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Scientists have uncovered a surprising way that fructose, a sugar commonly found in sweetened foods and drinks, may help aggressive ovarian cancer spread. Researchers discovered that cancer cells surviving chemotherapy release fructose that weakens the bonds holding neighboring tumor cells together, making it easier for cancer to spread. High dietary fructose levels and cholesterol-lowering statins also produced concerning effects in preclinical experiments.

A surprising new study suggests that walking, jogging, and even traditional weight training may be less effective at stimulating bone formation than high-intensity sports involving explosive movements and sudden changes in direction. Researchers found that activities such as football and handball increased markers of bone formation by up to 46%, potentially revealing a better way to protect bones against aging and osteoporosis.

A new study found that energy drinks and stimulant supplements were linked to disproportionately frequent reports of serious heart problems, including 11 times more reports of cardiac arrest and 4.5 times more reports of heart attacks. Young adults accounted for nearly half of the cardiovascular reports involving these products, raising concerns about their potential risks despite the study being unable to prove causation.

A surprising study of more than 4,500 older adults found that people who were overweight or obese when diagnosed with dementia had a 16% to 27% lower risk of death than those at a normal weight. Researchers suspect that extra energy and muscle reserves may help patients survive the disease's toll on the body, although the reason for the survival advantage remains unclear.

Ancient manuscripts, including the 1,000-year-old York Gospels, have revealed traces of a deadly sheep virus whose history stretches back more than 3,700 years. Scientists discovered that the virus has remained remarkably unchanged for millennia, turning historic parchment into an unexpected record of ancient disease outbreaks.

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) has been defined primarily by what it excludes, yet the scale and function of physiological blood-to-brain protein transport remain largely unknown. Using bioorthogonal proteomics, we find that the healthy BBB samples 191 plasma proteins and permits 92 into the brain parenchyma. Enriched for carrier and metabolic functions, these proteins home to distinct brain cell types, such as apolipoprotein A1 (APOA1) to astrocytes and alpha-1 antitrypsin (SERPINA1) to...

Alzheimer's disease (AD), the leading cause of dementia, is increasingly recognized as a metabolic disorder characterized by disrupted insulin and insulin-like growth factor-1 signaling in the brain, a concept now referred to as type 3 diabetes. Central to this perspective is the insulin receptor substrate-1/phosphoinositide 3-kinase/protein kinase B/mechanistic target of rapamycin (IRS-1/PI3K/Akt/mTOR) cascade, which acts as the primary convergence point linking systemic insulin resistance to...

Healthy older adults exhibit both selective impairments in episodic memory - memory for events situated within a specific time and place - and deficits in executive function, reflected by difficulty switching between different tasks and inhibiting task-irrelevant information. Prior work has shown that older adults show diminished mnemonic brain state engagement - recruitment of whole brain activity patterns that selectively support memory encoding and memory retrieval. Our hypothesis is that...

Cellular senescence is a state of irreversible cell-cycle arrest that prevents cancer but promotes aging and inflammation. Conflicting molecular profiles of senescence may arise from contamination by neighboring proliferating cells. Here, we developed SenLect (senescence selection), a genetically encoded system for purifying senescent cells in culture. SenLect expresses mCherry-2A-PuroR under the senescence-activated miR-146a promoter, providing senescent cells a selective advantage over...

Alzheimer's disease (AD), the leading cause of dementia, is increasingly recognized as a metabolic disorder characterized by disrupted insulin and insulin-like growth factor-1 signaling in the brain, a concept now referred to as type 3 diabetes. Central to this perspective is the insulin receptor substrate-1/phosphoinositide 3-kinase/protein kinase B/mechanistic target of rapamycin (IRS-1/PI3K/Akt/mTOR) cascade, which acts as the primary convergence point linking systemic insulin resistance to...

