Over 200 leading doctors, professional bodies and charities are urging the chancellor to use the budget on 30 October to invest in creating a smoke free UK as quickly as possible, and make the tobacco industry pay. In an open letter published by The BMJ today, they warn that unless smoking is addressed, there is no prospect of delivering on Labour’s manifesto commitment to halve the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions. The rationale for investing to end the tobacco epidemic could not be stronger, they explain. The annual cost of smoking to individuals, public ...

Potential fathers with type 2 diabetes can be reassured that taking the drug metformin is not associated with birth defects in their offspring, concludes a large study of more than 3 million pregnancies published by The BMJ today.  The researchers say the findings show that metformin can continue to be considered a suitable drug for managing blood sugar levels in men with type 2 diabetes who plan on having children. Metformin is widely used to treat type 2 diabetes in men of reproductive age, but a recent Danish study reported a link between metformin use by fathers-to-be and an increased ...

In a study of commonly used treatments for people with multiple sclerosis, both medical and behavioral interventions, and a combination of the two, resulted in meaningful improvements in fatigue, a University of Michigan-led study finds. The randomized clinical trial compared the effectiveness of modafinil, a wake-promoting medication used to treat sleepiness in people with sleep disorders, and cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, on reducing fatigue for over 300 adults with multiple sclerosis whose symptoms interfered with their ...

Individuals with multiple long-term conditions are two and a half times more likely to die following COVID-19 infection than others. When children were assessed separately the risk for mortality among those with multiple long-term conditions increased to almost three times (2.8) the risk of those without. The mortality rates are 22% and 8% respectively.  That is according to an authoritative systematic review and meta-analysis of over four million patients with COVID-19 published today (Thursday 17 October) in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.  The authors are calling for patients with multiple long-term conditions ...

Paris — An international group of leaders and experts warns that unless humanity acts with greater boldness and urgency, an increasingly out-of-balance water cycle will wreak havoc on economies and humanity worldwide. In a landmark report, The Economics of Water: Valuing the Hydrological Cycle as a Global Common Good, the Global Commission on the Economics of Water says the water crisis puts at risk more than half of the world’s food production by 2050. It also threatens an 8% loss of GDP in countries around the world on average by 2050, with as much ...

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among American men.  A ground-breaking study, conducted by researchers from the University of Virginia, Mount Sinai, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas and others, has demonstrated the clinical success of a new nanoparticle-based, laser-guided therapy for prostate cancer treatment.  The study, which involved 44 men with localized prostate cancer, used gold nanoshellss in combination with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound fusion — an ...

What if a security camera could not only capture video but understand what’s happening — distinguishing between routine activities and potentially dangerous behavior in real time? That’s the future being shaped by researchers at the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science with their latest breakthrough: an AI-driven intelligent video analyzer capable of detecting human actions in video footage with unprecedented precision and intelligence. The system, called the Semantic and Motion-Aware Spatiotemporal Transformer Network (SMAST), promises a wide range of ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida Health scientists exploring how combinations of antibiotics can fight resistant bacteria have been awarded an $11.8 million grant for work that could help save the tens of thousands of lives lost yearly to infections that are increasingly plaguing humanity. The National Institutes of Health, or NIH, grant to the UF College of Medicine and the UF College of Pharmacy will support scientists working to uncover the mechanics of how bacteria and antibiotics interact, down to the molecular level. That mechanistic knowledge ...

Atmospheric blocking events are persistent, high-impact weather patterns that occur when large-scale high-pressure systems become stationary and divert the jet stream and storm tracks for days to weeks, and can be associated with record-breaking flooding or heat waves, such as in Europe in 2023. In a new study, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa atmospheric scientist Christina Karamperidou used a deep learning model to infer the frequency of blocking events over the past 1,000 years and shed light on how future climate change may impact these significant phenomena.    “This study set out to extract a paleoweather signal from ...

It is just as safe and effective for people with HIV in need of kidney transplantation to get their organ from donors who are also HIV positive as it is from donors who are not infected with the virus, a new study shows. Survival rates for organ recipients one and three years after the procedure were the same for donors with or without HIV. Also the same were risks of serious side effects, such as infection, fever, and rejection in the donated organ. In what is the largest comparative trial of the experimental procedures since the first transplant was performed in the United States in 2016, researchers ...

In mid-2023, the SWOG S1826 phase 3 trial in advanced Hodgkin lymphoma reported highly positive primary results earlier than expected, after the trial’s second planned interim analysis found the preset threshold for efficacy had already been reached.  Now, a follow-up analysis with additional data – a median follow-up of 2.1 years – confirms the durability of those initial findings: among the 970 newly diagnosed adolescents and adults randomized to the trial, those who received a combination of nivolumab plus AVD chemotherapy (N-AVD) had a significantly lower risk of cancer progression ...

A treatment that rallies the immune system to destroy cancer raised the survival rate for advanced Hodgkin lymphoma patients to a remarkable 92 percent, suggesting a new standard therapy for the disease. The New England Journal of Medicine published the innovative clinical trial results this week. Young people are most at risk to get Hodgkin lymphoma, an uncommon blood and immune system cancer that falls within the general category of lymphomas. With this new treatment, scientists believe they ...

