neurology

Two investigations published in the journal JAMA conclude that there is no evidence of brain injury detectable by magnetic resonance imaging or biological abnormalities in people suffering from the so-called Havana syndrome. This syndrome has been described in overseas civil servants and their family members, who suffer from symptoms including noise, pressure and pain in the head, and cognitive dysfunction, called abnormal health incidents. Studies did find differences in symptoms of imbalance, fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. 

A treatment using lights and sound pulses can protect mice from cognitive decline associated with chemotherapy, according to a research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. The benefits are greatest when the therapy is used early and preventively at the same time as chemotherapy, says the study, published in Science Translational Medicine. The use of this non-invasive sensory stimulation therapy to alleviate other pathologies has already been studied.

US researchers have analysed data from 477 people who, using a mobile app, recorded their moods, energy levels and migraine occurrence four times a day for two weeks. Morning attacks were associated with poorer self-rated sleep quality and less energy the day before. Stress and high-energy states were linked to headaches in the afternoon, adds the study, which is published in the journal Neurology.

A study carried out in two hospitals in Denmark has compared the brain health of 120 patients admitted for covid over 18 months with that of other hospitalized patients with similar severity due to pneumonia, heart attack or need for intensive care, as well as with healthy people. The conclusions are that patients with covid worsened with respect to the latter, but did so in a similar way to other hospitalized persons. According to the authors, "although studies are needed to confirm these findings, brain health after covid-19 appears generally comparable to that of other diseases of similar severity."

The prions have made headlines after El País reported that a researcher working with them at a Catalan research center died in 2022 with symptoms compatible with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a type of prion disease.

Parkinson's disease is usually diagnosed when there is already extensive neuronal damage and symptoms are evident. Now, researchers at Cardiff University in the UK have used movement and sleep quality data from wearable accelerometers and concluded that they can help identify the disease early, years before clinical diagnosis. Although there is no effective preventive treatment, the authors propose that the tool can determine people at risk of developing Parkinson's disease and identify participants for clinical trials of neuroprotective treatments. The results are published in the journal Nature Medicine.

By directing ultrasound to a specific area of the brain, scientists at the University of Washington have succeeded in inducing a state very similar to hibernation in rats and mice. This state, called "torpor", involves a reduction in metabolism and body temperature to save energy. According to the authors, who publish their results in the journal Nature Metabolism, if it could be applied to humans it could be used in space travel or in medicine, to increase the chances of survival in life-threatening situations such as heart attacks or strokes.

Researchers from FIDMAG Hermanas Hospitalarias and CIBERSAM have announced the development of an algorithm that detects the risk of schizophrenia from fingerprints with a reliability of 70 %. It has been tested on 700 patients with schizophrenia and 850 people without schizophrenia; validation studies are pending.

Research has tested a gene therapy method that targets overactive cells to treat epilepsy in mice. The results are published in the journal Science.

A systematic review and meta-analysis published in JAMA Network Open examines whether there is an association between newborn exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and impaired neurodevelopment compared to those born before the pandemic. Neurodevelopment in the first year of life was not modified by being born or growing up during the covid-19 pandemic or by gestational exposure to SARS-CoV-2. However, the authors appreciated that, regardless of whether maternal infection was present, the pandemic was associated with a risk of delayed communication in these infants.