DUARTE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Researchers at City of Hope, a world-renowned independent research and treatment center for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases, have developed a tool that could predict if older adults with early-stage breast cancer will develop a severe or deadly reaction to chemotherapy.

This first-of-its-kind risk assessment tool called the Cancer and Aging Research Group-Breast Cancer (CARG-BC) Score helps oncologists make personalized treatment recommendations. Oncologists can discuss the score and its significance with early-stage breast cancer patients age 65 or older. Together, an informed decision about chemotherapy can be made as treatment benefit is weighed against quality of life concerns, said Mina Sedrak, M.D., M.S., co-first author of the new study and deputy director of clinical trials for the Center for Cancer and Aging Research at City of Hope.

Despite remarkable advances in cancer treatment, tools to characterize the toxicity of cancer therapies have remained virtually unchanged for the past 20 years, Sedrak said. This is a new precision medicine tool. Rather than basing treatment decisions and care on demographic data for a disease, we now can offer each elderly, early-stage breast cancer patient individualized toxicity information that could help align treatment with their goals for lifestyle, quality of life, longevity and other priorities.

More than 72% of older patients with cancer reported that they would not choose cancer treatment that results in functional impairment even if it improves survival, Sedrak said.

If the risk of chemotherapy toxicity is known in advance, oncologists and patients could work together to decide whether chemotherapy is the right choice. Treatment modifications such as dose reductions and longer periods between chemotherapy delivery could be recommended. Older patients could also preemptively be referred for supportive care interventions such as consults with physical therapists, occupational therapists, social workers and pharmacists, who could evaluate potential drug interactions with existing medications for chronic ailments. Additionally, patients could have someone evaluate their home for safety or necessary modifications.

The study, published on Jan. 14 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, spanned 16 institutions across the nation, with City of Hope being the lead institution. It included 473 patients age 65 or older with Stage 1-3 breast cancer (283 in development cohort; 190 in validation cohort). They were all treated with chemotherapy either before or after surgery and were evaluated for geriatric and clinical symptoms predictive of severe (grade 3), debilitating (grade 4) or deadly (grade 5) side effects due to chemotherapy.

Though chemotherapy is an effective way to treat early-stage breast cancer, it also carries a risk of side effects. There is a delicate balance between the benefits of chemotherapy and the harm of possible side effects, said Canlan Sun, M.D., Ph.D., senior author of the study and associate research professor in the Department of Supportive Care Medicine at City of Hope.

The development of severe chemotherapy toxicity not only can harm the patient, but it can also compromise an older adults ability to complete the full course of chemotherapy, possibly reducing the potential benefit of the cancer treatment, she added.

Sedrak noted that most women with early stage breast cancer have a potentially curable disease and some would benefit from chemotherapy after surgery. Unfortunately, older adults aged 65 and over, who comprise about half of all breast cancer diagnoses, are significantly less likely to be offered chemotherapy compared to younger patients sometimes because their doctors fear they wont be able to tolerate it, he said. Older adults are also underrepresented in cancer trials, and we know little about how best to treat this heterogenous group.

The CARG-BC score is derived by combining eight disease and patient-reported predictors: use of an anthracycline chemotherapy, Stage 2 or 3 breast cancer, longer planned treatment duration, abnormal liver function, low hemoglobin, falls, limited walking ability and lack of social support.

This risk prediction model is an extension of prior work from the national Cancer and Aging Research Group led by scientists at City of Hope and elsewhere. As a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center, City of Hope offers integrated, multidisciplinary care that includes supportive care services addressing physical and emotional issues that can arise during and after treatment.

The newly developed CARG-BC score outperformed existing measures of patient performance status that are widely used in oncology such as the Karnofsky performance status or Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status, both of which were developed and validated in younger patients.

Those clinician-based eyeball tests are imprecise and subjective, Sedrak said. They do not detect important factors such as functional reserve or the ability to respond to stress, which vary greatly between older patients of the same chronological age and are valued by patients and caregivers.

As a next step, the researchers will look to improve the chemotherapy toxicity risk assessment tool with more biological markers. They will attempt to identify biomarkers that could predict severe or deadly side effects to chemotherapy. They are working to identify interventions to support elderly breast cancer patients so that they derive the most benefit and the least toxicity from chemotherapy.

The researchers will also continue their efforts to improve access to cancer clinical trials for all patients, leveraging new innovations in technology and widely used social media networks.

The title of the study is Development and validation of a risk tool for predicting severe toxicity in older adults receiving chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer (https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO.20.02063). It was supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA R01 AG037037, K76 AG064394, K23AG038361, K24 AG055693, K24 AG056589), National Cancer Institute (K12CA001727, K12CA167540), National Institutes of Health (R21 AG059206), Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Susan G. Komen for the Cure (CCR14298143), American Cancer Society (125912-MRSG-14-240-01-CPPB) and Center for Cancer and Aging Research at City of Hope.

This research would not have been possible without the foundational scientific contributions made by the late Arti Hurria, M.D., former director of City of Hopes Center for Cancer and Aging Research.

About City of Hope

City of Hope is an independent biomedical research and treatment center for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases. Founded in 1913, City of Hope is a leader in bone marrow transplantation and immunotherapy such as CAR T cell therapy. City of Hopes translational research and personalized treatment protocols advance care throughout the world. Human synthetic insulin, monoclonal antibodies, and numerous breakthrough cancer drugs are based on technology developed at the institution. AccessHope, a wholly owned subsidiary, was launched in 2019 and is dedicated to serving employers and their health care partners by providing access to City of Hopes exceptional cancer expertise. A National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center and a founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, City of Hope is ranked among the nations Best Hospitals in cancer by U.S. News & World Report. Its main campus is located near Los Angeles, with additional locations throughout Southern California and in Arizona. For more information about City of Hope, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram.

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City of Hope Scientists Have Developed a Precision Medicine Tool That Predicts If Chemotherapy Will Produce Debilitating Side Effects in Older Adults...

Short bursts of physical exercise induce changes in the bodys levels of metabolites that correlate to an individuals cardiometabolic, cardiovascular, and long-term health, a study by Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has found.

In a paper published inCirculation, the research team describes how about 12 minutes of acute cardiopulmonary exercise affected more than 80 percent of circulating metabolites, including pathways linked to a wide range of favorable health outcomes, thus identifying potential mechanisms that could contribute to a better understanding of cardiometabolic benefits of exercise.

What was striking to us was the effects a brief bout of exercise can have on the circulating levels of metabolites that govern such key bodily functions as insulin resistance, oxidative stress, vascular reactivity, inflammation, and longevity, said investigator Gregory Lewis, section head of Heart Failure at MGH and senior author of the study.

The MGH study drew on data from the Framingham Heart Study to measure the levels of 588 circulating metabolites before and immediately after 12 minutes of vigorous exercise in 411 middle-aged men and women.

The research team detected favorable shifts in a number of metabolites for which resting levels were previously shown to be associated with cardiometabolic disease. For example, glutamate, a key metabolite linked to heart disease, diabetes, and decreased longevity, fell by 29 percent. And DMGV, a metabolite associated with increased risk of diabetes and liver disease, dropped by 18 percent. The study further found that metabolic responses may be modulated by factors other than exercise, including a persons sex and body mass index, with obesity possibly conferring partial resistance to the benefits of exercise.

Intriguingly, our study found that different metabolites tracked with different physiologic responses to exercise, and might therefore provide unique signatures in the bloodstream that reveal if a person is physically fit, much the way current blood tests determine how well the kidney and liver are functioning, notes co-first author Matthew Nayor of the Heart Failure and Transplantation Section in the Division of Cardiology at MGH. Lower levels of DMGV, for example, could signify higher levels of fitness.

The Framingham Heart Study, which began in 1948 and now embraces three generations of participants, allowed MGH researchers to apply the same signatures used in the current study population to stored blood from earlier generations of participants. By studying the long-term effects of metabolic signatures of exercise responses, researchers were able to predict the future state of an individuals health, and how long they are likely to live.

Were starting to better understand the molecular underpinnings of how exercise affects the body and use that knowledge to understand the metabolic architecture around exercise response patterns, says co-first author Ravi Shah of the Heart Failure and Transplantation Section in the Division of Cardiology at MGH. This approach has the potential to target people who have high blood pressure or many other metabolic risk factors in response to exercise, and set them on a healthier trajectory early in their lives.

Lewis is associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing Laboratory at MGH. Nayor is a cardiologist at MGH and instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Shah is a cardiologist at MGH and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Other co-authors include Ramachandran Vasan, professor of medicine at Boston University and principal investigator of the Framingham Heart Study, and Clary Clish, senior director of Metabolomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

The study was supported by the American Heart Associations Grand Challenge Award and the National Institutes of Health.

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12-minute bursts of exercise have bigger impact than thought - Harvard Gazette

Once a man reaches 40 years of age, it becomes more difficult for him to stay in shape and maintain his sexual health and wellness. If he lacks a proper exercise and nutrition regimen, then fatigue, weight issues, and loss of sex drive could strike him even sooner. Since so many successful men lead stressful and unhealthy lives, many feel they have lost their edge.

Dr. Kien Vuu, popularly known as Doctor V, is a performance and longevity doctor. His clinic, VuuMD, aims to help high achievers transform their minds, bodies, and libidos so that they can perform at their best in every area of life.

Each client goes through a detailed BioEnergetic assessment to determine lifestyle factors that could be contributing to their lack of performance, said Doctor V. And for those patients who desire to reclaim that edge in the gym, office, or bedroom, there are safe and effective advances in medicine that can be used to optimize performance. Some men feel the effects in as little as a few hours.

Doctor V is the epitome of an American success story. He was brought to the United States as an infant boat refugee by his immigrant parents. With no money or connections, they faced dire poverty and racism in their early years in America. However, they knew it was a country where a better life could be made for themselves and their son. That dream would eventually come true.

Doctor V dedicated his life to science and education. He started his career as a board-certified interventional and diagnostic radiologist - a physician who identifies and treats diseases with the use of medical imaging technology and other non-invasive techniques.

Ive treated countless patients with chronic diseases, but I was never satisfied with the disease-based model of traditional medicine alone, said Doctor V. Having overcome diabetes and high blood pressure myself, I knew the best ways to overcome chronic diseases and perform at our best are time-tested, science-driven protocols that combine ancestral wisdom and modern medicine.

Doctor V decided to take his medical practice in a different direction. He sought additional training from world experts of nutrition, personal development, spirituality, performance medicine, and longevity medicine. With his deeper understanding of non-traditional and integrative medicine, he started to offer a unique combination of treatments to increase the mental, physical, and sexual performance of his male patients.

Doctor V has revived the mojo of hundreds of highly successful men. His success has resonated on social media and national television shows like the Doctors and Access Hollywood.

The health transformation process should be fun, challenging, and truly a journey of rediscovery, said Doctor V. I teach patients how to enjoy the process as they become the person theyve always desired. It is my honor to guide them on their course to happiness, fulfillment, and the best version of themselves. The greatest reward is seeing the energy and confidence radiate from my patients as they reclaim their health, relationships, and purpose.

Doctor Vs new book Thrive State: Your Blueprint for Optimal Health, Longevity, and Peak Performance hit bookshelves April 2021, and you can pre-order your copy on Amazon or wherever books are sold. Learn more about Doctor V and the science of human performance and longevity at his website kienvuu.com , or connect with him on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube @kienvuumd .

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Performance and Longevity Specialist, Kien Vuu MD, Aims to Help Professional Males Whove Lost Their Edge - LatestLY

More than 250 people Texas A&M administrators, faculty, staff, former students, current students, community members and leaders from diverse backgrounds were given a challenge more than two decades ago: Pull together a sense of direction to which the university should aspire by the year 2020; involve important and informed points of view; debate and deliberate; strengthen the institution.

The result not only was bold for the land-grant college, it was visionary for all of higher education.

What follows are stories of a few of the key committee members interviewed recently to discuss the impact of the historical document. A more detailed story can be found here.

In 1997, Ray Bowen, the president of Texas A&M at the time, approached Walter Wendler with a proposal.

Wendler had been serving as the dean of the College of Architecture since 1992, and held the William M. Pea Professorship of Information Management. Bowen wanted to know if Wendler would help write a bold new plan looking 20 years into the universitys future.

He said, I dont know how we can do it, but I want somebody, and I think youre the kind of person to do it,' Wendler recalled. I was somebody willing to try to look ahead as best we could. President Bowen asked me if I would do it, and I did.

Wendler left the deans job and moved to the presidents office as Bowens executive assistant. Preparing Vision 2020 became his primary job for the next two years. Watching the plan unfold over the last two decades has been a distinct pleasure for Wendler.

Its the same way with any organization thats pursuing excellence it never stops.

He was deeply involved in communicating with individuals across the campus and finding people committed to the university to serve on numerous committees. At one point, Wendler recalls whittling down a list of around 900 names. He still has a digital record of every letter and memo he wrote throughout the process.

