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During pregnancy in mice, the billions of bacteria and other microbes that live in a mother’s intestines regulate key metabolites, small molecules that are important for healthy fetal brain development, UCLA biologists report Sept. 23 in the journal Nature.

There are no Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved treatments for COVID-19, the pandemic infection caused by a novel coronavirus. While several therapies are being tested in clinical trials, current standard of care involves providing patients with fluids and fever-reducing medications. To speed the search for new COVID-19 therapies, researchers are testing repurposed drugs—medicines already known to be safe for human use because they are FDA-approved for other conditions—for their abilities to mitigate the virus.

Supplements that claim to improve mental focus and memory may contain unapproved pharmaceutical drugs and in potentially dangerous combinations and doses, according to a new study published in the September 23, 2020, online issue of Neurology Clinical Practice, an official journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers found five such drugs not approved in the United States in the supplements they examined. The supplements are sometimes called “nootropics,” “smart drugs” or “cognitive enhancers.”