Research Highlights: An analysis of data from a long-running study of more than 11,000 adults from four diverse communities in the United States has found that adults who had high blood pressure while both seated upright and lying supine (flat on their backs) had a higher risk of heart disease, stroke, heart failure or premature death compared to adults without high blood pressure while upright and supine.  Adults who had high blood pressure while lying supine but not while seated upright had similar elevated risks of heart attack, stroke, ...

Research Highlights: An analysis of electronic health records for more than 60,000 adults in the United States found that systolic, or top-number, blood pressure rose slightly during the winter compared to summer months. The health records were of adults being treated for high blood pressure from 2018 to 2023 at six health care centers of varying sizes located in the southeast and midwestern United States. The researchers found that, on average, participants’ systolic blood pressure increased by up to 1.7 mm Hg in the winter months compared to the summer months. They also found that population ...

Research Highlights: Community health centers participating in the National Hypertension Control Initiative (NHCI) that introduced self-measured blood pressure interventions to their patients — including individuals from Black, Hispanic and American Indian/Alaskan Native populations, who are disproportionately impacted by hypertension and by the COVID-19 pandemic — experienced improvements in blood pressure control rates since 2021, when NHCI began. Community Health Centers in the NHCI that received funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Health Resources and Services Administration and Office of Minority Health and ...

Heart problems after a COVID infection are a serious concern for both elite athletes and recreational athletes alike.  A study from Amsterdam UMC, published today in Heart, offers some reassuring news. "We examined over 250 elite athletes and found that those who had contracted COVID-19 did not experience severe heart issues that impacted their careers," says Juliette van Hattum, a PhD candidate in sports cardiology at Amsterdam UMC.  The study specifically focused on elite athletes, a group that could be particularly susceptible to heart issues, particularly heart ...

Antarctica’s vast ice masses seem far away, yet they store enough water to raise global sea levels by several meters. A team of experts from European research institutes has now provided the first systematic stability inspection of the ice sheet’s current state. Their diagnosis: While they found no indication of irreversible, self-reinforcing retreat of the ice sheet in West Antarctica yet, global warming to date could already be enough to trigger the slow but certain loss of ice over the next hundreds to thousands ...

Early findings of two studies from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center shed light on new ways to anticipate recurrence in HPV-positive head and neck cancer sooner. The papers, published in Cancer and Oral Oncology, offer clinical and technological perspectives on how to measure if recurrence is happening earlier than current blood tests allow, and provide a framework for a new, more sensitive blood test that could help in this monitoring. “When metastatic head and neck cancer returns, it impacts their quality of life and can be disfiguring, interfering with the ability to talk, ...

For the past decade, companies across North America have paid more attention to supporting equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). This has prompted many organizations to create a leadership role fully dedicated to advancing EDI — so much so that between 2015 and 2020, the job title “head of diversity” increased 107 percent on LinkedIn. By 2021, more than half of S&P 500 firms had named a chief diversity officer. But a new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business shows many people have deeply held beliefs about who should ...

Contact infection is among the most common ways pathogens, such as bacteria and viruses, spread from one person to another. Hand washing and disinfection are important hygiene practices to minimize the probability of catching infectious diseases. Interestingly, our hands also have a natural barrier that fights off pathogens. While this had been known to science for quite some time, the exact mechanisms by which this barrier acts on pathogens remained a mystery until recently.   In a 2021 study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from Kao Corporation, Japan, revealed that lactic acid (LA), which has a molecular ...

Cosimo Commisso, Ph.D., has received a grant from the Department of Defense for $1 million to advance the research of a small molecule that kills pancreatic cancer cells by disrupting their pH equilibrium. The project is funded as part of the Pancreatic Cancer Research Program (PCARP), which aims to improve our understanding of pancreatic cancer for the benefit of service members, veterans, their families and the general public. “We’ve seen that this small molecule—called IMD-0354—works on cancer cells in the lab,” says Commisso, associate professor and director of the Cancer Metabolism and Microenvironment Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys. “This ...

Toronto, ON —Older adults who have had cancer had a high risk of experiencing symptoms of depression during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic according to a new study published in Cancer Management and Research. The study was focused on a sample of 2486 adults aged 50 and older with a history of cancer who participated in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. Among the 1765 individuals from the study who had a history of cancer but no lifetime history of depression, researchers found that 1 in 8 experienced depression for the first time during the early stages of the pandemic. “The ...

With the help of a new grant from the National Institute of Health for more than $2.6 million, Assistant Professor Timothy Huang, Ph.D., will continue his research on the role of the brain’s immune cells on the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease affects more than 47 million people worldwide, with 10 million new cases of dementia diagnosed each year. This number will continue to grow as the world population ages. Newly approved FDA treatments for Alzheimer’s remove beta-amyloid, a protein that accumulates into plaques, from the brain. However, ...

Cognitive-behavioral therapies (CBT) have become increasingly popular over the past few decades. This psychological treatment, used to treat problems ranging from marital issues, eating disorders, anxiety disorders and depression, has been adopted by clinicians around the world. However, the implementation of CBT still lags outside the Western countries where it was first developed. In a new review article, researchers examined the most popular CBT programs for young people in Japan, a country that ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. (Sept. 7, 2023) – Jessica Faulkner, PhD, a physiologist whose research is focused on sex differences in cardiovascular disease at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, is the recipient of the Harry Goldblatt Award for New Investigators from the American Heart Association’s 2023 Hypertension Council. She will be honored at the Hypertension Scientific Sessions in Boston this week. This prestigious award is named for the pathologist who established the first animal model of hypertension in 1934 and recognizes an early career independent investigator working in hypertension or cardiovascular research who has significantly contributed ...

