Legend has it that Marie Antoinette’s hair turned gray overnight just before her beheading in 1791.
Though the legend is inaccurate hair that has already grown out of the follicle does not change color a new study from researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons is the first to offer quantitative evidence linking psychological stress to graying hair in people.
And while it may seem intuitive that stress can accelerate graying, the researchers were surprised to discover that hair color can be restored when stress is eliminated, a finding that contrasts with a recent study in mice that suggested that stressed-induced gray hairs are permanent.
Credit: Albert Einstein College of Medicine
April 22, 2021 (BRONX, NY) Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have designed an experimental drug that reversed key symptoms of Alzheimer s disease in mice. The drug works by reinvigorating a cellular cleaning mechanism that gets rid of unwanted proteins by digesting and recycling them. The study was published online today in the journal
Cell. Discoveries in mice don t always translate to humans, especially in Alzheimer s disease, said co-study leader Ana Maria Cuervo, M.D., Ph.D., the Robert and Renée Belfer Chair for the Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases, professor of developmental and molecular biology, and co-director of the Institute for Aging Research at Einstein. But we were encouraged to find in our study that the drop-off in cellular cleaning that contributes to Alzheimer s in mice also occurs in people with the disease, suggesting that our drug may also work in humans. In the 1990s, Dr. Cuervo discovered