Millions of Americans deal with the sleep deficits brought on by sleep apnea, and many turn to one of the few treatments out there, continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines. But what if new neurochemical targets in the brain could lead to new, less cumbersome therapies for sleep apnea? That’s what a team at the University of Missouri-Columbia are working on in their lab. They’ve pinpointed specific brain chemicals in mouse brains that link sleep apnea to one of its most unhealthy side effects, high blood pressure. “Our ultimate goal is to eventually help clinicians develop specific drugs to target either these neurochemicals or the proteins they bind to in a way that reduces high blood pressure,” explained senior study author David Kline, an investigator at the university’s Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center. The study, which was led by postdoctoral researcher Procopio Gama de Barcellos Filho, involved mice whose brains were subjected to a low-oxygen state similar to what humans experience when they periodically stop breathing due to sleep apnea. Examining the rodents’ neurochemistry, Filho and Kline noticed key changes when in this “hypoxic” state. “When oxygen levels in the blood drop during sleep apnea, the forebrain sends warning signals to the brainstem area that controls heart and lung functions,” Kline explained. “By studying these signals, we found that two neurochemicals, oxytocin and corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH),…  read on >  read on >

Misuse of illicit prescription drugs is falling dramatically among U.S. high school students, a new study says. The percentage of seniors who say they’ve misused prescription drugs in the past year has dropped to 2% in 2022, down from 11% back in 2009, researchers reported July 24 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “To put these findings in context, the reduction over the past decade was like going from 1 in every 9 high school students using prescription drugs non-medically down to 1 in every 40 high school students,” said researcher Sean Esteban McCabe, director of the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking and Health. For the study, researchers tracked trends regarding the three types of prescription drugs most commonly misused by teens — opioids, stimulants (for example, Ritalin and Adderall) and benzodiazepines (drugs such as Xanax and Valium). They used data collected by the University of Michigan as part of an annual survey of high school students. Not only has illicit use declined, but even legitimate use for medical reasons has dropped among teens. About 16% of high school seniors said in 2022 they’ve ever been prescribed one of these drugs for health reasons, down from 24% in 2009, researchers found. The means of getting a prescription drug for illicit use also has changed over time, with…  read on >  read on >

The knee develops differently in men and women, with sex-specific distinctions in the joint appearing as early as childhood, a new study finds. Taking these differences into account among girls could help prevent knee arthritis for women later in life, researchers say. Gender-based differences in knee cartilage and ligaments develop prior to puberty and can’t be explained by sex hormones, researchers reported recently in the journal Osteoarthritis and Cartilage. There also are metabolic differences that could affect the knee, particularly in the abundance of various amino acids, researchers said. These differences play key roles in the likelihood of injury early in life, which can increase the risk of knee arthritis for women, they argue. “Young female athletes have a higher risk of ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] injuries compared to young male athletes, and we know these types of injuries can likely develop into osteoarthritis later in life,” said lead researcher Paula Hernandez, an instructor of orthopedic surgery and biomedical engineering at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. These findings lay the groundwork for a better understanding of how arthritis is influenced by a person’s biological sex, researchers said. As a result, they can help develop sex-specific exercises that could reduce the risk of injury and arthritis based on biological differences in the joints. “We hope that by showing evidence that sex disparities are not limited…  read on >  read on >

The boom in using GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic to treat obesity has resulted in a bust regarding the drugs’ original purpose, which was to treat type 2 diabetes, a new study finds.  New prescriptions for these drugs have doubled among people who have obesity but not diabetes, investigators found. As a result, drug shortages have triggered a drop in new prescriptions for type 2 diabetes, even though Ozempic and Mounjaro were initially developed as diabetes drugs, the researchers said. Both drugs were later approved for weight loss under different brand names, Wegovy and Zepbound. “Essentially, after the medication was approved for obesity… use took off so quickly that we lost control and vision of how fast people were picking up these medications,” said lead researcher Dr. Ali Rezaie, medical director of the Cedars-Sinai GI Motility Program. For the study, researchers analyzed the medical data of about 45 million Americans between 2011 and 2023.  About 1 million people became new GLP-1 users during that period in time, results show. Researchers classified them based on whether they had diabetes, obesity or some other related medical condition. GLP-1 drugs work by adjusting a person’s hormone levels and suppressing appetite. Semaglutide — the drug sold as Ozempic and Wegovy — is being prescribed disproportionately to females, whites, and those with a BMI of 30 or more, indicating obesity, results…  read on >  read on >

How many drugs in your bathroom medicine cabinet have expired? Now imagine you have no way of refilling them, because you’re millions of miles from home. That’s the dilemma that will face astronauts on a Mars mission, a new study warns. More than half of the medicines stocked on the International Space Station would expire before a mission to Mars could make it back to Earth, results show. These include staples like pain relievers, antibiotics, allergy medicines and sleep aids. Astronauts on their way back from Mars could end up relying on drugs that have become either ineffective or even harmful over time, researchers reported July 23 in the journal Microgravity. “It doesn’t necessarily mean the medicines won’t work, but in the same way you shouldn’t take expired medications you have lying around at home, space exploration agencies will need to plan on expired medications being less effective,” said senior researcher Dr. Daniel Buckland, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C. For the study, researchers reviewed the formulary of medications kept on the International Space Station (ISS), assuming NASA would stock similar drugs on a Mars mission. “Prior experience and research show astronauts do get ill on the International Space Station, but there is real-time communication with the ground and a well-stocked pharmacy that is regularly resupplied,…  read on >  read on >

The risk of seizures within the next 24 hours can be predicted by watching for abnormal brain activity patterns in people with epilepsy, a new study finds. The storm of brain activity that characterized a seizure is presaged by abnormal communication between specific areas of the brain, researchers discovered. They say they can forecast seizure risk by analyzing just 90 seconds of these aberrant brain signals, according to their report published in the journal Nature Medicine. If validated, this discovery could help improve quality of life for the 2.9 million Americans living with epilepsy, researchers said. “Until now, the changes in brain activity and the sequence of events leading up to a seizure have been largely unknown,” said lead researcher Dr. Vikram Rao, a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).  “By identifying one of those events, we can offer patients information that can reduce one of the most stressful aspects of epilepsy: the unpredictability of seizures,” Rao added in a UCSF news release. Current methods used to predict seizures require data gathered over long periods of time, and accuracy varies widely based on the individual and the method being used. Some patients with epilepsy have implants that monitor brain activity and attempt to head off seizures with electrical stimulation, researchers said in background notes. Unfortunately, these devices sometimes respond too…  read on >  read on >

It’s long been known that popping the antibiotic doxycycline within 72 hours of a risky sexual encounter can greatly reduce a person’s risk for a sexually transmitted infection (STI). In fact, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention formally recommended this type of “morning after” strategy last month. But what if folks at especially high risk for STIs simply took “doxy” daily — similar to how some people now take HIV meds as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to prevent that infection? Two small new studies suggest that this so-called “DoxyPrEP” strategy may indeed keep STIs at bay. Both reports are scheduled to be presented next week at the 25th International AIDS Conference in Munich. One study involved 52 gay or bisexual Canadian men living in Toronto and Vancouver. All of the men were living with HIV, and they also had a past history of contracting a common STI, syphilis. For 48 weeks, the men were randomly divided into two groups: One group took a 100-milligram pill of doxycycline daily, while the other took a “dummy” placebo pill. Overall, 41 of the 52 men completed the trial. In the group that got doxycycline daily, rates of new syphilis infections fell by 79%, reported study co-author Dr Troy Grennan, of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. Rates of two other common STIs also declined for the…  read on >  read on >