news 2022

Seasonal influenza is a major public health issue because it continues to remain associated with considerable mortality, particularly among people who are elderly, immunocompromised, or both. It also has a significant socioeconomic cost. With vaccination and current treatments still being of limited efficacy, research teams are trying to develop new therapeutic approaches.

The more social relationships we have, the more certain structures in our brain are developed. This has been the hypothesis of various neuroscience research projects for several years. With previous findings having highlighted the role of our social environment as one of the key factors behind the expansion of the cerebral cortex, researchers from Inserm and Université Lyon Claude Bernard Lyon 1, in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, went one step further in elucidating this link.

For the past thirty years, the star - Pictoris has fascinated astronomers because it enables them to observe a planetary system in the process of formation. It is made up of at least two young planets, and also contains comets, which were detected as early as 1987. These were the first comets ever observed around a star other than the Sun.

An interdisciplinary and international research team realized the first 4-dimensional simulation of hominin birth, constituting an important methodological advance for paleo-obstetrics. The researchers found that australopithecines gave birth to relatively small brained newborns, implying that they were helpless at birth similar to modern humans and their mothers thus needed the help of group members.

Infertility is a public health problem affecting millions of couples in France. Among the possible causes, chemotherapy has been singled out as having particularly harmful effects on the fertility of both women and men. In order to better prevent and restore fertility in cancer survivors, understanding the mechanisms behind these negative effects is a priority.

Gut microbiota by-products circulate in the bloodstream, regulating host physiological processes including immunity, metabolism and brain functions. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur (a partner research organization of Université Paris Cité), Inserm and the CNRS have discovered that hypothalamic neurons in an animal model directly detect variations in bacterial activity and adapt appetite and body temperature accordingly.

Migrating human T lymphocytes revealing a broad protrusion at the leading edge and long adhesive protrusions at the rear. Image obtained by confocal fluorescence microscopy: filamentous actin, pink; VLA4 adhesion protein, blue. Institut Pasteur/Lymphocyte Cell Biology. Image by Marta Mastrogiovanni In patients with familial adenomatous polyposis, a genetic disease predisposing to colon cancer, mutations of the APC gene induce the formation of intestinal polyps, but also reduce immune system activity.

Several months after infection with SARS-CoV-2, some patients are still having symptoms - a phenomenon known as "long COVID” or "post-COVID-19 condition”. Still poorly understood, scientists are now attentively studying long COVID in order to improve knowledge and offer patients the best possible treatment.

A very small percentage of people with HIV-1, known as "post-treatment controllers” (PTCs), are able to control their infection after interrupting all antiretroviral therapy. Understanding the fundamental mechanisms that govern their immune response is essential in order to develop HIV-1 vaccines, novel therapeutic strategies to achieve remission, or both.

If genetics is interested in gene sequencing, epigenetics studies how genes are going to be used, or not used, by a cell. The epigenome of a cell represents the set of chemical modifications of the DNA or associated proteins that will determine the expression of the genes and thus the cell's identity.

Using a microphone developed in France, the Perseverance rover has recorded the first ever sounds from Mars audible to the human ear. By analysing these sounds, scientists have been able to find out more about the physical characteristics of the Martian atmosphere, and in particular about the speed of sound and its attenuation there.

Artificial sweeteners are used to reduce the amounts of added sugar in foods and beverages, thereby maintaining sweetness without the extra calories. These products, such as diet sodas, yoghurts and sweetener tablets for drinks, are consumed by millions of people daily. However, the safety of these additives is the subject of debate.

Every year in France, 140,000 people have a stroke 1 . Around 80% are ischemic strokes or cerebral infarctions, which occur when a brain artery is obstructed by a blood clot. Studies have shown that the risk of ischemic stroke is increased by the use of antipsychotics: medications with antidopaminergic 2 properties that are commonly prescribed in psychiatry.

Although the majority of its population is fully vaccinated, the virus continues to actively circulate in France. As health restrictions are being lifted, fears of a resurgence of the epidemic and of the emergence of new more contagious variants are leading scientists to consider new strategies to continue to promote vaccination among populations that remain hesitant.

Some "hypervirulent" strains of Listeria monocytogenes have a greater capacity to infect the central nervous system. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Inserm and the Paris Public Hospital Network (AP-HP) have discovered a mechanism that enables cells infected with Listeria monocytogenes to escape immune responses.

Although a kidney transplant is the only curative treatment for end-stage kidney disease, the risk of the patient's body rejecting the graft means that success is not guaranteed. To reduce this risk, physicians are now able to look at a certain number of genetic and immunological parameters in order to evaluate the histocompatibility between donor and recipient - i.e. how compatible their organs and tissues are.

Within the 50,000 known species of spiders about 20 have developed a permanent social life characterised by a remarkable cooperation 1 . Among these, one or two species hunt "in packs", such as the Anelosimus eximius spiders of French Guyana, whose colonies can house several thousand individuals of all ages, coexisting peacefully in gigantic webs that often reach several cubic metres.

The infant mortality rate (IMR) is a key indicator of population health. In the absence of updated data on the statistical trends of this indicator in France, researchers from Inserm, Université de Paris, the Paris public hospitals group (AP-HP) and Nantes University Hospital, in collaboration with teams from the University of California, analyzed civil registry data from the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) from 2001 to 2019.

Publication of the CIRI in the journal Science Translational Medicine on February 1 st , 2022. Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University focus on February 24, 2022. Transplant recipients, who receive therapeutic immunosuppression to prevent graft rejection, are characterized by high coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related mortality and defective response to vaccines.

The innate immune system plays a crucial role in regulating host-microbe interactions, and especially in providing protection against pathogens that invade the mucosa. Using an intestinal infection model, scientists from the Institut Pasteur and Inserm discovered that innate effector cells - group 3 innate lymphoid cells - act not only during the early stages of infection but can also be trained to develop an innate form of immunological memory that can protect the host during reinfection.