Akkermansia muciniphila, a mucin-eating, gram-negative, obligate anaerobe that lives happily in the intestinal tract—that is, if you're lucky, as more and more data point to A muciniphila as an obesity-fighting bacterium. The presence of A muciniphila goes down as BMI goes up in humans, and mouse studies have shown that treatment with live A muciniphila reduced weight gain by 50% when mice were put on a high-fat diet. But mice aren't people. And until now, all of the suggestive findings about this bacterium were based on association, not causation.

@bratati Fibromyalgia is complex and largely unexplained, but abnormality in pain modulation is one of its hallmarks. Understanding how this modulation plays out in the central nervous system could give some insights into the cause of the condition. To examine this phenomenon, the researchers scanned the brains of 12 women with fibromyalgia by using functional MRI. The women's mean age was 39.5 years, and their mean Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire score was 52.9. The scale runs from 0 to 100 in order of increasing severity.

@pritha Intranasal oxytocin has been shown to improve facial recognition and shift attention from negative social information. In this study, the authors sought to see whether the neuropeptide would benefit women with borderline personality disorder.

Serum levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) appear to be a "useful, feasible, and potentially prognostic factor" in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a new study has suggested. The authors also note that high CRP levels may identify patients with ALS who respond better to a new drug in development for the condition. The findings were published online in JAMA Neurology on April 3, by a group led by Christian Lunetta, MD, NeuroMuscular Omnicentre, Fondazione Serena Onlus, Milan, Italy.

@senjuti The authors explained how under current guidelines broad-spectrum antibiotics are prescribed to up to 10% of all newborns for suspected infections, with this 'over-prescription' aiming to ensure early treatment for those who are ultimately found to have an infection, as any delay may quickly become life-threatening. Experts argue though that, in most cases, the antibiotics are prescribed unnecessarily, as only a small proportion of those who receive the drugs are eventually diagnosed with an infection.

@udipta For the study, the researchers drew on data from the Stockholm Youth Cohort, a prospective, cohort study of individuals born between January 1, 1984 and December 31, 2011. The study included 532,232 children (51.3% male) between ages 6 and 29 years at the end of follow-up (mean [SD] age, 17.6 [7.1] years) and their 299,768 mothers. Among the women, 5.8% were diagnosed with anemia during pregnancy; of these diagnoses, 5% occurred before 30 weeks' gestation, while 90.9% occurred after 30 weeks' gestation.

@prisha Over 186,762 person-years, a total of 1599 severe cardiovascular events occurred. Taking into account the factors mentioned, especially the women's health behavior and condition, the researchers determined that social isolation increased the risk for severe cardiovascular events by 8%, and loneliness increased it by 5%. When the participants' health behavior and condition were not included in the analysis, the corresponding values were 18% and 14%. Women who were strongly isolated socially and who also felt very lonely had a 13%–27% higher risk of developing severe cardiovascular events, when compared with women without these two factors.

@nabamita It would also have been helpful if investigators monitored patient adherence to prescribed medications through urine or blood samples rather than a questionnaire. Moving forward, it will be important to "investigate why some patients are non-responders to the exercise intervention and why some are super-responders

@bratati Hospitalized women are less likely to die from Covid-19; however, once severe disease occurs, the risk of dying is similar to men. Further studies are needed to better investigate the role of gender in clinical course and outcome of Covid-19.

@udipta In October 2021, surgeons at NYU Langone Health in New York City transplanted a pig kidney into a brain-dead patient without triggering immediate rejection for the first time. That pig's genes had also been altered so that its tissues no longer contained a molecule known to trigger near-immediate rejection. For 3 days, the new kidney was attached to the recipient's blood vessels and maintained outside her body, giving researchers access to it. Test results of the transplanted kidney's function appeared normal, with no evidence of the vigorous, early rejection typically seen when unmodified pig kidneys are transplanted into nonhuman primates. The recipient's elevated creatinine level returned to normal after the transplant.