September 7, 2023—(BRONX, NY)—In findings with potentially important implications for cervical cancer screening, scientists at the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Montefiore Einstein Cancer Center (MECC) have developed a test for detecting a type of cervical cancer that Pap tests often miss. The findings published online today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI). “Our novel test appears sensitive for detecting cervical adenocarcinoma [ADC]—which now accounts for up to 25% of cervical cancer cases—as well as its precursor ...

Koalas are endangered in much of Australia now but in in the past there were multiple species living across the continent. The discovery of an ancient relative of the koala helps fill a 30 million year gap in the amazing evolution of Australia’s marsupials, according to a new study by Australian and British scientists published in Scientific Reports.  The study was led by Flinders University PhD student Arthur Crichton, who found fossil teeth of the new species at the Pwerte Marnte Marnte fossil site south of Alice ...

More than 50% of Australians living in residential aged care facilities have a dementia diagnosis, with aged care services around the world preparing for the number of older people aged 65 years and above to double in the next 30 years.   For the first time, experts at the Caring Futures Institute at South Australia’s Flinders University are using innovative eye-tracking technology to ensure that the voices of all older people are heard to drive positive and effective change in keeping with the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety’s call to re-assess the quality of aged care in Australia.  The Flinders University ...

In recent years, the escalating impact of global warming has prompted efforts to reverse troubling trends, often by planting trees to capture and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it. New research from a team led by Young Zhou, from the Quinney College of Natural Resources and the Ecology Center, shows that, in addition to trees, humble grasses also play an essential role in capturing carbon — more important than previously thought. A recent initiative set its sights on capturing carbon in tropical savannas, an ecosystem characterized by shared space of trees and grasses. The project initiated ...

Mental health and substance use disorders are prevalent among people experiencing homelessness, yet access to care for these health issues is challenging for people living on the streets. Now, a new survey conducted by a team of researchers from USC Street Medicine found that, in California, street medicine programs are helping to fill this gap, delivering critical, high-level mental health and substance use treatments to the state’s unsheltered population. The survey, published in Community Mental Health Journal, shows that street medicine has the potential to serve as the basis for a strategy to expand access to behavioral health care for people who ...

A team of scientists from the University of California, Irvine, believe they have discovered a special antibody which may lead to a treatment for Retinitis Pigmentosa, a condition that causes loss of central vision, as well as night and color vision.  The study, Structural basis for the allosteric modulation of rhodopsin by nanobody binding to its extracellular domain, was published in Nature Communications. Authors of the study were Arum Wu, PhD, David Salom, PhD, John D. Hong, Aleksander Tworak, PhD, Philip D. Kiser, PharmD, PhD, and Krzysztof Palczewski, PhD, in the Department ...

Women who use non-steroidal anti-inflammatory painkillers alongside hormonal contraception appear to be at a small increased risk of blood clots known as venous thromboembolism (VTE), finds a large Danish study published by The BMJ today. The risk was greater in women using combined oral contraceptives containing third or fourth generation progestins, but smaller in women using progestin-only tablets, implants and coils, alongside the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) ibuprofen, diclofenac, and naproxen. The researchers stress ...

High intake of several emulsifiers (part of the ‘E numbers’ group of food additives), widely used in industrially processed foods to improve texture and extend shelf-life, is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), suggests a study published by The BMJ today. Given that these food additives are used ubiquitously in thousands of widely  consumed ultra-processed food products, these findings have important public health implications, say the researchers. Emulsifiers are often added to processed and packaged foods such as pastries, cakes, ice cream, ...

Rochester Institute of Technology researchers are improving non-invasive treatment options for degenerative disc disease, an ailment that impacts 3 million adults yearly in the U.S., according to the Mayo Clinic. Using state-of-the-art gene editing technology in mesenchymal stem cells, the researchers will add to the growing field of regenerative medicine, the process of producing cellular therapies to alleviate pain and lack of mobility. Karin Wuertz-Kozak and Thomas Gaborski, faculty-researchers in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering, recently received a National Institutes of Health award for “Extracellular vesicles produced by CRISPR-activated ...

As the second most popular social media platform in the world, YouTube frequently attracts criticism. In particular, critics argue that its algorithmic recommendations facilitates radicalization and extremism by sending users down "rabbit holes" of harmful content. According to a new study published in Science Advances, however, exposure to alternative and extremist video channels on YouTube is not driven by recommendations. Instead, most consumption of these channels on the platform can be attributed to a small group of users high in gender and racial resentment who ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6, 2023 – Though a cornerstone of thermodynamics, entropy remains one of the most vexing concepts to teach budding physicists in the classroom. As a result, many people oversimplify the concept as the amount of disorder in the universe, neglecting its underlying quantitative nature.  In The Physics Teacher, co-published by AIP Publishing and the American Association of Physics Teachers, researcher T. Ryan Rogers designed a hand-held model to demonstrate the concept of entropy for students. Using everyday materials, Rogers’ approach allows students to confront ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (Sept. 6, 2023) – A new study from researchers with Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and other top-tier cancer centers highlights the vital role that the immune system plays in determining the duration of patients’ remission from multiple myeloma. Their findings, published Sept. 2 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications, suggest that the health of patients’ immune systems may determine how long they will experience progression-free survival from this deadly blood cancer. Additionally, the researchers were pleasantly surprised to discover that patients’ immune systems ...