August 26, 2023
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Getting a COVID-19 vaccine may not only reduce a person's risk of getting long-haul COVID, but also could mean fewer symptoms for people who develop the condition. Mayo Clinic researchers discovered that long-haul COVID patients who were vaccinated before contracting the vi...
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August 26, 2023
When Emery Diffendorfer was a baby, he couldn't hold his head up or babble like other infants his age. His rare genetic disorder enlarged his tongue and head, and he had weakened muscle tone, brittle bones, sleep apnea, poor eyesight and persistent infections in his tonsils and adenoids. By s...
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August 19, 2023
Hypertension, or high blood pressure, occurs in more than 7% of pregnancies. A recent Mayo Clinic population-based study found that babies from pregnancies complicated by hypertension were more than two times as likely to develop chronic hypertension as adults. The study supports the recogn...
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August 19, 2023
With an aging population and the growth of outpatient electrocardiographic monitoring enabled by smartwatches and other wearable devices, primary care clinicians will see an increase in patients with premature ventricular contractions (PVCs). PVCs are extra heartbeats that originate from the ve...
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August 19, 2023
In a new study, Mayo Clinic researchers compared the cost-effectiveness of surgical treatments for uterine fibroids, suggesting that the less invasive option may relieve symptoms without as high a price. Historically, hysterectomy has been the most common surgical treatment for uterine fibr...
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August 19, 2023
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Using human "mini-brain" models known as organoids, Mayo Clinic and Yale University scientists have discovered that the roots of autism spectrum disorder may be associated with an imbalance of specific neurons that play a critical role in how the brain communicates and func...
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August 19, 2023
Researchers at the Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) Center at Mayo Clinic now use artificial intelligence (AI) to assess total kidney volume, generating results in a matter of seconds. The goal is to help diagnose PKD. When Fouad Chebib, M.D., was 16 years old, his father sat him and his siste...
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August 9, 2023
Quinn Peterson, Ph.D., was a graduate student working on a team to develop new chemotherapy drugs when a life-changing phone call reset the course of his career. His daughter, Clarissa, had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Neither he nor his wife had any known family history of the diseas...
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August 9, 2023
In a registry-based cohort study of 109 institutions, Mayo Clinic researchers evaluated the use of corticosteroids in hospitalized patients needing oxygen due to severe COVID-19 disease. The study assessed biomarker-concordant corticosteroid use in patients tested for a protein that causes ...
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August 9, 2023
Harnessing the power of patients’ lived experiences and their biospecimen data, a unique relationship between a nonprofit patient advocacy group called The MOG Project, a team of Mayo Clinic neurologists, and the Autoimmune Neurology Laboratory at Mayo Clinic has created a synergetic bridge ...
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Psilocybe cubensis extract potently prevents fear memory recall and freezing behavior in short- but not long-term in a rat model of posttraumatic stress disorder.
Psilocybe cubensis is a species of psilocybin mushroom (magic mushroom) of moderate potency whose principal active compounds are psilocybin and psilocin. Recent studies have shown the significant procognitive and mood-enhancer effects of Psilocybe cubensis. However, evidence is so limited, especially in preclinical studies. We aimed to investigate the effect of Psilocybe cubensis extract on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-like behavior, pain perception, locomotor activity, and anxiety in a rat model of PTSD. Male rats were exposed to three consecutive shocks (0.8 mA, 3 s interval) paired with three sounds broadcasted 3 s before delivering shocks (75 dB, 3 s). After 1, 3, or 21 days, fre...
Sex similarities and dopaminergic differences in interval timing.
Rodent behavioral studies have largely focused on male animals, which has limited the generalizability and conclusions of neuroscience research. Working with humans and rodents, we studied sex effects during interval timing that requires participants to estimate an interval of several seconds by making motor responses. Interval timing requires attention to the passage of time and working memory for temporal rules. We found no differences between human females and males in interval timing response times (timing accuracy) or the coefficient of variance of response times (timing precision). Consistent with prior work, we also found no differences between female and male rodents in timing accura...
Less is more: Smaller hippocampal subfield volumes predict greater improvements in posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms over 2 years.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a heterogeneous disorder, and symptom severity varies over time. Neurobiological factors that predict PTSD symptoms and their chronicity remain unclear. This study investigated whether the volume of the hippocampus and its subfields, particularly cornu ammonis (CA) 1, CA3, and dentate gyrus, are associated with current PTSD symptoms and whether they predict PTSD symptom changes over 2 years. We examined clinical and structural magnetic resonance imaging measures from 252 trauma-exposed post-9/11 veterans (159 with Time 1 PTSD diagnosis) during assessments approximately 2 years apart. Automated hippocampal subfield segmentation was performed with FreeSu...
Indirect and direct cannabinoid agonists differentially affect mesolimbic dopamine release and related behaviors.
The cannabinoid system is being researched as a potential pharmaceutical target for a multitude of disorders. The present study examined the effect of indirect and direct cannabinoid agonists on mesolimbic dopamine release and related behaviors in C57BL/6J (B6) mice. The indirect cannabinoid agonist N-arachidonoyl serotonin (AA-5-HT) indirectly agonizes the cannabinoid system by preventing the metabolism of endocannabinoids through fatty acid amide hydrolase inhibition while also inhibiting transient receptor potential vanilloid Type 1 channels. Effects of AA-5-HT were compared with the direct cannabinoid receptor Type 1 agonist arachidonoyl-2′-chloroethylamide (ACEA). In Experiment 1, mic...
Lrp8 knockout mice fed a selenium-replete diet display subtle deficits in their spatial learning and memory function.
Selenium is an essential trace element that is delivered to the brain by the selenium transport protein selenoprotein P (SEPP1), primarily by binding to its receptor low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 8 (LRP8), also known as apolipoprotein E receptor 2 (ApoER2), at the blood–brain barrier. Selenium transport is required for several important brain functions, with transgenic deletion of either Sepp1 or Lrp8 resulting in severe neurological dysfunction and death in mice fed a selenium-deficient diet. Previous studies have reported that although feeding a standard chow diet can prevent these severe deficits, some motor coordination and cognitive dysfunction rem...
