Day: March 7, 2025

Categories : Injury & Trauma Metabolic DisordersTags : Leave a comment

Time of Injury Matters: Circadian Rhythms Affect Muscle Repair

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Mat Napo on Unsplash

Circadian rhythms doesn’t just dictate when we sleep — it also determines how quickly our muscles heal. A new Northwestern Medicine study in mice, published in Science Advances, suggests that muscle injuries heal faster when they occur during the body’s natural waking hours.

The findings could have implications for shift workers and may also prove useful in understanding the effects of aging and obesity, said senior author Clara Peek, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

The study also may help explain how disruptions like jetlag and daylight saving time changes impact circadian rhythms and muscle recovery.

“In each of our cells, we have genes that form the molecular circadian clock,” Peek said. “These clock genes encode a set of transcription factors that regulate many processes throughout the body and align them with the appropriate time of day. Things like sleep/wake behaviour, metabolism, body temperature and hormones — all these are circadian.”

How the study was conducted

Previous research from the Peek laboratory found that mice regenerated muscle tissues faster when the damage occurred during their normal waking hours. When mice experienced muscle damage during their usual sleeping hours, healing was slowed.

In the current study, Peek and her collaborators sought to better understand how circadian clocks within muscle stem cells govern regeneration depending on the time of day.

For the study, Peek and her collaborators performed single-cell sequencing of injured and uninjured muscles in mice at different times of the day. They found that the time of day influenced inflammatory response levels in stem cells, which signal to neutrophils — the “first responder” innate immune cells in muscle regeneration.

“We discovered that the cells’ signalling to each other was much stronger right after injury when mice were injured during their wake period,” Peek said. “That was an exciting finding and is further evidence that the circadian regulation of muscle regeneration is dictated by this stem cell-immune cell crosstalk.”

The scientists found that the muscle stem cell clock also affected the post-injury production of NAD+, a coenzyme found in all cells that is essential to creating energy in the body and is involved in hundreds of metabolic processes.

Next, using a genetically manipulated mouse model, which boosted NAD+ production specifically in muscle stem cells, the team of scientists found that NAD+ induces inflammatory responses and neutrophil recruitment, promoting muscle regeneration.  

Why it matters

The findings may be especially relevant to understanding the circadian rhythm disruptions that occur in aging and obesity, Peek said.

“Circadian disruptions linked to aging and metabolic syndromes like obesity and diabetes are also associated with diminished muscle regeneration,” Peek said. “Now, we are able to ask: do these circadian disruptions contribute to poorer muscle regeneration capacity in these conditions? How does that interact with the immune system?”

What’s next

Moving forward, Peek and her collaborators hope to identify exactly how NAD+ induces immune responses and how these responses are altered in disease.

“A lot of circadian biology focuses on molecular clocks in individual cell types and in the absence of stress,” Peek said. “We haven’t had the technology to sufficiently look at cell-cell interactions until recently. Trying to understand how different circadian clocks interact in conditions of stress and regeneration, is really an exciting new frontier.”

Source: Northwestern University

Categories : Neurology Pain ManagementTags : Leave a comment

Over-the-counter Pain Relievers Linked to Improved Recovery from Concussion

On By ModernMedia
Credit: Pixabay CC0

People who take over-the-counter pain relievers after a concussion may recover faster than those who do not take pain relievers, according to a preliminary study that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 77th Annual Meeting taking place April 5–9, 2025.

The study does not prove that pain relievers improve recovery after concussion; it only shows an association.

“These results are exciting as there are limited treatment options for concussion, and over-the-counter pain relievers are readily available and inexpensive,” said study author Kyle Arnold, MD, of the University of Washington in Seattle and a member of the American Academy of Neurology.

“If these results can be confirmed by a controlled study, they could guide us to possible treatment options for people after a concussion.”

The cohort study was conducted by the NCAA and US Department of Defense CARE Consortium and looked at NCAA athletes and military cadets who had concussions. A total of 813 people took over-the-counter pain relievers such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs after their concussion and 848 people did not take any pain relievers.

Researchers looked at the amount of time it took the athletes to be cleared to return to activities with no restrictions at both 50% recovery and 90% recovery, meaning when 50% of the athletes in the study recovered and then later when 90% recovered.

