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Here are the top medical news for the day:
Study Links Oral Contraceptives and Smoking to Changes in Steroid Hormone Levels
Steroid hormone levels in healthy adults are influenced by oral contraceptives and smoking, as well as other lifestyle choices and factors such as biological sex and age, according to new research that has just been published in leading international journal Science Advances.
The objective of the research was to expand knowledge and understanding of steroid hormone levels, including corticoids and sex hormones, in healthy women and men over a broad age range. This is the first study to analyse such a large number of hormones in nearly 1,000 healthy people, filling a major gap in the knowledge of molecules that are important for our day-to-day well-being.
The team involved in this current study found that hormone levels vary according to an individual’s age and sex, but that they are also associated with many other factors, such as genetics and common behaviours.
Notably, many steroid hormone levels, beyond sex hormones, are influenced by oral contraceptive use in women, while in men, smoking was associated with altered levels of nearly every steroid hormone measured.
Additionally, measurement of hormones in the same donors 10 years after the original visit showed that decreases in specific androgens were associated with diverse diseases in aging men, implying that these hormones – which are associated with physical characteristics, and supporting strong bones and red blood cell production – play a role in disease development.
This finding – among others – gives the team numerous avenues to pursue in future research.
Ref: Deltourbe LG, Sugrue J et al. Steroid hormone levels vary with sex, aging, lifestyle, and genetics. Sci Adv. 2025 Mar 28;11(13):eadu6094. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adu6094. Epub 2025 Mar 28. PMID: 40153492.
Magnetic Micro-Robots Pave the Way for Minimally Invasive Brain Surgery
A University of Toronto Engineering team has collaborated with researchers in the Wilfred and Joyce Posluns Centre for Image Guided Innovation and Therapeutic Intervention at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) to create a set of tiny robotic tools that could enable ‘keyhole surgery’ in the brain.
In a paper published in Science Robotics, the team demonstrated the ability of these tools — only about 3 millimetres in diameter — to grip, pull and cut tissue.
Their extremely small size is made possible by the fact that they are powered not by motors but by external magnetic fields.
Current robotic surgical tools are typically driven by cables connected to electric motors, in much the same way that human fingers are manipulated by tendons in the hand that are connected to muscles in the wrist.
Instead of cables and pulleys, their robotic tools contain magnetically active materials that respond to external electromagnetic fields controlled by the surgical team.
The system consists of two parts. The first is the tiny tools themselves: a gripper, a scalpel and a set of forceps. The second part is what the team calls a coil table, which is a surgical table with several electromagnetic coils embedded inside.
In this design, the patient would be positioned with their head on top of the embedded coils, and the robotic tools would be inserted into the brain by means of a small incision.
By altering the amount of electricity flowing into the coils, the team can manipulate the magnetic fields, causing the tools to grip, pull or cut tissue as desired.
In the paper, the team reports that the cuts made with the magnetic scalpel were consistent and narrow, with an average width of 0.3 to 0.4 millimetres.
The researchers caution that it may still be a long time before these tools see the inside of an operating room.
Ref: Changyan He et al. Magnetically actuated dexterous tools for minimally invasive operation inside the brain.Sci. Robot.10,eadk4249(2025).DOI:10.1126/scirobotics.adk4249
Breakthrough in Kidney Health: New Biomarkers Enhance Early Detection and Monitoring
Drug-induced kidney injury, or nephrotoxicity, is a common complication in clinical medicine that happens when certain drugs at certain doses damage the kidneys. Nephrotoxicity can occur with multiple types of medicines, including anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antiretroviral, or chemotherapeutic medicines and can lead to therapies being discontinued or restricted from patients. The findings from this collaboration were published recently in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics.
Critical Path Institute® (C-Path) and Boston Medical Center (BMC) published results for six biomarkers that could improve the early and accurate detection of kidney injury, leading to both the development of safer medications and better health outcomes for all patients.
The research team examined urinary levels of protein biomarkers in healthy volunteers and patients undergoing treatment for mesothelioma with a chemotherapy drug that is known to have toxic effects on the kidneys. This enabled the researchers to better understand how kidney function changes in response to injury.
The team assessed performance of six promising biomarkers to detect drug induced kidney injury with more sensitivity and specificity than traditional markers. Most of the assessed biomarkers are generated in the kidneys themselves in response to injury or inflammation. This enables detection of kidney injury quicker than current biomarkers, like serum creatinine, which can sometimes take several days to reach abnormal levels.
The research team now hopes to assess whether these biomarkers can be used more broadly to monitor kidney health in healthy volunteers during phase 1 clinical trials.
Ref: Waikar S S, Mogg R et al. Urinary Kidney Injury Biomarker Profiles in Healthy Individuals and After Nephrotoxic and Ischemic Injury. Clin Pharmacology and Therapeutics. 04 January 2025. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpt.3531
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