PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics researchers awarded $3.4M NIH grant to understand link between chronic health conditions and Alzheimer's disease

McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics researchers awarded $3.4M NIH grant to understand link between chronic health conditions and Alzheimer's disease
2023-09-08
(Press-News.org) A three-year, $3.4 million grant to investigate how Alzheimer’s disease is connected to multiple chronic diseases has been awarded to UTHealth Houston researchers by the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health.

To study this, a team led by Xiaoqian Jiang, PhD, principal investigator and professor and chair in the Department of Health Data Science and Artificial Intelligence with McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth Houston, will build risk trajectory maps for patients using clinical data and electronic health records. Specifically, they will develop electronic health records with an application interface pathway that allows different data systems to communicate the exchange of health data across hospitals and clinics.

“Our focus is on prevention. If we have a better grasp of the patients’ conditions, then we can map their risk to visualize if they are following a certain cognitive degradation pathway. Intervention and prevention efforts can start earlier for the patient,” said Jiang, the Christopher Sarofim Family Professor in Biomedical Informatics and Bioengineering. When a patient’s medical history is stored in electronic health records, it is oftentimes scattered across different systems and platforms, making it difficult for doctors to piece together a full picture of the patient’s health. This results in missed opportunities to further understand how Alzheimer’s disease is connected to other ongoing health problems such as hypertension and diabetes, two chronic conditions that typically speed up the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

As part of the study, researchers will pull real-time patient information located in electronic health records from nearly 1,000 participants in a University of South Florida-led interventional trial called ACTIVE MIND, which is studying how cognitive training can help prevent dementia.

Most electronic health record systems in the United States follow the broadly-used Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standardization health data framework, which defines a set of standards for the exchange, integration, and sharing of health care information electronically to make it easier for different health care systems and applications to communicate and share data effectively.

Utilizing FHIR, Jiang’s research team will build patient profiles and attach previous medical and treatment histories to map patients’ risk trajectory of developing Alzheimer’s disease through machine learning. The team plans to follow patients for seven years.

“I am hoping we will build a digital patient profile over the trajectory of more than a decade. Alzheimer’s disease is gradual, and there are multiple evident sources that we can use to profile the degree of cognitive function changes influenced by multiple chronic conditions in different subpopulations,” Jiang said.

Media Inquiries: 713-500-3030

END

[Attachments] See images for this press release:
McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics researchers awarded $3.4M NIH grant to understand link between chronic health conditions and Alzheimer's disease McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics researchers awarded $3.4M NIH grant to understand link between chronic health conditions and Alzheimer's disease 2

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

SwiftPharma and the Population Council pursue agreement to manufacture Griffithsin needed for the development of a fast-dissolving insert for protection against HIV

2023-09-08
September 8, 2023 – SwiftPharma, a Belgium-based manufacturer, and the Population Council, a global nonprofit research organization, have signed a Manufacturing Master Service Agreement for the plant-based manufacture of Griffithsin to further the Council’s development of a Griffithsin fast-dissolving vaginal insert for protection against HIV.     The Population Council has been developing a non-antiretroviral HIV-prevention method containing Griffithsin (GRFT) in a fast-dissolving insert (FDI). This Griffithsin FDI is an on-demand, user-controlled, portable prevention technology in early development ...

What defines a safety-net hospital?

2023-09-08
Safety-net hospitals have a common mission to provide care for Medicaid beneficiaries and those who are uninsured, but there’s no universal definition for these hospitals—complicating efforts to allocate funding. In a new analysis published in JAMA Network Open and led by researchers at the NYU School of Global Public Health, the research team looked at five established definitions for safety-net hospitals and found that different criteria captured varying hospitals and characteristics. As a result, when the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) use one definition ...

Heatwaves hitting Antarctica too

Heatwaves hitting Antarctica too
2023-09-08
The world saw another year full of extreme weather events resulting from climate change in 2022, from intense storms to soaring temperatures and rising sea levels. Antarctica was no exception, according to new research published this week.    In the 33rd annual State of the Climate report, an international assessment of the global climate published Sept. 6 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, CU Boulder researchers report that the planet’s coldest and driest continent experienced both an unprecedented heatwave and extreme precipitation last year.  “My hope is that the public starts to see both the fragility and complexity of these ...

These worms have rhythm

These worms have rhythm
2023-09-08
There’s a rhythm to developing life. Growing from a tiny cell cluster into an adult organism takes precise timing and control. The right genes must turn on at the right time, for the right duration, and in the correct order. Losing the rhythm can lead to diseases like cancer. So, what keeps every gene on beat? Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Christopher Hammell has found that in the worm C. elegans, this genetic orchestra has no single conductor. Instead, a quartet of molecules works in concert to time each developmental stage. Hammell says this process shares some similarities with the circadian clocks that control human ...

Sleep-wake therapy gives new hope for teens with depression

2023-09-08
Sleep-Wake Therapy Gives New Hope for Teens with Depression  Promoting healthy sleep in teen night owls brings adolescents’ biology and school demands in alignment.  School systems aren’t built for kids who fall asleep and wake up late, the so-called “night owls,” which may help explain why this group of teens is more prone to depression.  Now, researchers at UC San Francisco have found a way to help these kids adjust to their natural sleep-cycle rhythms while still fulfilling their school responsibilities. The findings are a welcome sign for adolescents with ...

