the 10 devices offered… read on > read on >

A distinct brain pattern appears to make some people more likely to develop depression, a new study indicates. “Deep” functional MRI brain scans revealed that a brain feature called the salience network is nearly twice as large in people with depression than in those without the condition, researchers reported Sept. 4 in the journal Nature. The salience network is a group of brain regions thought to be involved in reward processing and focusing attention, researchers said. “Having a larger salience network appears to increase the risk for depression—the effect is an order of magnitude larger than what we usually see in fMRI studies,” said senior researcher Dr. Conor Liston, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. Functional MRI scans identify patterns of activity in the brain by measuring changes in blood flow. Researchers recruited six people with major depression to undergo repeated fMRI brain scans, and compared their results to those from 37 healthy people. On average, the depression patients had salience networks that occupied 73% more brain surface compared to those of the control group. The salience network “being implicated in depression kind of makes sense, because one of the main deficits in depression is anhedonia, which is the inability to feel pleasure and enjoy everyday activities,” said lead researcher Dr. Charles Lynch, an assistant professor of neuroscience… read on > read on >

Saltwater nose drops can reduce the length of a kid’s cold by two days, a new study demonstrates. “We found that children using saltwater nose drops had cold symptoms for an average of six days, where those with usual care had symptoms for eight days,” said researcher Dr. Steve Cunningham, a professor of pediatric respiratory medicine with the University of Edinburgh in the U.K. “The children receiving salt water nose drops also needed fewer medicines during their illness,” he added. Children tend to have 10 to 12 colds a year, “which have a big impact on them and their families,” Cunningham said. Over-the-counter remedies containing drugs like acetaminophen and ibuprofen can treat symptoms, but until now no treatments have been identified that could speed up recovery from a cold, Cunningham said. For the new study, researchers recruited more than 400 kids aged 6 years or younger and randomly assigned them to take either salt-water nasal drops or usual care if they caught a cold. Saltwater solutions often are used by people in South Asia as nasal irrigation or gargling to treat a cold, researchers noted. Overall, about 300 of the kids caught a cold and half were given saltwater drops as their treatment. Parents administered three drops per nostril a minimum of four times per day, using a saltwater solution they made at home with… read on > read on >

Gene therapy may restore vision to children and adults robbed of their sight by a rare inherited condition called Leber congenital amaurosis, researchers report. The illness is caused by mutations in the GUCY2D gene, which is critical to producing proteins that enable vision. People with this form of Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA1) typically lose their vision in early childhood. Just under 100,000 people are thought to be affected worldwide. However, a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say that a new gene therapy injected under the retinas of children and adults with LCA1 improved vision by 100 to 10,000 times. “Even though we previously predicted a large vision improvement potential in LCA1, we did not know how receptive patients’ [eye] photoreceptors would be to treatment after decades of blindness,” noted study co-lead author Artur Cideciyan, a research professor of ophthalmology at the university. “It is very satisfying to see a successful multi-center trial that shows gene therapy can be dramatically efficacious.” The findings were published Sept. 5 in The Lancet journal. A total of 15 LCA1 patients — 12 adults and three children — participated in the new trial. All had vision that was equal to or below 20/80, meaning that objects a normally sighted person could see at 80 feet could only be clear at 20 feet away for a person with… read on > read on >

Just 5.9% of American middle and high school students now vape, a big drop from the 7.7% who did so a year ago, new government data shows. Put another way, about 1.6 million youth now say they used e-cigarettes at least once over the past month, compared to 2.1 million in 2023. Among those who say they vape, 23.6% said they do it on a daily basis. It was high school kids who drove the change, according to the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), with middle schoolers still vaping at rates roughly similar to a year ago. Still, any reduction in vaping is welcome, said Brian King, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products. “The continued decline in e-cigarette use among our nation’s youth is a monumental public health win,” King said in an agency news release. Yolanda Richardson, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, agreed that the new numbers are encouraging, but warned that the vaping and tobacco industry isn’t through with the nation’s kids yet. “Youth e-cigarette use has fallen sharply, sparing many young people from the severe nicotine addiction and other health consequences that can result from e-cigarette use,” she said in a statement. “Despite this progress, youth e-cigarette use remains a serious public health problem in the United States, and the industry remains relentless in… read on > read on >

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Wegovy, Ozempic May Someday Be Given as Once-Monthly Injection

Healthy Tips to Protect Your Eyes’ Retinas as You Age

Seeing Through: Scientists Use Food Dye to Render Mouse Skin Transparent

Almost 1 in 4 U.S. Adults Under 40 Have High Blood Pressure

Exposure to PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Pregnancy Could Boost Long-Term Obesity Risk

Cuffs on At-Home Blood Pressure Monitors Don’t Fit Some Patients

Brain’s Wiring May Trigger Depression in Some People

Saltwater Drops in Nose Could Shorten Kids’ Colds

Gene Therapy Reverses a Rare Cause of Vision Loss

U.S. Youth Vaping Drops to Lowest Level in a Decade