Archive for category: News

USA: A recent large-scale investigation published in the Journal of Periodontology by Muhammad H. A. Saleh and Hamoun Sabri from the University of Michigan School of Dentistry has revealed a dose-dependent relationship between the severity of periodontitis and the presence of multiple systemic health conditions.

Sweden: In a significant advancement for dialysis care, researchers from Linkoping University, Sweden, have found that chlorhexidine is more effective than ethanol in reducing bacterial presence during buttonhole cannulation in patients undergoing haemodialysis via arteriovenous fistula (AVF). The study, led by Karin Staaf and colleagues from the Department of Health, Medicine and Caring Sciences, was published in BMC Nephrology.

A landmark study has revealed that autoantibodies-immune proteins traditionally associated with autoimmune disease-may profoundly influence how cancer patients respond to immunotherapy.

The study, published  in Nature, offers a potential breakthrough in solving one of modern-day oncology’s most frustrating mysteries: why checkpoint inhibitors work for some patients but not others-and how we can extend their benefits to more people.

“Our analysis shows that certain naturally occurring autoantibodies can tilt the odds dramatically toward shrinking tumors,” said senior author Aaron Ring, MD, PhD, an associate professor at Fred Hutch Cancer Center. “We saw some cases where autoantibodies boosted a patient’s likelihood of responding to checkpoint blockade by as much as five- to ten-fold.”

The Nature study suggests that autoantibodies could help reveal cancer’s weak spots and point to new targets for treatment.

Autoantibodies are proteins produced by the immune system that recognize the body’s own tissues. They are most associated with their harmful role in driving autoimmune diseases like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. However, emerging evidence indicates that in some cases, autoantibodies can surprisingly exert health benefits.

“For years, autoantibodies were viewed mainly as bad actors in autoimmune disease, but we’re discovering they can also act as potent, built-in therapeutics,” said Ring, who holds the Anderson Family Endowed Chair for Immunotherapy at Fred Hutch. “My lab is mapping this hidden pharmacology so we can turn these natural molecules into new treatments for cancer and other illnesses.”

In the Nature study, Ring and his collaborators used a high-throughput assay he developed — called REAP (Rapid Extracellular Antigen Profiling) — to screen for over 6,000 types of autoantibodies in blood samples from 374 cancer patients receiving checkpoint inhibitors and 131 healthy individuals.

Checkpoint inhibitors have transformed treatment for a wide range of cancers including melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer by unleashing the immune system to see and attack cancer. But not all patients respond to these treatments and, in many cases, their anti-tumor effects are incomplete and do not result in a cure.

Using blood samples collected from patients and healthy individuals, the REAP analyses revealed that cancer patients had substantially higher levels of autoantibodies compared to healthy controls.

Importantly, certain autoantibodies were strongly linked to better clinical outcomes, indicating their potential role in enhancing the effectiveness of immunotherapy.

For example, autoantibodies that blocked an immune signal called interferon were linked to better anti-tumor effects from checkpoint inhibitors. This finding mirrors other studies showing how too much interferon can exhaust the immune system and then curtail the effects of immunotherapy.

“In some patients, their immune system essentially brewed its own companion drug,” Ring explained. “Their autoantibodies neutralized interferon and that amplified the effect of checkpoint blockade. This finding gives us a clear blueprint for combination therapies that intentionally modulate the interferon pathway for everyone else.”

Not all autoantibodies were beneficial. The team discovered several that were associated with worse outcomes from checkpoint inhibitors, likely because they disrupted critical immune pathways necessary for anti-tumor responses. Finding ways to eliminate or counteract these detrimental autoantibodies could open another promising avenue for enhancing the effectiveness of immunotherapy.

“This is only the beginning,” Ring said. “We’re now extending the search to other cancers and treatments so we can harness — or bypass — autoantibodies to make immunotherapy work for far more patients.” 

Reference:

Dai, Y., Aizenbud, L., Qin, K. et al. Humoral determinants of checkpoint immunotherapy. Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09188-4

A new study that examined older and newer medications to treat seizures has found that using some medications during pregnancy is linked to an increased risk of malformations at birth, or birth defects. The study is published July 16, 2025, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

“Seizures can lead to falls and other complications during pregnancy, so seizure control for those with epilepsy is crucial to protect the health of both the mother and child,” said study author Sonia Hernandez-Diaz, MD, DrPH, of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. “While some older drugs are known to increase the risk of major malformations, less is known about the safety of newer ‘second generation’ medications. Our study looked at a number of drugs and provides valuable information for health care providers and people who may become pregnant to make more informed decisions about the use of these medications during pregnancy.”

For the study, researchers looked at 7,311 women who were taking an antiseizure medication during the first trimester of pregnancy. They were compared to 1,311 women who did not take antiseizure medications.

Participants completed phone interviews at the start of the study, at seven months pregnant, and within three months after delivery.

Researchers confirmed birth defects through medical records. These included cleft lip, larger-than-normal holes in the heart, neural tube defects where the spinal cord does not develop properly such as spina bifida, missing or underdeveloped limbs and other issues where parts of the body did not form correctly.

They then looked at the risk of these birth defects among infants exposed to specific antiseizure medications taken during the first trimester of pregnancy and compared them to infants exposed to lamotrigine, an antiseizure medication used as the reference group.

Researchers found that the risk of major birth defects varied among medications. Valproate posed the highest risk, with major birth defects occurring in 9% of infants exposed. Phenobarbital followed at 6%. Among newer drugs, birth defects occurred in 5% of those exposed to topiramate, while the group exposed to lamotrigine had malformations in 2% of births.

When compared to those who took lamotrigine, those who took valproate had more than five times the risk of birth defects, those who took phenobarbital had nearly three times the risk, and those taking topiramate had over twice the risk.

“Our results confirm that using valproate, phenobarbital or topiramate during early pregnancy is linked to a higher chance of major birth defects in the infants when compared to lamotrigine,” Hernandez-Diaz said. “On the other hand, our results did not show an increased risk with medications like levetiracetam, oxcarbazepine, gabapentin and zonisamide. For lacosamide and pregabalin, the data wasn’t clear enough to make solid conclusions, so more research is needed.”

A limitation of the study was that participants were enrolled months after conception and in most cases early losses of pregnancy were not assessed for malformations, so the number of malformations overall may have been underestimated.

Reference:

Sonia Hernandez-Diaz, Use of Antiseizure Medications Early in Pregnancy and the Risk of Major Malformations in the Newborn,Neurology, doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000213959.