The Year in Review - 2025
- mfulk78
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Articles and Points of Interest:
1) Microplastics in the Brain - From Science Advances: "Human health is being threatened by environmental microplastic (MP) pollution. MPs were detected in the bloodstream and multiple tissues of humans, disrupting the regular physiological processes of organs. Nanoscale plastics can breach the blood-brain barrier, leading to neurotoxic effects. How MPs cause brain functional irregularities remains unclear. This work uses high-depth imaging techniques to investigate the MPs within the brain in vivo. We show that circulating MPs are phagocytosed and lead these cells to obstruction in the capillaries of the brain cortex. These blockages as thrombus formation cause reduced blood flow and neurological abnormalities in mice. Our data reveal a mechanism by which MPs disrupt tissue function indirectly through regulation of cell obstruction and interference with local blood circulation, rather than direct tissue penetration. This revelation offers a lens through which to comprehend the toxicological implications of MPs that invade the bloodstream." (Huang et. al. 2025)
2) From Nature Medicine: "Brain insulin responsiveness is linked to long-term weight gain and unhealthy body fat distribution. Here we show that short-term overeating with calorie-rich sweet and fatty foods triggers liver fat accumulation and disrupted brain insulin action that outlasted the time-frame of its consumption in healthy weight men. Hence, brain response to insulin can adapt to short-term changes in diet before weight gain and may facilitate the development of obesity and associated diseases." (Pullman et. al. 2025)
3) In Nature Human Behavior we see: " Concerns about the relationship between social media use and adolescent mental health are growing, yet few studies focus on adolescents with clinical-level mental health symptoms. This limits our understanding of how social media use varies across mental health profiles. In this Registered Report, we analyse nationally representative UK data (N = 3,340, aged 11–19 years) including diagnostic assessments by clinical raters alongside quantitative and qualitative social media measures. As hypothesized, adolescents with mental health conditions reported spending more time on social media and were less happy about the number of online friends than adolescents without conditions. We also found hypothesized differences in social media use by condition type: adolescents with internalizing conditions reported spending more time on social media, engaging in more social comparison and experiencing greater impact of feedback on mood, alongside lower happiness about the number of online friends and lower honest self-disclosure. In contrast, those with externalizing conditions only reported higher time spent. These findings emphasize the need to consider diverse adolescent mental health profiles in policy and clinical practice." (Fassi et al 2025)
4) "Chronic stress remodels brain homeostasis, in which persistent change leads to depressive disorders. As a key modulator of brain homeostasis, it remains elusive whether and how brain autophagy is engaged in stress dynamics. Here we discover that acute stress activates, whereas chronic stress suppresses, autophagy mainly in the lateral habenula (LHb). Systemic administration of distinct antidepressant drugs similarly restores autophagy function in the LHb, suggesting LHb autophagy as a common antidepressant target. Genetic ablation of LHb neuronal autophagy promotes stress susceptibility, whereas enhancing LHb autophagy exerts rapid antidepressant-like effects. LHb autophagy controls neuronal excitability, synaptic transmission and plasticity by means of on-demand degradation of glutamate receptors. Collectively, this study shows a causal role of LHb autophagy in maintaining emotional homeostasis against stress. Disrupted LHb autophagy is implicated in the maladaptation to chronic stress, and its reversal by autophagy enhancers provides a new antidepressant strategy." (Yang et. al. 2025)
5) From BMJ Nutrition: "The analysis included 132 studies with 52,501 participants. The pooled prevalence of multiple micronutrient deficiency (vitamins, minerals and electrolytes) was 45.30% among T2D patients. The pooled prevalence was higher in women with T2D than in men. Vitamin D was the most prevalent micronutrient deficiency, followed by magnesium. B12 deficiency was higher in the metformin consuming group. The prevalence of micronutrient deficiency varied across WHO regions." (Mangal et. al. 2025)
6) A recent JAMA article by Forest et al., summarized by Samantha Anderer, reveals a bleak reality: U.S. children die at nearly twice the rate of peers in other high-income countries. From 2007–2023, American infants and children ages 1–19 were about 1.8 times more likely to die, translating to roughly 54 preventable child deaths every day. The largest contributors are prematurity and sudden infant death in infants, and firearm injuries and motor-vehicle crashes in older children and adolescents, with gun deaths staggeringly higher than in comparable nations. Beyond mortality, child health is deteriorating, with chronic conditions rising from about 40% to nearly 46% between 2011 and 2023, alongside increases in mental health disorders, obesity, ADHD, and autism. These outcomes reflect not just medical failure but systemic ones—poverty, fragmented healthcare, inadequate prenatal support, lack of parental leave, and widening inequality. The message is blunt: the U.S. is failing its children, and meaningful improvement will require urgent, prevention-focused, and equity-driven reform rather than continued avoidance of the obvious drivers.