People who took the pain relievers were 20% more likely to have a faster time before they were cleared to return to activities with no restrictions than those who did not take pain relievers. Those who took the medications were cleared at 50% recovery an average of two days faster, and at 90% recovery an average of seven days faster than those who took no medication.

People who took pain relievers were also about 15% more likely to return to having no symptoms more quickly than those who did not take pain relievers. At 50% recovery, those taking the medications had no symptoms one day sooner than those not taking the medications. At 90% recovery, they had no symptoms three days sooner.

Those who took pain relievers also had lower scores on tests of how severe their symptoms were overall and how severe their headaches were. The researchers also found that the earlier people took the pain relievers after the injury, the faster they recovered. For instance, at 50% recovery, those who started using pain relievers on the first day of their injury returned to play and had resolution of symptoms approximately eight days faster than those who started taking them after five or more days.

There was no difference between the type of pain reliever taken and how quickly people recovered.

“Early medication use appeared to be linked to shorter recovery times, but these findings require further validation through controlled trials,” Arnold said. “In the meantime, these preliminary results may help inform potential treatment options for people recovering from concussions, but additional studies are needed to provide more definitive recommendations.”

Source: American Academy of Neurology

Categories : AgeingTags : Leave a comment

Lifestyle and Environmental Factors Affect Health and Ageing More than Genes

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Mari Lezhava on Unsplash

A new study led by researchers from Oxford Population Health has shown that a range of environmental factors, including lifestyle (smoking and physical activity) and living conditions, have a greater impact on health and premature death than our genes.

The researchers used data from nearly half a million UK Biobank participants to assess the influence of 164 environmental factors and genetic risk scores for 22 major diseases on ageing, age-related diseases, and premature death. The study is published in Nature Medicine.

Key findings:

  • environmental factors explained 17% of the variation in risk of death, compared to less than 2% explained by genetic predisposition (as we understand it at present);
  • of the 25 independent environmental factors identified, smoking, socioeconomic status, physical activity, and living conditions had the most impact on mortality and biological ageing;
  • smoking was associated with 21 diseases; socioeconomic factors such as household income, home ownership, and employment status, were associated with 19 diseases; and physical activity was associated with 17 diseases;
  • 23 of the factors identified are modifiable;
  • early life exposures, including body weight at 10 years and maternal smoking around birth, were shown to influence ageing and risk of premature death 30-80 years later;
  • environmental exposures had a greater effect on diseases of the lung, heart and liver, while genetic risk dominated for dementias and breast cancer.

Professor Cornelia van Duijn, St Cross Professor of Epidemiology at Oxford Population Health and senior author of the paper, said, “Our research demonstrates the profound health impact of exposures that can be changed either by individuals or through policies to improve socioeconomic conditions, reduce smoking, or promote physical activity.

“While genes play a key role in brain conditions and some cancers, our findings highlight opportunities to mitigate the risks of chronic diseases of the lung, heart and liver which are leading causes of disability and death globally. The early life exposures are particularly important as they show that environmental factors accelerate ageing early in life but leave ample opportunity to prevent long-lasting diseases and early death.”

The authors used a unique measure of ageing (a new ‘ageing clock’) to monitor how rapidly people are ageing using blood protein levels. This enabled them to link environmental exposures that predict early mortality with biological ageing. This measure was previously shown to detect age-related changes, not only in the UK Biobank but also in two other large cohort studies from China and Finland.

Dr Austin Argentieri, lead author of the study at Oxford Population Health and Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, said “Our exposome approach allowed us to quantify the relative contributions of the environment and genetics to ageing, providing the most comprehensive overview to date of the environmental and lifestyle factors driving ageing and premature death. These findings underscore the potential benefits of focusing interventions on our environments, socioeconomic contexts, and behaviours for the prevention of many age-related diseases and premature death.”

Professor Bryan Williams, Chief Scientific and Medical Officer at the British Heart Foundation, added ‘Your income, postcode and background shouldn’t determine your chances of living a long and healthy life. But this pioneering study reinforces that this is the reality for far too many people.

“We have long known that risk factors such as smoking impact our heart and circulatory health, but this new research emphasises just how great the opportunity is to influence our chances of developing health problems, including cardiovascular disease, and dying prematurely. We urgently need bold action from Government to target the surmountable barriers to good health that too many people in the UK are facing.”

