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Population declines led to spike in spinal deformities and rare tumors, fossil study suggests

Popular AI-powered food apps may make calorie counting easier, but they may also leave out a surprisingly large part of the meal. Four apps underestimated calories and fat by about one-third when tested against carefully prepared meals. High-fat ketogenic dishes appeared to cause the most trouble, while carbohydrates were measured more consistently.

Scientists used CRISPR to make prostate cancer cells easier for the immune system to detect and destroy. The experimental treatment dramatically improved the effects of immunotherapy in mice and may offer hope for other hard-to-treat tumors.

Scientists discovered that damaged fat cells can become inflamed, lose their ability to store lipids, and eventually vanish, disrupting the body’s metabolism. The findings show that diabetes can result not only from excess fat, but also from losing the healthy fat tissue the body needs.

Scientists have identified a possible tipping point that helps determine whether Alzheimer’s-related brain changes lead to dementia. The key may lie in how the brain’s immune cells respond to plaques and tau, offering a promising new target for treatments designed to extend cognitive resilience.

Immunosenescence increases susceptibility to infection and reduces vaccine responsiveness, yet bulk transcriptomic clocks obscure the cellular heterogeneity underlying this process. Here, we present IDEAL-Age, an interpretable deep learning framework that operates directly on single-cell PBMC transcriptomes. Benchmarking against 35 methods across independent cohorts demonstrates superior predictive performance. The framework's interpretability uncovers linear and non-linear gene contribution...

Mitis group streptococci are opportunistic pathogens residing in the oral cavity, where they produce hydrogen peroxide (H(2)O(2)), a key virulence factor contributing to their pathogenesis. We previously demonstrated that these bacteria kill the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans through H(2)O(2) production. Metformin, a widely used biguanide drug for managing blood glucose levels, has shown promising effects on aging by extending lifespan in worms and mice, and has also demonstrated potential...

Aging is accompanied by progressive epigenetic alterations, including changes in DNA methylation affecting both gene-associated regions and repetitive elements such as LINE-1 retrotransposons. Reduced epigenetic repression of transposable elements has been implicated in age-related genomic instability. Circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) provides a minimally invasive substrate for monitoring systemic molecular changes; however, age-related LINE-1 methylation dynamics in cfDNA remain poorly...

Cellular senescence is closely associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. Sirtuin 2 (Sirt2), a member of the Sirtuin deacetylases family, plays a pivotal role in regulating energy metabolism and aging in mammals. However, its function in social insect aging remains unclear. Here, using the Eastern honey bee (Apis cerana) as a model, we demonstrate that the age-related downregulation of A. cerana Sirt2 (AcSirt2) in brain tissue is coupled with progressive mitochondrial damage, reactive oxygen...

The thymus is the central organ where T cells differentiate and proliferate. T cells experience the TCR recombination to generate diversity, self-antigen tolerance, and immune response. However, the spatial heterogeneity of transcriptomics and immune repertoire of the thymus during aging haven't been studied. We constructed the thymus's spatial transcriptomics and spatial immune repertoire atlas by TCR-specific amplification. The integrated multi-omics analysis of the scRNA-seq, ST-seq,...

The gut mycobiome plays an essential role in human health, yet its influence on the progression of arterial stiffness, a key feature of vascular aging, remains obscure. In this study, we aimed to investigate the involvement of intestinal fungi in the exacerbation of arterial stiffness. In total, 763 participants were invited for the brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity test to determine their status of arterial stiffness. The gut mycobiome was identified through internal transcribed spacer...

CONCLUSIONS: Female sex and physical activity were associated with lower physiological dysregulation, whereas higher BMI was associated with greater dysregulation. These findings underscore the importance of sex differences and modifiable lifestyle factors, particularly physical activity and adiposity in multisystem physiological burden among older US adults.

The Backrooms began as a single eerie image of empty yellow rooms, but internet users transformed it into a vast fictional world that feels disturbingly real. Through videos, games, maps, survival guides and social media stories, audiences do more than watch the horror unfold. They help build and explore it. Researchers suggest this popularity reflects a new kind of digital tourism, where people emotionally enter imaginary places filled with mystery, nostalgia and unease.

Even mild inflammation during pregnancy led mouse offspring to develop persistent brain overactivity, sensory sensitivity, repetitive behaviors, and increased seizure risk. Remarkably, one dose of rapamycin improved nearly all of these problems within about two hours. The benefits were temporary, but they suggest that adult brain circuits may remain far more adaptable than previously believed.

Scientists expected SuperAgers might simply inherit fewer Alzheimer’s-related risks, but their genes looked much like those of typical older adults. Their extraordinary memories may instead come from still-unknown protective forces involving the brain, body, lifestyle, and environment.

A major long-term study linked coffee consumption with lower risks of cirrhosis, liver cancer, and death from liver disease. Coffee drinkers also showed healthier liver scans and blood protein patterns, with less fat, inflammation, and scarring. Benefits appeared even at one or two cups daily and were strongest around three to four cups.

Newer oral drugs related to semaglutide medications such as Ozempic reduced pleasure-driven eating in mice by quieting a deep brain reward circuit. The finding could open new avenues for understanding food cravings and potentially treating substance use disorder.

A prebiotic fiber supplement reduced knee osteoarthritis pain while also improving grip strength and pain sensitivity in a six-week trial. The results hint at a fascinating gut-muscle-pain connection and suggest that a simple daily supplement may be easier to maintain than digital physiotherapy.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia, yet current therapies provide limited clinical benefit. Neuroinflammation, as an early and sustained driver of AD, places the NLRP3 inflammasome at the center of pathological and therapeutic focus. In this review, we synthesize recent advances in the structure, assembly, and activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome, and evaluate its contribution to AD using evidence from human brain tissues, cerebrospinal fluid, and diverse AD animal models....

Age is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, yet the molecular mechanisms underlying human cardiac aging are not fully understood. Using bulk RNA sequencing data from the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project, we identified cardiac age-associated genes by intersecting transcripts significantly correlated with age in both the atrial appendage and left ventricle, while excluding those similarly altered in skeletal muscle. Among these, 131 genes were positively correlated with age,...