Day to day that was the primary thing for the first year. The second year was writing the plan and putting it out to groups for revision and comments, Wendler said. I cant tell you how many drafts there were probably 20 to 25 with the same ideas, but different ways of presenting them.

Wendler said he went to countless Aggie Club meetings with The Association of Former Students to gather feedback, and also worked on the data collection to find information that would be important for the long-range mission of the institution.

The final product and its Twelve Imperatives ended up being powerfully important to the organization, he said. Wendler was inspired to replicate the process when he later served as chancellor of Southern Illinois University and in his current role as president of West Texas A&M University.

Wendler describes Texas A&M as having four epochs in its history: starting as an all-male military school, to its transformation under the leadership of Maj. Gen. James Earl Rudder to an institution that admitted women and students of color, to its vision of increasing private giving and other goals under the Target 2000 Project. The fourth epoch, Wendler said, was Vision 2020 and the goal of becoming a top-tier institution.

Now we need the next one the fifth epoch. I dont know what its going to be, but its going to be very interesting, he said. Thats part of the beauty of A&M they never feel like theyve arrived. That shaping process, if you have an idea, it never stops. Its the same way with any organization thats pursuing excellence it never stops.

Twenty years after graduating from the university, Bob Harvey was contacted by Texas A&M Foundation President Ed Davis, who asked him to drive up to College Station to think about the universitys next strategic planning effort.

Harvey was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, Inc. at the time. Shortly after their first meeting, Harvey and Davis met with President Ray Bowen, who brought his former roommate Jon Hagler on board. Along with Walter Wendler, the former dean of the College of Architecture, the team got to work on what would become Vision 2020.

Harvey is a former student body president and commander of the Corps of Cadets. As a consultant, he recognized the value of making a periodic assessment of where the university stood.

Its important for a university to periodically engage in such an effort. Theres real power in it, he said.

It wouldnt be a puff piece, or a way to brag about the university. It was to set aspirational goals, Harvey said.

To think back since I left campus, Im so proud of the university and the progress its made over those 40 years. In many ways, the university is unrecognizable from what it was 20 years ago in terms of the physical plan, just the sheer scale and dimension of excellence that exists today.

Bob Harvey, Greater Houston Partnership president and CEO

Bowen decided that the effort would be defined by making Texas A&M a top 10 public university, Harvey said. The small group that started the process looked hard at what other top universities had in common if theres one thing that stood out, he said, it was the quality and reputation of their faculty members.

The Vision 2020 team decided that elevating the faculty would be foundational to Texas A&M, and stood somewhat in contrast to prior visioning efforts that put more emphasis on students.

Harvey and others at McKinsey & Company formed a small skunk work team from across campus to develop the structure of the plan before expanding the effort, which ultimately grew to include more than 250 faculty and staff members, former students and external partners.

Two decades later, Harvey said hes proud of the plans longevity on campus, calling it part of the institutional glue that has sustained Texas A&Ms momentum through changes in leadership. All involved are owed a huge debt for their work, he said, including Hagler for setting the tone and Wendler for writing a coherent document that included input from nearly 300 people.

Im very proud to have been associated with Vision 2020, said Harvey, who is now the president & CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership. To think back since I left campus, Im so proud of the university and the progress its made over those 40 years. In many ways, the university is unrecognizable from what it was 20 years ago in terms of the physical plan, just the sheer scale and dimension of excellence that exists today.

What has remained constant, he said, is Texas A&Ms values.

Im really pleased there have been equal efforts to retain whats important, Harvey said.

Being a part of the Vision 2020 process was a wonderful opportunity, said Dr. John August, dean of the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences.

August had just finished 11 years as head of the Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, and was participating in an administrative training program in The Texas A&M University System. It was during this period of transition before heading back to the faculty that he served as campus co-chair for Imperative 12: Meet Our Commitment To Texas.

Much of his time was spent coordinating and leading meetings with a diverse group of administrators, faculty, alumni and others. Augusts committee focused on Texas A&Ms mission as a land-grant university to serve the diverse population of Texas. Based on data available at the time, they sought to answer how Texas A&M should fit into the state, nation and world.

It allowed us to look at top 10 in a broad variety of ways and realize many of those are just as important as the national metric we all think of. That was a very healthy outcome of Vision 2020.

August also co-chaired the Vision 2020 Executive Committee with Jon Hagler. They were in charge of leading oversight of the plans progress.

I think the topics that needed to be discussed were very pertinent at that time, and in a general way are certainly represented in the university at the current time, whether its how the university has to redirect its work and its energies toward the rapidly changing demographics in Texas, or undergraduate student expectations, or the buildings on campus and what is needed, August said.

Everyone involved had to ask themselves what it means to be a top-tier public land-grant institution in 2020. For August, he noticed these conversations changed when the university joined the Southeastern Conference.

We didnt have to look over our shoulders at our neighbors in Austin all the time after that. It allowed the university to become more independent and continue to build on its own aspirations, he said. I think from that time onwards Ive seen a very healthy conversation going on with regard to what we want to be.

One of the main aspirations of committee members in the 1990s was to be a top 10 public institution by 2020. What August said wasnt defined at that time was the metric by which this would be measured. Out of the many discussions that were held, members realized that there are many ways of defining top 10 in serving the state of Texas, whether it be in producing corporate leaders, helping first- generation students, graduation rates, or placing Aggies in outstanding positions upon graduation.

As Vision 2020 discussions continued, we realized that it wasnt just associated with pure academics, August said.

It allowed us to look at top 10 in a broad variety of ways and realize many of those are just as important as the national metric we all think of, he said. That was a very healthy outcome of Vision 2020.

As a former senior professor of management at the Mays Business School, Michael A. Hitt has an appreciation for the benefits of strategic planning.

He remembers this being the focus of several of the questions he was asked when interviewed to be part of the Vision 2020 process. Hitt was selected to co-chair the group tackling Imperative 10: Demand Enlightened Governance and Leadership, and later served on the 2004 Advisory Council formed by former university president Robert Gates.

There was a lot of progress made in the university that was due to that effort. I certainly believe it helped us take a step toward that future and become an even better university.

Hitt, a fellow of the Academy of Management and the Strategic Management Society, said its important for an organization to define its future in order to set the path to achieve it.

If you dont do that in some kind of coordinated fashion with different colleges of schools, they can go their own way and may not be as coordinated as youd like for the university as a whole, he said. It was an effort to work toward what I consider a vision of the future, and it helped us to do that. Just that coordination and appreciation helped us better develop goals that were designed to move the university forward, not only specific units.

He recalls being impressed by the level of involvement of individuals from across the university, alumni and other external members. Hitts group focused on leadership, a major issue of importance at Texas A&M throughout its history, both in terms of preparing students for leadership roles and leadership within the university more broadly.

I would say I think we did quite well. Weve taken more steps toward emphasizing leadership in all varieties in terms of our students, society and what we do, Hitt said.

Looking back, Hitt said he sees the importance Vision 2020 played in the institution reaching many of its goals.

There was a lot of progress made in the university that was due to that effort, he said. I certainly believe it helped us take a step toward that future and become an even better university.

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Vision 2020: Behind the Scenes - Texas A&M University Today

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World War II veteran Frank Caruso, 99, and his wife, Ann, 94, at The Fountains assisted living facility in Tuckahoe looks on Nov. 2, 2020. Caruso will turn 100 years-old on Nov. 19. Rockland/Westchester Journal News

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. Wednesdayis Veterans Day, when Americaremembers those who served in its armed forces.

Frank Caruso served in World War II. And this Veterans Day, just eight days shy of his 100th birthday, his memory still serves him remarkably well.

When asked for the secret to his longevity and happy life, he turns to Anna, his wife of 72 years.

"There she is," he said. "There's the secret."

Then Carusooffersanother suggestion.

"I have a longevity medicine," he said. "One Absolut vodka martini a day, just one, with a drop of Vermouth and no fruit."

Caruso's stories fly with flecks of tantalizing detail, from the shadow of Italy's Mount Vesuvius to "Mad Men"-era New York and beyond.

World War II veteran Frank Caruso, 99, with his wife Ann, 94, at The Fountains assisted living facility in Tuckahoe Nov. 2, 2020. The couple have been married for 72 years and Caruso will be a 100 years-old on Nov. 19.(Photo: Tania Savayan/The Journal News)

"I have to think, 'What era did I do that in?' because I sort of had separate different lives that I've lived through the years," Caruso said. "You try to remember them in groups."

Each "group" is well-represented as Caruso speaks, inching his wheelchair forward, a storyteller eager to be closer to his audience at a New York retirement home.

There were the early years in Detroit, before his tailor-father Michele Caruso, a native of Abruzzo, Italy, moved the family to the Bronx in 1929. Then came the Depression and his war years in the Army service that found him in Rome, shaking hands withPope Pius XII.

Cpl. Francis J. Caruso went from working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1942 to 30 months in overseas service in U.S. Army in World War II, in North Africa, Italy and Corsica.(Photo: Submitted)

After the war came his wife, Anna, and their two children.

Caruso spent years as a commercial artist on New York City'sMadison Avenue. From 1956 to 1987, he worked in commercial packaging for American Can Company, in Midtown Manhattan and, later, Greenwich, Connecticut.

That he has lived 99 years and 51 weeks through war and, now pandemic is remarkable.The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that fewer than 325,000 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II are still alive.

He wears a mask out of deference to the coronavirus pandemic which has hit the elderly hardest, accounting for 171,814 deaths of those age65 or older, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When Caruso remembers his military service as an artillery instrument operator, siting shellsin Gen. Mark Clark's Fifth Army inNorth Africa and the invasion of Italyhis memories arepart battle objectives, part weather report.

"You listen to artillery shells all day long, back and forth," he said. "The Germans shelling, the Americans shelling all day."

Caruso moved onto Corsica and on toSalerno, as the Americans worked theirway up Italy's "boot." There was time spent in Naples, where, at night, he could see flames rising from a simmering Mount Vesuvius.

There was, by Caruso's account, all kinds of weather, conjuring images from Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist BillMauldin, whose workregularly depicted soggy GIs in flooded foxholes.

Caruso's basic training was on "bitter cold Cape Cod," followed by a landing in North Africa, "where it was 120 degrees in the shade."

Cpl. Francis J. Caruso lent his artistic talents to the war effort during the 30 months he spent overseas in World War II. Here's one of his creations, emblazoned on the side of a B-25 bomber(Photo: Submitted)

Caruso found time for one non-artillery assignment in Corsica while waiting for the storming of Italy: Knowing that Caruso was an artist, afriend volunteeredhimto decorate a B-25 bomber nicknamed Sahara Sue II.

Caruso remembered having to scour the airfield for paints and brushes before spendingtwo weeks or so to emblazon the plane with a leggy lady.

Last year, 76 years later, Caruso met aretired Air Force officer at New York's Westchester County Airport, where World War II-era aircraft were on display. Within hours of mentioning that long-ago painting assignment to the officer, "I came home and he flipped this onto my computer."

A photo of Sahara Sue II.

"He found this plane," Caruso said, his voice full of awe. "Of all the thousands of planes we had."

First-generation American and World War II veteran Frank Caruso, 99, talks about his life experiences Nov. 2, 2020 at The Fountains assisted living facility in Tuckahoe. Caruso will turn 100 years-old on Nov. 19.(Photo: Tania Savayan/The Journal News)

The Americans fought north from Salerno to Naples and onto another key objective: the monastery atop Monte Cassino.

Bombing was finally approved on Feb. 15, 1944.

"I remember that day very vividly, because it felt like every plane in Italy was in the air dropping bombs," Caruso recalled. "And after it was all through, the Germans still had it. It was so well guarded. They had to go up on foot, climb up the side of mountain on foot to take it eventually."

When the war in Europe ended, Caruso was in Pisa, within walking distance of the leaning tower. V-E Day in May 1945 wasn't a big blowout for GIs still in Italy, he recalled.

When a visitor expresses surprise that the end of the war in Europe didn't launch a huge party, Caruso offers a simple defense: "Well, they didn't have much good booze," he said. "They mostly had cordials."

There was another war, still raging in May 1945 when Germany surrendered.

"The big fear we all had was that when the war ended in Europe we were going to be shipped to Japan," he said. But the point system years of service overseas and combat service pins meant Caruso was sent home.He was discharged in November 1945.

When he returned to the Bronx, he had spent 30 months overseas.

"That was a pretty rough deal, I think, for anybody," he said. "Nobody could go home those days. They didn't have rotations."

After his war service, Frank Caruso earned an advertising degree from Pratt Institute and worked for a NYC advertising agency before landing a job at American Can Company in New York and, later, Greenwich. where he stayed for 31 years. Frank Caruso will mark his 100th birthday on Nov. 19, 2020.(Photo: Submitted)

Back in the Bronx, arelative introduced Caruso "to a school chum" of Anna Pace. Before long, he and Pace were dating. They married on Feb. 7, 1948.

