Another high-profile publication from our Department
Our latest high-impact paper has been published in the prestigious Aging and Disease, the official journal of the International Society on Aging and Disease. The article, entitled “Senolytic treatment triggered by carotid occlusion confers protection against later acute ischemic stroke in aged rats”, is led by Dr. Szilvia V. Kecskés, Assistant Professor at our Department. In this study, we investigated whether the targeted removal of senescent cells accumulating in the walls of cerebral blood vessels could reduce stroke-induced brain damage in older age. Our results show that, under experimental conditions, the treatment reduced the size of cerebral infarcts and had beneficial effects on cerebral blood vessels as well as on age-related inflammatory and metabolic processes. These findings suggest that targeting the biological processes of aging may offer a new approach to increasing the resilience of the aging brain to stroke. Congratulations to all the authors on this excellent work!
New International Publication
A new paper entitled "Faecal proteases and immune signatures drive subtype-specific enteric neuronal activation in IBS" has been published in the prestigious journal Gut. The study was led by Dr. Anita Annaházi from the Department, in collaboration with physicians from the Centre of Gastroenterology and Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Szeged, researchers from the Genome Integrity and DNA Repair Team, University of Szeged, as well as German and French collaborators.
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) affects millions of people worldwide, yet there is still no simple diagnostic test to reliably identify the disease, and currently available treatments remain only partially effective. Our study demonstrated that components present in the stool of patients with both diarrhoea-predominant (IBS-D) and constipation-predominant (IBS-C) IBS activate neurons of the gut wall (enteric neurons) more strongly than those from healthy individuals. These findings provide further evidence that IBS is associated with genuine, measurable biological alterations rather than being merely a "functional" disorder. Importantly, we also showed that the two major IBS subtypes differ biologically: in IBS-D protein-degrading enzymes in the stool appear to drive these changes, whereas IBS-C involves different underlying mechanisms. The proteins identified in this study may form the basis of a simple stool-based diagnostic test for IBS-D in the future, while our findings may also contribute to the development of more personalized and targeted therapeutic approaches.
Congratulations to all authors on this outstanding achievement!
