JPour

30/11/2021

Reverse vaccination technique in mice suggests new way to teach the immune system not to attack lifesaving treatments
Autoimmune conditions like Type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis arise when an immune system mistakenly attacks its own body’s proteins, cells and organs. Not only do these conditions make the body attack itself, they can also destroy the medications intended to treat them.

A reverse vaccination approach my research team and I developed, however, could train the immune system to ignore self-proteins and prevent unwanted immune responses.

Autoimmunity destroys both body and treatment
Lifesaving treatments for autoimmune conditions are complicated by immune responses that work against them.

For example, people with Pompe disease are unable to produce the enzyme needed to break down complex sugars for energy. The buildup of these sugars in the muscles and other organs impairs their ability to function and could be fatal. Though enzyme replacement therapy can help manage this condition, many people develop antibodies that direct their immune system to destroy the treatment.
Once patients develop these unwanted antibodies, it becomes increasingly challenging to treat their conditions because of limited availability of any additional safe and effective therapies.
A reverse vaccination technique
Conventional vaccines usually train the immune system to recognize and attack specific parts of a pathogen that get into the body. Our proposed technique turns this concept on its head and teaches the immune system to do the opposite: to ignore and tolerate foreign proteins introduced to the body.

The vaccine we developed uses one particular lipid molecule, phosphatidylserine. PS is typically located in the inner layer of a cell’s surface membrane. When a cell dies via apoptosis, a natural process the body uses to remove damaged cells, PS becomes exposed to the outside of that cell. Upon exposure, PS sends an “eat me” signal that recruits specialized cells to clear up leftover debris from the now-dead cell.

Our team had previously found that high levels of PS outside the cell also actively teach the immune system to ignore the exposed debris. So we wondered if PS could be used to help the immune system learn not to attack specific proteins.

Diagram of cell with red box locating the cell membrane.
Molecules that are located on the inside of the cell membrane like phosphatidylserine are exposed to the outside of the cell after the cell dies. ttsz/iStock via Getty Images Plus
We tested our concept on mice with hemophilia A. People with this genetic condition are unable to make the blood-clotting protein factor VIII. Although typical treatment involves administering factor VIII directly to patients to prevent uncontrollable bleeding, about a third develop an immune response against this protein after repeated exposure.

When we reverse-vaccinated the mice with factor VIII paired with an optimized form of PS, however, 75% of the mice did not develop an unwanted immune response when they were later reexposed to factor VIII over the course of four weeks. This meant that the immune system was able to learn that factor VIII was not harmful and remembered to tolerate it.

Next steps
Autoimmune conditions adversely affect the lives of millions of people in the U.S. and cost the health care system billions of dollars annually.

Our reverse vaccination technique could offer a potential way to prevent unwanted immune responses that make treatments ineffective or unusable. Translating the findings of our lab-based study in mice to human clinical trials is the next step. We’re also interested in using our reverse vaccination approach to treat other rare diseases and conditions that have limited treatment options.

30/11/2021

The pandemic is changing the way young people eat and how they feel about their bodies: 4 essential reads
Kids, like adults, cope with stress and anxiety in many different ways.

For example, while some children reach for more snacks to deal with uncomfortable feelings, others overexercise or restrict their eating in unhealthy ways. As a result, rates of obesity and eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia have both increased among young people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here are four recent articles from The Conversation’s archives that deal with kids, body weight and the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Child obesity
Many programs over the past four decades have tried to get kids in the U.S. to eat healthier food and exercise more often. Despite these efforts, child obesity rates have continued to increase – particularly during the pandemic.

Read news coverage based on evidence, not tweets
Amanda Harrist and Laura Hubbs-Tait, child obesity researchers at Oklahoma State University, designed an intervention that actually lowered kids’ body mass index, or BMI.

The key factor that made their program succeed where so many others before failed? A focus on acceptance from family and friends, they say.

In their study of over 500 first graders, Harrist and Hubbs-Tait found that lessons on diet and exercise alone do not help kids at risk for obesity to slim down. Just as important, they say, is teaching new family dynamics and reducing the amount of rejection children face. That means showing parents how to emotionally support and comfort their children who are overweight, and teaching classmates to be more accepting of one another.

“Knowing you can come home and talk about how angry and sad you are is essential to healthy physical and mental growth,” the pair write. “And children must also have friends and peers who accept them for who they are.”

Read more: Kids with obesity need acceptance from family and friends, not just better diet tips, to succeed at managing their weight

2. Eating disorders
Physician Julia Taylor and psychotherapist Sara Groff Stephens specialize in treating eating disorders in teens and young adults, which spiked after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When it comes to eating disorders, they say, three groups of young people are often overlooked: young male athletes, LGBTQ youth and “normal”-sized adolescents. This last group includes young people who are average weight or even overweight, but may develop dangerously abnormal vital signs, electrolyte imbalances or severe gastrointestinal issues due to their unhealthy dieting.

