Embryology

The Grief of Miscarriage Is a Modern Phenomenon – Fatherly

When Dr. Lara Freidenfelds, a historian of health, parenting, and reproduction,suffered a miscarriage 17 years ago, she was shocked and distressed. But what shocked her the most, as a PhD candidate in the History of Science writing her dissertation on the modern period and menstruation in 20th century America, was just how common miscarriages were. (Around 20 percent of confirmed pregnancies miscarry) Even more surprising to her: if you take a pregnancy test as early as you can, about six days before your expected period, theres almost a one in three chance that you are going to lose that pregnancy.

This got her Why was the information that was out there when I was trying to get pregnant so obscure?, she said Why didnt I know that just getting a positive test didnt really tell me, yet, that I was successfully pregnant?

Pulling at these threads, Dr. Freidenfelds dove into the history of miscarriages and came out with a brand new understanding of modern pregnancy and how market forces, medical advancements, pregnancy apps, and birth control have given expecting parents a sense of control and surety over their pregnancy that they just dont have in the first place. This makes miscarriages more difficult and painful than they often need to be. Her new book, The Myth of the Perfect Pregnancy: A History of Miscarriage in America, is a deeply researched and thoughtful exploration of the history of miscarriages that serves to teach parents about the history of pregnancy but also lift the shame over it.

Fatherly spoke to Freidenfelds about the history of miscarriages, how birth control created unrealistic expectations for familys abilities to get pregnant, and how mens roles in pregnancy and miscarriage have shifted right alongside their partners.

What compelled you to write about the history of miscarriages?

I started researching this book, now, about 17 years ago when I had the miscarriage.It really made me feel better to start thinking through this. I know, as a historian, that before the 20th century, women didnt think about early pregnancy in the same way they do now. They thought of it as a suspicion, that you could be pregnant, but not being certain about it. Looking for symptoms. But then, if you had a late menstrual period, and even if it was a crampy, heavy one, if you didnt see the form of a child in it, then women would attribute it to either sickness or just a late period or a pregnancy that had sort of begun. That the materials had never really come together into a child.

I thought, why cant I think about my pregnancies that way, too? In some ways, we know a lot now. We know a lot about embryology. But weve lost a lot of really important knowledge about how often embryos dont actually succeed and arent actually viable.

And then, I wanted to know, how did we come to such a different understanding? And how did we, in the process of learning so much science and medicine, actually lose a key piece of knowledge about how uncertain early pregnancy is?

So how did we lose that key piece of knowledge?

I think that theres some really large and important cultural forces at work. Theyve reshaped modern life in some really positive ways. Around the time of the American revolution, women and men began to want to have control over their reproduction. At least by 1960, with the birth control pill, we succeeded. Were successful at preventing pregnancies when we dont want them, so now, we feel like when we do decide to be pregnant, that it should be successful.

What do you mean?

Modern birth control is a wonderful thing, but it has given us a misleading intuition about how secure pregnancies are. Secondly, our vision of parenting has shifted in some really important ways. In colonial America, sure, you would like a child to love, but, parenting happens just because you got married. It was up to God and fate how many children you had, and children were for helping with household work, and working on the farm, and supporting you in your old age, and respecting God.

All of those reasons for being a parent over the last few centuries have dropped away. Today, our parenting is really focused, almost exclusively, on forming a loving bond with a child. That idea of when that bond is supposed to start has moved earlier and earlier into pregnancy and in recent decades into even the first weeks of pregnancy.

So, while I think that its wonderful that we focus on having a loving bond with our children now, I do think theres been some really emotionally traumatic side effects with starting to think that way at the very beginning of pregnancy. And then, marketers have gotten in the mix and are important pieces of this.

When did this begin?

Some of this begins with the 1920s advertisements for special Sears catalogs the baby edition. But it really gets going in the 1960s, when marketers become a lot more sophisticated about reaching specific segments, and realize that pregnant women are a really valuable group of consumers, because theyre about to make a bunch of brand choices.

Over the decades, since then, the market has gotten more and more aggressive about reaching women as early as possible in their pregnancy. A lot of pregnancy advice on websites and on apps is actually driven by marketing and advertising.

A responsible pregnancy manual author would never tell you to start browsing baby names at five weeks pregnant. But your app? Or your pregnancy website? It might very well do that, because they have every incentive to feed your excitement and your emotional attachment to your pregnancy.

It has gotten out of control.

Really out of control. So, as nice as it is that we have these wonderful baby products, the consumer culture has really gone in a direction that has not served peoples emotional wellbeing when it comes to early pregnancy.