He earned his Pratt Institute advertising design degree at night while working for a Manhattan ad agency, then he got a job in package design for American Can Company, where he stayed for 31 years, from 1956 to 1987.

His portfolio brims with designs for Fanta soda and Schlitz cans, including print ads that would find their way into glossy magazines and newspapers.

Duringthose Midtown "Mad Men" years,Carusodeveloped a cherished ritual that he said was one of his secrets to a long life: a single vodka martini a day.

It was a habit he developed on New York City's Madison Avenue. He said heloved working in Midtown in that post-war era, where lunches were regularly accompanied by a cocktail.

"Madison Avenue was known for its swingers and everything else, and for a long time, everybody drank Manhattans," he said. "But here's the secret: You drink aManhattan, you come back, they can smell you a half-a-mile away. You drink a vodka martini, they can't tell. That's how it became popular. That's the truth."

Caruso shrugs when asked if his war years those months spent in all kinds of weather, seeing comrades fall affected him, made him the man he became.

"I don't know about that, truthfully," he said. "Maybe I was too young. It didn't affect me that much. Overseas was a long time, but I survived. A lot of guys didn't survive."

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WWII veteran just shy of his 100th birthday says his secret to longevity is his wife - and vodka - USA TODAY

Dr. Chandramallika Basak says research like hers helps explain how various health factors can protect us against declines in cognitive ability.

Adults over 60 with optimal blood pressure and high fitness levels can keep up mentally with people half their age, according to a recent brain-imaging study from researchers in The University of Texas at Dallas Center for Vital Longevity (CVL).

Dr. Chandramallika Basak, associate professor in the Department of Psychology in theSchool of Behavioral and Brain Sciences and director of the CVL Lifespan Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory, said the findings help define the characteristics of superagers and shed light on the clearest path to late-life cognitive health.

Basak is senior author of a study published Sept. 9 in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience that uses functional MRI (fMRI) to investigate the effects of low fitness levels and hardened arterial walls on brain activations during a task-switching exercise. The results suggest that these cardiovascular risk factors act independently in hampering the performance of the aging mind. For people with both risk factors, the detrimental effects on the aging brain is compounded.

This kind of research helps us understand how various health factors can help protect us against declines in cognition by promoting brain activation, Basak said. Only with that understanding can we begin to think about effective interventions in mid- and late life.

You might believe that if you stay fit, it will help maintain your blood pressure, and that in turn should prevent hardened arteries. But we are learning that these operate independently that fitness doesnt cut out all of the cardiovascular risk on brain functions.

Dr. Chandramallika Basak, director of the Lifespan Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory at the Center for Vital Longevity

For the study, pulse pressure calculated from blood pressure levels was used to measure arterial hardness, a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Basak said that most cognitive researchers have studied the effects of either fitness level or blood pressure level in the belief that the factors are correlated and represented essentially the same measure of cardiovascular health.

You might believe that if you stay fit, it will help maintain your blood pressure, and that in turn should prevent hardened arteries, she said. But we are learning that these operate independently that fitness doesnt cut out all of the cardiovascular risk on brain functions.

Shuo Qin PhD19

CVL research associate Shuo (Eva) Qin PhD19, the lead author of the paper, described another surprise: Older participants with no risk factors performed as well as younger adults.

There is no statistically significant difference between younger adults and high-health older adults in brain activations, she said. We expected a small gap, but not no gap at all.

The 88 participants included 60 in a 60-or-older cohort and 28 in a control group of UT Dallas students ages 18 to 30. No one in the older group had extraordinarily low or high fitness levels, or suffered from uncontrolled hypertension.

Even within this restricted group of healthy adults, if you have greater arterial stiffness or lower general fitness or worse, both it depletes your neural resources and your cognitive performance is significantly worse, Basak said.

For the cognitive task, participants viewed a single-digit number on either a pink or blue background. If the background was blue, subjects had to indicate if the number was high or low; if it was pink, they had to determine if the number was odd or even. Participants initially did the tasks separately, then the tasks were randomly interspersed.

We chose numbers because they are not biased against old age, native language, gender, race or socioeconomic status, Basak said. The timing in the task is also random so participants brains cant get into a rhythm and plan in advance the timing of when the numbers appear.

Qin said that the task-switching paradigm used in the study measures various cognitive processes, including some that are not affected by aging.

This allows us to examine effects of cardiovascular health factors on brain activations that are either affected by age or not affected by age, she said. Such a multidimensional approach can investigate effects of cardiovascular health factors on brain functions beyond general aging.

Basaks task-switching paradigm included a section of calling the numbers lower or higher than five, a section of odd-or-even judgments, then a section of intermixed decisions designed to test participants task-switching skills.

In fMRI, the brain is scanned about every second as the participant performs a mental task. Since more active brain areas use more oxygen, researchers can distinguish brain regions that activate during the task by an increase in flow of oxygenated blood to that region. One well-established pattern found in fMRI results of aging brains is that older adults activate frontal regions in addition to posterior regions while doing a memory or multitasking or visual task, while younger adults require only the posterior regions, where visual tasks normally take place.

What we found in our study is that older adults activate these posterior regions about the same as younger adults, Basak said. But low-fitness older adults are also activating additional frontal regions in an attempt to maintain their performance. But this compensation effort is maladaptive; it doesnt succeed in restoring their performance levels.

The researchers found that low-fitness older adults are specifically activating the inferior frontal gyrus part of the prefrontal cortex when they have to do two tasks simultaneously.

When the task is simple, the fMRIs of low-fitness older adults look very similar to the high-fit and young, Basak said. The difference is only apparent in the low-fitness brains when the tasks get harder. And the more you activate this region of the brain, the worse your performance is.

While the brain images dont conclusively indicate that cardiovascular risk factors cause cognitive issues, they do strongly suggest the two are related.

There are cardiovascular-related differences in brain activation, and the greater your risk factors, the worse you perform, Basak said. That doesnt establish cause and effect; to do that is impractical.

As the connection between these risk factors and cognitive decline become more firmly established and the characteristics of superagers are refined, Basak hopes that tactics for maintaining cognitive function can become widespread.

We hope to find ways to create superagers via interventions later in life in order to help with cognitive problems relating to fitness or blood pressure, she said.

This research was partially supported by National Institute on Aging grant R56AG060052 as well as a grant from the Advanced Imaging Research Center at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

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Brain Imaging Links Cardiovascular Health to Multitasking Ability - University of Texas at Dallas

What makes these 6 spas the best wellness destinations in the world?Worldwide Health & Wellness Destination of the Year is one of the highest accolades in the World Spa & Wellness Awards.The six amazing properties on the shortlist all impressed our judges with their innovative business models, outstanding service and dedication to improving the wellbeing of every guest. Heres a little more about what makes them so special.Clinique La Prairie Spa & Wellness Center, Clarens, Switzerland

Clinique La Prairie takes a holistic approach tomedical wellbeing, using a combination of medical expertise, internationally trained therapists and traditional and alternative philosophies.

The spa and wellness centre aims to encourage guests to become architects of their own vitality through programmes built on its pillars of longevity: medical care, nutrition, movement and wellbeing, which work together to promote energy production and cellular growth.

Clinique La Prairie prides itself on its full state-of-the-art medical centre, with over 50 doctors of varied specialities, as well as a six-room medical aesthetics centre and two aesthetic doctors, with one specialising in aesthetics for men.

Clinique La Prairie has appeared in articles in Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire and Town and Country, and uses five different PR agencies across to market and advertise the wellness centre.

Como Shambhala advocates proactive wellness, combining modern sciencewith ancient healing. The estate aims to help individuals find a sense of peace through the continuous process of learning and rebalancing.

As a retreat for change, Como Shambhala provides a 360-degree experience tailored to individuals needs, offering lifestyle and healing programmes for mind, body and spirit.

Guests are encouraged to come alone, engaging at their own pace and on their own terms. Como Shambhala encourages a sense of community between single guests through activities and dining experiences that bring them together.

Como Shambhala continues to evolve by introducing new modalities; for example, Balinese Chakra Healing, for guests to enjoy new traditional healing, and cultural experiences. It has also introduced evening wellness talks on topics such as gut health and managingstress naturally.

At the heart of Euphoria Spas philosophy is the Euphoria Methodos, an approach built on the blending of ancient Hellenic and Chinese philosophies and practices and a belief that individuals have the ability to become their own healer.

Euphorias location is also fundamental to the healing process, incorporating the energy of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Mystras, the Mediterranean mountains and the landscaped grounds, to create an environment of serenity.

The spa is built into the mountains, and has four levels, each representing a distinct passage in the transformational journey of the guest.

On leaving, guests receive support on how to incorporate what they have learnt into daily life. They are encouraged to see life as a transformation and joyous process.

Fivelements Retreat Bali is inspired by the Balinese concept Panca Mahabhuta, representing the vedic five elements: ether, air, fire, water and earth. Each has its own character and celestial element, and together their internal and external forces attune to ones authenticity and true potential.

The retreat is dedicated to what its founders call love in action, which is a vision of learning to love and respect life, and encourages guests to nurture harmony though spiritual practices, the environment, and one another. This creates a balanced way of living that is directly influenced by the Balinese people and their culture

Completed in 2019, a professional culinary training kitchen is an additional facility, expanding Fivelementss Cuisine for Life retreats. The space hosts renowned plant-based chefs, programmes and encourages guests to continue Fivelements wellness principles at home.

The Kamalaya resort centres around a cave previously used for centuries by Buddhist monks as a meditative retreat, creating a healing energy that envelops the resort.

Kamalaya's approach to wellness draws from ancient Asian healing traditions such as traditional Chinese medicine and ayurveda, alongside holistic western approaches such as naturopathy and homeopathy and current medical research.

Guests can also address their emotional and mental wellbeing with the team of meditation and life enhancement mentors.

The original vision for Kamalaya blossomed from founders John and Karina Stewarts lifelong curiosity and passion for wellness. John lived the life of a yogi monk in the Himalayas in India for 17 years and his wife Karina is a master of traditional Chinese medicine, who was brought up with Asian influences of meditation, yoga and natural healing.

Lefay Spa has curated is own innovative wellness method that combines classic Chinese Medicine and Western scientific research.

Through its programmes, this method aims to restore complete psychophysical wellbeing, and tackles obstacles such as incorrect posture, excess weight, premature ageing, sleep disorders and body purification.

Each programme is created following an interview with a doctor, energy treatments, hydrotherapy, physical and rebalancing activities, personalised phytotherapy and spa treatments.

Lefay Spa also has a commitment to sustainability and the philosophy that personal wellness should never overlook environmental wellness. It has been certified as the first organic and ecological Spa in Italy by Ecocert.

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What makes these 6 spas the best wellness destinations in the world? - Professional Beauty

Loneliness is a prevalent and serious public health problem impacting health, well-being and longevity. Seeking to develop effective interventions, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine examined the psychological and environmental factors that lead to patterns of loneliness in different age groups.

Researchers used a web-based survey of 2,843 participants, ages 20 to 69 years, from across the United States.

The study, published in the November 10, 2020 online edition of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, found that levels of loneliness were highest in the 20s and lowest in the 60s, with another peak in the mid-40s.

What we found was a range of predictors of loneliness across the lifespan, said corresponding senior author Dilip V. Jeste, M.D., senior associate dean for Healthy Aging and Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

The researchers noted that lower levels of empathy and compassion, smaller social networks, not having a spouse or a partner and greater sleep disturbances were consistent predictors of loneliness across all decades. Lower social self-efficacy or the ability to reflect confidence in exerting control over ones own motivation, behavior and social environment and higher anxiety were associated with worse loneliness in all age decades, except the 60s.

Loneliness was also associated with a lower level of decisiveness in the 50s.

The study confirmed previous reports of a strong inverse association between loneliness and wisdom, especially the pro-social behaviors component (empathy and compassion).

Compassion seems to reduce the level of loneliness at all ages, probably by enabling individuals to accurately perceive and interpret others emotions along with helpful behavior toward others, and thereby increasing their own social self-efficacy and social networks, said Jeste.

The survey suggested that people in their 20s were dealing with high stress and pressure while trying to establish a career and find a life partner.

A lot of people in this decade are also constantly comparing themselves on social media and are concerned about how many likes and followers they have, said Tanya Nguyen, Ph.D., first author of the study and assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. The lower level of self-efficacy may lead to greater loneliness.

People in their 40s start to experience physical challenges and health issues, such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

Individuals may start to lose loved ones close to them and their children are growing up and are becoming more independent. This greatly impacts self-purpose and may cause a shift in self-identify, resulting in increased loneliness, said Nguyen.

Jeste said the findings are especially relevant during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

We want to understand what strategies may be effective in reducing loneliness during this challenging time, said Jeste. Loneliness is worsened by the physical distancing that is necessary to stop the spread of the pandemic.

Nguyen said intervention and prevention efforts should consider stage-of-life issues. There is a need for a personalized and nuanced prioritizing of prevention targets in different groups of people, said Jeste.

