Making small changes in your life can and will lead to positive outcomes in the future. Becoming more engaged in life and not sweating the small stuff. To have the courage to step through the doors life presents and then maybe to go on a journey you never imagined. Diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1995, Rob has taken on the challenge of a TEDx talk the way he deals with pretty much everything.
A study of more than 22,000 people with multiple sclerosis (MS) has discovered the first genetic variant associated with faster disease progression, which can rob patients of their mobility and independence over time. The work resulted from a large international collaboration of more than 70 institutions worldwide, led by researchers from UCSF (USA) and the University of Cambridge (UK). About 3 million people live with multiple sclerosis or MS, but the real number may be higher. Women are more likely to develop MS than men. When diagnosed, the immune system attacks the central nervous system, causing symptoms that range from numbness to disability. Although scientists know MS is associated with genetic risks, MS is not an inherited disease, and doctors have struggled to understand why some cases progress faster than others. This latest study combed through 13,000 patients’ DNA and found a gene that is linked to the onset of severe disability. Sergio Baranzini is a Neurology Professor at the University of California San Francisco. He is the study’s lead author, and he joins us live from San Francisco to discuss the latest updates.
Immigrants to Canada who have spent a greater proportion of their lives in Canada have a greater risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS) than people who have spent a smaller proportion of their lives there, according to a new study. The study does not prove that an increased proportion of life in Canada causes MS; it only shows an association.
“Other studies have shown that immigrants tend to have better health than long-term residents, which is thought to be because healthy people are more likely to choose to immigrate,” said study author Manav V. Vyasy. “We wanted to see if the lower risk of MS declines over time as people adopt some of the unhealthy lifestyles of their new country or are exposed to other environmental factors that increase their risk.”
The study involved 1.5 million immigrants who arrived in Canada between 1985 and 2003 and were covered by health insurance for at least two years with no diagnosis of MS. The people were then followed through 2016.
During that time, 934 people were diagnosed with MS, a rate of 0.44 cases per 100,000 person-years. Based on previous research, the overall rate of MS in Canada is estimated to be 15 to 17 cases per 100,000 person-years. Person years represent the number of people in the study and the amount of time each person spends.
The person’s age at arrival in Canada and the amount of time since they immigrated determined the proportion of life spent in Canada. Overall, people have spent an average of 20% of their lives in Canada.
Researchers found that people who had spent 70% of their lives in Canada were 38% more likely to develop MS than people who had spent 20% of their lives there. This result took into account other factors that could affect the risk of MS, such as sex, age and other health conditions.
The researchers did not find any differences between men and women or between people belonging to one of Canada’s immigration classes: family, refugee, or economic.
“Our data did not include information on various environmental factors associated with MS, but our theories include that this increase in the risk of MS over time may be due to lifestyle factors such as higher rates of smoking and changes in diet, environmental factors such as sunlight exposure and biological factors such as the composition of the gut microbiome that have been previously associated with an increased risk of MS,” Vyas said. “Some immigrants may be more susceptible to these risk factors due to social determinants of health such as income, education, neighbourhood and access to nutritious food.”
Mary Kaupas participates in an experiment to study how humans of various ages reach for targets. Tubes monitor her breathing to measure how much energy she uses. CREDIT Erik Summerside/Mary Kaupas
It’s one of the inescapable realities of ageing: The older we get, the slower we move—whether walking around the block or just reaching for the remote control.
A new study led by University of Colorado Boulder engineers helps explain why.
The research is one of the first studies to experimentally tease apart the competing reasons why people over age 65 might not be as quick on their feet as they used to be. The group reported that older adults might move slower, at least partly, because it costs them more energy than younger people—perhaps not too shocking for anyone who’s woken up tired the morning after an active day.
The findings could one day give doctors new tools for diagnosing a range of illnesses, including Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and even depression and schizophrenia, said study co-author Alaa Ahmed.
“Why we move the way we do, from eye movements to reaching, walking and talking, is a window into ageing and Parkinson’s,” said Ahmed, professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering. “We’re trying to understand the neural basis of that.”
For the study, the group asked subjects aged 18 to 35 and 66 to 87 to complete a simple task: to reach a target on a screen, like playing a video game on a Nintendo Wii. By analyzing patterns of these reaches, the researchers discovered that older adults seemed to modify their motions under certain circumstances to conserve their limited energy supplies.
“All of us, whether young or old, are inherently driven to get the most reward out of our environment while minimizing the amount of effort to do so,” said Erik Summerside, a co-lead author of the new study who earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering from CU Boulder in 2018.
Ahmed added that researchers have long known that older adults tend to be slower because their movements are less stable and accurate. But other factors could also play a role in this fundamental part of growing up.
According to one hypothesis, the muscles in older adults may work less efficiently, meaning that they burn more calories while completing the same tasks as younger adults—like running a marathon or getting up to grab a soda from the refrigerator.
Alternatively, ageing might also alter the reward circuitry in the human brain. Ahmed explained that as people age, their bodies produce less dopamine, a brain chemical that gives them a sense of satisfaction after a job well done. If you don’t feel that reward as strongly, the thinking goes, you may be less likely to move to get it. People with Parkinson’s disease experience an even sharper decline in dopamine production.
In the study, the researchers asked more than 80 people to sit down and grab the handle of a robotic arm, which, in turn, operated the cursor on a computer screen. The subjects reached forward, moving the cursor toward a target. If they succeeded, they received a reward—not a big one, but enough to make their brains happy.
“Sometimes, the targets exploded, and they would get point rewards,” Ahmed said. “It would also make a ‘bing bing’ sound.”
That’s when a contrast between the two groups of people began to emerge.
Both the 18 to 35-year-olds and 66 to 87-year-olds arrived at their targets sooner when they knew they would hear that bing bing—roughly 4% to 5% sooner over trials without the reward. But they also achieved that goal in different ways.
The younger adults, by and large, moved their arms faster toward the reward. The older adults, in contrast, mainly improved their reaction times, beginning their reaches about 17 milliseconds sooner on average.
When the team added an 8-pound weight to the robotic arm for the younger subjects, those differences vanished.
“The brain seems to be able to detect very small changes in how much energy the body is using and adjusts our movements accordingly,” said Robert Courter, a co-lead author of the study who earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering from CU Boulder in 2023. “Even when moving with just a few extra pounds, reacting quicker became the energetically cheaper option to get to the reward, so the young adults imitated the older adults and did just that.”
The research seems to paint a clear picture, Ahmed said: Both the younger and older adults didn’t seem to have trouble perceiving rewards, even small ones. But their brains slowed down their movements under tiring circumstances.
“Putting it all together, our results suggest that the effort costs of reaching seem to be determining what’s slowing the movement of older adults,” Ahmed said.
The experiment can’t completely rule out the brain’s reward centers as a culprit behind why we slow down when we age. But, Ahmed noted, if scientists can tease out where and how these changes emerge from the body, they may be able to develop treatments to reduce the toll of aging and disease.