And then we have these great medical technologies! Weve made new rituals around ultrasounds, and home pregnancy testing, that have also contributed to making us feel like its a real baby at a time when in fact it may not be secure yet.

So, 150 years ago was there not a lot of grief, or even a culture of silence around miscarriage?

Nineteenth century women werent talking about miscarriages in letters or diaries a lot. Part of whats complicated about this is, before people had good control of their fertility, they already had begun wishing for smaller families, and doing what they could to have smaller families. So 19th century women were commonly using douching and withdrawal and folk methods like heavy work or going on a bumpy carriage ride to try to bring on the menses, to try to not have a pregnancy this month.

So, if thats how youre thinking about early pregnancy as something that youre largely trying to avoid youre not that often in the situation of feeling distress about an early pregnancy loss. It took having a certain amount of control over fertility before early losses could seem like something that was clearly undesirable. So thats part of it.

The idea that having a choice in being able to limit pregnancy makes the loss of wanted pregnancy more jarring.

Part of it also is that when women wrote about second trimester losses, they were scary medical situations. They were relieved at not dying from them. So, the loss of the child was secondary to being relieved to have survived the process. Pregnancy and birth has become so much safer that we can focus on the expected child, and not on surviving the birth or miscarriage.

We see how womens attitudes towards miscarriages have changed over the last 150 years or so. Is there a sense that mens attitudes have changed alongside this shift?

Historically, when women had pregnancy losses that they were confident were pregnancy losses, so later in pregnancy, husbands were part of it in the same way they were part of birth. Which is that they were responsible for calling an assistant, or a medical practitioner, to come in and assist and make sure their wife survived. Men were highly invested, and very concerned, because they had the same concerns that their spouse could lose her life. They werent necessarily expected to be thinking about pregnancy as an already existing baby.

What has changed today as far as mens relationship to miscarriage?

I think that in many positive ways, the expectations about husbands and male partners being part of pregnancy is a new thing. Thats great for many couples. In some ways, some of these rituals weve developed around our medicine the ultrasound, going in for the ultrasound to see the baby is partly about helping the father feel involved, because he cant feel the pregnancy. But this way, he has a window into whats going on. Its also not literally the seeing of it. Its having a ritual format where you go in and start imagining yourself as parents, together.

And thats something that fathers can participate in. Thats very nice. But its just really hard on people when you find a miscarriage, instead of seeing the heartbeat.

Yes, incredibly.

So, fathers, I think, are experiencing the losses more directly now because of that. And the same thing with home pregnancy tests, especially with websites suggesting many exciting and sentimental ways for women to share their positive home pregnancy test with their spouse or other relatives. It can be a really nice way for fathers to be involved in their future parenting right from the same time as their partners. On the other hand, that means that theyre going to face the loss as well.

When parents suffer a miscarriage, its often an incredibly sad time for them. The grief is real.

People grieve in different ways. Part of whats so complicated about the situation, in terms of people giving appropriate emotional support, is that you dont know if your friend or relative who miscarried felt like they lost a child, and are grieving a death in the family, or, if they are very disappointed, but are ready to try again next month and youre going to make it harder for them if you say, Im so sorry your baby died.

Yes, and its hard to know, as a friend or family member, how to discuss it. Or if its appropriate to bring it up. So its often not addressed.

I think that people are looking for certain kinds of support, because we dont talk about it. And people dont talk about it partly because they are protecting themselves from the burden of what people might put on them having heard of their miscarriage. We dont have a standard ritual for handling miscarriage. We often dont know how to feel about it, which is sort of a strange thing.

It is strange.

Thee narratives that tend to get offered are trying to support women who are grieving their miscarriage. I think grievers do need a lot of support. But, its not true that the only way to think about a miscarriage is as the death of a child. If you tell people that that is the way youre supposed to think about it, its going to hurt people at the same time it helps others. I would like to see more discussion in our popular support literature about the variety of ways people might think about a miscarriage and also, that how you think about your miscarriage might change over the course of your life. Its not something that happens once, you experience it, and its permanently that way.

No life experience is. But this one, more than others, can change in its meaning and how you think about it in the context of your journey to parenthood, depending on how that goes.

So what do you think is the correct course of action?

We need to have this discussion enough so that people know it might happen ahead of time so that they can go into childbearing with the information that they may get pregnant next month and have a baby in nine months. They may take six months to get pregnant. They may have a successful pregnancy the first time around or the first one may not stick and it may take another try. All of those are normal, healthy ways that people have their children and if we can go in knowing that that might be the case, we might be able to handle early pregnancy a little bit differently so that when they dont work out, its not as distressing.

