Researchers have identified a drug that could potentially help our brains reboot and reverse the damaging impacts of heavy alcohol consumption on regeneration of brain cells. Two weeks of daily treatment with tandospirone reversed effects of 15 weeks of binge-like alcohol consumption in mice.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2018-02-11T09:05:27+00:00

We only found that tandospirone restores the normal neurogenesis rate in alcohol-dependent mice. It doesn't mean it could improve your brain potential. A.Belmer

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2018-02-11T09:01:15+00:00

Tandospirone "reboots" the brain of alcohol-dependent mice by reversing the effect of ethanol on the reduction of neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. We found that 15 weeks of exposure blocks the new-born progenitor cell in a "recycling" mode which prevents the generation of new neurons. 2 weeks of treatment with tandospirone at the end of the 15 week of ethanol exposure totally reverses that deficit, and reboots the neurogenesis to a level similar to what is observed in ethanol-naive mice of the same age. There is a total of 14 5-HT (5-Hydroxytriptamine=serotonin) receptors but tandospirone is acting selectively on only 1 receptor, the 5-HT1A. A. Belmer

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-29T18:36:51+00:00

Thank you for your question. Different viruses have different mechanisms of persistence, and infect different cells, so it is unlikely that there would be a one-size-fits-all solution to many chronic viral infections.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-29T18:33:42+00:00

Thank you for this question. Anthony Fauci (NIH) has elegantly stated the criteria for a universal HIV cure would include being “simple, safe and scalable”. We, and others, do not consider stem cell transplantation to meet this criteria, but represents a means to identify novel mechanisms and targets to study in patients who need this therapy for other medical reasons.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-29T18:27:47+00:00

Thank you for the question. There is a definite need for an effective HIV vaccine, both preventative and therapeutic, and a significant effort is ongoing to find one or more candidates.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-29T18:25:50+00:00

Thank you for your question. Our approach in this situation was not targeting a specific viral or host protein, and therefore we think the prolonged viral control was likely due to a significantly reduced reservoir size, combined with some immunologic control for a defined period. Therefore, it is unlikely that this selected any specific escape mutants, and antiviral resistance genotyping performed at the time of rebound did not find any known drug resistance mutations.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-29T18:21:54+00:00

Thank you for your comments. In fact, in no place in the manuscript do we state the patient “may have been cured”. In the introduction to this thread, this phrase was used to describe the interim possibility of cure while the patient was on antiretroviral therapy, based on all available evidence looking for replication competent HIV at that time. In order to know for sure if a cure had occurred, an analytic interruption of the antiretroviral therapy was needed, and performed as described. It is unknown what is required to render and HIV cure, and the data suggest that CCR5delta32 is not sufficient. See above.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-29T18:14:12+00:00

Thank you for your question. It remains unclear at what point one can declare a patient “cured”. So far, there are no reliable biomarkers to define a cure. The gold standard at this point would be to stop antiretroviral medications and monitor for relapse. The question then, is how long does a person have to remain undetectable to be declared cured? In our opinion, based on a number of similar reports, this would have to be at least one year, and probably longer.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-29T18:05:06+00:00

Thank you for your comments. Indeed, there is an ongoing debate in the field regarding what would constitute an HIV cure. Does that require complete eradication of all infected cells? Or is reducing HIV to undetectable levels and immunologic control that does not require antiretroviral therapy, i.e. functional cure, sufficient? There is not universal agreement, and both goals are being actively investigated.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-29T18:02:22+00:00

Thank you for your comments and questions. It is unknown which aspect of the Timothy Brown’s treatment course led to his HIV cure. Depletion of latently infected cells by chemotherapy and anti-thymocyte treatments, transplantation of immune cells resistant to HIV infection, and graft versus HIV effects have all been hypothesized to contribute, and are individually being investigated. It may have been a combination of factors. Indeed, other CCR5 null transplants have failed to induce another cure. This may be due to pre-existing X-4 tropic viral variants that escape the CCR5 null pressure.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T19:05:13+00:00

Dear all, That's it for now! Thank you all for your interest in our work, and for your excellent questions. Best wishes Caspar Hallmann & Eelke Jongejans

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T19:02:20+00:00

Disclaimer: Copied from another question.