“The recent COVID-related increase in patients presenting for care has reinforced that no group is immune from them,” Taylor and Stephens write. “Breaking down barriers for identification and treatment for all individuals – including boys, sexual and gender minority youth and kids across the weight spectrum – will improve outcomes for those who struggle with these significant illnesses.”

Read more: The COVID-19 pandemic increased eating disorders among young people – but the signs aren't what parents might expect

3. Weight stigma
The COVID-19 pandemic has been hard and stressful for everyone – and being critical of people’s bodies doesn’t help, argue Nicole Giuliani, Nichole Kelly and Elizabeth Budd, psychology professors at the University of Oregon who are also moms with young children.

The scholars believe health research and health initiatives place a disproportionate emphasis on kids’ weight. This draws attention away from better predictors of chronic disease such as smoking, lack of exercise or poor mental health. And it also reinforces weight bias, which they describe as “the belief that a thin body is good and healthy, while a large body is bad and unhealthy.”

Weight bias, in turn, contributes to bullying and teasing, which are common among youth and linked to disordered eating and depression, as well as poorer academic performance and health.

“To best support the physical and emotional health of children during this pandemic, we suggest reducing the emphasis on body size,” Giuliani, Kelly and Budd write.

They offer five tips for parents, which range from avoiding words like “fat,” “obese” and “overweight” to noticing when kids feel bad about their bodies after spending time on social media, and encouraging them to take a break.

Read more: If you want to support the health and wellness of kids, stop focusing on their weight

4. Social media
Speaking of social media, Facebook officials have known since at least March 2020 that Instagram – the social media platform most used by adolescents – is harmful to teen girls’ body image and well-being. That’s according to an explosive Wall Street Journal report published in September 2021.

But Christia Spears Brown, a professor of psychology at University of Kentucky who studies social media use among teens, says researchers have been documenting these harms for years.

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“[S]tudies consistently show that the more often teens use Instagram, the worse their overall well-being, self-esteem, life satisfaction, mood and body image,” Brown writes. “One study found that the more college students used Instagram on any given day, the worse their mood and life satisfaction was that day.”

Brown says parents can help “by repeatedly talking to their teens about the difference between appearance and reality, by encouraging their teens to interact with peers face to face, and to use their bodies in active ways instead of focusing on the selfie.”

30/11/2021

Giving Tuesday: Charitable gifts from donor-advised funds favor education and religion
The big idea
Large shares of grants that donor-advised funds distributed from 2014 to 2018 supported educational and religious nonprofits. That’s what we found in one of the first studies of its kind regarding the financial accounts often called DAFs. People with donor-advised funds use them to give money to the charities of their choice when they are ready to do so.

Some 29% of total DAF grant dollars funded education-focused nonprofits, and 14% supported churches and other religious organizations during this period within our sample, we found.
This pattern contrasts sharply with overall U.S. charitable giving. About 31% of all charitable donations supported religious causes and 14% funded colleges, universities and other educational organizations in this same time frame.

Grants from DAFs also supported giving to arts and culture organizations and public-society benefit organizations, such as the United Way and civil rights groups, at higher levels compared with the overall picture. Giving to arts and culture represented roughly 9% of the total grant dollars from DAFs from 2014 to 2018, and giving to public-society benefit organizations claimed 13% of the total.

This data is part of a Giving USA Special Report on donor-advised funds. We conducted our analysis in partnership with the Giving USA Foundation, classifying 3 million grants from 87 different DAF-sponsoring organizations. As two of the lead researchers, we obtained the data from the Internal Revenue Service and the organizations and charitable arms of financial institutions that manage DAFs.

This data encompasses 70% of all DAF grant dollars from 2014 to 2018.
Why it matters
Money distributed by donor-advised funds represented an estimated 7% of all charitable giving in 2020 – a percentage that appears to be growing over time. And yet very little research exists to explain where this money went.

We believe this study to be the most detailed and comprehensive look at where DAF grant dollars are going to date. It is more comprehensive than our prior study that looked at data regarding donor-advised fund grants distributed from 2012 to 2015.

What’s next
We are doing additional research based on data from DAF grants for 2020. The information available so far indicates that priorities for these donors changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. DAF grants to human services nonprofits, such as food banks and homeless shelters, grew strongly in that year for the subset of organizations we studied.

In addition, we are finding that grants from donor-advised funds in our sample to historically Black colleges and universities and racial justice organizations more than quadrupled from 2019 to 2020, growth that is consistent with an overall trend in philanthropy. As final 2020 IRS data is released, and in the years ahead, we will continue to track what DAFs are funding – and how those trends may be shifting.

What still isn’t known
There are still many unknowns about DAFs, including how much money flows in and out of individual accounts each year. Many legal scholars, philanthropists and charity leaders are debating whether DAFs should be regulated differently. Proposed legislation pending in Congress would introduce new rules, but it’s not clear how the flow of money from DAFs to charities would change if that bill were to become law.

30/11/2021

30/11/2021