Cholinergic dysfunction is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease and other memory disorders. Yet, the neurophysiological mechanisms linking cholinergic signaling to memory remain poorly understood. In this study, we administered scopolamine, a muscarinic cholinergic antagonist, to neurosurgical patients with intracranial electrodes as they performed an associative recognition memory task. When scopolamine was present at encoding, we observed disruptions to hippocampal slow theta oscillations (2-4...

White matter free water (FW-WM), quantified using diffusion MRI, reflects extracellular water content and microstructural alterations within water matter, but its genetic architecture and clinical relevance remain largely uncharted. We conducted a multi-omics study integrating 42,039 individuals from the UK Biobank and Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative cohorts to characterize tract-specific FW-WM across genetic, phenotypic, and proteomic dimensions. Genome-wide association analyses...

Slow waves during sleep are fundamental for neural homeostasis, metabolic regulation, and waste clearance and are known to be altered in neurodegenerative diseases. Sleep-like slow waves (SLSWs) have been observed in awake, healthy individuals, where they are linked to fluctuations in vigilance and mind-wandering. Whether SLSWs are altered in Parkinson's disease (PD), and whether such alterations contribute to psychiatric or cognitive complications, remains unknown. In a cohort of 84 nondemented...

Replicative senescence links telomere shortening to irreversible proliferative arrest and is widely recognized as a major tumor-suppressive mechanism. At the organismal level, however, progressive accumulation of senescent cells contributes to tissue dysfunction, chronic inflammation, and aging. Accumulating evidence suggests that telomere shortening influences telomeric and subtelomeric chromatin organization and transcription through mechanisms that remain incompletely understood. Building...

Frailty is a multisystem clinical syndrome closely linked to cognitive aging, yet its relationship with brain pathology and contribution to neurological outcomes remain unclear. We examined neuroimaging correlates of frailty and evaluated their integrative impact on incident dementia within a cerebral frailty risk score (CFRS) framework. In a population-based UK Biobank cohort, we analyzed neuroimaging-derived phenotypes, including cerebral volumetrics and thickness, white matter...

Beyond total volume, how physical activity is distributed, timed, and structured across the 24-h cycle may reflect aspects of brain aging missed by conventional measures. We examined how these activity dimensions relate to cognitive status, cognitive performance, and Alzheimer's disease (AD)-related plasma biomarkers. In this cross-sectional analysis of 164 adults aged 50-89 from the Human Connectome Project-Connectomics in Brain Aging and Dementia study, 7-day wrist actigraphy measured activity...

Evidence linking socioeconomic mobility to depressive symptoms in older adults in low- and middle-income countries is limited. We examined childhood-to-adulthood socioeconomic position (SEP) mobility in India. The primary cross-sectional analysis used complete-case data from 30,358 adults aged ≥ 60 years in the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India Wave 1. Childhood SEP was recalled; adulthood SEP reflected per capita consumption expenditure. Mobility was classified as consistently high, upward,...

Super-carbon-chain compounds (SCCCs), marine long-carbon-chain polyketides featuring numerous carbon stereocenters, fall into untapped chemical space in between drug-like small molecules and biopolymers. Due to mass-material unavailability and flexible-structure complexity, the reliable stereochemical assignment of SCCCs has long remained stagnant. In this work, a modern microalgal biomass production-platform is created for pilot-scale cultivation of marine dinoflagellates to produce over 100...

Alzheimer's disease (AD), a neurological disorder characterized by progressive deterioration of cognitive function, has complex pathogenic mechanisms and lacks curative therapies with proven efficacy. Aging and inflammatory responses, which play indispensable roles in the onset and progression of AD, are closely intertwined with mitochondrial dysfunction. During aging, a series of degenerative alterations, including accumulated mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations, excessive mitochondrial...

Mitochondrial dysfunction and declining ATP production are common features of aging, yet whether ATP availability itself directly regulates cellular lifespan is unclear. However, the causal relationship between cellular ATP homeostasis and aging has not been established. Here, we developed a synthetic system to manipulate intracellular ATP independently of endogenous energy production by expressing a plasma membrane-targeted nucleotide transporter, NTT1, from the intracellular parasite...