Co-authors include: Ellen Lee, Rebecca Daly, Tsung-Chin Wu, Yi Tang, Xin Tu, Ryan Van Patten, and Barton Palmer, all at UC San Diego.

Funding for this study came, in part, from the National Institute of Health (grants K23 MH118435, K23 MH119375, T32 MH019934, and R01 MH094151); UC San Diego Center for Healthy Aging; and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Study: Loneliness highest in the 20s and lowest in the 60s - University of California

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Building on ground-breaking conferences in London (2017) and Washington (2019), Metabesity 2020 will be held online, with an all-access free pass option, on Oct. 12-15.

Keynoters include Dr. Victor Dzau, (President of the National Academy of Medicine), Dr. Kenneth Dychtwald (Founder of Age Wave and one of America's leading gerontologist), and Lord Geoffrey Filkin (Chair of the Strategic Advisory Group of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for Longevity). Congresswoman Shalala, the longest-serving Secretary of Health and Human Services in history and now representing Miami-Dade County, Florida, one of the oldest demographics in the U.S., will join for a fireside chat in a session on making healthy longevity a national priority. Other speakers include Peter Stein(Director of FDA's Office of New Drugs), Luigi Ferrucci (Scientific Director of the National Institute on Aging of NIH), top researchers in geroscience, diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases, and their peers in industry, capital markets and other stakeholders.

This unique, silo-busting conference gathers more than 70 speakers in 20 sessions and will focus on preventing chronic disease and the extension of "healthspan," the portion of life spent free of significant disease.Targeting Metabesity 2020 will also offer a full day for Longevity Sector Investors at the Shark Tank-inspired Emerging Company Showcase on Oct. 15.

Founder and Co-Chair of Metabesity 2020, Dr. Alexander Fleming commented, "We are a part of a global moonshot project to advance healthy longevity for all within the next decade. We aim to make healthy longevity a national policy and part of everyday clinical practice. In addition to presenting the amazing scientific advances, in this Pandemic year, we are spotlighting the importance of equal access to solutions and the related disparities across ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic groups."

Conference Co-chair, Stanford ProfessorDr. Lawrence Steinman, a co-discoverer of the multiple sclerosis drug, Tysabri and a number of other therapeutic approaches, added, "After several decades of stupendous progress in treating immediately life-threatening conditions, orphan and genetic disorders, and incapacitating degenerative diseases, we must turn our attention to slowing the aging process and reducing the risks of the major chronic diseases. Collectively, these diseases account for the great majority of morbidity and mortality and healthcare spending across the globe."

Conference organizer and Kinexum CEO Thomas Seoh noted, "This year's edition of Metabesity is a major milestone for the conference. A large and diverse online global audience has registered, and many more will be able to view the recorded proceedings.We are thrilled that the not-for-profit Kitalys Institute is taking the conference forward, along with related initiatives. Kitalys and the Metabesity Conference are partnering with a powerful network of academic, business, and governmental organizations to help reap the longevity dividend, a triple health, well-being and economic win for our young, our growing elderly, taxpayers, and our economy."

Conference organizer and Kitalys Institute Executive Director Adriane Berg added, "The Kitalys Institute mission is to accelerate the translation of emerging science into equitable gains in public health.We are thrilled and honored to work with the prominent speakers and motivated attendees of the Metabesity conferences to prevent or delay chronic diseases and extend healthy longevity."

To simulate the ambience and networking of previous conferences, Metabesity 2020 will include social gatherings after each day's program and a gala event on Wednesday evening. Acclaimed artists Voces8 and composer Eric Whitacre and his 17,000+ singers virtual choir will provide musical interludes. Amazing improv rapper and comedian Chris Turner will emcee the gala event.

For further information, please contact:

Adriane Berg, Executive Director, Kitalys Institute, at [emailprotected], +1 (201) 303-6517.

AlisonCockrell, Custom Management Group, at[emailprotected].

Targeting Metabesity 2020 website at http://www.metabesity2020.com

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Stellar Speakers to Make Targeting Metabesity 2020 One of the Most Important Healthy Longevity Conferences of the Year - PRNewswire

Amid the news explosion that followed President Trumps COVID-19 diagnosis and brief convalescence earlier this month, there was a nugget you might have missed: The antibody treatment from biotech company Regeneron the president tookseemingly to great effecthad been developed in part by means of cells derived from fetal tissue.

Most of the discussion around this revelation concerned whether it showed the president to be a hypocriteeither personally because of his stated pro-life beliefs, or as a matter of policy because his administration has suspended federal funding for scientific research involving fetal tissue. (Both claims were dubious: There was no reason to believe the president knew the provenance of the Regeneron cocktail when he was treated with it, and the kind of fetal-derived cells used to develop the drug were not included in the administrations funding freeze.)

But the news portended a larger problem that may prove important in months to come: the ethical objections other pro-life people may have to new COVID treatmentsincluding vaccineswith similar issues in their development history.

I think its going to test our convictions about these things, said Dr. C. Ben Mitchell, a professor of moral philosophy at evangelical Union University and senior fellow at the Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity. Whether or not we are going to be consistent with our convictions.

Beyond the central aim of ending legal abortion, no issue has so united the pro-life movement over the last few decades as the push to prevent fetal and embryonic remains from being used in medical research. In the 2000s, the battle involved embryonic stem cell research: President Bush prohibited federal funding for research involving new embryonic stem cell lines in 2001, a policy President Obama reversed in 2009. More recently, the issue has been researchers use of fresh tissue from recent abortions, following activist David Daleidens 2015 expos on Planned Parenthoods practice of selling organs from aborted fetuses to medical research companies.

But while pushing for public policy changes and supply chain reforms to make researchers less reliant on ongoing abortions, pro-lifers have also struggled with a parallel issue on a more personal level: whether its permissible to make use of treatments developed via the use of fetal tissue that already exist. If abortion is evil, they ask themselves, then can I in good conscience allow myself to benefit from medicines that rely on the practice?

Such questions are complicated by the fact that, unlike the tissue research that has dominated pro-life policy space in recent years, many medical products in current use, including a number of childhood vaccines, have a connection to abortion that is distant and tenuous. The cell cultures used in developing such medicines are most accurately described not as fetal cells themselves, but as cells that are fetal-derived: Cells originally taken from an aborted fetus that have been cultivated to multiply freely ever since.

The most widely used of these cell lines date back to just a handful of abortions in Europe in the 1960s. The WI-38 cell line, which has been used to develop vaccines for rubella, rabies, measles, mumps, and various other diseases, is derived from the lung tissue of a fetus aborted in Sweden in 1962; The MRC-5 line, used to produce vaccines for Hepatitis A and polio, dates back to 1966. Other lines are used for other purposes: HEK293 cells, which are derived from fetal kidney cells isolated in the Netherlands in the early 1970s, can be used to create virus-like cells that arent able to infect humans. Researchers use these pseudoviruses to test new therapeutics without having to handle live virus themselves, reducing the need for extreme biosafety precautions in laboratory settings. (The aforementioned Regeneron made use of HEK293 cells in this way.)

These cell cultures wont reproduce infinitely, but saying so almost feels like a technicality: Descendants of the WI-38 and MRC-5 lines have been used to create hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines over the past half-century.

Going by any sort of costbenefit analysis, the use of these cell lines has been a force for good in the world. By making use of the remains of a bare handful of elective abortionsabortions that would have taken place whether or not researchers decided to use thema staggering number of people around the world have been spared the miseries of a whole host of wretched and deadly diseases.

But for those who advocate for decoupling from such practices, simply to use the language of cost and benefit in the first place is to give away the game. If thats the measure, they argue, its hard to see how you could oppose any promising medical research, even the most depraved: How can you weigh the suffering of a few unfortunates against the ongoing benefits to all humanity of curing a deadly disease?

These sorts of ethical questions arent the exclusive domain of the pro-life movement. What posture we ought to take toward ill-gotten medical research is a question that has long occupied bioethicists, given how much of the science underpinning our current understanding and practice of medicine was conducted in unethical waysoften even by the standards of their own time, and even more so by the more exacting standards of the present.

The classic example, of course, is the gruesome human experimentation carried out by Nazi doctors in concentration camps, but there are examples closer to home, too: black men in Alabama whose untreated syphilis was allowed to fester for decades so government researchers could observe the progress of the disease, all the while assuring the subjects they were being treated; developmentally disabled children in New York given chocolate milk laced with feces to deliberately infect them with hepatitis as part of an effort to develop a vaccine.

Other ethical issues involve the origin of immortalized cell cultures in particular. The longevity of these cell lines is such that many of them predate modern medical standards on ethical human research, which werent truly codified until the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavior Research, established by Congress for the purpose in 1974, published its Belmont Report in 1979. The oldest such cell line in existence is a culture of cervical cancer cells taken from a woman named Henrietta Lacks in 1951, who died of the disease that same year. Lacks never consented to having her cells cultured; nor did the women who obtained the abortions that resulted in the WI-38 or MRC-5 cells.

These fraught ethical issues are not a thing of the past. After decades of lobbying, the Lacks family finally won a partial concession from the National Institutes of Health in 2013 to place some restrictions on medical access to information about their relatives cells. Pro-life organizations continually push for researchers to divest from and seek alternatives to fetal cell cultures as well.

For some pro-life bioethicists, the vast distance between the harm of the original abortion and the use of the modern treatment in which it resulted means that, while policymakers and biotech firms still have a moral obligation to work toward developing ethically unproblematic alternatives, individuals dont necessarily have a moral duty to abstain from such treatments themselves. Medical ethics are complicated and a matter of conscience, said Tiffany Manor, who directs the Life Ministry of the conservative Lutheran ChurchMissouri Synod. Some modern medical procedures result from past research that was conducted unethically. That doesnt mean that we ought to throw out all of the beneficial procedures.

But others argue that individuals retain a moral duty to keep pressure on the medical research industry by declining the use of such treatments when possible without creating grave risks to public health. The Catholic Churchs Pontifical Academy for Life tried to strike such a balance when it considered the question in 2005:

On a cultural level, the use of such vaccines contributes in the creation of a generalized social consensus to the operation of the pharmaceutical industries which produce them in an immoral way. Therefore, doctors and fathers of families have a duty to take recourse to alternative vaccines (if they exist), putting pressure on the political authorities and health systems so that other vaccines without moral problems become available. They should take recourse, if necessary, to the use of conscientious objection with regard to the use of vaccines produced by means of cell lines of aborted human foetal origin.

The document goes on:

As regards the diseases against which there are no alternative vaccines which are available and ethically acceptable, it is right to abstain from using these vaccines if it can be done without causing children, and indirectly the population as a whole, to undergo significant risks to their health.

You can see the precarious moral tightrope here: It is good, in the mind of pro-life ethicists, to attempt as much as possible not to participate, however indirectly, in the evil act of a long-ago abortion. But one ought not strain so hard to avoid that participation that one thoughtlessly commits another evil act: allowing oneself or ones children to become vectors of otherwise preventable disease, spreading suffering and even death to those around them.

All this, remember, is just the moral calculus that surrounds such vaccine under normal medical circumstances. Throw in a global pandemic and an unprecedented race to treat and cure it, and you begin to get a sense of the scale of the ethical headaches involved.

Take the issue of Regeneron. Since his own positive experience with the companys antibody cocktail, REGN-COV2, President Trump has become its biggest cheerleader; pushing for it to play a major role in COVID treatment going forward. We have hundreds of thousands of doses that are just about ready. I have emergency use authorization all set, he said on October 7. Youre gonna get better, and youre gonna get better really fast.

But both Regenerons drug and a similar antibody treatment currently being developed by Eli Lilly made use of fetal tissue in their developmentnot in the actual manufacture of the drug, as mentioned above, but in creating neutered pseudoviruses to test its effectiveness.

Imagine a person whose doctor has recommended such a drug trying to make a decision in the light of the moral principles suggested by the Pontifical Academy for Life. On the one hand, the drug is a product of fetal tissue research in only the most remote possible way. But the possibility of endangering others by abstaining does not bear considering here, as the cocktail is a treatment, not a vaccine. Further, it is unclear how a person recommended such a treatment by a doctor ought to think about the question of whether there are ethically acceptable alternatives. Other drugs can help manage COVID, of course, but generally speaking their effect is cumulative: Dexamethasone and remdesivir are not replacements for antibody therapy.

To cap the dilemma off, it isnt as though a pro-life person could start off with unproblematic treatments and work up to REGN-COV2 as a matter of last resort: Patients arent prescribed antivirals or steroids for COVID unless theyre already seriously sick, while antibody treatments like Regenerons have been shown to be helpful only if theyre given very early in the course of the disease, before the bodys own immune response has had a chance to kick in.

COVID vaccines in development present further difficulties. First, we dont actually know which of the many vaccines currently being developed will end up the first to pass muster as a safe, effective, and mass-producible weapon against the pandemic. Many of the candidates do not make use of fetal-derived cells in any capacity. Others use such cells only in confirmatory tests, as with Regeneron. Still others use them in the production of the vaccines themselves.

