A study led by IR Sant Pau and published in Human Reproduction analyzes data from more than 22,000 women and identifies four distinct clinical profiles. One in five women experiences the most severe form, with pain, digestive problems, and impaired mental health occurring at the same time. This group has a poorer quality of life across all areas, including more pain, worse overall health, greater social isolation, and more difficulty accessing medical care. Endometriosis is not only pelvic pain: nearly 30% of patients have a “neurological-psychological” profile. Anxiety, depression, and migraine are often the first symptoms recorded in these patients, who receive psychiatric diagnoses before gynecological ones. Adenomyosis is more severe than previously thought: women with both endometriosis and adenomyosis fall into two groups with severe symptoms, with none in the asymptomatic group.

Epilepsy affects millions of people worldwide, and roughly one-third of such patients continue to experience seizures despite medication. In a recent study, researchers from Gunma University have developed a 410-base pair compact genetic switch that selectively targets inhibitory neurons in the brain to restore the excitatory–inhibitory balance. This compact switch can be delivered using viral delivery vectors, enabling effective seizure suppression across multiple epilepsy mouse models while preserving the capacity of the therapeutic genes.

A case report in Chinese Neurosurgical Journal describes a novel salvage surgical approach for refractory multiple sclerosis-related trigeminal neuralgia. In a single patient who had failed medical, percutaneous, and radiosurgical treatments, the procedure combined internal neurolysis (nerve combing) with targeted glycerol delivery to the proximal trigeminal root. The patient experienced immediate pain relief and remained recurrence-free on the treated side for 43 months, with preserved sensation and reduced medication use.

Kyoto, Japan -- Synucleinopathies are a group of neurodegenerative disorders that includes serious conditions such as Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. There are currently no cures for these disorders and treatment is limited to mitigating symptoms. Recently, antibody-based therapies have attracted considerable attention, but alternative approaches are still necessary.

Therapy development for synucleinopathies tends to target the alpha-synuclein protein, αSyn, the abnormal aggregation of which is a hallmark of these diseases. However, targeting this protein using conventional strategies for drug discovery is stymied by the molecule's lack of a stable three-dimensional structure, which cultivates aggregation.

Interested in understanding how abnormal protein aggregation drives neurodegeneration, a team of researchers at Kyoto University had an idea that was both scientifically intriguing and therapeutically promising: could RNA aptamers -- often described as "chemical antibodies" -- directly recognize αSyn's disordered regions and suppress pathological aggregation?