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The Grief of Miscarriage Is a Modern Phenomenon - Fatherly

Physiology

MSU-Meridian to host meeting for those interested in education degrees on Feb. 13 – Meridian Star

Want to be an educator or further your career in education?

MSU-Meridians Division of Education will host an informational meetingfrom 5:30 7 p.m. onFeb. 13 in Kahlmus Auditorium located on the College Park Campus at 1000 Hwy 19 North.

According to Kim Hall, head of the Division of Education at MSU-Meridian, the meeting will help prospective students learn more about undergraduate and graduate degree programs in Education offered at the local campus, including kinesiology (clinical exercise physiology) and counseling.

Mississippi is facing a critical teacher shortage, said Hall, and we at MSU-Meridian have worked diligently the past several years to do our part by developing flexible delivery methods designed for the working adult for all our education degree programs. Weve also implemented the Professional Advancement Network for Teacher Assistants or PANTA initiative which helps teacher assistants complete the educational requirements to become licensed teachers, she added.

Those interested in attending must RSVP by contacting Kimberly Pace at 601.484.0243 or email kkd43@msstate.edu.

A light meal will be provided and anyone who attends the meeting and submit an application to Mississippi State University by Feb. 21, will have their application fee waived.

Education degrees offered at MSU-Meridian

UNDERGRADUATE:Educational Psychology,Elementary Education,(w/endorsements in Secondary Education& Special Education available),Kinesiology Clinical Exercise Physiology

MASTER OF ARTS IN TEACHING:Community College Education,Secondary Education (Alternate Route Program)

MASTER OF SCIENCE & EDUCATIONAL SPECIALIST:Counselor Education (Clinical Mental Health, Rehabilitation, School),Elementary Education,School Administration,Teacher Leadership

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MSU-Meridian to host meeting for those interested in education degrees on Feb. 13 - Meridian Star

Physiology

New Study: Daylight Saving Time Linked to 28 Fatal Car Accidents Per Year – Sleep Review

A study appearing January 30 in the journal Current Biology puts forth evidence of one downside of Daylight Saving Time (DST): it increases the risk of fatal car accidents in the United States for about a week each year.

The evidence shows about a 6% increase in the risk of fatal traffic accidents in the week after the time change each spring. In other words, more than 28 fatal accidents could be prevented yearly in the United States if the DST transition were abolished. The effect is especially pronounced in the morning hours and in locations further west within a time zone.

The acute adverse effects of DST on fatal traffic accident risk are real, and can be prevented, says senior author Cline Vetter, Dr. Phil, a circadian sleep scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, in a release. Although the observed effects are of moderate size and are not long-lasting, we must not forget that DST transition affects billions of people every year, and thus small changes in risk can have a substantial public health impact.

The findings come at a time when numerous states, including Oregon, Washington, California, and Florida, are considering doing away with the switch entirely, and mounting research is showing spikes in heart attacks, strokes, workplace injuries, and other problems in the days following the time change.

But, Vetter explains, the findings on car accidents werent so clear-cut. In the new study, she and her colleagues, including first author Josef Fritz, set out to look deeper.

They took advantage of the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which recorded 732,835 fatal car accidents across all US states observing DST from 1996 to 2017. After controlling for factors like year, season and day of the week, they found a consistent rise in fatal accidents in the week following the spring time change. Notably, that spike moved in 2007, when the Energy Policy Act extended daylight saving time to begin on the second Sunday of March instead of the first Sunday in April.

Prior to 2007, we saw the risk increase in April, and when daylight saving time moved to March, so did the risk increase, says Vetter. That gave us even more confidence that the risk increase we observe is indeed attributable to the daylight saving time switch, and not something else.

In absolute numbers, they report, this risk increase translated to an additional 5.7 fatal accidents per day from Monday to Friday after the spring DST transition in the United States. Thats more than 28 deaths during the workweek. Over the course of the 22 years, they report, thats more than 626 out of 8,958 fatal accidents that might have been prevented.

Those on the western edge of their time zone, in places like Amarillo, Texas, and St. George, Utah, already get less sleep on average than their counterparts in the eastabout 19 minutes less per day, research showsbecause the sun rises and sets later but they still have to be at work when everyone else does.

They already tend to be more misaligned and sleep-deprived, and when you transition to daylight saving time it makes things worse, says Fritz, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Integrative Physiology. In such western regions, the spike in fatal accidents was more than 8%, the study found.

The increase kicks in right away, on the Sunday when the clocks spring forward, and the bulk of the additional fatal accidents that week occur in the morning.

