@darcydarnoci
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patients deserve advocates
United States
Joined October 2010
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darcy darnoc retweeted
Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) affects more than 300 million people worldwide—yet it remains under-recognised, underdiagnosed, and undertreated.
A new Series aims to address this major health burden: spkl.io/60187rwOO
ALT Figure showing typical regions of vessel involvement in people with PAD and illustration of the life course of affected people from asymptomatic PAD through intermittent claudication to CLTI, with reported progression rates and major amputation risk as well as death rates at the symptomatic disease stage. CLTI=chronic limb-threatening ischaemia. PAD=peripheral arterial disease. Copyright: 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. CC BY 4.0.
darcy darnoc retweeted
A Mayo Clinic team just built the cleanest causal test I've seen for NAD's role in aging. They engineered mice whose NAD synthesis depends entirely on dietary niacin, then pulled the niacin. Result: kyphosis, muscle and bone loss, cataracts, frailty, cellular senescence, shortened lifespan. Put niacin back and most of it reverses, without fully restoring NAD.
That partial-restoration gap matters. It says NAD depletion triggers senescence programs that do not simply snap back when the cofactor returns. We flagged senescence as a load-bearing hallmark in the Biomarkers of Aging Consortium work (Moqri et al., Cell 2023); this is a rare in vivo model that makes the causal chain from cofactor to senescence to phenotype explicit and reversible.
Nat Commun, Benitez-Rosendo, Chini et al. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-7…
darcy darnoc retweeted
Bloomberg just dropped the most disturbing investigation I have read this year, and every AI builder should read it and take it seriously.
On February 28, two Tomahawk missiles hit an elementary school in Minab, a small town in southern Iran. 156 people died. At least 123 were children. The Pentagon knew within hours that it had bombed a school.
The school had its own website. It was labeled on Google Maps. You could see the soccer pitch from a satellite view. You could see the brightly painted walls. Any 12-year-old with a browser could tell what the building was.
The AI system could not.
Inside US Central Command, personnel were using Palantir's Maven Smart System. It is an AI targeting platform running on a $1.3 billion Pentagon contract, and embedded inside it is Anthropic's Claude.
On day one of the war, more than 1,000 targets went through it in 24 hours. Work that used to take a team hours per target got compressed into minutes.
The satellite imagery Maven was pulling from was seven years old. The site was still tagged in the database as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard facility.
The system spat it out as a recommended day-one target. Humans signed off. The first missile flew. Then a second one landed minutes later to hit the people who came to help.
Investigators later found that some Central Command staff had assumed Maven would flag stale intelligence for them. It did not. Nobody had told it to.
Palantir told Bloomberg the government is responsible for the underlying data. The Pentagon's civilian harm mitigation team, the people whose actual job is to catch a target like this, had been cut back before the war started.
This is not AI going rogue. This is the opposite.
This is AI doing exactly what it was built to do at exactly the speed it was built to do it. And a school full of little girls got vaporized because the humans in the loop trusted the machine more than they trusted their own eyes.
I keep thinking about the version of this story that comes next. What happens when the system is faster. When the target list is not 1,000 in a day but 10,000. When "review" becomes a button the operator has three seconds to hit before the next target loads. When there is no human left slow enough to notice that a soccer pitch is not a helipad.
We are not talking about a spam filter mislabeling an email. We are talking about a system that turned a seven-year-old database entry into two cruise missiles landing on children in the middle of a morning class.
A UN-backed panel has now called it a potential war crime.
In terms of children killed, it is the deadliest American targeting error of the entire 21st century. And according to Bloomberg, some of Defense Secretary Hegseth's own advisors are worried that too much public scrutiny of Maven might slow down its adoption inside the Pentagon.
Read that last line again.
If you build this stuff, you own what it does. You do not get to hide behind "the government owns the data." The whole pitch of your product is that speed and integration save lives. When it takes them instead, that is also on you.
I am not against AI in defense. I am against AI in a hurry. Speed is the entire mechanism that made Minab possible. Every guardrail we already know how to build takes time, and time is exactly what the system was designed to eliminate.
So here is the question I have not been able to stop asking, and I genuinely want to know what you think.
If a piece of software helped kill 123 children in a single morning while behaving exactly as designed, what does "responsible AI" even mean anymore?
darcy darnoc retweeted
Clean air is not just a #health issue, it is an innovation and productivity policy.
A new study in @NatureHumBehav Behaviour finds that #airpollution doesn’t just hurt physical labour, it also drags down high-skilled cognitive work.
Tracking millions of Chinese scholars from 2015–2022, researchers estimate that each 1 μg/m³ increase in annual PM2.5 exposure reduces publications per scholar by about 0.23% and quality-weighted output by 0.67%; at China’s mean PM2.5 level, a 1% rise in pollution translates to roughly 1,053 fewer papers nationwide.
