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Category: health

Effects of Exercise and Intensive Vascular Risk Reduction on Cognitive Function in Older Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial

In this multicenter randomized clinical trial, 24 months of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise, intensive pharmacological reduction of blood pressure and serum LDL cholesterol, or the combination of these interventions did not significantly improve global cognitive function compared to usual care in older adults with hypertension and either family history of dementia or subjective cognitive decline.

Exercise and intensive vascular risk reduction each improved cardiovascular parameters, but no group differences were observed for changes in the Preclinical Alzheimer Cognitive Composite or NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery scores.

Question Can exercise, intensive pharmacological reduction of blood pressure (BP) and serum low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), or the combination of these interventions improve cognitive function in older adults with family history of dementia and/or self-reported subjective cognitive decline?

Findings In this randomized clinical trial of 513 participants, moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise training, intensive pharmacological lowering of BP and serum LDL-C, or both did not result in statistically significant differences in improvements in global cognitive function over 24 months.

Meaning The findings do not provide evidence in support of exercise, intensive reduction of BP and serum LDL-C, or both for improving cognitive function in older adults with family history of dementia and/or self-reported subjective cognitive decline.

How beliefs about demons shape the experience of mental illness

For some evangelical Christians, attributing mental illness to demonic forces can offer a sense of meaning, while for others, it creates harmful barriers to medical care. A recent qualitative study published in Spirituality in Clinical Practice outlines how these widespread spiritual explanations act as a double-edged sword for individuals experiencing psychological distress. The research indicates that integrating religious beliefs with standard psychiatric care may be a safer path forward for many faith communities.

Religion frequently shapes how people interpret their physical and mental health. Psychologists recognize that religious frameworks offer a primary system for individuals to make sense of the world around them. By relying on theological teachings, people construct meaning around their personal suffering. This process of religious meaning construction can influence health outcomes in both positive and negative directions.

Within evangelical Christianity, foundational teachings often emphasize the active existence of spiritual forces. This includes the belief that angels, demons, and other supernatural entities directly influence the physical world. This worldview can lead to the belief that spiritual forces cause human ailments, including severe psychological distress.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation can target a deep brain region without surgery or medication

Neuroscientists at University of Iowa Health Care have demonstrated for the first time that noninvasive brain stimulation can alter the activity of a critical deep brain region involved in emotion and memory. Moreover, the study shows that personalizing the stimulation site using a patient’s unique brain connectivity pathway can increase the neuromodulation effect.

The study, published recently in Nature Communications, used innovative, concurrent brain stimulation and recording techniques in people to provide direct human evidence that noninvasive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can reliably engage and modulate activity in the hippocampus.

The hippocampus is a deep brain region that plays a critical role in multiple brain functions, such as memory and emotion. Problems with hippocampal function have been implicated in several neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

New sensor could allow MRIs to see molecular-level changes

You’ve seen people sliding into the tube of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine on your favorite medical drama, or maybe you’ve been inside one yourself, waiting as the noisy scanner makes images of your brain, heart, bones, or other structures, which doctors use to identify injury or disease.

Since the 1970s, MRIs have been important diagnostic tools, combining a magnetic field and radio waves to produce snapshots of the body’s interior without using ionizing radiation, which can create health risks at higher doses. An MRI can typically capture changes in anatomy, but the molecular-level changes that could further aid understanding of disease have been beyond its reach.

Now, in a new article in Science Advances, University of California, Santa Barbara researchers report the invention of a modular, genetically encoded, protein-based sensor that enables MRI machines to visualize molecular activity inside cells—a development that could transform how scientists study cancer, neurodegeneration, and inflammation.

Therapeutic, nasally delivered DNA vaccine fuses two genes to help fight tuberculosis

In a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, a research team at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reports developing a therapeutic intranasal (nose-delivered) DNA vaccine against tuberculosis (TB) that fuses two genes with the goal of directing the immune system to fight drug-tolerant bacterial “persisters” that can survive prolonged antibiotic therapy and contribute to disease relapse.

A scourge for at least the past 6,000 years, TB is estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be a latent, symptom-free infection in about one-quarter of the world’s population, approximately 2 billion people. In 2024 alone, WHO reported that more than 10 million people worldwide developed active TB disease, with 1.2 million deaths recorded. This makes TB the leading cause of death from a single infectious disease.

In recent years, WHO has called for therapeutic vaccines that can be used alongside drug therapies to shorten TB treatment regimens and improve outcomes, particularly because long multidrug courses are difficult to complete, and drug-resistant TB strains continue to emerge. The vaccine described in the new Johns Hopkins study shows promise for meeting that need.