Changes in accident patterns also occur after the fall back time change, the study showed, with a decline in morning accidents and a spike in the evening, when darkness comes sooner.

Because they balance each other out, there is no overall change in accidents during the fall back week.

The public health impact of the DST transition regarding fatal traffic accident risk is clear from our data, Vetter says. Because our data only included the most severe accidents, namely where a fatality was recorded, this estimation is likely an underestimation of the true risk.

The findings offer yet another reason to consider getting rid of the switch to DST, the researchers say. They now hope to understand and better characterize the effects of DST on individuals and the physiology and health outcomes associated with the mini-jetlag DST causes. With such an understanding, they say theyll be in a better position to identify the people who are most vulnerable and affected by the time change.

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New Study: Daylight Saving Time Linked to 28 Fatal Car Accidents Per Year - Sleep Review

Physiology

Classes help improve mind, body and spirit – TimminsToday

An Eastern philosophy is having a positive impact on a group of Timmins residents.

The Timmins branch of Fung Loy Kok Taoist Tai Chi members gather regularly to exercise their bodies, mind and spirit. While they initially tried tai chi for various reasons, they enjoy the benefits of the non-violent martial art.

The benefit is that everything relaxes. Its called a moving mediation, explained Shirley Calhoun, a co-leader of the Timmins branch. But it also has stretching, it has repair of different things. It helps your back. It helps your eyes. It helps you to just mellow out.

There is a meditative aspect to it. Its a wonderful art.

Taoist tai chi grew out of the ancient Chinese belief that health comes with the body, mind and spirit working together. According to the organizations website, tai chi involves deep stretching with a full range of motion and continuous turning of the spine. They exercise the whole physiology including muscular, skeletal and circulatory systems, as well as tendons, joints, connective tissue and organs.

The gentle, internal movements are balanced throughout the body and have a calming effect on the mind.

Taoist tai chi is marking 50 years in Canada.

In 1970, the fellow who actually started this came from China and his name was Moy Lin Shin, Cahlhoun said. He got it started in Montreal first, then he came to Toronto.

Weve got over 40,000 people that part of the society and do tai chi. Were in 25 or 26 countries. If you become a member here in Timmins, and you travel to, say, Costa Rica, you just bring your little card that says youre part of it all, then you can do tai chi there free.

Once youve become a participant in one place, youre all over the world.

A little more than 20 years after coming to Canada, tai chi arrived in Timmins.

The Timmins branch actually started around 1991-92, she said. There was a fellow from around North Bay, his name is Ron Dankovich, he was a continuing instructor and he came up to Timmins, got everybody started and showed what they had to do.

The Timmins branch began with about 15 members.

Right now, we have 75 members on the books, Calhoun said. Its hard to get started, you have to have enough population.

Members come to the branch for a variety of reasons. Some come to get more physically active, in a gentle way. Others seek a venue for meditation. Others want to find pain relief.

Membership is open to all age groups.

There is no criteria (to join), she said. You just come in and we show a demonstration. We usually have an open house, where we show what we do and we answer questions. If they want to sign up, we sign them up and they can come the next time.

All you need is a pair of loose pants, a pair of shoes that are flat that you wear inside only, we give you a t-shirt and thats it.

She said there are also social benefits to joining the group.

We have a lot of fun, Calhoun said. We have games night sometimes. We do have a lot of fun.

Were open to all age groups. Weve even had an eight-year-old come out with his mom.

The Timmins branch of Fung Loy Kok Taoist Tai Chi has ongoing, beginners and pain relief classes ongoing at the Masonic Hall, 35 Tamarack St.

It can be reachedat 705-268-4300 or onFacebook.

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Classes help improve mind, body and spirit - TimminsToday

Physiology

Do Bacteria in the Brain Impact Sleep? Researchers Get a Keck Grant to Find Out – Sleep Review

With a $1 million grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation, neuroscience researchers at Washington State University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst will explore whether variations in brain levels of bacterial fragments can account for lifes circadian rhythms.

The bacteria residing inside of you outnumber your own cells 10 to one and affect sleep, cognition, mood, brain temperature, appetite and many additional brain functions. Yet we lack an understanding of how they do it, says James Krueger, PhD, Regents Professor of Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience at the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine, in a release.

The sleep research is led by Krueger, and the circadian rhythm portion of the project is led by co-investigator Ilia Karatsoreos, PhD, who recently joined UMass Amherst from WSU as an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences.

