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A Salk Institute study found that a simple dietary amino acid, methionine, dramatically improved survival in mice facing severe infections and inflammatory conditions. Rather than directly targeting the immune system, methionine boosted kidney filtration, helping the body flush out excess inflammatory molecules that can cause tissue damage, brain dysfunction, wasting, and death.

A promising new study suggests rheumatoid arthritis may not be as inevitable as once thought for people at high risk. Researchers found that just one year of treatment with the immune-targeting drug abatacept delayed the onset of rheumatoid arthritis by up to four years, with benefits lasting long after treatment ended.

A long-overlooked organ may hold surprising clues to healthy aging and cancer survival. Researchers at Mass General Brigham used AI to analyze CT scans from tens of thousands of adults and found that people with healthier thymuses—a small immune-system organ once thought to become largely irrelevant after childhood—lived longer and had substantially lower risks of heart disease, cancer, and death.

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), prevalently in aging men, is characterized by aberrant cell death of prostate cells. Anoikis, a specific subtype of apoptosis, is triggered when cells detach from the extracellular matrix (ECM), in contrast, cells with anoikis resistance contribute to pathological processes such as unregulated cell proliferation and impaired cell death. However, the role of anoikis resistance in BPH pathogenesis remains poorly understood. In this study, an elevated anoikis...

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Anxiety disorders are prevalent and can greatly impact well-being. The biological mechanisms behind anxiety are not fully understood, but growing evidence suggests a role for DNA methylation. Here, we conduct a large-scale methylome-wide association study of lifetime anxiety in 14,443 participants (1817 cases and 12,626 controls) in whole blood, and, through epigenomic deconvolution, 12 different blood cell types. We detect four CpG associations at methylome-wide significance in whole blood, and...

In Italy, evergreen holm oaks (Quercus ilex) and deciduous sessile oaks (Quercus petraea) experienced a synchronized establishment pulse starting at the beginning of 1400s CE, consistent with a release from anthropogenic pressure following demographic collapse associated with the Black Death outbreak (1347 CE) and its following waves until the 17th century. Radiocarbon dating of the oldest-looking individuals of each species revealed similar tree-age distributions across sites located at the...

Bilingualism has been associated with enhanced executive functions (EFs), particularly attentional control, and may confer protection against cognitive decline in older age. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a factor negatively affecting EF in older adults. Bilingualism might offer resilience against these COVID-related cognitive declines, especially in late adulthood, by bolstering cognitive reserve. The present study collected data from 312 community-dwelling individuals...

Cohesin is a DNA tethering complex essential for chromosome structure and function. In fission yeast, defects in the cohesin loader Mis4 result in chromosome segregation defects and dysregulated expression of genes near chromosome ends. A genetic screen for suppressors of the thermosensitive growth defect of mis4-G1487D identified several hypomorphic mutants of the Target of Rapamycin Complex 1 (TORC1), a conserved kinase that integrates cellular signals to regulate growth and metabolism through...