Study explores an underappreciated way warmer temperatures will impact ecosystems: Decomposition

Study explores an underappreciated way warmer temperatures will impact ecosystems: Decomposition
2023-09-08
Our world is changing, and warming temperatures will alter our natural ecosystems. Some of these changes will be straightforward, like animal ranges creeping northward as they strive to maintain their ideal temperatures. But other changes will be more complicated, as warming sets off complex chain reactions that reverberate through these systems. An important process in ecosystems is the decomposition of plant litter, in which dead plant material is broken down by animals, fungi, and microbes, making its nutrients accessible to the next generation of plants. How quickly this breakdown happens — the decomposition ...

UMBC team of data scientists named a tools competition winner

2023-09-08
Baltimore – A team of four data scientists from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, was named today as one of 32 winners of the Tools Competition, one of the largest education technology (edtech) competitions in the world that awarded more than $4 million to winners this year.  The team was a winner in the DARPA AI Tools for Adult Learning opportunity, which sought artificial intelligence-powered tools to help adults learn complex topics necessary for the current and future national security workforce (e.g., AI engineering ...

Synchrotron studies change the composition of the Earth’s core

2023-09-08
In work published in Science Advances, a team of researchers have determined a new pressure scale, which is critical for understanding the Earth’s composition. Using x-rays from a uniquely powerful spectrometer at RIKEN’s SPring-8 Center they avoided some of the large approximations of previous work, discovering that the previous scale overestimated pressure by more than 20% at 230 gigapascals (2.3 million atmospheres) - a pressure reached in Earth’s core. This is similar to someone running a marathon that they thought was 42 kilometers, but finding they had only really run 34 kilometers. While 20% might seem like a modest correction, it has big implications.  An accurate ...

Applications now open for early-career Latin American science journalists to receive EurekAlert! Fellowships and attend the AAAS Annual Meeting

Applications now open for early-career Latin American science journalists to receive EurekAlert! Fellowships and attend the AAAS Annual Meeting
2023-09-08
The EurekAlert! Fellowships for International Science Reporters are back and now accepting applications from early-career Latin American science journalists. Two fellows will be selected to receive travel funding from EurekAlert! to attend the 2024 AAAS Annual Meeting, taking place February 15-17, 2024 in Denver, Colorado. Learn more about who is eligible and how to apply on our website. The application deadline is October 5, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. US Eastern Time. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) ...

British sex lives revealed in new study

2023-09-08
A new study published today shows the number of sexual partners we have changes as we age – and there are some surprising results.  Researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA), in collaboration with King’s College London and University College London, surveyed more than 5,000 people aged 18 years and older during the 2022 mpox (previously known as “monkeypox”) outbreak.   The team wanted to better understand how sexual behaviours change with age, so that mathematical models of sexually transmitted infections can be made more accurate. Key findings included in the paper, published today ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Cercus electric stimulation enables cockroach with trajectory control and spatial cognition training

Day-long conference addresses difficult to diagnose lung disease

First-ever cardiogenic shock academy features simulation lab

Thirty-year mystery of dissonance in the “ringing” of black holes explained

Less intensive works best for agricultural soil

Arctic rivers project receives “national champion” designation from frontiers foundation

Computational biology paves the way for new ALS tests

Study offers new hope for babies born with opioid withdrawal syndrome

UT, Volkswagen Group of America celebrate research partnership

New Medicare program could dramatically improve affordability for cancer drugs – if patients enroll

Are ‘zombie’ skin cells harmful or helpful? The answer may be in their shapes

University of Cincinnati Cancer Center presents research at AACR 2025

Head and neck, breast, lung and survivorship studies headline Dana-Farber research at AACR Annual Meeting 2025

AACR: Researchers share promising results from MD Anderson clinical trials

New research explains why our waistlines expand in middle age

Advancements in muon detection: Taishan Antineutrino Observatory's innovative top veto tracker

Chips off the old block

Microvascular decompression combined with nerve combing for atypical trigeminal neuralgia

Cutting the complexity from digital carpentry

Lung immune cell type “quietly” controls inflammation in COVID-19

Fiscal impact of expanded Medicare coverage for GLP-1 receptor agonists to treat obesity

State and sociodemographic trends in US cigarette smoking with future projections

Young adults drive historic decline in smoking

NFCR congratulates Dr. Robert C. Bast, Jr. on receiving the AACR-Daniel D. Von Hoff Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education and Training in Cancer Research

Chimpanzee stem cells offer new insights into early embryonic development

This injected protein-like polymer helps tissues heal after a heart attack

FlexTech inaugural issue launches, pioneering interdisciplinary innovation in flexible technology

In Down syndrome mice, 40Hz light and sound improve cognition, neurogenesis, connectivity

Methyl eugenol: potential to inhibit oxidative stress, address related diseases, and its toxicological effects

A vascularized multilayer chip reveals shear stress-induced angiogenesis in diverse fluid conditions

[Press-News.org] McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics researchers awarded $3.4M NIH grant to understand link between chronic health conditions and Alzheimer's disease