At Karatsoreos Lab, researchers will use models of simulated jet lag, a way to disrupt our circadian rhythms. As anyone who has flown cross-country has likely experienced firsthand, disrupting these rhythms is associated with changes in sleep, cognition and even body temperature.

When jetlagged, many of the normal bodily functions are out of synchrony with each other. This is a consequence of altering circadian rhythms, Karatsoreos says. By looking for changes of bacterial products in the brain, we anticipate we will discover new approaches to treat jet lag, and possibly the desynchrony of physiological functions that occurs with old age.

The new grant builds on nearly 40 years of sleep research. In the early 1980s, Krueger isolated a sleep-promoting molecule from brains of sleep-deprived rabbits and from human urine. Its chemical structure was a muramyl peptidea building block component of bacterial cell walls.

At the time of the discovery, it was difficult to measure small amounts of muramyl peptides. Now, improved measurement technologies and the Keck Foundation funding will enable researchers to determine the brains muramyl peptide levels and whether they correlate with sleep-wake cycles or circadian rhythms.

Whats more, researchers will determine if sleep loss results in increased levels of muramyl peptides in the brain, a predicted result based on the 1980s investigations.

Another goal of the Keck-funded work will be to determine how brain muramyl peptides elicit sleep. Our minds are an outcome of a bacteria/human symbiosis, Krueger says. Expanding this concept by determination of how such disparate species talk to each other will transform our views of cognition, psychiatric disorders, consciousness including sleep, and our understanding of what it means to be human.

The late W. M. Keck, founder of the Superior Oil Company, established The W. M. Keck Foundation in 1954. The Foundations grant making is focused primarily on pioneering efforts in the areas of medical research, science and engineering, and undergraduate education.

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Do Bacteria in the Brain Impact Sleep? Researchers Get a Keck Grant to Find Out - Sleep Review

Physiology

ZOLL Foundation Announces Grantees for its September 30, 2019 Funding Round – Business Wire

CHELMSFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ZOLL Foundation grants to young investigators in the fields of resuscitation and acute critical care totaled more than $676,000 in calendar year 2019. The September 30, 2019 round awarded $86,000 more than the round ending March 31, 2019; $381,000 vs. $295,000, respectively. Each round had nine awardees, for a total of 18 recipients receiving an average grant of $37,555 each. The next submission deadline is March 31, 2020.

It has been rewarding to assess applications to the ZOLL Foundation over the past five years, says Norman A. Paradis, MD, Professor of Medicine, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College, and a Director of the ZOLL Foundation since its inception in 2013. The caliber of young investigators looking to the Foundation to help them jumpstart their careers with seed funding, as well as the novel and challenging work they propose undertaking, is very encouraging indeed. Judging from the number and quality of applicants from diverse geographies each round, the Foundation is clearly now a known source of support with an important place in the future of resuscitation and acute critical care research.

Six of the nine recipients of grants for the round ending September 30, 2019 are with U.S.-based institutions, with others from Canada, France, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Research these new investigators will be pursuing, usually with guidance from an established mentor, ranges from hemodynamic and metabolic interventions during cardiac arrest; sex hormone differences in cardiac arrest patients; and endothelial dysfunction and repair during septic shock; to using machine learning algorithms with physiology-guided resuscitation; and testing the impact of intra-shift naps during night shifts among EMS clinicians. For a complete list of research projects, researchers and their institutions, go to http://zollfoundation.org/projects.html.

Application guidelines and a streamlined application form for the March 31 deadline can be found at http://zollfoundation.org/apply.html.

About the ZOLL Foundation

The ZOLL Foundation is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization that operates independently from ZOLL Medical Corporation. It provides grants that support research and educational methods designed to improve resuscitation practices, prevent patient deterioration associated with cardiac arrest, and enhance the care of acute patients to reduce mortality and morbidity. Its focus is on providing seed grants for new investigators starting on the path of resuscitation and acute critical care research. More information on the Foundation, grantees to date, and the grant application process can be found at http://www.zollfoundation.org.

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ZOLL Foundation Announces Grantees for its September 30, 2019 Funding Round - Business Wire

Physiology

Students share their favorite films of the 2010s Queen and Slim, Call Me By Your Name among those listed – The Aggie

Other favorites include Disobedience, Shutter Island, The Martian

This decade brought extraordinary films that left their mark on the history of cinema. Disney saw major success with the release of both Frozen and Frozen 2, as well as the highly anticipated sequel to The Incredibles. The Marvel cinematic universe finished the decade with multiple Avengers movies, ending one chapter and allowing a new one to begin in the new decade. These blockbuster films have made their mark on viewers, but there are other films that made a more personal impact on UC Davis students.

