Mount Sinai and King Saud University Medical City in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, today announced a three-year collaboration aimed at better understanding why inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) runs in some Saudi families, and how that knowledge can lead to risk ascertainment, earlier diagnosis and more personalized treatment options. The project will focus on Saudi families with multiple members affected by IBD, including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. By identifying exposure and biological markers that drive disease mechanisms and outcomes in these high-risk families, the parties aim to accelerate the development of new diagnostics and therapies tailored to individual patients around the world. As part of the collaboration, King Saud University Medical City will identify and enroll eligible participants and collect whole blood, serum, and stool samples, along with de-identified health and family history information, from individuals with IBD and relatives at increased risk. Mount Sinai will lead advanced biomarker discovery and integrative analyses using multi-omics profiling and other state-of-the-art research tools.

Neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) are typically diagnosed after irreversible pathology has developed. Aging, the strongest risk factor, drives molecular changes that predispose the brain to synaptic dysfunction and proteinopathy (neurodegenerative diseases characterized by the abnormal folding, aggregation, and accumulation of specific proteins within neurons or brain tissues). Glycosylation and extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling are processes crucial for protein folding, stability and cell signaling and represent underexplored mechanisms linking aging to neurodegeneration, opening avenues for biomarker discovery; yet mass spectrometry-based glycoproteomics and glycomics studies have remained limited until now.

More time spent standing or stepping while wearing a weighted vest showed positive changes in bone mineral density, according to a new weight loss study from Wake Forest University.

A new study details how fecal transplants from older female mice significantly improve ovarian function and fertility in young mice. The surprising results reveal a direct link between the microbiome (the collection of all bacteria and other microbes present) of the gut and ovarian health and function.

“These findings suggest that there is two-way communication between the ovary and the microbiome and that this communication changes throughout life with age,” said USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology Associate Professor Bérénice Benayoun, the study’s senior author.

The study, which appears in the journal Nature Aging, joins a growing body of research on the microbiome and how it interacts with mental health, metabolism, cardiovascular disease and many other conditions in humans.

Future research will be needed to determine whether microbiome-based therapies could one day support fertility and healthy aging in women, Benayoun said.