All posts tagged: diseases

Death toll from DR Congo Ebola outbreak passes 500 as healthcare workers threaten strike

Death toll from DR Congo Ebola outbreak passes 500 as healthcare workers threaten strike

Published by Sam Flores

More than 500 people have now died in the Ebola outbreak gripping the Democratic Republic of Congo, World Health Organization figures showed Monday. A newly updated count issued by the UN health agency showed that there have been 1,561 confirmed cases in the DR Congo since the outbreak was declared in mid-May, including 506 confirmed deaths. Two others have also died in neighbouring Uganda, where the situation is more stable. The country has seen 16 patients recover out of 20 total confirmed cases. The WHO’s figures for the DR Congo, which come from the health authorities in the vast country, show that the outbreak there has a case fatality rate of 32 percent. Watch moreAuthorities race to contain spread of Ebola in eastern DR Congo A total of 254 patients have recovered, while 354 suspected cases of the viral haemorrhagic fever are currently under investigation. The outbreak is being driven by the rare Bundibugyo species of Ebola, for which there are no approved vaccines or treatments. The trial of two potential treatments for Bundibugyo began …

Sloth genome study reveals how ‘jumping genes’ shape metabolism

Sloth genome study reveals how ‘jumping genes’ shape metabolism

Published by Jenni Sidey

Deep within tropical forests, sloths move at a pace that seems almost frozen in time. Their slow movements, low energy use, and quiet lives have long puzzled scientists. Now, researchers have taken a major step toward understanding how these animals function at such a different rhythm from the rest of the animal world. A global team led by the Wellcome Sanger Institute, alongside collaborators from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research and Hospital Sírio Libanês, has sequenced and analyzed the genome of the two-toed sloth. Their findings reveal how unusual DNA elements may shape the animal’s famously slow metabolism. The results provide new insight into how evolution has crafted one of nature’s most energy-efficient mammals, and they may offer clues for human health as well. A Mammal Unlike Any Other Sloths belong to a group of mammals known as Xenarthra, which also includes armadillos and anteaters. This lineage first appeared more than 65 million years ago in South America. Over time, it produced a wide range of species, including massive ground sloths that …

Massive blood study finds 88,000 new links between genes and metabolism

Massive blood study finds 88,000 new links between genes and metabolism

Published by Jenni Sidey

The chemicals flowing through your bloodstream tell a story that your DNA alone cannot. They reflect what you eat, how your body functions, and even the diseases that may be developing long before symptoms appear. Now, the largest study ever conducted on the genetics of human metabolism has revealed just how deeply our genes shape those chemical signals. Led by researchers at the University of Tartu in Estonia, the study analyzed genetic and metabolic data from 619,372 people. By combining information from the Estonian Biobank and the UK Biobank, scientists created the most detailed map to date of how genetic differences influence hundreds of substances circulating in the blood. The findings uncover tens of thousands of previously unknown links between genes and metabolism. They also challenge some long-held assumptions about disease risk and could help guide future drug development. “This dataset gives us a broad foundation for understanding the pathophysiology of various diseases more deeply and for identifying their causal and drug-targetable factors more precisely,” said Priit Palta, Professor of Translational Genomics at the University …

The Painful Truth About Long Covid

The Painful Truth About Long Covid

Published by skeptic

By 2025, most experts had adopted the same position. “I think everybody now agrees that long Covid is a biologic disease,” said Igho Ofotokun, of Emory University School of Medicine, in his concluding comments at the Long Covid International Conference. “It’s not in your mind. It’s real.” Ofotokun also offered an explanation for the lack of scientific progress. “The big elephant in the room is just that we don’t have a gold-standard definition for long Covid. So it really makes it difficult to do all the things we want to do. Makes designing of clinical trials extremely difficult, following outcomes in clinical trials extremely challenging.” Part of the definitional problem for long Covid is the absence of definitive biomarkers: genes, antibodies, any unique physiological signature of the illness. To discover biomarkers, researchers must first identify patients presumed to have a specific illness, then see what they have in common beyond their symptoms. Identifying a biomarker allows for the development of disease-targeting interventions—gene therapy, antivirals—and enables the sorting of people who have a particular condition from …

