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NEWSBRIEFS August 2023

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Drug for Resistant Hypertension Shows Promise

Treatment-resistant hypertension is a frustrating problem for the individuals who have it and the physicians who treat it. But now there’s a drug in clinical trials called baxdrostat that shows promise for doing what the current combination of several other drugs cannot. In phase 2 clinical trials conducted to evaluate the effect of different doses, researchers gave baxdrostat or placebo to 248 patients with a baseline blood pressure of 148/88 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) despite the use of three or more antihypertensive medications. All individuals experienced a significant drop in systolic and diastolic pressures in a dose-dependent fashion, meaning the higher the dose of baxdrostat, the greater the reduction in blood pressure. All three doses tested were more effective at lowering blood pressure than placebo. Baxdrostat is the first drug in a class that inhibits the enzyme that makes aldosterone, rather than blocking the mineralocorticoid receptor, which causes levels of the stress hormone cortisol to drop. The study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine

AI Detects Early Signs of MCI and Dementia in Older Drivers

Researchers at Columbia University developed a novel algorithm for predicting mild cognitive impairment and dementia in older drivers. They used data from a large driving study and their algorithm achieved an accuracy of 96% in predicting mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. This model outperformed traditional machine learning models widely used in artificial intelligence (AI) for classifying disease status. “Our learning model based on digital markers and basic demographic characteristics could predict mild cognitive impairment and dementia in older drivers with excellent accuracy,” said Sharon Di, associate professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics at Columbia Engineering and the study’s lead author. At the time of enrollment, the 2,977 participants were active drivers ages 65 to 79 years who were cognitively intact. Data used in this study came from the first three years of follow-up, spanning from August 2015 through March 2019. During the follow-up, 36 participants were diagnosed with MCI, eight with Alzheimer’s disease, and 17 were diagnosed with other or unspecified dementia. The two most influential driving variables were the right to left turn ratio and the number of hard braking events. “With advancing age, drivers make relatively fewer left turns and more right turns because left turns are riskier,” noted Di. According to the researchers, early detection of MCI and dementia could lead to timely evaluation, diagnosis, and interventions, which are especially salient in the absence of effective therapeutics. The study was published in the journal Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and was supported in part by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

Gut Microbes Can Boost the Motivation to Exercise

Some species of gut-dwelling bacteria activate nerves in the gut to promote the desire to exercise, according to a study in mice that was led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The study was published in Nature and reveals the gut-to-brain pathway that explains why some bacteria boost exercise performance. “If we can confirm the presence of a similar pathway in humans, it could offer an effective way to boost people’s levels of exercise to improve public health generally,” said study senior author Christoph Thaiss, PhD, an assistant professor of Microbiology at Penn Medicine. Thaiss and colleagues set up the study to search broadly for factors that determine exercise performance. They recorded the genome sequences, gut bacterial species, bloodstream metabolites, and other data for genetically diverse mice. They then measured the amount of daily voluntary wheel running the animals did, as well as their endurance. The researchers analyzed these data using machine learning, seeking attributes of the mice that could best explain the animals’ sizeable inter-individual differences in running performance. They were surprised to find that genetics seemed to account for only a small portion of these performance differences, whereas differences in gut bacterial populations appeared to be substantially more important. Mice given broad-spectrum antibiotics to get rid of their gut bacteria reduced their running performance by about half. The team plans further studies to confirm the existence of this gut-to-brain pathway in humans.

The post NEWSBRIEFS August 2023 appeared first on University Health News.


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