Once considered harmless by doctors, calcium crystal deposits in the knee joint actually can contribute to worsening arthritis, a new study warns. CT scans have revealed that calcium crystals in the knee can promote joint damage, wearing away the cartilage that keeps bones from rubbing together, researchers reported recently in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatology. “The cartilage damage is most likely to occur in the same locations where the crystals are deposited, suggesting a localized effect,” said researcher Dr. Tuhina Neogi, a professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. “We have also showed that these crystals can contribute to knee pain in another recently published paper,” Neogi added in a university news release. “Taken together, these findings highlight the important role of calcium crystals to structural damage and symptoms in knee osteoarthritis.” Knee osteoarthritis affects about 34 million people in the United States and 600 million worldwide. It happens when the cartilage in the knee joint breaks down. There are no treatments available that prevent its progression, researchers said in background notes. Up to now, calcium crystal deposits in the knee were thought to be of no clinical consequence, and just something that happens with old age, the researchers said. But using CT scans of nearly 1,700 patients, the team was able to detect a higher amount of deposits than previously revealed by regular…  read on >  read on >

In a finding that unearths yet another way Long COVID can harm health, new research finds the condition may trigger thinking declines. Published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study involved cognitive testing on nearly 113,000 people in England. It found that those with Long COVID scored 6 IQ points lower than people who had never been infected with the virus. Even folks who didn’t suffer lingering symptoms after a bout of COVID scored slightly lower than people who had never been infected — in this case, by 3 IQ points. Still, the differences in scores were small and experts stressed the findings don’t mean that COVID causes profound deficits in thinking and memory. However, they do provide proof that the brain fog many folks who get Long COVID experience is likely not imagined. “These emerging and coalescing findings are generally highlighting that, yes, there is cognitive impairment in Long COVID survivors — it’s a real phenomenon,” James Jackson, a neuropsychologist at Vanderbilt Medical Center who wasn’t involved in the study, told the New York Times. Luckily, the latest study suggests that if people’s Long COVID symptoms resolve themselves, the related thinking impairments might also ease. Study volunteers who had Long COVID for months before finally recovering eventually had testing scores similar to those who had experienced a quick recovery. Importantly, the standard…  read on >  read on >

Middle-aged folks who have difficulties navigating their way through space could be at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease years later, a new study finds. “Very early symptoms of dementia can be subtle and difficult to detect, but problems with navigation are thought to be some of the first changes in Alzheimer’s disease,” noted Dr. Richard Oakley, associate director of research and innovation at the Alzheimer’s Society. He wasn’t involved in the new British research, although the society did help fund the study. “One in three people born today will go on to develop dementia,” Oakley added, “and early and accurate diagnosis of the diseases that cause the condition are vital for people to access the right support, plan for the future and receive appropriate treatment.” The study involved 100 middle-aged people (ages 43 to 66), none of who had any of the standard symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. At the time of the study, they were all about 25 years younger than the expected age of Alzheimer’s onset. However, the participants were all thought to be at heightened odds for the illness due to factors such as genetics, family history or lifestyle. Researchers at University College London (UCL) had the participants strap on a virtual reality (VR) headset and then “navigate” their way through a virtual environment. Folks already known to be at higher Alzheimer’s…  read on >  read on >

The eyes may have it when it comes to the early diagnosis of autism in children, a new study finds. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), have pinpointed a gene that affects how kids’ eyes react when they turn their heads. Typically, people use what’s called the vestibulo-ocular reflex to help their sight coordinate with their head movement. However, kids with autism appear to have a gene that puts this reflex into overdrive, and the change can be picked up on vision tests. That might help speed research into autism, said study co-author Kevin Bender, a professor in the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “We can measure it in kids with autism who are non-verbal or can’t or don’t want to follow instructions,” Bender said in a university news release. “This could be a game-changer in both the clinic and the lab.”  The significance of the variant in the eye-tracking gene, called SCN2A, was first spotted in mice. If you shake your head, your eyes still stay more or less “centered,” the researchers explained. But in mice with a particular form of the SCN2A gene, that wasn’t the case. Their vestibulo-ocular reflex got stuck. Would this aberration show up in children with autism? To find out, Bender’s group conducted a study involving 5 kids with autism and 11 of their siblings who…  read on >  read on >

Live musical performances speak to the soul, stimulating the brain in ways more powerful than listening to a recorded tune does, new research finds. “Our study showed that pleasant and unpleasant emotions performed as live music elicited much higher and more consistent activity in the amygdala [the emotional center of the brain] than recorded music,” said lead researcher Sascha Fruhholz, a professor of cognitive and affective neuroscience at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. “The live performance also stimulated a more active exchange of information in the whole brain, which points to strong emotional processing in the affective and cognitive parts of the brain,” Fruhholz added in a university news release. Music can have a strong effect on emotions, and prior studies have shown that listening to recorded music stimulates emotional and imaginative processes in the brain, researchers said. But it’s not clear whether listening to music in a live setting — at a music festival, rock concert, opera performance or piano bar — triggers a different response in the brain, researchers said. To examine this, researchers performed MRI brain scans on the amygdala of 27 people as they listened to a pianist playing live music. During the performance, the pianist adapted his performance to intensify the audience’s emotions, based on the MRI feedback. The participants also listened to a recorded copy of the same…  read on >  read on >

Pesticides and herbicides used in farming appear to increase people’s risk of Parkinson’s disease, a new, preliminary study finds. People exposed to pesticides and herbicides are 25% to 36% more likely to develop Parkinson’s, according to a study to be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s upcoming annual meeting in April. The Parkinson’s risk was specifically higher in the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains region of the country, researchers said. “Our methods enabled us to identify parts of the nation where there was a relationship between most pesticides and Parkinson’s disease and subsequently pinpoint where the relationship was strongest, so we could explore specific pesticides in that region,” said researcher Brittany Krzyzanowski of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix. The region where farm chemicals are most strongly linked to Parkinson’s includes parts of Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. Parkinson’s disease is a progressive degenerative disease of the nervous system. Patients become less and less able to control their body, suffering from tremors, leg stiffness and gait and balance problems. For the study, researchers reviewed records of 21.5 million people enrolled in Medicare in 2009 to determine the rate of Parkinson’s disease in various parts of the country. The team then looked for a possible relationship between those rates of Parkinson’s and the…  read on >  read on >

Tattoos are a trendy way to decorate your body, but a new study reveals that the inks used in the process often contain unlisted substances that could cause health problems. An analysis of tattoo inks from nine manufacturers in the United States found the contents rarely matched the label of the product. Of 54 inks analyzed, nine out of 10 (90%) had major discrepancies with the labeled contents, such as different pigments or unlisted additives, researchers report. The study comes as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration prepares to regulate tattoo inks as part of new powers granted by Congress in 2022’s Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA), the researchers noted. “The FDA is still figuring out what that is going to look like, and we think this study will influence the discussions around MoCRA,” said senior researcher John Swierk, an assistant professor of chemistry at Binghamton University-SUNY. “This is also the first study to explicitly look at inks sold in the United States and is probably the most comprehensive because it looks at the pigments, which nominally stay in the skin, and the carrier package, which is what the pigment is suspended in,” Swierk added in a university news release. Health experts typically are focused on skin cancer or the pigments in tattoo ink when it comes to the potential risks of tattoos, the…  read on >  read on >