Of the four vaccines seemingly closest to release in America, twothose being developed by Pfizer and Modernawere merely tested on fetal-derived cells. Two others, from Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, are made with them. The latter vaccines Phase III clinical trials were placed on hold earlier this month, but were resumed last week.

Under ordinary circumstances, this would be a no-brainer: Many pro-life people would simply wait for one of the less objectionable vaccines to become available. But during the coronavirus pandemic, where every day that goes by without a vaccine is critical, what happens if Johnson & Johnson or AstraZenecas product is first past the post, and the federal government invests heavily in its development and distribution?

Its unclear whether such a situation would provoke a legal clash. The federal government doesnt have the constitutional authority to mandate vaccines, but states and cities can; all 50 states require children to receive a battery of vaccines before attending public school, although all offer various exemptions for religious, philosophical, and/or other reasons. Whether citizens have a right to such exemptions, however, is less clear: the Supreme Court has upheld mandatory vaccination programs in the past and has separately ruled that the right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease.

Theres no reason to believe yet that states will choose to go that route. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose state was racked by the coronavirus this spring and who last year signed a state law ending religious exemptions for childhood vaccines, is thus far messaging that an eventual COVID vaccine will be available to all New York residents who want one.

The likelier scenario may be that such a clash will instead simply play out in the court of public opinion.

One of the nightmare scenarios Ive been thinking about is, say we get a safe and effective vaccine, and it comes from what many would regard as tainted sources, said Mitchell. And so pro-lifers decide not to use the vaccinethey wont be vaccinated. My guess is that there would be a huge uprising in the society saying, Well, youre posing now a public health risk. We now have a vaccine, but youre choosing not to use it. Youre exposing others to it by not taking the vaccine, or youre going to cost our health care system huge amounts of money in treating you when we have a vaccine that could prevent getting COVID-19, but you choose not to. So I think those are going to be an important test of our convictions.

Photograph by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto/Getty Images.

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Is the Pro-Life Movement on a Collision Course with the Coronavirus? - The Dispatch

Wellness has always been at the foundation of Watermark Retirement Communities business model. Now, the Tucson-based operator aims to take wellness to the next level with a precision approach.

That is, Watermark is harnessing technology, partnerships, new in-house talent, building design and novel operational approaches to support tailored wellness for each resident.

In this regard, Watermark Chairman David Freshwater compares Watermark to Tesla. He calls the automaker a technology company that just happens to make cars, and considers Watermark to be a wellness company that provides housing and services for seniors.

Were going to try to be the Tesla of senior housing, he said Wednesday during a fireside chat at Senior Housing News BUILD conference, being held virtually this week.

In recent years, senior living has increasingly shifted from a focus on taking care of peoples needs to promoting their wellness. Often, these new operational models are organized around various facets of wellness, such as physical, intellectual and spiritual.

While Watermark also believes in a multi-faceted approach to wellness, a pitfall is viewing wellness as a discrete component of how a senior living community is built and operates, Freshwater said. For instance, some senior living communities have wellness centers, which is where wellness-oriented programming occurs.

But the pursuit of wellness must be ongoing and supported across a residents entire experience, Freshwater argued.

It comes back to the idea of the whole community being a wellness center, he said.

Freshwater came to this conclusion in part through work that Watermark has done over the years with wellness pioneers based in Tucson, including Canyon Ranch and the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine.

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This work began with the very first community that Watermark opened, in 1987. The University of Arizona Center for Aging approached the operator about a wellness concept it wanted to embed in a retirement community. This concept, Project AgeWell, set Watermark on a path of incorporating wellness throughout its building designs and operations.

As Watermark grew and evolved, its commitment to wellness did not waver, but wellness was not necessarily a core component of every project as it had been at the first community. Another turning point came in 2005, when Watermark held a forum with some leading minds in wellness and added a new dimension of wellness to those typically considered. This additional dimension was focused on the built environment.

Today, Watermarks portfolio encompasses 60 communities with 12 under development, and is creating communities to support wellness through all aspects of design. This not only includes major efforts such as having wellness-oriented restaurants but must extend to some less obvious areas such as landscaping. One example Freshwater gave was the decision to eliminate the use of chemical weedkillers. Because its more difficult to keep weeds in check through other methods, there are occasionally weeds in the landscaping, so sales staff had to be educated that this is a feature to sell residents on, not a source of embarrassment.

Likewise, the landscaping is designed to blend with the existing environment; if a community is located in a desert, designs often let the desert extend all the way to the back doors of apartments.

So the operator spends time educating its residents about the possible natural dangers they may encounter in such an environment. Freshwater noted that it is not uncommon for residents in Watermarks desert communities to find rattlesnakes on their back decks. Rather than compromising wellness-oriented design for the sake of preventing such incursions, the providers philosophy calls for education and common sense.

That rattlesnake isnt going to bite you just call maintenance and well move it, Freshwater said, referring to the message conveyed to residents.

Watermark is taking a measured approach to rethinking building design in the Covid-19 era. Freshwater is cognizant that certain aspects of a buildings plant will have to change, such as HVAC systems. But the operator is looking at ways to retrofit designs that accommodate permanent changes stemming from the coronavirus, without acting rashly.

Were not going to be knee jerk and saying, lets put up plexiglass, Freshwater said.

He envisions the permanent changes Covid-19 will bring to the built environment will be similar to the safety measures enacted by the airline industry after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks such as tighter safety checkpoints and procedures at airports and reinforced metal doors on airplanes preventing access to cockpits.

Watermark views the pandemic as an opportunity to get granular and study what can be implemented in communities that strikes a balance between the services residents pay for with enhanced safety in the event of another mass outbreak.

And many of the approaches are simple. Watermark is looking at spacing dining rooms to encourage social interaction while compartmentalizing residents into smaller groups. The company is reviewing outdoor space in warm-weather communities to determine methods to seamlessly move from indoors to outdoors, such as indoor-outdoor exercise classes.

Community restrictions that Watermark enacted during the pandemics early weeks laid bare the need for resident engagement a core pillar of the operators E4 wellness strategy. (The other pillars are essence, enhance and embody.) The framework is being developed with leadership from Aras Erekul, who worked for Canyon Ranch before joining Watermark.

To Freshwater, a key principle of the approach is that keeping residents safe is not the same as keeping them well.

We could tell in our own communities that we really needed to somehow find a way to get people engaged again, he said.

As the pandemic persists, Watermark is looking at ways to tailor and scale its wellness programs to a larger resident population, and technology will play a role. The operator is adapting its Watermark University program in which residents, staff and families host classes rooted in their passions so that classes will be available to residents either on demand or in real-time, virtual settings.

Watermark has precedent in doing this. The operator once launched the Fountains Club, a wellness program at its CCRCs which opened its slate of amenities to seniors living outside the campus. The program was well received, with up to 200 people from the outside community participating.

It was a win-win for the community because it allowed us to have more vibrant programming and a broader offering for our residents, Freshwater said.

Moving forward, partnerships will play a pivotal role in achieving Watermarks wellness goals and this is an area where he noted the industry as a whole needs to improve. Watermark entered a partnership with the longevity center at UCLA, where the operator is opening a community on campus, and is exploring other partnerships with research centers, hospital groups and wellness specialists.

In Freshwaters view, wellness must not be simply medical. It can also involve arts, culture, music anything that can enhance the services it provides to residents, it will consider.

There are literally thousands of affiliations that we could have been cultivating, he said. If you have more minds approaching a topic, youre going to do better at it than if you just stay myopic.

Precision wellness is a demanding operational model that at its most robust requires dedicated staff members. Communities that are part of Watermarks high-end Elan brand, which includes a high-profile New York City project that is soon to welcome its first residents, do staff at this higher level.

But, advancements in technology and the embrace of tech driven by Covid-19 also open up new possibilities for bringing wellness to more affordable communities, Freshwater believes. For instance, being able to share wellness programming across various communities through virtual platforms creates cost efficiencies.

Covid-19 gives me hope that wellness isnt a luxury, Freshwater said.

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Watermark Aims To Be 'Tesla of Senior Housing' With Precision Wellness Model - Senior Housing News

Fruits and vegetables diet for long healthy life and heart health  |  Photo Credit: iStock Images

One thing that the COVID-19 pandemic did was bring the focus right back on good health and the importance of a fit and able body. Also, while mankind chases the dream of extreme longevity, the aspect of having a fit body cannot be done away with.

Heidi Godman, Executive Editor, Harvard Health Letter writes online that as we often talk about how diets rich in fruits and vegetables are good for your health, very few people are clued into how much (quantity of fruits and veggies) do we need to average per day to reap real rewards?

The answer that she gives for that is based on an analysis from Harvard researchers and it is: A total of five servings per day of fruits and vegetables offers the strongest health benefits.

The Harvard Study on Longevity:Godman cites the research, published online March 1, 2021, by the journal Circulation. It was not a short term study, but involving data pooled from self-reported health and diet information collected from dozens of studies from around the world. The sample size was not small either. A whopping two million people had been followed up to 30 years to collect this data.

Though practically not everyone can afford to (in terms of time, availability, price etc) have a vegetable and fruit-heavy diet, there are untold benefits from this "Saatvik" aahar or back to nature simple diet.

Godman cites that as compared with people who said they ate just two servings of fruits or vegetables each day, people who ate five servings per day had:

"Fruits and vegetables are major sources of several nutrients that are strongly linked to good health, particularly the health of the heart and blood vessels: potassium, magnesium, fibre, and polyphenols (antioxidant plant compounds)," explains Dr Daniel Wang, lead author on the study and a member of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Womens Hospital.

Set your own menu, plan the combo:The most effective combination of fruits and vegetables among study participants was two servings of fruits plus three servings of vegetables per day, for a total of five servings daily, states the Harvard Health Letter.

Dr Wang says leafy green vegetables (kale, spinach) and fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin C and beta carotene (citrus, berries, carrots) are primary sources of antioxidants that may play a role in preventing cancer and including them in your diet will bring great benefits.

So should you be eating more than 5 servings of fruits and vegetables in a day if you have the facility or access? Research says that would be such a waste. It turns out that eating more than five servings of fruits or vegetables per day didnt seem to provide additional benefit in lowering the risk of death. Neither did eating starchy vegetables like peas, corn, or potatoes, or drinking fruit juices.

What if I miss eating this fruit+veggie diet on certain days?Godman's article says that if during any particular day you have no fruit and vegetables, thats fine, that is not the end of your resolve to eat sensibly.

Dust yourself, get back onto the fitness bandwagon and add a little more than usual on other days to raise your average for the week. It's ultimately about how much you eat on average.

How to include fruits and vegetables in your daily meals?Make minor changes to your menu.

For breakfast, it could be a bowl of Dalia, poha, upma, or cereal with some blueberries, or perhaps eggs and sauted tomatoes, onions, and spinach.

For lunch, you could toss up a salad with your favourite fruits and vegetables (how about chunks of banana and apple in a bowl of milk - instead of crushing the fruits to a pulp? Let the fibre stay intact, eat your fruits). Or take a bowl and make kale and spinach salad with grapefruit chunks, red peppers, carrots, and pine nuts, a cup of yoghurt with strawberries, or a smoothie with kale and mango.

What about dinner? The cucumber raita or Maharashtrian Koshimbir (Dahi and chopped cucumber+tomato+onion with a dash of seasoning) or the onion+lemon juice+carrot pieces+cucumber+tomato salad will quite you a plethora of fruits and vegetables. Or else, as the Harvard newsletter suggests, you can include a side salad or a large side of vegetables such as steamed broccoli or yellow squash and zucchini. If you havent had a chance to eat enough vegetables throughout the day, make your main meal a large salad with lots of colourful vegetables and some chunks of protein, such as grilled chicken or fish.

Nursing a sweet tooth?For dessert: fresh or frozen fruit is a delicious and healthful treat, especially with a dab of frozen yoghurt. Or add some milk and a wee bit of honey.

Now the toughest part: How to measure a serving?Fantastic, the report of the now very famous study says "Squeeze in five servings per day". We are stuck on how much, exactly, is a serving?

Check the Harvard Newsletter list that spells out just that out for a wide variety of fruits and vegetables in the table below (see "Fruit and vegetable servings").

This can guide you in maintaining a change and variation when planning meals. You can choose from the list any of your favourites. Aim for a wide variety of fruits and vegetables to get the best mix of vitamins, minerals, and other beneficial nutrients in your personalized five-a-day plan.

Fruit and vegetable servingsFruit (and serving size)

(Source: Harvard magazine Circulation, March 14, 2021)

Bon appetit! And may you live a long, healthy, and fulfilling life along with your near and dear ones for the company.

Disclaimer: Tips and suggestions mentioned in the article are for general information purposes only and should not be construed as professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor or a professional healthcare provider if you have any specific questions about any medical matter.

