Health & Science

A promising new approach to AIDS

The startling case of an AIDS patient who appears to have been cured is raising new hopes for a breakthrough in the treatment of the disease. In a delicate and risky procedure, doctors in Germany killed all of the patient’s diseased bone marrow with radiation and then introduced a new population of bone marrow stem cells from a donor who is genetically resistant to HIV. The new immune cells appear to have rid the patient’s body of HIV. More than 600 days after the operation, the unidentified 42-year-old patient still appears to be virus-free, though doctors caution that the virus could be dormant and reappear. Doctors also note that bone marrow transplants are extremely expensive and dangerous procedures that kill a third of patients who receive them, and that the only reason the procedure was justified in this case was because the patient also has leukemia. All those caveats aside, researchers say the German case suggests a potential new therapeutic avenue using gene therapies to modify patients’ immune systems so that they can defeat HIV. It’s not quite a eureka moment, University of Massachusetts AIDS expert Mario Stevenson tells Science. But “it’s proof of the concept of gene therapy.”

Why some old people stay sharp

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Some people are just naturally immune to the mental fog that sets in with old age, says LiveScience. As most people enter their 70s and 80s, their cognitive faculties start to slip. But while everyone ages physically, researchers have discovered that some people somehow manage to stave off mental deterioration. Now scientists have seen physical proof that sharper seniors’ brains are different. As most people age, our brains become increasingly clogged with “tangles” of proteins that kill off brain cells. But when doctors at Northwestern University dissected the brains of five deceased people who had stayed sharp well into old age, they found the organs to be tangle-free. Now the question is why. “We want to see what protects the brains of these individuals,” says study author Changiz Geula. Understanding that process, he says, “someday may lead to the ability to protect average brains from memory loss.”

A transplant milestone

For the first time, a team of doctors has built a new organ for a patient out of her own stem cells. A Spanish woman named Claudia Castillo needed a new trachea to survive, and doctors fashioned a new hard tube from a donor trachea. They then coated it with cells cultured from Castillo’s own stem cells. As a result, the new organ matched Castillo’s DNA and was not rejected by her body. “We are terribly excited by these results,” surgeon Paolo Macchiarini tells Time.“ Just four days after transplantation, the graft was almost indistinguishable from adjacent normal bronchi.” It’s been several months since Castillo’s windpipe transplant, and she’s doing well without the aid of immunosuppressant drugs. That’s significant, because traditional transplants require long-term immunosuppressive therapy to prevent the immune system from attacking the new organ.

Watch a lot of TV? How sad

Happy people watch less TV than sad people, a three-decade-long study of 30,000 people has concluded. The General Social Survey, an ongoing project of the National Science Foundation, found that people who described themselves as happy watched an average of 19 hours of television a week, while their unhappy counterparts watched 25 hours a week. The survey also found that people who watched less TV engaged more in community, church, and other outside activities, and they also read more. “TV may provide viewers with short-run pleasure, but at the expense of long-term malaise,” study author John Robinson tells LiveScience. It’s not clear whether TV makes people sadder or that depressed people tend to plop themselves in front of the TV. But Robinson speculates that depressed people turn to television as an escape. “TV is not judgmental nor difficult, so people with few social skills or resources for other activities can engage in it,” he says. “Even the unhappiest people can click a remote and be passively entertained.”

Kids: Living well with technology

Parents concerned about all the time their kids spend online can take heart: For most teenagers, a new MacArthur Foundation study concludes, the Internet, texting, and other technologies serve as an enriching playground for intellectual and social development. When today’s tech-savvy kids spend hours each day updating their Facebook profiles or IMing their buddies, researchers say, they actually are training themselves for a future in which the line between our online and “real” lives will be largely gone. Making Web pages or creating an online avatar, says study author Mizuko Ito, are skills that soon will be considered essential. “It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media,” Ito tells The New York Times. “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to manage a public identity.”