A number of students took the time to share their favorite pieces of cinema from this decade with The California Aggie.

Minh Tran, a first-year biopsychology major, said her film of the decade was Silenced, directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk.

The film was an advocate for sexual assault victims, [and it] calls out the predator and toxic power dynamic in work environment, Tran said.

Caroline Hopkins, a first-year undeclared major, said Disobedience, directed by Sebastian Lelio, is a deeply emotional and cutting tale of self-discovery.

Neha Singh, a third-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major, said Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, was the film that stood out to her this decade because it was empowering and very funny.

Husnaa Formoli, a third-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major, said her favorite film was Shutter Island directed by Martin Scorsese.

I love movies that are unpredictable, and this movie was unpredictable with a twist at the end, Formoli said. The acting was phenomenal.

Ariel Guzman-Avila, a third-year international relations major, expressed his opinion on The Martian directed by Ridley Scott.

The film demonstrated unity and genuine cooperation throughout the entire film involving many parties who always are at odds, Guzman-Avila said. I was most impacted understanding that I too would wish to see global cooperation such as that of NASA and China or a new space colonization effort with my lifetime.

Est Banuelos, a third-year political science major, named Queen and Slim, directed by Melina Matsoukas, as her favorite film this decade.

It impacted me the most because it allows its viewers to grasp a closer sense to what we are currently facing today in America, Banuelos said. The door to higher levels of racism opened up with the current president we have.

Madison Satre, a fourth-year psychology major, was moved by Call Me by Your Name, directed by Luca Guadagnino.

It reinforced living in the moment and taking chances when you can, because you never know when the moment will pass, Satre said.

Shreya Kandasamy, a fourth-year psychology and Chicana/o studies double major noted that Before Midnight, directed by Richard Linklater, taught [her] how relationships are not perfect and that communication is key to sustaining relationships.

Noemi Gregorio, a third-year communications major, said World War Z, directed by Marc Forster, made an impact on her.

I thought it was crazy because it was something I had never seen before, Gregorio said. If you see the movie you will literally see the world collapsing in front of you. It was just a movie, but [it] felt possible.

Alisha Singh, a third-year political science and public service major, said the film that resonated with me the most was Alita: Battle Angel, directed by Robert Rodriguez.

It taught meaningful lessons about the strength of grit and never giving up.

Written by: Gabriela Hernandez arts@theaggie.org

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Students share their favorite films of the 2010s Queen and Slim, Call Me By Your Name among those listed - The Aggie

Physiology

Keck Foundation gives $1 million to WSU researchers studying how sleep affects the brain – WSU News

By Josh Babcock, College of Veterinary Medicine

Cant sleep? Cant think clearly? Feel depressed? It may not be what you think.

The bacteria residing inside of you outnumber your own cells 10:1 and affect sleep, cognition, mood, brain temperature, appetite, and many additional brain functions. Yet we lack an understanding of how they do it, explained James Krueger, PhD, MDHC, Regents Professor at the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience.

With a $1 million grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation, Krueger and colleagues at Washington State University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMA) will explore whether variations in brain levels of bacterial fragments can account for lifes sleep/wake and 24-hour cycles, known as circadian rhythms.

The sleep research is led by Krueger and the circadian rhythm portion of the project is led by Associate Professor Ilia Karatsoreos, PhD, at UMA, who was formerly at WSU and a co-investigator on the study.

The award builds on nearly 40 years of cutting-edge sleep research. In the early 1980s, Krueger isolated a sleep-promoting molecule from brains of sleep deprived rabbits and from human urine. Its chemical structure was a muramyl peptide a building block component of bacterial cell walls.

At the time of the discovery, it was difficult to measure small amounts of muramyl peptides. As a result, determination of the brains muramyl peptide levels and whether they correlated with sleep-wake cycles or with circadian rhythms was shelved. Now, improved measurement technologies and the W. M. Keck Foundation funding enables this work to be done.

Further, WSU researchers will determine if sleep loss results in increased levels of muramyl peptides in the brain; a predicted result based on the 1980s work.

The UMA researchers will use models of simulated jet lag, a way to transiently disrupt our circadian (daily) rhythms. Disruption of these rhythms is associated with multiple changes including sleep, cognition, and body temperature. They will determine if muramyl peptide levels in the brain correlate with such changes.

When jetlagged, many of the normal bodily functions are out of synchrony with each other. This is a consequence of altering circadian rhythms, Karatsoreos said. By looking for changes of bacterial products in the brain, we anticipate we will discover new approaches to treat jet lag, and possibly the desynchrony of physiological functions that occurs with old age.

