Tag: Medicine

If you’re a woman and over 50, we recommend that you find out whether or not you snore at nights (your bed partner may or may already have alerted you to the issue). TAU researchers found that women aged 55 and over who snore are at increased risk for sleep apnea, which can be fatal. Because the phenomenon occurs during sleep, most women who suffer from sleep-disordered breathing are not aware that they are at increased risk.

“The lack of early diagnosis is particularly noticeable in one of the target demographic groups: women over the age of 50, who suffer from an increase in the incidence of sleep-disordered breathing due to hormonal changes that occur during menopause,” warns TAU’s Prof. Ilana Eli, adding “We wanted to examine and characterize the phenomenon in this group in order to raise a red flag when necessary.” The following study was conducted by Dr. Alona Emodi-Perlman, Prof. Ilana Eli, Dr. Jawan Sleiman and Dr. Pessia Friedman-Rubin from the Department of Oral Rehabilitation at The Maurice and Gabriela Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine at Tel Aviv University, and was published in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Medicine

Drop the Shame

The researchers examined hundreds of Israeli women, whom they divided into two groups: women aged 20-40 (pre-menopause) and women aged 55 and over (post-menopause).

They found that 15% of the older women are at significant risk for sleep apnea, compared to only 3.5% of the younger women. In addition, they found that 11% of the women who snore are at increased risk for sleep apnea, compared to only 1% of the women who do not snore.

In the study, the participants filled out dedicated questionnaires, which included a variety of questions such as: How do you feel when you get up in the morning: Fatigue, headache, tension/stiffness in the muscles of the face, neck and jaw? Do you grind your teeth at night? Do you wake up during the night? Do you feel tired or drowsy during the day? And the big question, which many women are ashamed of answering: Do you snore? The data were weighted with physical indicators – BMI and neck circumference, which is known to thicken in old age, as well as demographic data – work, number of children, marital status, etc. The findings make it possible to define three categories of risk for sleep apnea: women who are at high, medium and low risk.

Prof. Eli explains that sleep breathing disorders range across a broad spectrum – from mild snoring to the most severe and dangerous disorder – sleep apnea. Sleep apnea causes a decrease in blood oxygen concentration and can, as mentioned, be life-threatening. In addition, if the phenomenon is not diagnosed and treated in time, it can contribute to the development of a variety of systemic diseases, such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease and stroke.

Ask the Right Questions

The difficulty in diagnosing it is mainly due to lack of awareness and under-reporting: women suffering from the problem are unaware of it because it occurs during sleep. They are more likely to report fatigue, headaches, masticatory muscle soreness upon awaking or sleep problems like insomnia to their doctors. It is therefore important that the attending physician makes the connection, asks the right questions and even seeks further diagnosis in case of suspected sleep apnea.

Grinding of teeth at night, high BMI, and a relatively large neck circumference are additional warning signs, according to the researchers.

In the wake of these findings, the researchers address doctors, and especially those who focus on the orofacial area – dentists: “Take note of symptoms that may indicate a risk of sleep apnea. Ask your older patients the relevant questions that no one is asking, such as: Do you snore? Do you suffer from headaches/neck pain when you wake up? Ask them to fill out a dedicated questionnaire to identify the risk of sleep apnea. Take note of the condition of the teeth – are there any indications of grinding of teeth at night? Note the thickness of the neck, which tends to expand in old age. And the bottom line is, if you have identified a high-risk patient, refer her to a sleep diagnosis specialist. This way, we can diagnose women who are ‘under the radar’ due to lack of awareness and under-reporting and provide them with appropriate and life-saving care.”

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, humanity has led an arms race against mutations, variants, and extensive contagion, in order to minimize damage to human life and the economy. Currently the battle against the virus relies mainly on RNA-based vaccines, alongside several anti-viral medications.

The Covid virus, however, changes very rapidly, and frequent updates are required to treatments and vaccines that are based on familiarizing the immune system with the virus. The same is true for flu viruses, another widespread cause of illness and death. Now, TAU researchers have shown that common dietary supplements can help protect us against the Covid virus as well as several common winter illnesses.

The study was led by Prof. Ehud Gazit, Prof. Eran Bacharach, and Prof. Daniel Segal of The Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research at The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, TAU, together with PhD students Topaz Kreiser and David Zaguri and other researchers. The paper was published in Pharmaceuticals.

Preventive Supplement

Prof. Gazit, who also heads TAU’s BLAVATNIK CENTER for Drug Discovery, said: “To address the rapid changes of the virus, we decided to develop active vaccines made of safe and easily obtainable dietary supplements, that would reduce the viral load in the body and cut down contagion. We have known for years that food supplements containing zinc can enhance immunity to severe, viral, and chronic infections and their potentially grave consequences.”

The researchers found that the consumption of zinc alone achieves a relatively low cellular content. To enhance the effect, they combined the zinc with flavonoids – polyphenolic compounds found in many fruits and vegetables. They also added copper – in order to prevent an ionic imbalance and improve the treatment’s effectiveness.

“The interesting aspect is the treatment’s potential flexibility,” explains Prof. Bacharach. “We found that a combination of several flavonoids with zinc helps protect cells against a wide range of RNA viruses. We believe that the product can serve as a supplementary treatment to enhance the effect of existing anti-viral vaccines and medications.”

