Category: 8. Health

Students vape to fit in, and cope with stress

Educators suggested a range of reasons why vaping occurs in middle and high school, including peer pressure, self-soothing, and experimentation. Students are commonly turning to vaping as they try to fit in with peers and assert independence from adults. Educators noted that vaping was common among students struggling with anxiety, stress, and depression.

“I definitely see some middle schoolers that are actually addicted to nicotine now, to the point where they’re trying to sneak it in (school) and they get caught. They get this sort of desperation about them, because they know they’re going to be struggling.” Middle School-Based Psychologist, Minnesota

“These kids are self-medicating. Vaping gives them a dopamine hit, a break from stress, a moment of comfort. It’s everywhere—their parents do it, siblings, friends. But at its core, they’re using it to escape what they’re feeling.” Middle School Assistant Principal, Ohio

“Between that [vapes] and the phones, those two addictions, irritability is a big thing. Not being able to stay focused, needing to get up and go get their fix.” High School-Based Psychologist, California

Researchers have completed the first-ever activity map of a mammalian brain in a groundbreaking duo of studies, and it has rewritten scientists’ understanding of how decisions are made.

The project, involving a dozen labs and data from over 600,000 individual mouse brain cells, covered areas representing over 95% of the brain. Findings from the research, published in two papers in the journal Nature, suggest that decision-making involves far more of the brain than previously thought.

No one will argue against the benefits of good oral hygiene (The Guardian view on the dental divide: ministers must brush up their policy as well as children’s teeth, 2 September), but teaching toothbrushing at breakfast clubs to prevent dental decay (cavities and fillings) is a waste of time unless it is backed up by dietary advice with regard to unnecessary sugar. Why can’t this simple advice, and ways to apply it, be given to pregnant women and mothers of newborns? It can be given by a variety of healthcare professionals, costs nothing to apply at home and would save the NHS millions in a few years’ time. Children would have less pain and dentists would have a happier job.

Extending the sugar tax and challenging the aggressive marketing and lobbying tactics of the food industry, which promotes and profits from high-sugar foods, should also be considered if we are to take the problem seriously. There is “no specific correlation between the number of NHS dentists and young children with tooth decay” because the damage has been done and habits established before most children get to see a dentist.

Incidentally, a bit more advice at the earliest stages would have significant health benefits in other respects too.
Nick Hopkinson
York

A newly discovered “timekeeper” for fighting infections dramatically shapes the body’s immune defenses, offering insight as to why antiviral T cell response varies throughout the day, according to UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers. Their findings, published in Science Advances, could lead to new strategies for treating infections, using immunotherapies to combat cancer, and limiting the effects of body clock disruptors such as jet lag and shift work.

The scientists found that a protein on the surface of T cells that binds to adrenaline appears to act as a timekeeper for the cells’ infection-fighting function. This pathway suppresses inflammation while also increasing vulnerability to disease. The discovery could help explain why individuals might be more susceptible to some infections or experience more severe symptoms at various times during a 24-hour period.

“The adrenaline receptor sets the internal clock of virus-specific T cells, which regulates how well they respond to viral infections at different times of the day,” said David Farrar, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Immunology and Molecular Biology at UT Southwestern. Dr. Farrar co-led the study with Drashya Sharma, Ph.D., Instructor of Immunology at UTSW.

Most organisms have biological functions that cycle on a 24-hour time frame, a phenomenon known as circadian rhythm. For humans and many other mammals, light sets these cycles by programming a region of the brain that sends chemical signals throughout the body to synchronize the circadian clocks in cells, tissues, and organs.

Although scientists have long known the immune system functions on its own daily cycle – for example, vaccines tend to elicit a greater immune response when given in the morning than at night – it has not been known which chemical signals regulate its circadian clock.

Dr. Farrar and his colleagues got their first clues in a study they published in 2022. To better understand the role of the adrenaline receptor on T cells, they used genetic engineering to remove this receptor (ADRB2) from T cell surfaces. Surprisingly, among more than 300 genes affected by this change, the researchers found several genes important for maintaining circadian rhythms.

