Antarctic fur seals that were hunted to near extinction have recovered but now face dangerous decline because of a lack of food, new research suggests. The study of fur seals, almost all of which live on the sub-Antarctic islands of South Georgia, shows that the modern-day population peaked in 2009 at about 3.5 million – a healthy number, although significantly less than previously estimated. But a more detailed count of animals living on a particular South Georgia island called Bird Island also shows the seals are ...

Researchers have gained new insights into the lives and losses of Eurasian otters in Hong Kong, as detailed in a paper published by Oryx—The International Journal of Conservation, published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of international wildlife conservation charity Fauna & Flora. Hong Kong is one of the world’s busiest metropolises, and the Eurasian otter Lutra lutra is among its most threatened wildlife. Dependence on lowland wetlands makes it particularly susceptible to human disturbance. Moreover, the low-lying region within Hong Kong where most otters can be found has been earmarked for a government-led mega ...

SAN FRANCISCO — Although people with opioid use disorder (OUD) are significantly more likely to overdose or have a complication after major surgery than those without the disorder, using medications for the treatment of OUD before surgery may eliminate that extra risk, suggests a large, first-of-its-kind study presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2023 annual meeting.   Patients with OUD who didn’t use an OUD medication (such as buprenorphine or methadone) were over four times more likely to overdose after having surgery, yet those who used evidence-based OUD medication ...

(16 October 2023, Copenhagen, Denmark) A groundbreaking new study, presented today at UEG Week 2023, has discovered a significant connection between birthweight and the onset of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease*, now known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), in young people.1 Most notably, babies with a low birthweight were found to be four times more likely to develop MASLD in childhood, adolescence or young adulthood.1 To investigate this link, a team of researchers from Sweden used the nationwide ESPRESSO cohort and conducted a population-based case-control study of all ...

(Monday, 16 October 2023, Copenhagen, Denmark) New research has identified significant variations in the gut microbiome of individuals who developed pre-cancerous colonic lesions, suggesting a potential connection between gut bacteria and the onset of colorectal lesions and cancers.1 These findings, presented today at UEG Week 2023, open promising new avenues for enhancing the detection and prevention of colorectal cancer.1 The large-scale prospective study, involving 8208 participants, linked data from the Dutch Microbiome ...

SAN FRANCISCO — About 12,000 Black and Hispanic patients who died after surgery the past two decades may have lived if there were no racial and ethnic disparities among Americans having surgery, suggests a study of more than 1.5 million inpatient procedures presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2023 annual meeting. This estimate draws attention to the human toll of disparities in surgical outcomes, with Black patients being 42% more likely and Hispanic patients 21% more likely to die after surgery compared to white patients. Unless efforts to narrow the racial and ethnic gap in surgical outcomes intensify, ...

ROCKVILLE, Md.— After 12 initial weeks of weight loss with intensive lifestyle intervention alone, participants in the SURMOUNT-3 study who were randomly assigned to tirzepatide for 72 weeks achieved a total mean reduction in baseline body weight of 24.3% at week 84. Results of the study, conducted by Eli Lilly & Company, will be presented during the 41st Annual Meeting of The Obesity Society (TOS) at ObesityWeek® 2023 scheduled for Oct. 14–17, in Dallas, Texas. The study will be published in the journal Nature Medicine and publication will coincide with the presentation at the conference. "These are extraordinary findings, ...

SAN FRANCISCO — Blood management programs that reduced or avoided transfusions saved a health system millions of dollars annually, with a return on investment of more than $7 for every dollar spent, while achieving the same or better outcomes, suggests research presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2023 annual meeting. Over the past 10 years, the Johns Hopkins Health System established a comprehensive blood management program with two primary goals: 1) to reduce unnecessary transfusions across the five-hospital health system, and 2) to ...

SAN FRANCISCO — Two simple solutions could help prevent severe bleeding (postpartum hemorrhage) after cesarean delivery, suggests research presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2023 annual meeting. As the leading cause of maternal mortality in the U.S. at the time of birth, postpartum hemorrhage is more common after cesarean deliveries than vaginal births. Both solutions help address uterine atony, which causes up to 80% of postpartum hemorrhage. Uterine atony is when, after delivery, the uterus remains soft and weak instead of contracting to compress the blood vessels that had been attached to the placenta. One solution involves infusing a medication to help the ...

SAN FRANCISCO — An automated pain recognition system using artificial intelligence (AI) holds promise as an unbiased method to detect pain in patients before, during and after surgery, according to research presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2023 annual meeting. Currently, subjective methods are used to assess pain, including the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) — where patients rate their own pain — and the Critical-Care Pain Observation Tool (CPOT) — where health care professionals rate the patient’s pain based on facial expression, ...

SAN FRANCISCO — Patients who had common procedures performed outside of the operating room (OR) were more likely to go home instead of to a long-term care facility when they were discharged from the hospital if their sedation was administered or directed by an anesthesiologist, rather than by a physician who is not a trained anesthesiologist, according to a first-of-its-kind study presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2023 annual meeting. Patients who need catheters placed in a vein, angiograms (X-ray of the blood vessels), image-guided biopsies and many other procedures typically are treated in the interventional radiology (IR) suite instead of the OR and given ...

About The Study: Among 2,511 adults hospitalized with acute infection, treatment with the antibiotic piperacillin-tazobactam did not increase the incidence of acute kidney injury or death in this randomized clinical trial. Treatment with the antibiotic cefepime resulted in more neurological dysfunction.  Authors: Edward T. Qian, M.D., M.Sc., of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2023.20583) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other ...