The effects are strongest during heavy pollution and among younger and highly productive scholars, with mechanisms including fewer office hours, more hospital visits, and weaker same-city collaboration.
nature.com/articles/s41562-0…
darcy darnoc retweeted
An AI model called RADAR, designed to provide broad diagnostic interpretation of abdominal CT scans, substantially outperformed existing AI systems across a wide range of diseases and clinical settings, researchers report in Science.
The findings demonstrate the potential of vision–language models to advance expert-level generalist AI tools for radiology. scim.ag/3SVbLwm
darcy darnoc retweeted
Neurological Manifestations of Long COVID: Current Evidence, Emerging Concepts, and Future Perspectives
🚨Vaccines cut the odds of neurological LongC0VID. They do not delete it. Reinfections stack the risk. Brain fog, dysautonomia and cognitive injury are still an important post-pandemic disease, not some kind of psy-feeling.
➡️This recent Croatian narrative review treats neurological LongC0VID (neuro-PASC) as a durable, multi-mechanism brain and autonomic disorder AGAIN, not as a residual “post-viral tiredness.”
➡️Key points:
- Common lasting features: brain fog/cognitive impairment, fatigue and post-exertional malaise, headache, sleep disruption, dysautonomia/POTS-like orthostatic intolerance, smell/taste change, sensory symptoms, anxiety/depression,
- These occur after mild as well as severe acute infection. A large minority of survivors still report neuro symptoms at 12 months and beyond,
- Leading mechanisms in current evidence: immune dysregulation and neuroinflammation, microvascular/endothelial injury, possible viral persistence or antigen remnants, latent herpesvirus (e.g. EBV) reactivation, autonomic failure, gut–brain disruption, and structural/functional imaging changes. Direct viral invasion of neurons is here not the main story,
- Overlap with ME/CFS, POTS, fibromyalgia and post-ICU syndrome is substantial, the phenotypes are heterogeneous,
- Diagnostics and disease-modifying treatments remain weak. Care is still mostly supportive and multidisciplinary,
- Risk of LongC0VID and of incident neurologic diagnoses accumulates with repeated infections,
- Research priorities: biomarkers, sub-phenotypes, trials, and long-term neurodegeneration risk.
‼️So, according to this review, the pandemic left AGAIN a large, under-treated neurological after-effect. Vaccines blunt acute severity and cut new LongC0VID risk, but they do not erase neuro-PASC once it is established, and each reinfection can add more brain and autonomic injury. Declaring the neurological chapter closed is not supported by the evidence.
‼️IMPORTANCE of this review:
A 2026 Q1 clinical review for practicing doctors, not a new trial. Its value is synthesis: phenotypes, mechanisms, imaging/biomarkers, and the still-thin treatment options; and this at a time when many are minimising or trying to drop LongC0VID. Many journalists and others need to read this review, It shows again the neurological-LongC0vid signal is real, has a multi-pathway, and is clearly not gone!
#Avoidsars2 #avoidReinfections #Vaccination
mdpi.com/2077-0383/15/18/716…
darcy darnoc retweeted
Interesting, but again in general, not novel: persistent immune dysregulation as a possible driver of LongC0VID!
My growing problem: LongC0VID has many distinct phenotypes. Treating it as ONE disease family is becoming scientifically undefendable. We need differentiation!!😷
#LongCOVID may be less about a weak immune response—and more about an immune system out of balance
➡️ A study comparing 67 people with LongCOVID and 81 recovered individuals found that both groups had broadly similar antibody, T-cell and cytokine responses. Yet LongCOVID patients showed disturbed coordination between cellular and antibody-mediated immunity.
➡️ Interestingly, IL-6 remained elevated as a potential marker of persistent inflammation even 1–3 years after COVID, while higher FGF-basic levels were associated with more severe disease-related immune disturbances. 1/
darcy darnoc retweeted
"Fulminant myocarditis remains a rare but potentially fatal complication of SARS-CoV-2 infection, capable of causing rapid hemodynamic collapse and malignant electrical instability even in previously healthy individuals."( YOUNG: 35y!) #Omicron #CaseReport #AvoidSars2
amjcaserep.com/abstract/inde…
darcy darnoc retweeted
This USA study shows CVD roughly doubled mortality and raised ICU use in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
That is consistent with CVD acting as an important risk amplifier. From a prevention standpoint, this supports treating people with established CVD as a high-priority group for measures that reduce severe COVID-19, including staying current on recommended COVID-19 vaccines, rather than restricting that offer by age alone!