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Eating fruits and vegetables vital for longevity BUT exactly how much of it should one consume in a day? - Times Now

Breeding herd mortality and replacement rates continue to be challenging areas for commercial swine producers. Breeding sow herd lameness is a major contributor to mortality challenges, feet and leg conformation and lameness. Feet and leg structure rank right behind reproductive failure as the major identifiable reason for sow culling and reduced sow longevity.

Overgrown toes, often called digital overgrowth in scientific circles, continues to represent an increasing breeding sow herd challenge. Overgrown toes are one of the most common foot abnormalities seen and recorded on commercialized sow farms, and often lead to lameness and premature sow culling. In addition, sows with severe toe overgrowth may have impaired welfare and this in-turn could erode consumer confidence.

It has been reported that just under 10% of lactating sows had overgrown toes (KilBride et al, 2010). In another study that included 3,500-plus pregnant sows, over 25% had moderately overgrown toes, while 7% had severely overgrown toes (Boyle, 1996). Overgrown toes can negatively impact sow performance because sows spend less time eating and are quicker to lay down post farrowing when compared to sows with normal toe growth (Calderon Diaz et al., 2015). In addition, Calderon Diaz and colleagues (2015) reported that sows with overgrown toes had higher instances of slipping and weight shifted frequently. Collectively, these behaviors and postural changes indicate a sow in greater discomfort. Beyond discomfort, the actions of slipping and being quicker to lay down may be related to increased piglet crushing and greater pre-wean mortalities. Fitzgerald et al. (2012) reported that sows with overgrown toes averaged 1.5 fewer piglets born alive when compared to control sows without digital overgrowth. The overall combination of sow discomfort, lower feed intake, lower number born alive and greater piglet crushing contributes to poorer sow performance and reduced breeding herd efficiency (Lucia et al., 2000). The sows age/number of parities may also play a role with overgrown toes in the breeding herd. Knauer et al. (2012) reported that 8% of parity 1 sows had overgrown toes on their rear feet, but between parities 6 through 10 this number increased to 40%. Interestingly, sows culled with overgrown toes on the front feet were much lower, with 0% for parity 1 sows and approximately 5% between parities 6 through 10 (Knauer et al., 2012).

Sows with overgrown toes tend to have a greater risk for developing other foot problems like cracks in the toes and lesions (Lisgara et al., 2014). Furthermore, overgrown dew claws may become concave, extremely curved or extend below the heel bulb that in-turn and contribute to increased lameness. In a study evaluating sow lesions at the harvest plant, Knauer et al. (2007) observed that 86% (n=3,158) had a lesion on at least one foot. Additionally, 52% of sows had at least one lesion on their front feet and 81% had at least one lesion on their rear feet. The same study speculated that increased rear foot lesions may be attributed to the wet environment that sows are exposed to in a gestation stall.

Another factor contributing to overgrowth toes relates to weight bearing on their feet. Approximately 80% of the sows weight of the sow is born by the outside (lateral) toe and the majority of the weight on that toe being placed on the heel bulb (Webb, 1984). The uneven weight distribution on the feet as well as the difference in weight distribution between the outside (lateral) and inside (medial) toes (Sasaki et al., 2015) likely contribute to the uneven toe wear that can contribute to overgrown toes in the sow breeding herd.

As the sows toes and dewclaws become overgrown, there is an increased risk that they may getting caught in slotted flooring and break off creating lameness issues (Pluym et al., 2013b). If a sows dewclaw becomes detached, the highly innervated corium (like the nail bed in humans) is exposed and results in a very painful lameness condition (Pluym et al., 2011; Pluym et al., 2013b). The risk for this occurrence increases in group-housed sow gestation settings where the biological demand increases because sows are competing for resources and increased locomotion occurs (Anil et al., 2003; Pluym et al., 2013b; Tinkle et al., 2017).

Histologically, there are differences when comparing foot and toe structure from sows feet with overgrown toes with sows having normal appearing toes. A variety of factors including body weight, weight distribution, trauma, fighting, housing type and the interaction among two or more factors play a role in differing foot structures that contribute to overgrown toes observed among breeding herd females (Newman et al., 2014). Newman et al. (2014) evaluated 24 Landrace x Large White F1 females to study cellular and toe structure. They defined overgrowth as claws that were greater than 50mm long. Their results indicated that of the 72 claws evaluated, 39 showed digital overgrowth while the remainder showed normal appearing toe growth. Overgrown toes ranged between 51 mm and 79 mm in length. Lateral rear claws comprised 67% of all overgrown toes. Laminitis was found in several toe tissue samples when evaluated microscopically from sows presenting overgrown toes. Inflammation was observed from 14 of the sows with overgrown toes, but total numbers were insufficient to create statistical significance.

It is clear that overgrown toes can be a challenge for commercial sow breeding herds. We know that overgrown toes can contribute to increased locomotion challenges and reduced sow performance in the breeding herd. Additionally, overgrown toes can be a welfare issues when toe overgrowth is excessive and/or when toes breakoff. This may cause injury or lameness. To date, identifying the cause for overgrown toes within commercial sow herds is challenging and is an area our research group is focusing on in the coming months.

Sources:Derek Henningsen, Grace Moeller, Anna Johnson, Locke Karriker, and Ken Stalder, Iowa State University,who aresolely responsible for the information provided, and wholly own the information. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.

References

Anil, L., K. M. G. Bhend, S. K. Baidoo, R. Morrison, and J. Deen. 2003. Comparison of injuries in sows housed in gestation stalls versus group pens with electronic sow feeders. J. Am. Vet. Med. Assoc. 223:13341338. doi:10.2460/javma.2003.223.1334.

Boyle, L., MSc. thesis 1996. Skin Lesions, Overgrown Hooves and Culling Reasons in Individually Housed Sows. University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.

Caldern Daz, J.A., Stienezena, I.M.J., Leonard, F.C., Boyle, L.A., 2015. The effect of overgrown claws on behaviour and claw abnormalities of sows in farrowing crates. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 166, 44-51.

Fitzgerald, R.F., Stalder, K.J., Karriker, L.A., Sadler, L.J., Hill, H.T., Kaisand, J., Johnson, A.K., 2012. The effect of hoof abnormalities on sow behavior and performance. Livestock Science 145, 230238.

KilBride, A.L., Gillman, C.E., Green, L.E., 2010. A cross-sectional study of prevalence and risk factors for foot lesions and abnormal posture in lactating sows on commercial farms in England. Anim. Welf. 19, 473480.

Knauer, M., K. J. Stalder, L. Karriker, T. J. Baas, C. Johnson, T. Serenius, L. Layman, and J. D. McKean. 2007. A descriptive survey of lesions from cull sows harvested at two Midwestern U.S. facilities. Prev. Vet. Med. 82:198212. doi:10.1016/j.prevetmed.2007.05.017.

Knauer, M., Stalder, K., Baas, T., Johnson, C., Karriker, L., 2012. Physical conditions of cull sows associated with on-farm production records. Open Journal of Veterinary Medicine, 2012, 2, 137-150.

Lisgara, M., Skampardonis, V., Kouroupides, S., Leontides, L., 2014. Hoof lesions and lameness in sows in three Greek swine herds. Journal of Swine Health and Production. 23, 5, 244-251.

Lucia, T., Dial, G.D., Marsh, W.E., 2000. Lifetime reproductive and financial performance of female swine. J. Am. Vet. Med. Assoc. 216, 18021809.

Newman, S.J., Rohrbach, B.W., Wilson, M.E., Torrison, J., Van Amstel, S., 2014. Characterization of histopathological lesions among pigs with overgrown claws. Journal of Swine Health and Production. 23, 2, 91-96.

Pluym, L., A. Van Nuffel, J. Dewulf, A. Cools, F. Vangroenweghe, S. Van Hoorebeke, and D. Maes. 2011. Prevalence and risk factors of claw lesions and lameness in pregnant sows in two types of group housing. Vet. Med. (Praha). 56:101109. doi:10.17221/3159-VETMED.

Pluym, L., A. Van Nuffel, and D. Maes. 2013b. Treatment and prevention of lameness with special emphasis on claw disorders in group-housed sows. Livest. Sci. 156:3643. doi:10.1016/j.livsci.2013.06.008.

Sasaki, Y., R. Ushijima, and M. Sueyoshi. 2015. Field study of hind limb claw lesions and claw measures in sows. Anim. Sci. J. 86:351357. doi:10.1111/asj.12299.

Tinkle, A. K., K. J. Duberstein, M. E. Wilson, M. A. Parsley, M. K. Beckman, J. Torrison, M. J. Azain, and C. R. Dove. 2017. Functional claw trimming improves the gait and locomotion of sows. Livest. Sci. 195:5357. doi:10.1016/j.livsci.2016.10.013.

Webb, N. G. 1984. Compressive stresses on, and the strength of the inner and outer digits of pigs feet, and the implications for injury and floor design. J. Agric. Eng. Res. 30:7180. doi:10.1016/S0021-8634(84)80008-6

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Characterization of overgrown toes in sow breeding herds - National Hog Farmer

TORONTO, Feb. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ReGen Scientific, a leader in personalized, preventative, and regenerative health announced today it will become the first comprehensive health clinic in Canada to bringSynaptive Medicals Evry, a superconducting 0.5T head magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system intended to provide MRI directly at the point-of-care, to their downtown Toronto location.

Maintaining a healthy brain during ones life is the uppermost goal in pursuing health and longevity, said Dr. Robert Francis, chairman and co-founder of ReGen Scientific. The information and images provided by Evry will inform and support our team of medical professionals in developing personalized proactive strategies to maintain and or restore brain health and cognitive performance to improve quality of life.

At the heart of ReGen Scientifics mission is to change the way health is measured and care is delivered with a hyper-personalized approach to health and wellness. With ReGen Scientifics adoption of Evry, for the first time ever, high performance MRI technology will become accessible directly at a patients point of care within a health clinic, giving doctors vital and potentially life-saving information when and where they need it most, said Cameron Piron, president and co-founder of Synaptive Medical. Our team spent years developing Evry and we are excited to partner with an already established Canadian leader in preventative health, ReGen Scientific, to bring this technology to Canadians seeking to understand the health of their brain well before issues arise.

Evry, which received Health Canada approval in February 2020 and FDA clearance in April of 2020, is currently being used in connection with multiple research studies being done at the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia including neuroimaging of stroke and tumor patients, with research funding also having been received to assess and track the impact that COVID-19 may have on the brain.

There are increasing scientific studies revealing that recovery from COVID-19 is a long-haul, meaning survivors continue to suffer debilitating illness and symptoms months after having it. This has created a COVID-19 long-haulers global patient movement seeking help with understanding what has happened within their bodies.

Jean-Marc MacKenzie, CEO and co-founder of ReGen Scientific indicated, ReGen Scientific is looking forward to supporting critical medical research on COVID-19 long-haulers, but more importantly, working to identify treatments that will assist individuals overcome with any lingering effects of COVID-19.

About ReGen Scientific Inc.

ReGen Scientific, is a Toronto based leader in personalized, preventative, and regenerative health. It is accelerating the loop between discovery medical science and evolutions in clinical and functional medicine. ReGen delivers hyper-personalized care based on its Science of You, which enables individuals to take control of their health with an objective of not only extending years lived but the ability to live those years with vitality and health. ReGen Scientific will launch its much-anticipated Toronto based Health Institute, in April 2021. This medical campus will offer the latest in health informatics, genetic testing, predictive screening, regenerative treatments, therapeutics, anti-aging research and functional medicine.

About Synaptive Medical

Synaptive Medical Inc., a Toronto-based, global medical device and technology company solves surgical, imaging, and data challenges to improve the quality of human lives. Synaptives integrated suite of products bridging MRI, surgical planning, navigation, and robotic visualization delivers novel information with automated efficiency across all stages of clinical intervention.

Media Contact

Rob FrancisChief Operating OfficerReGen Scientific 416-704-3064rob@regen.care

Katrina FerroSenior Marketing Associate, Events and CommunicationsSynaptive Medical 647-243-3355katrina.ferro@synaptivemedical.com

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ReGen Scientific First Health Institute in Canada to Introduce Evry into Proactive Brain Health Management and COVID-19 'Long-Hauler' Research and...

Sure, exercise helps your muscles, your brain, and your lifespan. (In some cases, it can even cause harm; for more on the dangerous side effects of exercise, see here.) But according to a new study published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, working out more every day can also enhance your feelings of purpose in life, and science shows that living a more purposeful and meaningful life is also a happier and longer one. Read on for more about this new study and what it means for you. And for more on the benefits of exercise, check out why Walking This Way Can Add 20 Years to Your Life, Says Top Scientist.

The study was led by Ayse Yemiscigil, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, and Ivo Vlaev, D.Phil, a professor of behavioral science at the UK's University of Warwick. The researchers first studied data provided by the big (and still going) Health and Retirement Study, where people over 50 report on their daily activities and mental health. Then, the researchers reference another study of more than 4,000 people who answered questions about their physical and mental health, as well as their sense of purpose.