SAN FRANCISCO — Virtual reality (VR) may be an effective and reliable tool to alleviate the anxiety experienced by most parents or caregivers when their child undergoes surgery, according to research presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2023 annual meeting. “When a child has a medical procedure, it is often emotionally unsettling for not just the patient, but the entire family,” said Thomas J. Caruso, M.D., Ph.D., FASA, senior author of the study and clinical professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine at Stanford University, California. “By ...

SAN FRANCISCO — The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) today presented Stanley W. Stead, M.D., MBA, FASA, with its 2022 Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his enduring contributions to advancing patient-centered, physician-led health care, and his advocacy related to health care economics, including value-based care and equitable physician payment models. The award is the highest honor ASA bestows and is presented annually to a member who has transformed the specialty of anesthesiology. A nationally recognized thought leader in health care economics, information technology and quality of care, Dr. Stead ...

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have engineered a range of new single-walled transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) nanotubes with different compositions, chirality, and diameters by templating off boron-nitride nanotubes. They also realized ultra-thin nanotubes grown inside the template, and successfully tailored compositions to create a family of new nanotubes. The ability to synthesize a diverse range of structures offers unique insights into their growth mechanism ...

FINDINGS In a recent study led by Ravi Salgia, M.D., Ph.D., the Arthur & Rosalie Kaplan Chair in Medical Oncology, a team of researchers from City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, and other institutions found that nongenetic mechanisms are important in lung cancer patients who develop a resistance to one cancer therapy. Their findings were published in the October 13 issue of the journal Science Advances.  The team’s study explored resistance to the anti-cancer medication sotorasib in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Sotorasib inhibits a specific mutation ...

London, Ont.,: Worldwide, millions of stroke survivors undergo prolonged cardiac monitoring, leading to the discovery of atrial fibrillation, or irregular heartbeats, in up to 1.5 million of these patients each year. A new study, published in The Lancet Neurology, describes the knowledge on atrial fibrillation detected in patients who had a recent stroke. The publication suggests that atrial fibrillation detected post-stroke is not quite the same as the irregular heartbeats already known before a stroke. The study, led by Western University professor Dr. Luciano Sposato, proposes that atrial fibrillation detected post-stroke exhibits distinct ...

New research has underscored how characteristics of “grit” and self-control are associated with better weight loss and weight maintenance outcomes in a study focusing on couples. And that these characteristics can change through behavioral interventions. This research led by Amy Gorin, professor of psychological sciences and  vice provost for health sciences and interdisciplinary initiatives; and Tricia Leahey, professor of allied health sciences in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural ...

For the fourth time in five years, students at The University of Texas at Arlington have won a prestigious national award for noise control engineering. Ross Everett and Bret Johnson, mechanical engineering students who graduated in May 2023, earned the Leo Beranek Student Medal for Excellence in the Study of Noise Control from the Institute of Noise Control Engineering of the USA for their work to decrease cabin noise in the autonomous rideshare cars owned by May Mobility that operate around UTA’s campus. The institute awards the medal annually to outstanding undergraduate and graduate ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC — A three-year clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health and Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE) has shown that the sublingual immunotherapy, or SLIT, is safe in peanut-allergic children ages 1 to 4, with a greater likelihood of desensitization and remission the earlier the treatment began. Led by Edwin Kim, MD, associate professor of pediatrics at the UNC School of Medicine, this is the first randomized, controlled trial to investigate – in this young age group – the efficacy and feasibility of SLIT, which ...

A long-term study by UC Davis Health researchers sheds new light on the relationship between autism traits and mental health in middle childhood. The paper, published in the journal Autism, finds that changes in core autism characteristics are related to whether children develop additional mental health challenges during their elementary school years. “Our findings suggest that different aspects of a child’s development may affect each other over time,” explained Einat Waizbard-Bartov, a doctoral researcher in developmental psychology at the UC Davis MIND Institute and the lead author on the paper. “Core autism traits and ...

Professor Dan M. Frangopol is the winner of the EuroStruct2023 International Award of Merit presented by the EuroStruct Executive Committee in recognition of outstanding contributions to bridge and structural asset management and structural engineering. Frangopol, the inaugural Fazlur R. Khan Endowed Chair of Structural Engineering and Architecture in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Lehigh, was presented with the award during EuroStruct 2023, the second Conference of the European ...

NEW YORK, NY--Does this sound like you? You wake up at the same time each morning, get the kids out the door, and rush to catch the subway to work. But at night, maybe you stay up until midnight doing laundry or 1 a.m. to catch up on the bills. Lots of Americans—about one-third of us—are in the same situation and habitually get only five to six hours of sleep instead of the recommended seven to eight hours. But even a mild chronic sleep deficit may heighten the risk of developing heart disease later in life: Surveys of thousands of people ...

University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) researchers conducted a statewide survey of all patients on breathing machines in hospitals and long-term care facilities and found that a significant percentage of them harbored two pathogens known to be life-threatening in those with compromised immune systems. One pathogen, Acinetobacter baumannii, was identified in nearly 31 percent of all patients on ventilators to assist with their breathing; Candida auris was identified in nearly 7 percent of patients on ventilators, according to the study which was published this week in the Journal ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, Oct. 13, 2023 CONTACT: NIAPressTeam@mail.nih.gov, 301-496-1752   Reducing overall calorie intake may rejuvenate your muscles and activate biological pathways important for good health, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health and their colleagues. Decreasing calories without depriving the body of essential vitamins and minerals, known as calorie restriction, has long been known to delay the progression of age-related diseases in animal models. This new study, published in Aging Cell, suggests the same ...