7) Elevated uric acid is a well known innate immune activator via the Caspase/NLRP3 system. Dietary proteins and fructose/starchy based foods are the known contributors of elevated serum uric acid levels. In a new study in the Nutrition Journal, the group defined Hyperuricemia as serum uric acid levels > 7.0 mg/dL for men and > 6.0 mg/dL for women. They posted these results: "A significantly greater risk of hyperuricemia was observed among individuals with higher overall low carb diet score (LCDS) and animal-rich LCDS, but not with plant-rich LCDS. These positive associations for overall LCDS and animal-rich LCDS were evident in overweight individuals and for animal-rich LCDS, but not in non-overweight individuals." (Jung et. al. 2025)
8) A new April 2025 Science Translational Medicine study by McClune et al. shows that a chemically unique peptidoglycan from Borrelia burgdorferi can persist long after the bacteria are eradicated, acting as a chronic immune irritant rather than inert debris. Using improved detection assays and mouse models, the authors found this peptidoglycan accumulates for weeks in tissues like the liver and joints, where it is retained by immune and parenchymal cells. Its persistence drives sustained immune activation, including elevated pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, TNF-α, IL-6), inflammasome and NF-κB signaling, and interferon-stimulated gene expression. The resulting inflammatory and metabolic signatures closely resemble those seen in post-infectious syndromes such as long COVID. Together, these findings support the idea that lingering bacterial antigens, not ongoing infection, may underlie post-treatment Lyme disease symptoms and possibly other chronic post-infectious illnesses. (McClune et. al. 2025)
9) Maternal health conditions such as obesity and diabetes are associated with measurable differences in breast milk cytokine profiles, which can influence infant immune development and metabolism.
Key findings from the literature:
· Higher pro-inflammatory cytokines: mothers with obesity or gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) often have elevated levels of IL-6, TNF-α, and IL-8 in breast milk compared to healthy-weight mothers
· Lower anti-inflammatory cytokines like IL10, a key to tolerance development and the avoidance of allergic/immune based diseases
· In gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), breast milk can have altered levels of adipokines (e.g., leptin, adiponectin) along with cytokine changes. This altered inflammatory metabolic environment may influence infant growth patterns and immune programming. This is a key, in my mind to the autism epidemic
· Even after delivery, women with pre-pregnancy obesity or GDM can show prolonged differences in breast milk cytokines for weeks to months postpartum
· Elevated pro-inflammatory milk cytokines may influence the infant’s gut immune environment, inflammation set point, and possibly risk for obesity or allergic disease later in life though long-term outcome data remain limited (Isganaitis et. al. 2021)(Saben et. al. 2022)(Enstad et. al. 2020)(Dumke de Siqueira et. al. 2025)
10) Maternal autoantibody–related autism (MAR-ASD) accounts for roughly 18% of autism spectrum disorder cases and represents a distinct autoimmune subtype. A January 2021 Molecular Psychiatry study by Ramirez-Cellis used machine learning to identify specific maternal autoantibody patterns that were associated with autism with 100% accuracy in this subgroup. In these cases, mothers produced antibodies during pregnancy that targeted proteins critical to fetal brain development, including CRMP1/2, GDA, LDHA/B, STIP1, NSE, and YBX1. These proteins govern neuronal wiring, microtubule assembly, and cellular energy metabolism, so immune interference can disrupt brain development in precise, biologically plausible ways. The findings raise the possibility of pre-pregnancy screening and even preventive strategies, such as neutralizing harmful antibodies before or during gestation. More broadly, this work points to chronic inflammation and autoimmune risk, shaped by modern lifestyle and environmental pressures, as a central upstream driver we can no longer afford to ignore. (Ramirez-Cellis et. al. 2021)
Dr. M
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