Yemiscigil and Vlaev analyzed the data to figure out how much and how vigorously the people moved throughout their days, along with their feelings of purpose. And for more exercise news you can use, read up on the One Body Part You Never Exercise But Should, Say Experts.

The researchers found that exercise is not only linked with stronger feelings of purpose, but it creates a virtuous cycle, as those feelings of purpose then propel people to exercise more. What was especially interesting was how exercising earlier in life was found to be linked with a greater sense of purpose in people's later yearsand vice versa.

"People who started off with active lives generally showed an increasing sense of purpose over the years, and those whose sense of purpose was sturdier in the beginning were the most physically active years later," observed The New York Times, which also noted that those who feel purposeful early in life tend to take an extra walk "or two" every week later in life.

"It was especially interesting to see these effects in older people," Yemiscigil told the NY Times, "since many older people report a decreasing sense of purpose in their lives, and they also typically have low rates of engagement in physical activity."

Paul Dolan, Ph.D., is perhaps the world's most foremost expert on happiness. In his terrific book Happiness by Design, he defined happiness essentially as the perfect balance between "pleasure and purpose." Having more pleasure in your hard-partying college years may make you happier, but you also have a sense of purpose that you're being educated. Meanwhile, having more purpose in your child-rearing years may make you happier. It's an always-changing mix, he argued, and you need both of them to be happy, wherever the pleasure/purpose pendulum may be swinging.

According to data compiled by the University of Minnesota, having a stronger sense of purpose is linked to a longer life, a lower risk of heart disease, better protection against Alzheimer's disease, and even better pain management.

"Purpose is belonging to something bigger and greater than ourselves," longevity expert Kien Vuu, MD, once told The Beet.

His advice? Find something in your community where you can find healthy connections and contribute to a cause that is bigger than yourself. "On average, people live seven years longer if they have a deep sense of purpose," said Vuu. "They also had a limited risk of cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attack and stroke, which are the number one killer among Americans. If you happen to be hospitalized, if you have a sense of purpose, you actually spend fewer days in the hospital. This really is medicine, and purpose actually has biological effects." And for more reasons to exercise, read about The One Major Side Effect of Going for a Single 1-Hour Walk, Says New Study.

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New Study Reveals One Major Side Effect of Exercising More | Eat This Not That - Eat This, Not That

By Deborah Borfitz

January 13, 2021 | As aging researchers are aware, birthday candles are not a good guide to either human health or longevity. But there is an abundance of clues in the genome and, as suggested by studies in animals, some of age-related damage is reversible by removing or reprogramming problematic cells or blocking the activity of key proteins.

As it turns out, DNA methylationa frequently-used biomarker of biological ageis not just marking time like a clock on the wall but actually controlling time within cells, according to David Sinclair, an expert on aging at Harvard Medical School and cofounder of 4-year-old Life Biosciences. The revelation emerged from a study recently published in Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2975-4) where Harvard researchers showed, for the first time, that the pattern of DNA methylation in the genome can be safely reset to a younger age.

It was in fact a prerequisite to restoring youthful function and vision in old mice, says Sinclair, who has spent most of his adult life studying the epigenetic changes associated with aging. Up until a few years ago, he thought the process was unidirectional and that cells ultimately lost their identity and malfunctioned or became cancerous.

It seemed crazy to try to get proteins to return to the place they were in young cells, Sinclair says. Proteins move around in response to age-associated DNA damage and end up in the wrong places on the genome, causing the wrong genes to be turned on, but scientists did not know if proteins could go back, where the instructions were stored, or if they were being stored at all.

As covered in his 2019 bestseller Lifespan, Sinclair now believes that aging is the result of the so-called epigenetic changes scrambling how the body reads genetic code. Were essentially looking for the polish to get the cell to read the genome correctly again, he says, a process he likens to recovering music on a scratched CD.

Yamanaka Factors

Sinclair and his research associates have been focusing on the eye, in part because retinal tissues start aging soon after birth, he explains. While a damaged optic nerve can heal in a newborn, the injury is irreversible in a 1-year-old.

Yuancheng Lu, a former student of Sinclairs, was also interested in the eye because his family has a vision-correction business and recognized sight loss as a huge unmet need, he continues. We thought if we could take the age of those retinal cells back far enough, but not so far that they lose their identity, we might be able to see regrowth of the optic nerve if it was damaged.

Among the foundational work was a 2016 study in Cell (DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2016.11.052) by Life Biosciences cofounder Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte (Salk Institute for Biological Studies) who partially erased cellular markers of aging in mice that aged prematurely, as well as in human cells, by turning on Yamanaka factors Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc (OSKM) highly expressed in embryonic stem cells. Short-term induction of OSKM ameliorated hallmarks of aging and modestly extended lifespan in the short-lived mice.

The lifespan gain was widely dismissed as an artifact of shocking a mouse, says Sinclair, since the mice died if the treatment continued for more than two days. Although the human health implications appeared unlikely, his Harvard team decided to try the approach using an adeno-associated virus as a vehicle to deliver the youth-restoring OSKM genes into the retinas of aging mice.

The technology kept killing the mice or causing them to get cancer until Lu decided to drop the c-Myc genean oncogenein his experiments using human skin cells. He looked at [damaged] cells that had been expressing OSK for three weeks and the nerves were growing back toward the brain to an unprecedented degree. Moreover, the cells got older by the damage and younger by the treatment.

As the broader team went on to show in the Nature paper, the trio of Yamanaka factors effectively made cells younger without causing them to lose their identity (i.e., turning back into induced pluripotent stem cells) or fueling tumor growth even after a year of continuous treatment of the entire body of a mouse. If anything, the mice had fewer tumors over the course of the study, says Sinclair.

Although the mice needed to be autopsied to definitively measure tumor burden, Sinclair says the study will be repeated to learn if the epigenetic reprogramming technique can increase lifespan.

Findings have implications beyond the treatment of age-related diseases specific to the eye, says Sinclair. Aging researchers have published studies showing other types of tissues, including muscle and kidney cells, can also be rejuvenated.

Clocked Results

In the latest study using mice, epigenetic reprogramming was found to have three beneficial effects on the eye: promotion of optic nerve regeneration, reversal of vision loss with a condition mimicking human glaucoma, and reversal of vision loss in aging animals without glaucoma. The latter finding, from Sinclairs vantage point, is the most important one. This is ultimately a story about finding a repository of youthful information in old cells that can reverse aging.

Results of all three experiments are noteworthy and have commonly thought to be three separate processes, says Sinclair. That is only because the fields of aging and acute and chronic disease are distinct disciplines that rarely talk to each other.

The Harvard team is pioneering a new way to tackle diseases of aging by addressing the underlying cause. This is the first time, as far as Sinclair is aware, where nerve damage was studied in old rather than young animals. In the case of glaucoma and most diseases, aging is considered largely irrelevant, when of course we know glaucoma is a disease of aging.

A variety of aging clocks, including some the research team built themselves, have been deployed for studies because they are considered the most accurate predictor of biological age and future health, says Sinclair. As embryos, cells lay down different patterns of methylation to ensure they remember their purpose over the next 80 to 100 years.

For unknown reasons, methyl groups get predictably added and subtracted from DNA bases across cell and tissue types and even species, Sinclair says. In 2013, UCLAs Steve Horvath (another Life Biosciences cofounder) showed that machine learning could be used to pick out the hot spots and predict individual lifespan depending on how far above or below the DNA methylation line they sit (Genome Biology, DOI: 10.1186/gb-2013-14-10-r115).

A multitude of aging clocks have since been developed. Eventually, we will need some standardization in the field, but there is nothing super-mysterious about aging clocks, says Sinclair. One of my grad students could probably get you one by the end of the day.

Booming Field

Aging research is a rapidly accelerating field and epigenetic reprogramming is poised to become a particularly active area of inquiry. In terms of numbers, there are still only a dozen or so labs intensely working on this, but there are probably a hundred others I am aware of who are getting into it, says Sinclair.

Life Biosciences began with four labs, but new ones are now joining on an almost weekly basis, he adds. Collaborators have expanded work to the ear and other areas of the body beyond the eye, he adds.

Were also reducing the cost of the DNA clock test by orders of magnitude so [biological age prediction] can be done on millions of people, he continues. In the future, aging clocks are expected to be a routine test in physicians arsenal to guide patient care as well as to monitor response to cancer treatment.

Harvard University has already licensed two patents related to the technology used by the aging researchers to Life Biosciences, Sinclair says. The company has built a scientific team with a group of world-class advisors who developed gene therapy for the eye, which will be tested first for the treatment of glaucoma.

The role of chaperone-mediated autophagy in aging and age-related diseases is another promising area of research being pursued by Life Biosciences Ana Maria Cuervo, M.D, Ph.D., professor, and co-director of the Institute of Aging Studies at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Cuervo recently reported at a meeting that fasting-induced autophagy, the cells natural mechanism for removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components, can greatly extend the lifespan of mice. She believes the triggering of this process might one day help treat diseases such as macular degeneration and Alzheimers.

The specialty of Manuel Serrano, Ph.D., the fourth company cofounder, is cellular senescence and reprogramming and how they relate to degenerative diseases of the lung, kidney, and heart. He isan internationally recognized scientist who has made significant contributions to cancer and aging research and works in the Institute for Research Biomedicine in Barcelona.

See the rest here:
Reversing The Aging Clock With Epigenetic Reprogramming - Bio-IT World

In recent years, the motivation for healthy habits like veggie-heavy diets and regular exercise has shifted from present-day benefits to those more long-term in nature. And were not just interested in extending our lifespan, but our health span, tooaka the length of time we are not only alive but alive and well. Most of us want to die with our boots on, as my grandfather would sayable in both mind and body.

As such, longevity research has become a major focus in the wellness world and this year, we learned quite a bit about how to optimize our daily lives now for the benefit of our future selves. Below, a rundown of the best tips weve accumulated in 2020 for living your healthiest life into your 80s and beyondbecause theres a lot to live well for just ask President-Elect Joe Biden, who is 78!

1. Exercise this many times per week

Its no secret that human beings were designed to be a lot more active than most of us currently are in our modern-day, screen-heavy existences; however, you dont need to give up hope of a long life if youre pressed for tons of time to move each week. This year, a new study published inJAMA Internal Medicinefound that those who engage in moderate or vigorous exercise 150 minutes per weekhad lower all-cause mortality.

That translates to just 22 minutes of moderate-to-intense exercise per day. Those who got these 150 minutes per week showed a lower risk of early death from all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease mortality, and cancer mortality.

Benefits were especially notable in those who tended toward the more rigorous side of the equation, opting for running, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) routines, or something equally as taxing. The takeaway there is that if you are doing lower-impact exercises, it might help to throw a few more hardcore (think: quick and dirty) fitness routines into the mix as well. Not sure where to start? Here are nine such workouts you can try now (or January 1, because resolutions).

2. This particular workout format packs the best longevity punch

Any exercise is better than none, so if theres a format you love and that gets you moving, you should one hundred percent stick to it. But if youre open to new things or are already a devotee, research this year shows that HIIT workouts are the most effective form of fitness from a longevity standpoint.

The study looked at the effects of two weekly HIIT workouts per week on 70 to 77 year-olds and found that all-cause mortality was 36 percent lower in that group than in the studys control group (which did whatever kind of exercise they liked). Thirty-six percent!

The specific HIIT routine the studys participants engaged in was the 44 format, which divides each workout into a 10-minute warm-up period followed by four high-intensity intervals. Each interval consists of one to two minutes of extreme exertion, at about 90 percent of maximum heart rate, followed by a three-minute period at about 60 percent of heart rate. The session then concludes with a cool down period. If you want toe try one out, here are four to get you started.

3. If your workouts dont include this one move, they probably should

Technically, research just shows that if you can do this one move easily, that in and of itself is a good indication of longevity: the squat. So while this doesnt necessarily show that doing squats will increase your lifespan, it stands to reason that one way to ensure you can do them easily is to, well, do themand frequently.

One of the reasons its such a good exerciseboth to practice frequently and as a longevity predictor is that its functional, meaning we sort of need to be able to execute squat-like movements regularly in everyday life when, for example, we move from sitting to standing. Plus, we sit too much, and therefore the parts of our bodies, e.g. the glutes, which squats activate do not get nearly the amount of work they were built to take on.

Its critical, howeverfor knee health especiallythat you squat with proper form; heres how.

4. Cardio is not to be overlooked, either

Its not always possible for everyone to engage in high-impact exercise like HIIT or running, but that doesnt mean theyre screwed from a longevity perspective. In some cases, people might want to choose exercises that are gentler on their joints, which is not the same thing as being easy.

According to a cardiologist, there are five types of low-impact cardio thatll work you out hard without irritating aging or injured parts of your body: swimming, walking, cycling, rowing, and elliptical. Or, heres a 25-minute low-impact cardio workout you can try from home today.

