Medical Bulletin 26/June/2023

Here are the top medical news for the day:

Researchers identify brain pathways impairing postpartum social behavior following adolescent stress

In a Nature Communications study, the University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers used a mouse model and cutting-edge neurobiological techniques to show how psychological stress during adolescence alters neuronal functions in the brain, resulting in altered postpartum social behavior.

This research builds on their recent finding that mice exposed to social isolation in late adolescence, which alone causes no endocrine or behavioral changes, show long-lasting behavioral changes only when accompanied by pregnancy and delivery. They were able to use this behavioral model to probe for postpartum neural circuit differences between mouse dams that were stressed in late adolescence and a control group of mouse dams that remained unstressed in adolescence, due to normal social interactions with other mice.

Reference: Adolescent stress impairs postpartum social behavior via an anterior insula-prelimbic pathway in mice, Nature Communications, DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-38799-6

A study suggests that the source of common kidney disease may originate from outside the kidney 

The cause of a common kidney disease likely lies outside the kidney, according to a new study led by Columbia University researchers. The study, which uncovered 16 new locations in the genome linked to immunoglobulin A (IgA) nephropathy, confirms an earlier hypothesis that the immune system has an important role in driving the disease and points toward new strategies for detecting and treating it.

No targeted treatments have been approved to treat IgA nephropathy, largely because the underlying cause of the disease has not been well understood. Identifying genes linked to disease can provide clues to its source and guide the development of new drugs, but thousands of patients are needed for such studies. For IgA nephropathy, those numbers are difficult to achieve.

Reference: Genome-wide association analyses define pathogenic signaling pathways and prioritize drug targets for IgA nephropathy, Nature Genetics, DOI 10.1038/s41588-023-01422-x

The likelihood of CTE is raised by the force, not just the quantity, of head blows. 
For years, researchers studying chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, believed the primary cause of it was repetitive hits to the head, whether or not those hits caused concussions. They believed the more frequently that a person sustained head blows, the more likely they were to develop neurological and cognitive struggles later in life.

A new collaborative study conducted by researchers at Boston University, Mass General Brigham, and Harvard Medical School—using brains donated to BU’s UNITE Brain Bank adds a new wrinkle to the research around CTE. The study found that the clearest predictor of what could cause a person to suffer brain disease later in life was the cumulative force of thousands of hits to the head, and not just the sheer volume of concussions suffered.

The study is the largest one to date, examining the root causes of CTE, which is associated with everything from memory loss to impulsive behavior to suicidal thoughts and depression.

Reference: Leveraging football accelerometer data to quantify associations between repetitive head impacts and chronic traumatic encephalopathy in males, Nature Communications, DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-39183-0