In the new study, Drs. Farrar and Sharma and their colleagues discovered that deleting ADRB2 had an inconsistent effect on these circadian clock genes. While some lost their rhythmic expression, others adopted abnormal rhythms, either shifting when they were normally expressed within a 24-hour cycle or cycling outside a 24-hour period.

Next, healthy, normal mice and others genetically altered to remove ADRB2 from their T cells were infected with vesicular stomatitis virus, a common pathogen for this species. T cells of the mice with ADRB2 proliferated and differentiated into various subsets, as typically happens after exposure to bacterial and viral pathogens; however, T cells of the mice lacking ADRB2 had reduced proliferation and differentiation.

One subset particularly affected in the altered mice was memory T cells, which are targeted by vaccines. These cells stick around after infection, preserving a cellular memory of the pathogen so they can launch a new attack upon exposure to the same pathogen in the future.

Drs. Farrar and Sharma explained that adrenaline produced by brain cells rises upon waking and falls at bedtime, a cycle that’s the opposite of immune activity. Because some circadian clock genes in T cells continue to cycle even in the absence of ADRB2, the researchers added, adrenaline is probably just one of several chemical signals that direct circadian rhythms in T cells.

Future research in the Farrar Lab will focus on identifying other cycle-setting chemicals in these immune cells as well as how they affect T cell response to various pathogens at different times of the day.

Reference: Sharma D, Kohlbach KA, Maples R, Farrar JD. The β2-adrenergic receptor (Adrb2) entrains circadian gene oscillation and CD8+ T cell differentiation in response to virus infection. Science Advances. 2025;11(31):eady2643. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.ady2643

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Researchers have developed a shampoo-like gel that has been studied in animal models and could protect hair from falling out during chemotherapy treatment.

Baldness from chemotherapy-induced alopecia causes personal, social, and professional anxiety for everyone who experiences it.

Currently, there are few solutions—the only ones that are approved are cold caps worn on the patient’s head, which are expensive and have their own extensive side effects.

Bryan Smith, an associate professor in the Michigan State University College of Engineering and with MSU’s Institute for Qualitative Health Science and Engineering, has developed a gel the consistency of shampoo that he hopes will help protect patients’ hair throughout treatment.

When Smith was a trainee at Stanford University, he learned and used a process that inverted the typical engineering process, seeking to objectively identify and completely characterize critical clinical needs prior to solving them.

“This unmet need of chemotherapy-induced alopecia appealed to me because it is adjacent to the typical needs in medicine such as better treatments and earlier, more accurate diagnostics for cancer,” Smith says.

“This is a need on the personal side of cancer care that, as an engineer, I didn’t fully recognize until I began interviewing cancer physicians and former cancer patients about it. Once I understood, it became clear to me that better solutions are very important to many cancer patients’ quality of life.”

This rigorous process of specifying the need, identifying possible solutions, developing an initial prototype, and refining and testing it led to the development of a gel described in a new paper in Biomaterials Advances.

The gel is a hydrogel, which absorbs a lot of water and provides long-lasting delivery of drugs to the patient’s scalp. The hydrogel is designed to be applied to the patient’s scalp before the start of chemotherapy and left on their head as long as the chemotherapy drugs are in their system—or until they are ready to easily wash it off.

During chemotherapy treatment, chemotherapeutic drugs circulate throughout the body. When these drugs reach the blood vessels surrounding the hair follicles on the scalp, they kill or damage the follicles, which releases the hair from the shaft and causes it to fall out. The gel, containing the drugs lidocaine and adrenalone, prevents most of the chemotherapy drugs from reaching the hair follicle by restricting the blood flow to the scalp. Dramatic reduction in drugs reaching the follicle will help protect the hair and prevent it from falling out.

To support practical use of this “shampoo,” the gel is designed to be temperature responsive. For example, at body temperatures the gel is thicker and clings to the patient’s hair and scalp surface. When the gel is exposed to slightly cooler temperatures, the gel becomes thinner and more like a liquid that can be easily washed away.

Smith and his team hope to obtain federal and/or venture funding to move this research forward into clinical trials and, eventually, to human patients.

“The research has the potential to help many people,” Smith says. “All the individual components are well-established, safe materials, but we can’t move forward with follow-up studies and clinical trials on humans without the support of substantial funding.”

Source: Michigan State University