Measles is incredibly contagious, and outbreaks are more common now as people decide against vaccinating their kids. Now, a case involving a rare but fatal brain disease caused by the measles virus may make some rethink that decision. The patient caught measles as a child. It took years for the virus to migrate to their brain, where it mutated and caused the fatal illness, according to Mayo Clinic researchers. “Our study provides compelling data that shows how viral RNA mutated and spread throughout a human organ — the brain, in this case,” said Mayo virologist and study co-lead author Roberto Cattaneo. Reporting Dec. 21 in the journal PLOS Pathogens, Cattaneo’s team explained that while the measles virus initially congregates in the respiratory tract, it can slowly migrate throughout the body years after the illness is over. The brain disease, called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), occurs in about 1 in every 10,000 measles cases, the researchers said. They estimate that it takes about 10 years for the virus to make its way to the brain, where it can begin to mutate. Seizures, memory impairments and mobility issues can signal the onset of SSPE. In the new study, Cattaneo’s team examined the brain of a person who died from the disease. They looked at the genetics of tissues taken from 15 different brain regions. The measles virus’…  read on >  read on >

The smoke billowing from this summer’s devastating wildfires wasn’t just bad for your lungs. Skin problems also seem to worsen, with dermatology visits rising as air quality deteriorates, a new study says. Visits for eczema spiked at dermatology clinics within the Mass General Brigham health system during the Canadian wildfires this summer, researchers found. “We were inspired to investigate the relationship between air pollution and skin inflammation after listening to patients who kept telling us that their skin conditions like eczema were particularly bad, and in some cases ‘worse than ever before,’ this summer,” senior researcher Dr. Arianne Shadi Kourosh said in a news release. She’s director of community health in the Department of Dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “This was strange because typically patients with eczema are more likely to experience worsening symptoms or flares in winter months due to cold dry weather, but we were seeing the opposite: an unusual surge in the summer,” Kourosh said. The MGB hospital system is about 300 miles from the Canadian wildfires, and carbon monoxide (CO) levels peaked in July 2023 as a result of the blaze, researchers found. Researchers compared dermatology visits in 2019 through 2022 to the summer of 2023, and found that the visits tracked with carbon monoxide (CO) levels in the air. Wildfire smoke and chronic air pollution contain substances like…  read on >  read on >

Are you necessarily at higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease just because you’re 80, and not 75? New research shows it’s more complex than that. The findings suggest that it’s the pace of buildup in the brain of Alzheimer’s-linked amyloid protein plaques that matters most, not age. “Our findings are consistent with studies showing that the amyloid accumulation in the brain takes decades to develop,” said study lead author Dr. Oscar Lopez, a professor of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh. His team’s findings were published Dec. 22 in the journal Neurology. Neuroscientists have long known that the slow but steady accumulation of amyloid-beta protein plaques within brain tissue is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, although whether it actually causes the illness is still debated. Rates of dementia do rise with advancing age, but is age alone the key factor? To find out, Lopez’ team examined amyloid buildup in the brains of 94 people who were 85 at the time they enrolled in the study. All were tracked for 11 years or until they died, and all received two PET scans of their brains during that time. The researchers compared levels of amyloid buildup seen in those scans to those seen in scans from a younger group of patients (in their 60s) observed in a prior Australian trial. As expected, amyloid plaque buildup rose over time,…  read on >  read on >