A third goal of the W. M. Keck funded work will be to determine how brain muramyl peptides elicit sleep. Our minds are an outcome of a bacteria/human symbiosis, Krueger said. Expanding this concept by determination of how such disparate species talk to each other will transform our views of cognition, psychiatric disorders, consciousness including sleep, and our understanding of what it means to be human.

Based in Los Angeles, the W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 by the late W. M. Keck, founder of the Superior Oil Company. The Foundations grant making is focused primarily on pioneering efforts in the areas of medical research, science and engineering and undergraduate education. The Foundation also maintains a Southern California Grant Program that provides support for the Los Angeles community, with a special emphasis on children and youth. For more information, please visit www. wmkeck.org.

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Keck Foundation gives $1 million to WSU researchers studying how sleep affects the brain - WSU News

Immunology

Kymera Therapeutics to Present Preclinical Data on its First-in-Class Selective and Potent Oral IRAK4 Degraders in Cutaneous Inflammation – Yahoo…

Company names first inflammation/immunology disease indication: Hidradenitis suppurativa

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Kymera Therapeutics Inc., a biotechnology company pioneering targeted protein degradation to discover breakthrough medicines for patients, today announced the company will present preclinical data demonstrating that oral daily dosing of its IRAK4 degraders completely suppressed IRAK4 protein expression in skin and immune cells and inhibited cutaneous inflammation. Data support the development of Kymera's degraders for chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, including the company's first named inflammation/immunology disease indication, hidradenitis suppurativa (HS). Research will be presented at the 9th European Hidradenitis Suppurativa Foundation Scientific Conference in Athens, Greece on Feb. 6 at 10:30 AM GMT+2 in the Ilissos room of the Athens Caravel hotel (Abstract #86).

(PRNewsfoto/Kymera Therapeutics LLC)

IRAK4 is a protein known to play a significant role in inflammation mediated by the activation of toll-like receptors (TLRs) and IL-1 receptors (IL-1Rs). While TLR and IL-1R signaling via IRAK4 is involved in the normal immune response, aberrant activation of those pathways is the underlying cause of multiple inflammatory and autoimmune conditions, including HS, atopic dermatitis and rheumatoid arthritis.

"Our latest findings build on the data presented last year at the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) showing the ability of IRAK4 knockdown in skin and spleen to suppress cutaneous inflammation in mice," said Jared Gollob, MD, CMO of Kymera Therapeutics. "Importantly, we have also demonstrated that oral daily administration of an IRAK4 degrader leads to complete knockdown of IRAK4 in skin and immune cells in higher species that is well-tolerated. These findings support development in hidradenitis suppurativa, a chronic inflammatory skin disease where robust IRAK4 inhibition has the potential to block the painful, destructive neutrophilic and lymphocytic inflammation driven by chronic TLR and IL-1R activation."

Last November, at the ACR meeting in Atlanta, Kymera introduced its selective and potent oral IRAK4 degraders, showing in vitro inhibition of cytokine and chemokine induction by TLR agonists and IL-1bthat was superior to IRAK4 kinase inhibitors as well as suppression of neutrophil infiltration and IL-1bproduction in vivo in the mouse MSU air pouch model.

"Inhibition of the TLR/IL-1R pathway with a single oral small molecule targeted against IRAK4 has great potential for the treatment of devastating autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases like HS, where inflammation is caused by multiple different IL-1 family cytokines as well as TLR stimulation," said Nello Mainolfi, Founder, Presidentand CEO, Kymera Therapeutics. "It is encouraging to see that we can safely achieve the level of IRAK4 knockdown in relevant tissue necessary to treat a disease like HS which has a high inflammatory burden. We look forward to moving our lead compound into the clinic in healthy volunteers by the end of 2020."

EHSF Study Highlights ABSTRACT #86, "Identification of highly potent and selective Interleukin-1 receptor associated kinase 4 (IRAK4) degraders for the treatment of hidradenitis suppurativa," will be presented byVeronica Campbell, Principal Scientist at Kymera Therapeutics.

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About Kymera TherapeuticsKymera Therapeutics is a biotechnology company pioneering a transformative new approach to treating previously untreatable diseases. The company is advancing the field of targeted protein degradation, accessing the body's innate protein recycling machinery to degrade dysregulated, disease-causing proteins. Powered by Pegasus, a game-changing integrated degradation platform, Kymera is accelerating drug discovery with an unmatched ability to target and degrade the most intractable of proteins, and advance new treatment options for patients. For more information visit, http://www.kymeratx.com.