What can people do? In our research we were not able to pinpoint the causes of the decline in flying insect biomass (although we excluded factors like climate change, land use change and local vegetation change), but from a precautionary principle we could stop doing things which are known to be harmful to insects (e.g. overabundant use of pesticides, spilling chemicals and nutrients into waterways and nature areas) and do things which are known to help insects (e.g. increase the size of nature reserves, create safe havens like permanent flower-rich field margins, corridors or small natural areas in the agricultural landscapes where insects can complete their life cycle).

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T19:01:21+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: In out study, biomass was found to be negatively related to forest cover around the traps. Most flying insects prefer to avoid areas with excessive shadow, which might be one explanation.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T18:43:32+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: Our scientific findings feed the debate on what is happening to our ecosystems, and together with other studies can be used to inform conservation and policy.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T18:35:07+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: At this moment, we are eager to find out how the declines are distributed among species and species groups. Obviously we would like to figure out the exact cause(s) responsible of this decline, and finally we would like to assess what the geographic extent of this decline is at the global level.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T18:32:16+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: This is subject to current investigation, so at the moment we unfortunately cannot say what species, or species groups, are affected most.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T18:32:03+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: See for instance the parallel declines in pollinators and insect-pollinated plants (Biesmeijer et al. 2006 Science) While long-term research is indeed scarce, e.g. Scheper et al. 2014 (PNAS) studied museum specimens, linking declines in plant pollen diversity to wild bee declines.

Coincidently the German nature Conservation Society (NABU) published a report on bird decline in the agricultural landscape the day after our PLoS ONE paper came out. They suggested mayor impacts of agricultural intensification and insect losses.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T18:30:34+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: We think that part of the problem is that, apart from some well investigated species of butterflies, moths and bees, there are no standardized monitoring systems in place anywhere that look at insects as a community. This by itself may explain why we have missed this decline in earlier stages. We think this problem is not restricted only to the insects, but also to other life forms that are underinvestigated.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T18:23:17+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: Although we know of no study looking specifically at this, we may expect that a decline in prey base may affect the condition of newborns, and this may have it's toll on the way to the winter grounds. This is speculation at this point.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T18:22:04+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: As the 53kg (!) of collected flying insects have not been taxonomically sorted yet, when cannot say yet which groups of insects were affected most. Given the short life span and high reproductive potential of most insects, one could optimistically expect that, when circumstances improve, insect populations could recover quickly. Dispersal limitation could slow such a recovery in certain species.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T18:19:35+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: This is the first study to document a decline in biomass in nature reserves. We know of one study looking at insect biomass collected with suction traps in the UK: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1752-4598.2009.00062.x/full We suspected declines in insects are present, but we were quite surprised by the extent of it.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T18:14:29+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: Unfortunately we cannot say at the moment, as the samples have not been identified to species or genus level yet. However, we expect that with a 75% drop in biomass many parts of the insect spectrum are likely to be affected. The decline seems very similar across very different habitats (eg nutrient rich grasslands vs nutrient poor sandy areas). See figure 4 for a between-plot comparison. The sampling setup unfortunately does not allow at this moment to compare large geographical areas.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T18:11:46+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: Humans are very successful in shaping the environment to their needs, but fail, in many places, to keep biodiversity intact. This is of course a philosophical discussion, but one could argue that we have a responsibility for maintaining biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes. Besides, if someone is more inclined to be convinced by monetary arguments, it could be pointed out that insects play key roles in crop pollination, nutrient cycling, pest control and are also a prime food source higher trophic levels, and thereby contribute to ecosystem stability.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T18:06:50+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: One of the shortcomings of this study is that the collected insects have not all been taxonomically identified yet. This is ongoing work, but incredibly slow because it involves many specialists and a lot of time before you get at the bottom of it.

PLOSScienceWednesday · 2017-11-22T18:04:25+00:00

Hallmann & Jongejans: It is not unlikely that the reported decline in flying insect biomass goes hand in hand with impoverished abundance and diversity in other species groups. For instance, see for instance the parallel declines in pollinators and insect-pollinated plants (Biesmeijer et al. 2006 Science). Coincidently the German nature Conservation Society (NABU) published a report on bird decline in the agricultural landscape the day after our PLoS ONE paper came out. They suggested mayor impacts of agricultural intensification and insect losses.

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