The research shows that whilst many of the individual exposures identified played a small part in premature death, the combined effect of these multiple exposures together over the life course (referred to as the exposome) explained a large proportion of premature mortality variation. The insights from this study pave the way for integrated strategies to improve the health of ageing populations by identifying key combinations of environmental factors that shape risk of premature death and many common age-related diseases simultaneously.

Professor van Duijn said, “Studies on environmental health have tended to focus on individual exposures based on a specific hypothesis. While this approach has seen many successes, the method has not always yielded reproducible and reliable findings. Instead, we have followed a ‘hypothesis free’ exposome approach and studied all available exposures to find the major drivers of disease and death.

“We have made a big leap forward in understanding how to provide accurate evidence on the causes and consequences of age-related diseases by combining novel computational methods with clinical and epidemiological knowledge to explore the interplay between multiple exposures. In an ever-changing environment, it is critical that we combine these techniques with novel advances in smart technology to monitor lifestyle and environment, as well as with biological data, to understand the impact of the environment over time. There are a lot of questions still to be answered related to diet, lifestyle, and exposure to new pathogens (such as bird flu and COVID-19) and chemicals (think of pesticides and plastics), and the impact of environmental and genetic factors in different populations.”

The paper. ‘Integrating the environmental and genetic architectures of aging and mortality‘. can be ready in Nature Medicine.

Source: University of Oxford

Categories : Injury & Trauma Surgeries & ProceduresTags : Leave a comment

Engineered Cartilage from Nasal Septum Cells helps Treat Complex Knee Injuries

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Researchers grow cartilage replacements from cells of the nasal septum to repair cartilage injuries in the knee. (Photo: University of Basel, Christian Flierl)

An unlucky fall while skiing or playing football can spell the end of sports activities. Damage to articular cartilage does not heal by itself and increases the risk of osteoarthritis. Researchers at the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel have now shown that even complex cartilage injuries can be repaired with replacement cartilage engineered from cells taken from the nasal septum.

A team at the Department of Biomedicine led by Professor Ivan Martin, Dr Marcus Mumme and Professor Andrea Barbero has been developing this method for several years. It involves extracting the cells from a tiny piece of the patient’s nasal septum cartilage and then allowing them to multiply in the laboratory on a scaffold made of soft fibres. Finally, the newly grown cartilage is cut into the required shape and implanted into the knee joint.

Earlier studies have already shown promising results. “Nasal septum cartilage cells have particular characteristics that are ideally suited to cartilage regeneration,” explains Professor Martin. For example, it has emerged that these cells can counteract inflammation in the joints.

More mature cartilage shows better results

In a clinical trial involving 98 participants at clinics in four countries, the researchers compared two experimental approaches. One group received cartilage grafts that had matured in the lab for only two days before implantation – similar to other cartilage replacement products. For the other group, the grafts were allowed to mature for two weeks. During this time, the tissue acquires characteristics similar to native cartilage.

For 24 months after the procedure, the participants self-assessed their well-being and the functionality of the treated knee through questionnaires. The results, published in the scientific journal Science Translational Medicine, showed a clear improvement in both groups. However, patients who received more mature engineered cartilage continued to improve even in the second year following the procedure, overtaking the group with less mature cartilage grafts.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) further revealed that the more mature cartilage grafts resulted in better tissue composition at the site of the implant, and even of the neighbouring cartilage. “The longer period of prior maturation is worthwhile,” emphasizes Anke Wixmerten, co-lead author of the study. The additional maturation time of the implant, she points out, only requires a slight increase in effort and manufacturing costs, and gives much better results.

Particularly suited to larger and more complex cartilage injuries

“It is noteworthy that patients with larger injuries benefit from cartilage grafts with longer prior maturation periods,” says Professor Barbero. This also applies, he says, to cases in which previous cartilage treatments with other techniques have been unsuccessful.

“Our study did not include a direct comparison with current treatments,” admits Professor Martin. “However, if we look at the results from standard questionnaires, patients treated with our approach achieved far higher long-term scores in joint functionality and quality of life.”

Based on these and earlier findings, the researchers now plan to test this method for treating osteoarthritis – an inflammatory disease that causes joint cartilage degeneration, resulting in chronic pain and disability.