About PegasusPegasus is Kymera Therapeutics' proprietary protein degradation platform, created by its team of experienced drug hunters to improve the effectiveness of targeted protein degradation and generate a pipeline of novel therapeutics for previously undruggable diseases. The platform consists of informatics driven target identification, novel E3 ligases, proprietary ternary complex predictive modeling capabilities, and degradation tools.

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kymera-therapeutics-to-present-preclinical-data-on-its-first-in-class-selective-and-potent-oral-irak4-degraders-in-cutaneous-inflammation-300998974.html

SOURCE Kymera Therapeutics Inc.

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Immunology

3 Important Things to Know About Gilead Sciences’ Q4 Results – The Motley Fool

Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) made headlines in recent days after the company announced that it was working with Chinese authorities to test its Ebola drug remdesivir in treating the deadly coronavirus strain that has become an epidemic. But that wasn't the biggest news for Gilead this week.

The big biotech reported its 2019 fourth-quarter and full-year results after the market closed on Tuesday. Here are three important things to know about Gilead's Q4 update.

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Gilead endured a long stretch where its revenue declined quarter after quarter. That wasn't the case in Q4, though. The company reported Q4 revenue of $5.9 billion, up from $5.8 billion in the prior-year period. This result even topped the consensus Wall Street revenue estimate of $5.71 billion.

Sure, Gilead's hepatitis C virus (HCV) franchise continued to weigh on the company's total revenue. HCV sales fell nearly 19% year over year in the fourth quarter to $630 million. But the quarter-over-quarter decline of only 6.5% wasn't too bad considering what Gilead has experienced in the past.

The biggest bright spot for Gilead yet again was its HIV franchise. HIV sales jumped 12% year over year in Q4 to $4.6 billion, with Biktarvy leading the way with sales of $1.57 billion. Although Descovy was the only other HIV drug in Gilead's lineup to deliver sales growth, the combination of it and Biktarvy were more than enough to offset declining sales for Truvada, Genvoya, and other HIV drugs.

Yescarta didn't pick up much momentum in Q4, though. Sales rose nearly 51% year over year in the fourth quarter to $122 million, but that was only slightly above the $118 million recorded in the third quarter.

While Gilead topped Wall Street's Q4 revenue estimate, it was a different story on the bottom line. The biotech posted adjusted earnings of $1.7 billion, or $1.30 per diluted share. This result was lower than the $1.9 billion, or $1.44 per diluted share, generated in the prior-year period. It was also well below the average analysts' Q4 earnings estimate of $1.67 per share.

Gilead's earnings based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) looked much better, though. The company reported GAAP earnings of $2.7 billion, or $2.12 per share, up significantly from GAAP earnings of only $3 million in the prior-year period. However, this big improvement stemmed mainly from some positive tax effects from accounting moves related to asset transfers and net gains from equity securities.

Analysts probably weren't too bothered by Gilead's big adjusted earnings miss. It's possible that they didn't factor in some of the company's acquisition-related expenses.

Gilead provided what could be described as lackluster full-year 2020 guidance. The company projects product sales to be between $21.8 billion and $22 billion. The midpoint of that range is lower than the $22.1 billion in product sales generated in the full year 2019.

Non-GAAP adjusted earnings per share (EPS) for full-year 2020 are expected to be between $6.05 and $6.45. The midpoint of this range is well below the consensus Wall Street adjusted EPS estimate for 2020 of $7.01.

At first glance, it might also appear that Gilead's adjusted EPS will decline from its full-year 2019 level. However, beginning this year, the company isn't excluding stock-based compensation expense from its non-GAAP figures. On an apples-to-apples basis, Gilead's adjusted EPS outlook for 2020 reflects a year-over-year increase of 2% at the midpoint of the guidance range.

If I had to sum up Gilead's fourth-quarter results in one word, it would probably be "blah." There simply was nothing in the company's update to excite investors.

However, pipelines are more important to the prospects for biotech stocks than past quarterly results. Gilead could generate more excitement later this year if it wins FDA approval for immunology drug filgotinib in treating rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Some analysts think filgotinib could achieve peak annual sales in the ballpark of $6 billion if approved for RA and other targeted immunology indications.

Gilead also ended 2019 with cash, cash equivalents, and marketable debt securities totaling$25.8 billion. That's a big cash stockpile the company could use to bolster its pipeline. The company is also putting its ample cash flow to use in another way that should delight investors -- its dividend. Gilead announced an 8% dividend increase beginning in the first quarter of 2020.

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3 Important Things to Know About Gilead Sciences' Q4 Results - The Motley Fool