AI joins the quest to find new treatments for rare neuromuscular diseases

AI joins the quest to find new treatments for rare neuromuscular diseases

Published by skeptic

Rare neuromuscular diseases often lack treatments because developing targeted drugs is slow, costly and risky for companies. A new approach using AI and stem cell models could finally shift the balance. Belgian AI company Kantify was doing business as usual until a cancer diagnosis forced the team to rethink their direction. “We built algorithms for sectors like marketing or transport,” said Ségolène Martin, Kantify’s co-founder and CEO. “Those were complex projects that had nothing to do with health, but they enabled us to build a deep expertise in AI.” That changed in 2017, when Nik Subramanian, the company’s CTO, was diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare type of cancer that forms tumours in connective tissues such as bones, muscles and blood vessels. This experience prompted the company to shift its focus to health and explore the potential of AI to help improve how new drugs for rare diseases are identified and tested. “It changed our lives,” said Martin. “We are now completely focused on AI for human health, and have developed a specialised technology for AI-based drug discovery.” …

These Ebola Researchers Are Stuck in US Due to Trump’s Funding Cuts

These Ebola Researchers Are Stuck in US Due to Trump’s Funding Cuts

Published by skeptic

As the world struggles to contain the rapidly growing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri province, a vital network of research centers has been unable to help on the ground. The reason: The Trump administration slashed its funding last year, in part due to conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid-19. Established in 2020 by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID) Network was conducting research into viruses that emerge from wildlife and spill over to people, including the family of viruses that Ebola belongs to. The network operated 10 sites around the world where these types of disease outbreaks are likely to occur, including in Central and East Africa. (The network was also researching hantavirus, a disease that saw a recent rare outbreak on a cruise ship.) NIH provided CREID with approximately $82 million in funding over five years, and its funding was up for renewal in 2025. But last June, the centers received a stop-work order stating that their research had been deemed …

Scientists identify hundreds of ancient genes associated with human diseases

Scientists identify hundreds of ancient genes associated with human diseases

Published by Jenni Sidey

When a child develops kidney failure or a rare bone disorder, the cause can seem painfully immediate. It may be a single broken gene, a sudden diagnosis, or a family searching for answers. However, some of those faults may trace back nearly two billion years, to a one-celled ancestor shared by every plant, animal, and fungus alive today. A University of Texas at Austin-led team has now reconstructed the most detailed map yet of the protein networks inside that ancestor, known as the last eukaryotic common ancestor, or LECA. In doing so, the researchers built a new way to hunt for disease genes in humans. They used some of the oldest molecular machinery in complex life as a guide. Their study, published in Cell Genomics, suggests that the deep history of life is not just a story about origins. It can also help explain why modern bodies fail. Rachael Cox, a former UT doctoral student who led the data analysis in the lab of senior author Edward Marcotte, said the approach proved unexpectedly powerful. “There …

New AI model reads the language of genes to detect diseases faster

New AI model reads the language of genes to detect diseases faster

Published by Jenni Sidey

Artificial intelligence is helping scientists read gene behavior more like language, revealing how genes cluster, shift roles, and shape disease. A new model from Mount Sinai learns from vast datasets to predict missing links, spotlight obscure genes, and hint at faster biomedical discoveries. Artificial intelligence has transformed how computers understand human language. Now, scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai are using a similar idea to decode one of biology’s biggest mysteries: how genes work together inside human cells. In a new study, researchers introduced a gene set foundation model, or GSFM, designed to learn relationships between genes across millions of biological datasets. The system draws inspiration from large language models such as ChatGPT, which learn how words gain meaning from context. Instead of studying sentences, however, this new AI studies groups of genes. The result is a system that can predict how genes interact, identify poorly understood genes and even suggest possible disease targets. Researchers believe the model could eventually improve drug discovery, diagnostics and the understanding of human disease. “Genes …

Uganda confirms three new Ebola cases as Africa CDC warns 10 countries ‘at risk’

Uganda confirms three new Ebola cases as Africa CDC warns 10 countries ‘at risk’

Published by Sam Flores

Three new Ebola cases have been confirmed in Uganda, health authorities said Saturday, after the World Health Organization raised the risk from the deadly outbreak to the highest level for neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. The new cases bring to five the total confirmed in Uganda since the current outbreak was discovered in the east African country on May 15. It named the patients as a Ugandan driver, a Ugandan health worker and a woman from the DR Congo, the epicentre of the outbreak, which the WHO has declared an international emergency. “Three new cases of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) have been confirmed in the country,” the Ugandan health ministry said in a statement on X. All three are alive. Watch moreHealth workers struggle with Ebola outbreak as WHO declares highest risk level in DR Congo On Friday, the WHO raised the risk from Ebola in the DR Congo to “very high”. The United Nations health agency said the regional risk in central Africa was “high”, though it maintained the global risk was “low”. …