Two large-scale clinical studies, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the EU research framework programme Horizon Europe, are about to begin. These studies will explore the technique’s effectiveness in treating a specific form of osteoarthritis affecting the kneecaps (ie, patellofemoral osteoarthritis). The activities will further develop in Basel the field of cellular therapies, strategically defined as a priority area for research and innovation at the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel.

Source: University of Basel

Categories : General Interest Implants and ProsthesesTags : Leave a comment

Össur South Africa Launches ‘What’s Your Epic?’ to Further Empower Those Living with Limb Loss

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Transform Lives, Break Barriers, Redefine Possibilities

Dane Wilson, Michael Stevens and Reuben van Niekerk of Jumping Kids, a nonprofit that supports young amputees.

Ahead of this year’s Cape Epic, Össur South Africa has announced the launch of its ‘What’s Your Epic?’ initiative. In partnership with Aramex, this campaign supports three nonprofit organisations (NPOs) – all of which provide hope, mobility, and independence to individuals with limited movement. ‘What’s Your Epic?’ aims to further empower amputees to overcome barriers, move freely, and live life to the fullest.

“Movement is a fundamental right. While not everyone may be an elite athlete, everyone deserves the freedom to move,” says Blignaut Knoetze, MD of Össur South Africa, a global provider of non-invasive orthopaedics. “We are committed to improving people’s mobility so that they can live their life without limitations. Our efforts and expertise are focused on helping those living with limb loss to be confident, safe and mobile, regardless of injuries or conditions that could compromise their quality of life.”

To help drive awareness for these NPOs and the valuable work that they do, so closely aligned with its own mission, Össur South Africa has entered three teams into the prestigious Cape Epic mountain bike race, with each team representing and raising funds for one of the selected NPOs. These teams not only showcase the resilience of their riders but also shine a light on the important and essential work carried out by these organisations.

The NPOs and Riders Making a Difference

Rejuvenate SA
After an elective amputation in 2020, Travis Warwick-Oliver turned to adaptive sports and co-founded Rejuvenate SA with prosthetist Luvan Cass. Their nonprofit provides mobility aids and vocational training to underprivileged individuals, particularly in rural KwaZulu-Natal. As they gear up for another Cape Epic, they see it as more than just a race – it’s an opportunity to raise awareness and inspire involvement. “We’re not just trying to get people moving; we’re trying to create a better future and give them the opportunity to fend for themselves,” explains Cass. Their journey embodies resilience, community, and the belief that movement is the key to opportunity and dignity.

Jumping Kids
Led by director Michael Stevens, Jumping Kids supports young amputees by providing prosthetics, education, and sporting opportunities – equipping children with limb loss with the prosthetic technology they need to run, play, and chase their dreams. Ambassadors Reuben van Niekerk and Dane Wilson (both amputees) advocate for mobility solutions, emphasising that the ‘What’s Your Epic?’ campaign is about more than just sports—it’s about redefining possibilities. “Whether through donations, raising awareness, or inspiring others, every action helps build a future where children with disabilities can thrive,” says Stevens.

Zimele NPC
Rentia Retief lost her leg in a 2023 cycling accident. Just a year later, she is set to compete in the Cape Epic alongside teammate Jackie Church. Supporting Zimele NPC (‘independence’ in Xhosa), a nonprofit dedicated to empowering adult amputees to lead independent lives, Rentia is proving that disability does not define potential. “Being part of this experience is truly inspiring,” says Church, an Össur South Africa employee. “Rentia is showing others what’s possible and breaking barriers for amputees everywhere.”

“These three NPOs are lifelines for those who often lack essential resources or healthcare,” says Knoetze, Össur South Africa aims to support them by raising vital funds, thereby helping them to expand their impact and, in turn, help ensure that more amputees have the freedom to move, dream, and live fully.

“’What’s Your Epic?’ is more than a fundraising initiative—it’s a movement to shift perceptions, raise awareness, and advocate for individuals with limb loss,” adds Knoetze. “Movement changes lives. Together, we can empower amputees to overcome challenges, dream boldly, and achieve the extraordinary.”

What’s your Epic?

To support these heroes taking part in the upcoming Cape Epic, and help to extend the impact of these three NPOs (Rejuvenate SA, Jumping Kids and Zimele), please visit GivenGain:  https://www.givengain.com/event/ossur-sa-giving-back.