WHAT:  Kidney transplantation from deceased donors with HIV (HIV D+) to recipients with HIV (HIV R+) was safe and comparable to kidney transplantation from donors without HIV (HIV D-) in a multicenter observational study in the United States. The clinical outcomes observed were consistent with smaller pilot studies, but this National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded clinical trial was the first statistically powered to demonstrate noninferiority, which means that an approach being studied is as good as standard clinical practice. The results were published today ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Biologists at Brown University have discovered how a neuropeptide hormone made in the gut of flies can control their lifespan. The findings, published in PNAS, have implications for humans, too, the researchers say — especially as new diabetes and obesity medications based on gut hormones in the same family of the fly hormone are becoming more widespread. For the past two decades, study author Marc Tatar, a professor of biology affiliated with the Center on the Biology of Aging at Brown University, has studied how the hormones insulin and insulin-like ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – For people with ischemic stroke, treatment with the clot-busting drug tenecteplase is associated with a slightly higher likelihood of an excellent recovery and reduced disability three months later than the drug alteplase, according to a meta-analysis published in the October 16, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers found that the likelihood of good recovery was similar ...

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found an FDA-approved drug used to treat breast cancer has the potential to be an effective therapeutic for a specific type of appendix cancer.  The clinical trial results, publishing in the October 16, 2024 online edition of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, showed the oral medication, known as palbociclib, stabilized tumor growth and reduced blood tumor marker levels in patients with peritoneal mucinous carcinomatosis (PMC). This form of cancer originates in the appendix and is often resistant to standard chemotherapy. “Finding that a breast cancer drug is ...

Research published in Nature Genetics on Oct.14, by Yale Cancer Center researchers at Yale School of Medicine, found a higher concentration of a specific kind of DNA — extrachromosomal or ecDNA — in more aggressive and advanced cancers that could mark them as targets for future therapies.  Using data available from The Cancer Genome Atlas, the International Cancer Genomics Consortium, the Hartwig Medical Foundation, and the Glioma Longitudinal Analysis Consortium, the researchers considered more than 8,000 tumor samples, divided between newly diagnosed untreated tumors and those that had been through previous treatments ...

PHILADELPHIA (October 16, 2024) – J. Margo Brooks Carthon, PhD, RN, FAAN, the Tyson Family Endowed Term Chair for Gerontological Research; Professor of Nursing in the Department of Family and Community Health; and Associate Director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, has been appointed the new Director of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing (Bates Center), the preeminent history of nursing research center and archive. The Bates Center amplifies the importance of the history of nursing and healthcare to the development of crafting effective health policies and strategies to improve health for all. “The ...

Scientists are developing advanced tools to understand and treat neurological symptoms such as brain fog associated with respiratory diseases like influenza. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) within the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), awarded a three-year contract to researchers at the University of Rochester to develop a technology to model respiratory disease effects on the brain ...

WASHINGTON, DC – As the nation continues to build a diverse, clean-energy workforce, the Department of Energy (DOE) today announced that applications are being accepted for the Summer 2025 term of two undergraduate internship programs. The Office of Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program and the Community College Internships (CCI) program are unique opportunities open to all current and recent college undergraduates. Interns will learn about science and technology careers, team science, networking, and gain the experience needed to transition from internship to employment. The application deadline for both programs is January 8, 2025, ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Several medications are available to treat high blood pressure, but more than 10 million Americans do not respond to the treatments, according to the American Heart Association. Using a bioelectronic device to deliver pulsed electricity to the body has proven to be a promising strategy to treat drug-resistant hypertension patients, according to Penn State researcher Tao Zhou, although he noted that its practical application in patient care has significant limitations.  Zhou, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics and of biomedical engineering, received ...

U.S. researchers have detected microplastic particles in air exhaled by wild bottlenose dolphins, suggesting that inhalation may be a relevant route of exposure to these potentially harmful contaminants. Miranda Dziobak of the College of Charleston in South Carolina, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 16, 2024. Around the world, humans and numerous other animals are exposed to tiny particles of plastic contaminants known as microplastics. In humans and rodents, microplastic exposure has been linked to adverse health impacts, such as oxidative stress and inflammation. Ingestion ...

A new paper published today in Science Advances exposes the global aquaculture sector’s growing dependence on wild fish. Despite industry claims to the contrary, these findings highlight how the growing appetite for expensive farmed salmon can leave coastal communities struggling to access affordable local fish like sardines and anchovies. Instead, these small pelagic fish are frequently caught, processed, and “reduced” to fishmeal and fish oil, almost all of which is used to feed farmed fish. These ‘reduction fisheries’ account for 26% of global ocean catch.    “As the aquaculture industry grows, so does its ...

Neural spheroids — 3D clusters of brain cells — are emerging as essential tools for understanding neural networks and studying neurological diseases in the lab. EPFL’s e-Flower, a flower-shaped 3D microelectrode array (MEA), allows researchers to monitor the electrical activity of these spheroids in a way that was previously impossible. This breakthrough, published in Science Advances, lays the groundwork for more sophisticated research on brain organoids, which are complex, miniaturized models of brain tissues. “The ...

A study published in the journal Science Advances suggests that global fish farming, or aquaculture, may rely on significantly larger quantities of wild-caught ocean fish than previously calculated. The study is part of a special issue focused on expanding contributions from the aquaculture industry to food systems with an aim towards sustainability. These findings call into question long-held assumptions about the sustainability of the rapidly growing aquaculture industry and provides a range of plausible estimates for its impact on wild fish populations. The research, led by an international team of scientists ...