Medical Bulletin 4/January/2022

Here are the top medical news for the day:

APS perceived their physical and cognitive function to be less than optimal: Study

Antiphospholipid syndrome or APS is characterized by persistently positive antiphospholipids antibodies in the setting of adverse obstetric events or dangerous blood clots. Patients may be diagnosed with “primary APS” when APS is the main autoimmune disease or “secondary APS” when the is APS diagnosis is paired with Lupus.

Antiphospholipid syndrome is an autoimmune disease that preferentially affects women. Patients with APS are typically given different medications to reduce their risk of blood clotting and help normalize lab values such as platelet count. Despite this, patients sometimes internally feel that they are not doing as well as the numbers are showing.

Reference:

“Predictors and Interrelationship of Patient-Reported Outcomes in Antiphospholipid Syndrome: A Cross-Sectional Study” published in the American College of Rheumatology’s ACR Open, doi 10.1002/acr2.1151

Study finds ketamine to increase brain noise

Schizophrenic spectrum disorders affect approximately one in 300 people worldwide. The most common manifestations of these disorders are perceptual disturbances such as hallucinations, delusions and psychoses.

An international team of researchers including Sofya Kulikova, Senior Research Fellow at the HSE University-Perm, found that ketamine, being an NMDA receptor inhibitor, increases the brain's background noise, causing higher entropy of incoming sensory signals and disrupting their transmission between the thalamus and the cortex. This finding may contribute to a better understanding of the causes of psychosis in schizophrenia. An article with the study’s findings has been published in the European Journal of Neuroscience.

Reference:

The psychotomimetic ketamine disrupts the transfer of late sensory information in the corticothalamic network,European Journal of Neuroscience,doi 10.1111/ejn.15872.

Dry eye disease alters how the eye’s cornea heals itself after injury

Dry eye disease occurs when the eye can’t provide adequate lubrication with natural tears. People with the common disorder use various types of drops to replace missing natural tears and keep the eyes lubricated, but when eyes are dry, the cornea is more susceptible to injury.

People with a condition known as dry eye disease are more likely than those with healthy eyes to suffer injuries to their corneas. Studying mice, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that proteins made by stem cells that regenerate the cornea may be new targets for treating and preventing such injuries.

Reference:

Joseph B. Lin et al,Dry eye disease in mice activates adaptive corneal epithelial regeneration distinct from constitutive renewal in homeostasis,doi 10.1073/pnas.2204134120