Prof. Segal adds: “Advanced lab tests, including PCR, have shown that the new vaccines we developed did, in fact, reduce the viral load. We found a 50-95% decrease in the genomic replication of various groups of RNA viruses, including Covid-19, the flu virus, and others. These results are very promising, possibly enabling the development of an orally administered biological shelf treatment.”

So far, all experiments were conducted in vitro in the lab, but the researchers are optimistic as to the study’s practical potential. Soon they hope to launch a series of clinical trials in humans, ultimately leading to an effective treatment accessible to everyone.

The Research Team (left to right): Professors Eran Bacharach, Daniel Segal and Ehud Gazit

In most methods used today, clinical trials designed to evaluate the safety of a new drug or vaccine employ self-report questionnaires, asking participants how they feel before and after receiving the treatment. A new study from Tel Aviv University enables developers, for the first time in the world, to determine vaccine safety via smart sensors that measure objective physiological parameters. According to the researchers, most clinical trials testing the safety of new vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, rely on participants’ subjective reports, which can lead to biased results. In contrast, objective physiological data, obtained through sensors attached to the body, is clear and unambiguous.

The study was led by Dr. Yftach Gepner of the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, together with Dr. Dan Yamin and Dr. Erez Shmueli from TAU’s The Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering. The paper was published in Communications Medicine, a journal from the Nature portfolio. 

The End of an Era?

Researchers from Tel Aviv University demonstrated that smart sensors can be used to test new vaccines. The current study was conducted when many Israelis received their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The researchers equipped volunteers with innovative, FDA-approved sensors developed by the Israeli company Biobeat. Attached to their chests, these sensors measured physiological reactions from one day before to three days after receiving the vaccine.

The innovative sensors monitored 13 physiological parameters, such as: heart rate, breathing rate, saturation (blood oxygen levels), heartbeat volume, temperature, cardiac output, and blood pressure. The surprising results:

• A significant discrepancy was found between subjective self-reports about side effects and actual measurements. That is, in nearly all objective measures, significant changes were identified after vaccination, even for subjects who reported having no reaction at all.
• In addition, the study found that side effects escalate over the first 48 hours, and then parameters return to the level measured before vaccination. In other words: a direct assessment of the vaccine’s safety identified physiological reactions during the first 48 hours, with levels re-stabilizing afterwards.

“The message from our study is clear,” says Dr. Gepner. “In 2022 the time has come to conduct continual, sensitive, objective testing of the safety of new vaccines and therapies. There is no reason to rely on self-reports or wait for the occurrence of rare side effects like myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, which occurs in one of 10,000 patients. Preliminary signs that predict such conditions can be detected with advanced sensors, identifying normal vs. extreme alterations in physiological parameters and any risk of inflammation. Today, trial participants are invited to the clinic for blood pressure testing, but often their blood pressure rises just because the situation is stressful. Continual monitoring at home solves these problems with simple, convenient, inexpensive, and accurate means. This is the kind of medicine we should strive for in 2022.”

The Research Team (from left to right): Dr. Dan Yamin, Dr. Yftach Gepner and Dr. Erez Shmueli

A new study by Tel Aviv University, Kaplan Medical Center and Shamir Medical Center (Assaf Harofeh) found that one in four children (25.3%) who have been discharged from the emergency room after a mild head injury are misdiagnosed and continue to suffer from persistent post-concussion syndrome for many years. The syndrome includes chronic symptoms such as memory loss, psychological issues and sensitivity to light and noise, which can be misdiagnosed as symptoms of ADHD, depression or sleeping disorders. The misdiagnosis results in the children receiving treatment that is not suited to their condition, which causes them prolonged suffering.

The study was led by Prof. Shai Efrati of the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research at Tel Aviv University and Shamir Medical Center (Assaf Harofeh), Dr. Uri Bella and Dr. Eli Fried of Kaplan Medical Center, and Prof. Eran Kotzer of Shamir Medical Center. The results of the study were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The researchers examined 200 children who suffered from a head injury and who were released from the emergency room after the need for medical intervention was ruled out. They tracked the subjects for a period between six months and three years, and found that about one in four children released from the emergency room suffered from the chronic syndrome.

Long-Term Monitoring Needed

According to the researchers, the alarming findings demonstrate that changes in the approach are needed to be monitoring and treating these children. 

“Persistent post-concussion syndrome is a chronic syndrome that results from micro damage to the small blood vessels and nerves, which may appear several months after the head injury. As a result, it often gets misdiagnosed as attention deficit disorders, sleep disorders, depression, and so on,” explains Prof. Shai Efrati. 

“The purpose of an emergency room diagnosis is to determine whether the child suffers from a severe brain injury that requires immediate medical intervention,” adds Prof. Eran Kotzer, Director of the Emergency Rooms at the Shamir Medical Center.  “Unfortunately, the way most medical systems operate today, we miss long-term effects and do not continue to monitor those children who leave the emergency room without visible motor impairment.”

“Treatment for a wide range of disorders will change if we know that the cause of the new problem is a brain injury,” concludes Prof. Efrati. “Proper diagnosis of the cause is the first and most important step in providing appropriate treatment for the problem.”