What the scientists are saying…
Skin cells rejuvenated by 30 years
Scientists have devised a way of turning back the biological clock of human skin cells, by around 30 years. In the past, researchers have been able to reverse ageing in human cells, but at the cost of wiping out their specialised functions: the process turns them into stem cells, which can develop into any cell type. The new research, conducted at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, uses the same technique – inserting specialist genes known as “Yamanaka factors” – but without losing the cells’ function in the body. The scientists infused skin cells from donors aged around 50 in a chemical bath containing Yamanaka factors, for about 12 days. When the scientists later tested the cells, they found they were behaving like skin cells three decades younger: they were producing far more collagen. Although the research is in its early stages, the method could be used to speed up skin healing: when placed onto an artificial wound, the rejuvenated cells moved quickly to repair it. It has wider applications, too. “So far, we’ve only tested this technique in skin cells,” said researcher Dr Diljeet Gill. “We’re excited to see if we can translate it across other cell types.”
The “drunken monkey” theory
In 2014, Robert Dudley, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, proposed that humans may be congenitally drawn to alcohol because our ape and monkey ancestors learnt millennia ago that following its scent led them to ripe fruit. This idea – known as the “drunken monkey” theory – has now been given support by a study into the eating habits of black-handed spider monkeys in Panama. Scientists collected the fruit the monkeys were eating and then discarding – mostly from jobo trees – and found that the alcohol concentration in the fruit was typically between 1% and 2%. An analysis of the monkeys’ urine then revealed that the animals were metabolising the alcohol, showing that they were using it for energy; it wasn’t just passing through their bodies. “For the first time, we have been able to show, without a shadow of a doubt, that wild primates, with no human interference, consume fruit containing ethanol,” said Prof Christina Campbell, who led the study. “Human ancestors may also have preferentially selected ethanol-laden fruit for consumption, given that it has more calories,” she added.
Private schools and happiness
Young adults who went to a state school are generally just as satisfied with their lives as their privately educated peers, a study has suggested. The study, published in the Cambridge Journal of Education, drew on data from Next Steps, a longitudinal study of young people in England born in 1989 and 1990. The participants answered a questionnaire every year from when they were about 13 until they turned 20, and then did another at 25. The study found no evidence of a statistically significant private school advantage (or disadvantage) in terms of mental health, at any age. It showed that privately educated young adults were more likely to report being satisfied with their lives at the ages of 20 and 25, but the effect disappeared when other factors were considered, including parental social class. The study’s author, Dr Morag Henderson, suggested that the benefits of private school, in terms of resources, were cancelled out by the additional stress.
Cancer diagnosis in A&E
More than a third of cancer patients in the UK only find out they have cancer after an emergency hospital admission with pain or severe symptoms, a study has shown. The study, in The Lancet Oncology, analysed more than 850,000 cancer cases between 2012 and 2017 in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway and the UK, and found that 37% of cases in England and Wales, and 39% in Scotland, were diagnosed within 30 days of an emergency admission. (In Northern Ireland, the rate was 28%, though it was measured using a different definition.) Of the high-income countries studied, only New Zealand had a higher rate than the UK, at 42.5%. Patients who are diagnosed by the emergency route have a “substantially greater risk” of dying within 12 months. “The UK is... lagging when it comes to cancer survival,” said Michelle Mitchell of Cancer Research UK – “this study helps us understand why.”