Catch up on the latest health news to find out how to protect your baby’s eyesight from pregnancy to preschool; how diabetes may rewire the brain in ways that mimic early Alzheimer’s disease; and why COVID-19 may be linked to higher risk of autoimmune disorders, like rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes.
Helping Your Baby’s Eyes Develop
When a newborn opens their eyes for the first time, new parents wonder, “What exactly does my baby see?”
At first, your newborn baby will not see much, as the eyes and brain are still maturing. “An infant’s vision is still quite blurry,” explains Melinda Chang, MD, Attending Physician in the Vision Center at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
If your newborn does not gaze at your face at first don’t be discouraged. Within weeks, they will begin to look directly at you. If your baby is born prematurely, measure your infant’s vision milestones from their due date, not the date of birth.
Here’s what you can do to help — and protect your baby’s eyesight from pregnancy to preschool.
Study Unlocks How Diabetes Distorts Memory
Type 2 diabetes may rewire the brain in ways that mimic early Alzheimer’s disease — and UNLV researchers say the “why” may lie in a previously unexplored connection between high blood sugar levels and a key part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).
Based on their findings, published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience’s Computational Properties of the Prefrontal Cortex Special Collection, it appears that diabetes weakens ACC function — suppressing reward perception and memory signals — and induces mild cognitive impairment similar to that observed during the brain’s progression towards Alzheimer’s disease.
“Diabetes may be altering the brain similarly to early stages of Alzheimer’s disease,” said James Hyman, lead researcher and psychology professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). “Further research is needed but these findings have the potential to help researchers unlock clues to improved diagnostic or treatment strategies for the disease.”
COVID-Induced Autoimmune Disease
COVID infection has been linked to higher risk of autoimmune disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes. But why the virus might cause the body’s immune system to go haywire remains unknown, making it difficult to develop therapies to avoid autoimmunity.
One hypothesis is that viral “molecular mimics” that resemble the body’s own proteins trigger an immune response against the virus—and healthy tissues get caught in the crossfire.
Now, with advanced data analysis and machine learning, scientists have identified a set of COVID-derived molecular mimics that are most likely to be involved in triggering autoimmunity. The new results are published in ImmunoInformatics.