My bottom line as expert: all patients with CVD, regardless of age, should be offered COVID-19 vaccine updates! #AvoidSars2 #AvoidReinfections
#VaccineUpdates
link.springer.com/article/10…
Replying to @BrianRoemmele @WilliamShatner
We induce a current with (high power) PEMF. It’s effective. Germs can’t survive the depolarization, healthy cells can.
darcy darnoc retweeted
Sarcopenia is more than a disease of muscle. This new review reframes it as a disorder of the aging motor system, integrating neural drive, neuromuscular function, muscle quality, strength, and physical performance. An interesting perspective on how we assess and treat muscle health with aging. #Sarcopenia
thelancet.com/journals/lanhl…
darcy darnoc retweeted
Epstein–Barr Virus: More than Just an Infection
🚨EBV isn’t “just mono.” It rewires B cells, mimics host proteins (GlialCAM → MS, nuclear antigens → lupus), drives lymphoma and paediatric cytokine storms,
This new Belgian review also flags emerging, not yet solid, evidence that EBV reactivation after COVID may contribute to LongC0VID.
Worth your time!
➡️EBV, carried lifelong by ~95% of adults, toggles between lytic replication and programmed latency, reprogramming B cells to evade immunity and disrupt homeostasis,
➡️EBNA-1 is central( EB virus-nuclear antigen-1), “The Achilles’ Heel of EBV,”
➡️Via molecular mimicry it cross-reacts with GlialCAM (MS), keratin (RA), and nuclear antigens (SLE),
➡️A "bystander activation" and "epitope spreading" can amplify inflammation in Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes, and IgA nephropathy,
➡️EBV also drives lymphoproliferative disease in both immunocompetent and immunosuppressed hosts. "When a usually EBV-negative lymphoma turns EBV-positive, that is often a red flag for underlying immune failure,"
➡️Two paediatric emergencies get special attention:
- EBV-HLH: A cytokine-storm catastrophe from failed cytotoxicity,
- Chronic active EBV disease (CAEBV),
- Both can kill,
➡️On LongC0VID the review is cautious:
➡️Separate studies suggest COVID can wake latent EBV in B cells:
- EBNA1 mimicry, atypical B-cell expansion, and cytokine dysregulation could then sustain the same inflammatory loops seen in MS, SLE, and RA.
- SARSCoV2 would not need to persist, it would only need to reactivate the most omnipresent human virus and let it keep “burning.”
- That, according to this review, remains a hypothesis, not yet a settled mechanism,
➡️The authors further argue that mapping these molecular interactions is essential for vaccines and targeted therapies that finally treat EBV as a systemic pathogen rather than a childhood inconvenience,
‼️So, a virus shrugged off as “kissing disease” is a plausible architect of autoimmunity, lymphoma, paediatric cytokine storms, and possibly part of the wreckage after SARSCoV2. Ignoring that possibility is no longer scientifically serious.
Sadly, NO licensed EBV vaccine momentarily available. Incoming mRNA candidates are real, but a public shot is not yet imminent!
mdpi.com/1999-4915/18/9/1048
darcy darnoc retweeted
PANS/PANDAS mechanism just published: (They studied strep but it's not limited to strep, I've seen many cases from bartonella)
Strep → IL-17A → microglia → leaky blood-brain barrier → sudden personality changes, OCD, tics, & many more.
For 20 years parents were told it was psychosocial.
It was inflammation due to an infection. It always was.
darcy darnoc retweeted
🚨 Scientists have engineered a common probiotic to act as a cancer-seeking 'drug factory,' completely eradicating 43% of colorectal tumors in preclinical trials.
The study, led by researchers at Columbia University, utilized a modified strain of Escherichia coli Nissle 1917, a safe gut microbe.
Because tumors provide an oxygen-low, nutrient-rich environment where the immune system is suppressed, the injected bacteria naturally migrate to and multiply inside the cancerous cells.
Once established, these engineered microbes act as tiny localized drug factories, converting a separately administered, non-toxic compound into a potent chemotherapy drug directly at the tumor site, minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissue.
To maximize effectiveness, the probiotic was also engineered to deliver a powerful dual-action immune boost. It releases an immune-stimulating protein to recruit the body's natural defenses, alongside a specialized nanobody that unmasks cancer cells, preventing them from hiding from the immune system.
This 'triple-whammy' therapy—combining localized chemo, immune stimulation, and immune checkpoint blockade—completely eliminated established colorectal tumors in 43% of treated cases in preclinical trials.
By proving that living medicines can reprogram tumor microenvironments, this breakthrough offers a promising, highly precise alternative to conventional, high-toxicity treatments.
source: Yang, Z., Im, J., Chen, N., Mariuzza, D. L., de los Santos-Alexis, K., Li, F., Ballister, E. R., Ringham, O. R., Danino, T., & Arpaia, N. (2026). Engineered probiotics for tumor-targeted combination chemoimmunotherapy. Science Translational Medicine, 18(867), eady2289.