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Parkinson’s Sex Differences: Male Flies Show Stronger Rotenone Stress

MHD featured image for Parkinson's sex differences and rotenone immune-gene response in Drosophila.

A 2026 Drosophila Parkinson’s model exposed male and female flies to 500 μM rotenone. By 60 days, male flies had worse survival/climbing than female flies; the paper is a vulnerability screen, not evidence that the same genes are ready human biomarkers.1 Research Highlights 500 μM rotenone split male and female flies: Iyer et al. used …

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SYNGAP1 Autistic Behaviors Linked to Seizure Type, Not Frequency

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A 337-person SYNGAP1-DEE registry preprint found caregiver-reported autistic behavior scores linked most strongly to atypical absence seizures (n = 77; FDR-adjusted p = .001), while peak seizure-frequency ratings were not detectably associated with those behavior scores.1 Research Highlights Seizure type carried the signal: atypical absences were associated with higher caregiver-reported autistic behavior scores in 77 …

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Post-Meal Glucose Genetics Linked to Lacunar Stroke Risk

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A 2026 medRxiv genetic analysis linked type 2 diabetes and 2-hour postprandial glucose — the blood-sugar rise after an oral glucose challenge — to higher lacunar stroke risk, with a stronger direct signal for post-meal glucose than for HbA1c after adjustment for brain small-vessel imaging markers.1 Research Highlights Lacunar stroke was the clearest endpoint: genetically …

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Semaglutide Did Not Increase Suicidality in 102,361 Veterans

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A 2026 target-trial emulation involving 102,361 U.S. veterans with type 2 diabetes found no increased suicidality risk after starting semaglutide vs. sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT2 inhibitors): suicidal ideation HR 0.99 and suicide attempt/death HR 1.05 after overlap weighting.1 That does not prove semaglutide prevents suicide, but it weakens the broad claim that semaglutide initiation itself …

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Football Head Impacts Linked Cortical Slowing to NET and BDNF Maps

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A 91-player adolescent football preprint mapped head-impact-related cortical slowing onto brain receptor and gene-expression maps: concussion-related slowing aligned with norepinephrine transporter density, r = 0.43, and alpha-4 beta-2 nicotinic receptor density, r = 0.50, while aligning inversely with dopamine D2, BDNF, and APOE maps.1 The result is a mechanistic clue about where head-impact physiology may …

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Migraine Linked to Cognitive Impairment in Chinese MR

Editorial card showing a brain with migraine pain pathways overlaid on genetic instrument schematic for Mendelian randomization.

A 2026 study by Bai et al. in Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience uses Mendelian randomization (MR) — inherited genetic variants as a natural experiment to test causality — and concludes that migraines causally lower cognitive performance in a Han Chinese sample.1 The headline conclusion is plausible; the effect-size numbers in the popular MR shorthand (odds …

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