A stiff defense: Physical rigidity of healthy gum tissue found to shield against chronic periodontal inflammation

Periodontitis is a serious chronic inflammatory form of gum disease that affects millions worldwide. It can lead to tooth loss and the destruction of supporting bone. This disease has also been linked to other health problems, including diabetes, respiratory infections, and heart disease, impacting quality of life and increasing health care costs.

Current treatments target bacterial infection and inflammation through nonsurgical therapies, such as scaling and root planing, commonly known as “deep cleaning.” However, they do not repair the gum’s extracellular matrix (ECM), the gingival tissue’s structural support that is damaged by chronic inflammation. Without this foundation, gingival tissue cannot function properly, allowing inflammation to persist and slowing healing.

Now, new research led by Kyle H. Vining and Hardik Makkar of the School of Dental Medicine demonstrates how the physical properties of the gingival tissue impact periodontal health and disease. Their findings are published in Advanced Materials.

Pitfalls and Potential of Dementia Prevention Trials

💬 Editorial by Holly Elser, MD, PhD, and Jonathan Graff-Radford, MD:

Recent randomized clinical trials on dementia prevention highlight several challenges in interpreting lifestyle intervention studies, including practice and Hawthorne effects, modest changes in cognitive outcomes, and heterogeneity in both trial design and participant baseline risk.

The trial by Zhang et al—evaluating aerobic exercise and intensive vascular risk reduction—showed no significant cognitive benefit over 2 years in older adults at elevated risk, underscoring the potential influence of midlife vs late-life intervention timing and the need for longer trials or biomarker-enriched cohorts to better assess dementia prevention strategies.

Dementia prevention is a global public health priority,1,2 with up to 45% of cases potentially attributable to modifiable risk factors over the life course.3 While recent landmark trials, including FINGER, SPRINT MIND, and POINTER, suggest either single-or multidomain lifestyle interventions can improve cognitive outcomes,4-6 others have shown no clear benefit,7,8 thus highlighting ongoing uncertainty in the field.

In this issue of JAMA Neurol ogy, Zhang and colleagues9 report the results of a single-blind, multicenter randomized clinical trial of the effects of exercise and intensive vascular risk reduction on cognitive function. Eligible study participants were between the ages of 60 and 85 years at baseline with a history of hypertension, family history of dementia, or self-reported cognitive decline. The study used a 2 × 2 factorial design wherein participants were randomized to aerobic exercise training alone, intensive pharmacological reduction of cardiovascular risk factors (IRVR) alone, both aerobic exercise and IRVR, or usual care for a 24-month period. The IRVR protocol lowered systolic blood pressure to less than 130 mm Hg, and participants with baseline serum low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) of 70 mg/dL or higher were also treated with a high-intensity statin.

Studying 2 distinct human cohorts with recent exposure to TB

https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.202134 Paul Ogongo & team find different individual Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigens induce distinct T cell responses, with important implications for TB vaccine development.

5Center for Global Health Research, Kenya Medical Research Institute, Kisumu, Kenya.

6Center for Vaccine Innovation, La Jolla Institute for Immunology, La Jolla, California, USA.

7Department of Infectious Disease and Immunology, Center for Vaccine Research, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Graphene ‘leaf tattoo’ sensor tracks plant hydration in real time

Is your houseplant thirsty? Are crops getting enough water? Is a forest at high risk of wildfire? Leaf health can answer all these questions, and researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed new technology to measure hydration levels with greater accuracy and without hurting the plant. The researchers developed an electronic tattoo for leaves that uses the hyperflexible and sustainable material graphene to track hydration levels. It sticks on the leaves without harming them, a major improvement over current methods that work only with dead or dried-out leaves or provide indirect measurements.

“Being able to directly measure and monitor the live leaf over time, at the point of photosynthesis, gives us more information to understand the health of our plant ecosystems, whether that’s an individual plant or an entire forest,” said Jean Anne Incorvia, associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and one of the leaders on the new research published recently in Nano Letters.

Mutation map reveals how amylin mutations influence type 2 diabetes

Researchers at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) have produced a mutational map showing how mutations in amylin—a hormone that plays a key role in glucose regulation—affect its tendency to form toxic amyloid aggregates in the pancreas. This process is linked to the development of type 2 diabetes. While it was already known that certain mutations could alter this aggregation capacity, understanding of this process was fragmented and based on isolated studies. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.

“For the first time, we can systematically map how thousands of mutations modulate amylin aggregation, bringing human genetics closer to molecular mechanisms,” says Benedetta Bolognesi, the principal investigator of the Protein Phase Transitions in Health and Disease group at IBEC, who is also the lead author of the study.

“We have created a map that allows us to anticipate the potential impact of these mutations in the population,” adds Marta Badia, a researcher in the same group and first author of the study. “We are not assessing toxicity, but rather the protein’s intrinsic propensity to form fibers. This is a first step, but an extremely necessary one.”

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