play a role

It seems to play a role in exacerbating inflammation in the seven million people that live with inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.

"Our study highlights the importance of one's age at diabetes diagnosis and suggests that specifically targeting obesity -- whether through diet and exercise or perhaps medication -- may play a role in staving off dementia in younger adults with diabetes," said Wu.

"Excitingly, factors related to the transcription factors Myc and Sox2, which are also used in modern medicine to produce stem cells from differentiated human cells, also play a role here," says Alexander Stockinger, the other first author of the study.

"Our findings indicate that the neurological effects of HEV may be due -- at least in part -- to a direct infection of the nerve cells and not exclusively to other mechanisms such as a reaction of the immune system, even if the latter could also play a role," outlines Eike Steinmann.

Fampridine acts on specific ion channels in nerve cells that, according to the researchers' analyses, also play a role in mental disorders such as schizophrenia.