5. Overall, your workout routines should include these 3 pillars

Ultimately, the best fitness routines are a mix of a number of different modalities, and exercising for longevity is no different. According toAleksandra Stacha-Fleming, founder of NYCs Longevity Lab, a gym that works with people of all ages to create workouts that help their bodies age properly, your regular workouts should typically include a smattering of the following: cardio, for your heart; strength-training, for your bones; and anything that works your flexibility and mobility, e.g. yoga. Get workout vids for each here.

1. Always keep these 6 foods on hand in your fridge

According to Dan Buettner, longevity expert and author ofThe Blue Zones Kitchen, the longest-living people in the world dont obsess over or restrict what they eat; however, they naturally consume nutrient-dense foods as a way of life. The six such foods Buettner thinks you should stock up on ASAP to follow their lead are nuts, vegetables, fruit, tofu, fish, and alt-milk. Find out more about why here.

You might want to add a jar of canned hearts of palm to your shopping list the next time youre try to stock your fridge, too. The ingredient is nutrient-dense, antioxidant-rich, and packed with minerals like potassium, iron, phosphorus, and zinc. Most importantly, its Blue Zones diet-approved, meaning its a longevity-booster, too. Try these 9 recipes to make use of your next hearts of palm haul.

2. Meanwhile, these 5 foods should go in your freezer

Buettner also has thoughts on what should be found in your freezer if you hope to emulate the worlds centenarians. His top five picks include a lot of the same things you should simultaneously keep fresh in your fridge, like fruits and vegetables, and nuts fall into both categories, too. Additionally, Buettner recommends keeping bread (bless you, Buettner!) and whole grains on ice, too. Get a few recipes made with each ingredient on this Buettners freezer list here.

3. Pack these in your pantry

Buettner even shared what he keeps in his own kitchen specifically when it comes to his pantry. What youll find there includes staples such as beans, legumes, whole grains (specifically steel-cut oats and brown rice), nuts, and seeds. You should keep canned greens in your pantry, too.

4. Herbs and spices are oh-so-important, too

Excess inflammation is an enemy of healthy aging, and plants are packed with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. According to herbalist Rachelle Robinett, nutrient-dense herbs are, therefore, a great supplement for anyone looking to enhance the longevity benefits of their diet. Specifically, she recommends ginger, turmeric, spirulina, chili peppers, and ginsengfind out more on why here.

People in the Blue Zone of Okinawa, Japan, also consume an herb called otani-watari, which can be boiled and added to stir-fries, soups, and salad.

4. This one-pot recipe is a longevity experts favorite go-to meal

Whatever Buettner, whos made his lifes work longevity, is eating regularly, Ill have, too. Fortunately, this year he shared his favorite go-to meal, which just so happens to be a one-pot Ikarian Longevity Stew packed with legumes and superstar veggies. Get the recipe here.

5. Overall, its this popular diet that wins the day with respect to longevity

You may have noticed a theme in the above tips, which is that they heavily emphasize fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, and whole grains; however, the longest-living people in the world arent necessarily vegans. Instead, they adhere to the Mediterranean Diet, and recent research has strengthened the link between it and longevity.

The study found that the Mediterranean diet may be linked to lowering inflammation markers and increasing both brain function and gut healthand therefore improving the aging process overall.

Essentially, the Mediterranean diet does call for substantial amounts of those aforementioned fruits, veggies, whole grains, and nuts. It also adds olive oil as a key component alongside fish and encourages a reduction in the consumption of red meat and saturated fats.

Need a little help making shifting your eating habits to better reflect this diet? Try the Blue Zones specific daily, weekly, and monthly guide for eating more like the longest-living humans on the planet.

6. To keep it simpler still, follow these golden rules of eating for longevity

If all of the above sounds like a lot, consider this; according to Buettner, there are six golden consumption rules to follow if you want to live longer, and TBH, theyre not very restrictive. The first is to drink wine after 5 p.m., ideally with friends or loved ones and a meal. (Um, twist my arm!) The second is to eat mostly plant-based foods, which at this point feels a bit repetitive, so duh. The third is to forget fad-diet brainwashing and carbo load to your hearts desire, as long as your carbs of choice are derived from grains, greens, tubers, nuts, and beans. The fourth is to eat less meat, as mentioned prior, and the fifth is to stick to just three beveragescoffee, that aforementioned wine (okay, yes), and lots and lots of water. Find out what the lastand least obviousgolden rule is here.

1. Keep a consistent sleep schedule

The Dalai Lama might not be a longevity expert per se, but he is doing pretty well at the spritely age of 85. One of his top six tips for extending your lifespan is to maintain a consistent sleep schedule. And even though he starts his day at 3 a.m., his 7 p.m. bedtime ensures he gets a solid eight hours of sleep per night.

Hobbies

1. Volunteer

One less-easy-to-imitate characteristic of those occupying the worlds Blue Zones is that they retain a sense of purpose throughout their lives. In America, we tend to put older people to pasture, so to speak, and they are less naturally integrated into family and community life, too.

One way to hack a sense of purpose in our (cold, heartless) societynot just when youre older but at any ageis to volunteer. Research shows that helping other people can actually help you to live a longer life. Our results show that volunteerism among older adults doesnt just strengthen communities, but enriches our own lives by strengthening our bonds to others, helping us feel a sense of purpose and well-being, and protecting us from feelings of loneliness, depression, and hopelessness, Eric S. Kim, PhD, research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a press release about the study. Find out more here, including how to adapt this hashtag-goals habit to pandemic times.

2. Grow a green thumb

According to Buettner, people in the Blue Zones, or longest-living areas of the world, garden well into their 90s and beyond. Gardening is the epitome of a Blue Zone activity because its sort of a nudge: You plant the seeds and youre going to be nudged in the next three to four months to water it, weed it, harvest it, he says. And when youre done, youre going to eat an organic vegetable, which you presumably like because you planted it. Find out more on the research behind this here.

3. Meditate

Not to state the obvious, but the Dalai Lamas longevity routine also includes regular meditation. And while he practices for seven hours a day, research shows that just five minutes per day can reap benefits such as sharpening your mind, reducing stress and, importantly, slowing aging.

4. Practice compassion

The Dalai Lama considers compassion to be one of the keys to happiness, and science says it has pro-social benefits, too. These might help us live longer lives, as humans thrive in the communities many Americans find it more difficult to build than those living in the Blue Zones do. Showing concern, care, and empathy to others can endear you to them and ensure that when the shoe is on the other foot, youve got others to lean on, too. This reciprocal relationship gives you that aforementioned sense of longevity-endowing purpose, too.

More:
The 17 Best Longevity Tips Experts Taught Us in 2020 - Well+Good

Every week there are numerous scientific studies published. Heres a look at some of the more interesting ones.

People Recovered from COVID-19 May Only Require One Dose of mRNA Vaccines

A study published on the preprint server medRxiv, meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed, suggests that people who have had a strong case of COVID-19 may only require a single mRNA vaccine, such as that produced by Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, in order to generate sufficient immune response for protection. The study was conducted by scientists at Mount Sinai Hospital. The findings were partially described after noting that people who had previous cases of the disease appeared to have much more severe reactions to the first dose of the vaccines.

I think one vaccination should be sufficient, said Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and one of the study authors. This would also spare individuals from unnecessary pain when getting the second dose and it would free up additional vaccine doses.

It was supported by a second study published on medRxiv by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in healthcare workers. This study didnt evaluate symptom response to the vaccine, but instead looked at antibody responses. In that study, they found that previously infected people generated high antibody levels after the first dose of the vaccines, comparable to the levels seen after second doses in individuals who had not previously had COVID-19.

Although the data is interesting, its a significantly long way from proving that the second doses should be abandoned in people already diagnosed with COVID-19. And there are cases where people with mild COVID-19 cases seemed to generate much lower antibody levels, which may not offer enough protection, particularly against the new more contagious variants.

Random DNA Change Reversed Rare Inherited Immune Condition

DOCK8 immunodeficiency is a rare autosomal recessive type of hyperimmunoglobulin E syndrome. It is caused by a mutation in the DOCK8 gene and is marked by elevated immunoglobulin E levels, eosinophilia, and recurrent staph and viral infections. Investigators at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research identified three patients whose bodies spontaneously repaired the mutation and restored normal immune function over time. Two of the patients were in France and one in Australia. Analyzing the genome of the patients immune cells, they observed that some cells had undergone somatic reversion, which is to say, they accumulated random mutations within the DOCK8 gene and when it was copied, they reverted to normal DNA code.

Why Some Psychiatric Drugs Help Some but Not Others

Scientists with the University of Colorado at Boulder found that a specific protein in the brain called AKT appears to function differently in males than females. AKT was identified in the 1970s and is known for causing cancer when mutated, but it was more recently found to be a key player in promoting synaptic plasticity, which is the brains ability to strengthen connections between neurons in response to experience. Mutations in the AKT gene are linked to schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, autism and Alzheimers. This research found that there are different forms of AKT that have different functions in the brain, for example, AKT2, which is implicated in brain cancer, is found only in the star-shaped astroglia. AKT3 is involved in brain growth and development, while AKT2 and AKT1 are critical for learning and memory. But the finding that there are sex differences, and it was a significant difference, they hope it will lead to more nuanced treatments for these diseases.

Subgroup of COVID-19 Patients at High-Risk for Severe Bleeding

A study by researchers at the University of Michigan published in Scientific Reports of a subgroup of COVID-19 patients found increased risk of bleeding. This is related to the well-known incidences of COVID-19 patients having high risk of blood clots, which could result in strokes or heart attacks. In this subgroup, they appear to have an unbalanced ability to break down blood clots, which is good for removing the clots, but then provides a greater risk of uncontrolled bleeding. The study included 118 COVID-19 patients and 30 healthy controls. The investigators expected to observe high levels of plasminogen activator-inhibitor-1 in the COVID-19 patients, which is associated with stabilizing blood clots. But, they found high levels of tissue-type plasminogen activator, a molecule responsible for removing clots.

How Exercise Improves Metabolism

Researchers with USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and the University of Ulsan College of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea, showed how moderate exercise stimulates cells in the hypothalamus to release a hormone called MOTS-c. The hormone is encoded in cells smaller mitochondrial genome. The hypothalamus is the part of the region that controls metabolism. The research suggests that low-grade stress in mitochondria promotes health and longevity, which is called mitohormesis. They conducted research on mice homodeficient in Crif1, which controls how cells use proteins encoded by mitochondria. The mice without Crif1 experienced severe mitochondrial stress and had metabolic problems at adulthood, such as weight gain and decreased energy expenditure. They also had insulin resistance and high blood sugar, similar to type 2 diabetes in humans. But mice that were heterodeficient in the Crif1 gene, meaning they produced some of the appropriate protein, had mild mitochondrial stress and protection against obesity or insulin resistance.

Super Responder Memory B Cells Attack COVID-19 Virus, but Not Necessarily the Spike Protein

Immunome, a biotech company in Exton, Pennsylvania, published preclinical research from its COVID-19 research program. The study found that 50% of the antibodies isolated from so-called super-responders are directed at non-Spike antigens. This suggests that non-Spike-related antibodies may play a big role in effectively clearing the virus. The most prevalent non-Spike targets were nucleocapsid proteins and the open reading frame-encoded (ORF) proteins, ORF8 and ORF10. They also found that the antibody response against both neutralizing and non-neutralizing epitopesparticular parts of the Spike proteinare committed to B-cell memory. The research is yet to be peer-reviewed but has been posted on the bioRxiv preprint server.

The company received a $13.3 million agreement from the U.S. Department of Defenses Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense (JPEO-CBRND), in collaboration with the Defense Health Agency, to support its COVID program.

We believe that the broad response we observed to multiple viral proteins beyond just the Spike protein points towards an approach for developing an antibody cocktail, which could better mimic the natural human immune response against the SARS-CoV-2 infection, said Purnanand Sarma, chief executive officer of Immunome. Furthermore, an optimized combination of antibodies could potentially overcome the high level of mutational drift we are seeing in the Spike protein.

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Research Roundup: COVID-19 Recovery & the Vaccine and More - BioSpace

Studies show that we are living longer and longer. If this is true, then what can we do now in our younger years to live a long life free of regret?

There is something deep inside of us, our own hidden understanding, that drives us to the realization that we gain so much through maturation; the feeling of fulfillment, the power of forgiveness, the medicine of generosity, and wisdom.

Through embracing the fact that even in this very moment, we are one day closer to old age, one minute closer to death, one breath closer to a wrinkle, we learn to appreciate what we have while we have it. We learn to love our bodies rather than judge them and connect with our community and families while we still can. We remember always: This, too, shall pass.

Is it possible that a lot of the suffering we see could stem from massive immaturity? If this is the case, then maybe if we embrace our ever-aging selves, we will radiate the energy of confidence and become a part of valuing wisdom in our society.

Having a mature presence means breaking the bonds of reactivity and stepping into the grace of receptivity.

Original post:
Why We All Need To Take A Spiritual Approach To Aging & Longevity - mindbodygreen.com