Sci-Ed Update 339

Immunity & cancer, optional corequisite for A&P, the science of racism, fixing COVID smell loss, Ozempic's health benefits, redefining obesity, teaching neuroanatomy, more!

Jan 30, 2025

Obesity is currently defined using a person's body mass index, or BMI. This is calculated as weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of height (in metres). In people of European descent, the BMI for obesity is 30 kg/m² and over.
But the risk to health and wellbeing is not determined by weight – and therefore BMI – alone. We've been part of a global collaboration that has spent the past two years discussing how this should change. Today we publish how we think obesity should be defined and why.
As we outline in The Lancet, having a larger body shouldn't mean you're diagnosed with "clinical obesity". Such a diagnosis should depend on the level and location of body fat – and whether there are associated health problems.
…The goal of the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Commission on the Definition and Diagnosis of Clinical Obesity was to develop an approach to this definition and diagnosis. The commission, established in 2022 and led from King's College London, has brought together 56 experts on aspects of obesity, including people with lived experience.
The commission's definition and new diagnostic criteria shifts the focus from BMI alone. It incorporates other measurements, such as waist circumference, to confirm an excess or unhealthy distribution of body fat.
We define two categories of obesity based on objective signs and symptoms of poor health due to excess body fat.

Kevin Patton comment→ I guess I can no longer claim that my high BMI is due to my large muscle mass. Like that ever helped me. 😏

Huge Study Finds Constellation of Health Benefits for Ozempic Beyond Weight Loss

In a ginormous new study, researchers have begun mapping the manifold health benefits of drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy beyond weight loss.
Published in the journal Nature Medicine, this new study led by Ziyad Al-Aly of the Veteran's Affairs health system in St. Louis tracked millions of diabetes patient outcomes over a period of 3.5 years.
Of those, over 215,000 had been prescribed a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist receptor — the class of drugs that includes Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound, and others — and 1.7 million were on another form of blood sugar-lowering medicine.
Looking at other disorders in the data ranging from Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's to kidney disease and opiate addiction, Al-Aly and his team found that those who were on GLP-1 medications saw significant improvement across a staggering range of health concerns — and far beyond anything clearly linked to weight or blood sugar.
Though many studies have found that these blockbuster drugs seem to be beneficial for specific disorders, "no one had comprehensively investigated the effectiveness and risks of GLP-1 receptor agonists across all possible health outcomes," the physician-scientist told Nature.

Optional Corequisite Courses Supercharge Anatomy & Physiology Success

Get ready for a mind-bending 😲 rendezvous with Kevin Patton in Episode 141, where he continues to spill the beans on his top-secret recipe for student triumph. 🏆 Brace yourself for this next adventure on his whirlwind tour of revolutionizing A&P 1 education, as we dissect the art of identifying student pain points, personalizing preparation, and serving up the kind of mentorship they’ve been yearning for! It’s an optional corequisite course that students love!

0:00:00 | Introduction
0:00:45 | One of Two Success Courses
0:09:48 | Setting Up the Supplement Course
0:18:44 | Structure of Class Sessions
0:40:17 | Grading
0:42:45 | Does an A&P Supplement Work?
0:54:21 | Parting Wisdom
1:14:46 | Staying Connected

To listen to this episode, click on the play button above ⏵ (if present) or this link→ theAPprofessor.org/podcast-episode-141.html

Exposing the mental gymnastics that conceal racism

Keon West could reel off anecdotes about the everyday racism he experiences – but he won’t. Personal accounts rarely convince anyone, he says, and, all too often, they are dismissed or put down to some other, less offensive, cause. Instead of the feelings that racist behaviour and accusations of racism provoke, he prefers to focus on facts.
A social psychologist at the University of London, West has consolidated hundreds of rigorous empirical studies on racism conducted over decades in his new book, The Science of Racism. By exploring how experiments can detect racism and measure its impact across societies, he builds a scientifically accurate picture of what contemporary racism is and the complexities that surround it.
While it is clear that society’s attempts to combat racism remain inadequate, there is plenty that can be done about it. The same studies that prove the existence of racism can also help us unpack the psychological gymnastics that nearly everyone performs to conceal their racist behaviours from themself. The idea is that, by becoming aware of these personal biases, many racist behaviours can gradually be dissolved.
In this interview, West sheds light on ideas like systemic racism and lays out the science-backed methods of spotting racism in its various guises. Doing so, he hopes, will steer public discourse away from debating whether racism exists to confronting it head on.

Covid smell loss eased by injecting platelets into the nose

Transmission electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles (gold) within endosomes of a heavily infected nasal Olfactory Epithelial Cell. Image captured at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Credit: NIAID

People who had lost their sense of smell after catching covid-19 partly regained it following the injection of blood cells called platelets into their noses, which could help to improve their quality of life.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste has been considered a common covid-19 symptom.
“The SARS-CoV-2 virus enters cells in the nose, causing inflammation that can damage neurons, the cells that detect smells,” says Zara Patel at Stanford University in California. But the symptom has become less common with newer variants, she adds.
Most people spontaneously regain their sense of smell within a few months, while others recover after receiving a commonly recommended type of therapy called smell training. This involves regularly sniffing different odours, such as coffee and lemons. “But that training doesn’t work for a huge number of people,” says Patel.
In search of another treatment, Patel and her colleagues turned to a therapy that seems to regenerate a range of tissues, including skin and the cartilage in joints. It involves collecting a person’s blood and filtering out plasma – a clear yellow liquid that contains platelets, blood cells that produce regenerative proteins – before injecting this into the affected area.

Neuroanatomy educators, meet your global community

Imagine if you had access to up-to-date, peer-reviewed clinical cases and teaching resources…
Access to this community and its collection of resources is intended to provide you with a reliable, high-quality network to locate and share ideas, support, and teaching materials.
The community is for educators involved in teaching neuroanatomy to all levels and disciplines. The resources are for educators at all stages of neurogenesis — whether you are preparing to teach your first class or just trying to maintain myelination of your last nerve.

Cancer cells ‘poison’ the immune system with tainted mitochondria

Cancer cells can poison attacking immune cells by filling them with defective mitochondria ― dampening the body’s defensive forces and helping the tumour to evade eradication¹.
These findings, published today in Nature, provide the strongest evidence to date that mitochondria, cellular sub-structures that produce energy, migrate in humans and not just in cell and animal models.
“My first thought was that this sounds crazy, like science fiction. But they seem to have the data for it,” says Holden Maecker, an immunologist at Stanford University in California, who was not involved in the research. “This is potentially a totally new biology that we were not looking at.”
Further studies are needed to understand this phenomenon’s frequency and how much it benefits cancer cells, he adds.

How to trick the immune system into attacking tumours

This is a representation of the kidneys in the human body. The left kidney depicted is healthy with normal functioning. The right kidney depicted has a tumor (shown inside the red circle). Image: Chinski72

Scientists have disguised tumours to ‘look’ similar to pig organs ― tricking the immune system into attacking the cancerous cells. This ruse can halt a tumour’s growth and even eliminate it altogether, data from monkeys and humans suggest. But scientists say that further testing is needed before the technique’s true efficacy becomes clear.
It’s “early days” for this novel approach, says immuno-oncologist Brian Lichty at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. “I hope it stands up to further clinical testing,” he adds. The work is described today in Cell¹.

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