(COLUMBUS, Ohio) – Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is a debilitating and deadly condition that affects infants who were born preterm. In NEC cases, intestinal tissues become inflamed, and in severe cases there is  ischemia and death of the involved intestines. Treatment for NEC often involves surgery to remove the dying tissue. “Even after decades of research, little has changed in terms of prognosis for infants who develop NEC,” says Gail Besner, MD, pediatric surgeon and principal investigator in the Center for Perinatal Research at Nationwide Children’s. ...

BOSTON – In a randomized controlled clinical trial of adults with moderate-to-severe depression, those who participated in heated yoga sessions experienced significantly greater reductions in depressive symptoms compared with a control group. The results of the trial, which was led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a founding member of Mass General Brigham (MGB), and was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, indicate that heated yoga could be a viable treatment option for patients with depression. In the eight-week trial, 80 participants ...

Geologists have long known that around 155 million years ago, a 5000 km long piece of continent broke off western Australia and drifted away. They can see that by the ‘void’ it left behind: a basin hidden deep below the ocean known as the Argo Abyssal Plain. The underwater feature also lends its name to the newly formed continent: Argoland. The structure of the seafloor shows that this continent must have drifted off to the northwest, and must have ended up where the islands of Southeast Asia are located today. ...

Complications of diabetes can have numerous negative health effects, from impaired vision and nerve damage to kidney dysfunction and heart disease. In an analysis of information on adults with colorectal cancer, patients who also had diabetes—particularly those with diabetic complications—faced a higher risk of dying early. The results are published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. For the study, Kuo‐Liong Chien, MD, PhD, of National Taiwan University, and his colleagues ...

A rise in psychological pseudoscience is putting people at risk, psychologists have warned, with social media and celebrity endorsements partly to blame. Mental health apps, mood-boosting supplements and energy therapies are among the therapies that could do ‘more harm than good’ according to psychologists Jonathan Stea and Stephen Hupp in their new book Investigating Clinical Psychology. “As discourse around wellness, mental health, therapy, and access to these resources increasingly enter the public domain, the potential of coming across persuasive pseudoscience has also increased,” Stea explains. “This is the age of health misinformation. It is everywhere. ...

Do canines get more care? Some studies have suggested pet owners are less emotionally attached to and less willing to finance care for cats than dogs, possibly because of cats’ behavior: cats may be perceived as caring less about humans and needing less care in return. But these studies are often conducted on non-representative samples and don’t consider possible cultural differences in attitudes to pets. A team of scientists led by Dr Peter Sandøe of the University of Copenhagen decided to investigate further. “We and others have found that people are willing to spend much less on their cats than ...

ROCKVILLE, Md. – Oct.  23, 2023 – The Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), the premier global molecular diagnostic professional society, today announced the appointment of Lauren S. Menser, CAE, as its Chief Executive Officer, effective January 3, 2024. Menser will succeed Mary Steele Williams, MNA, MT(ASCP)SM, CAE, after her retirement. AMP’s national search for a new executive leader was administered by an outside consulting firm and overseen by a diverse group of member volunteers. Menser has served AMP in various capacities for more than 17 years. Since 2016, she has served as Director of Strategic Development, ...

A large study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.230459 identified 10 predictors of opioid overdose after prescription for chronic pain, which can help clinicians engage in shared decision-making with patients around opioid prescribing. “The opioid crisis has generated interest in identifying patients at higher risk of addiction or overdose and has led to the development of several screening tools; however, these instruments have either not been validated or shown poor psychometric properties,” writes Dr. Li Wang, a researcher and methodologist at the ...

A team of University of Waterloo researchers has created smart, advanced materials that will be the building blocks for a future generation of soft medical microrobots.  These tiny robots have the potential to conduct medical procedures, such as biopsy, and cell and tissue transport, in a minimally invasive fashion. They can move through confined and flooded environments, like the human body, and deliver delicate and light cargo, such as cells or tissues, to a target position. The tiny soft robots are a maximum of one centimetre long and are bio-compatible and non-toxic. The robots are made of advanced hydrogel ...

The INTERLACE phase III trial, funded by Cancer Research UK and UCL Cancer Trials Centre, assessed whether a short course of induction chemotherapy (IC) prior to chemoradiation (CRT) could reduce the rate of relapse and death among patients with locally advanced cervical cancer. As part of an analysis of clinical data, the preliminary results will be presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) congress on Sunday 22 October 2023. The peak incidence of cervical cancer is in women in their early thirties, with around 3,200 new cases each year in the UK. CRT has been the standard treatment for cervical cancer since 1999, but despite improvements ...

New York, NY (October 22, 2023) — A clinical trial co-led by Mount Sinai researchers is the first to show that using chemotherapy with immunotherapy resulted in improved survival in patients with an advanced type of bladder cancer. The results were simultaneously reported in The New England Journal of Medicine and at the annual meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology. The randomized phase 3 trial, named ”CheckMate 901,” showed significantly improved outcomes in patients who received the immunotherapy nivolumab with a combination of the chemotherapies gemcitabine and cisplatin, ...

Cabozantinib, which targets tumor cell growth and tumor blood vessel growth, sharply improved progression-free survival over placebo in patients with extra-pancreatic and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors Boston - A drug that simultaneously strikes cancer cells' growth circuits and pipeline to the bloodstream produced encouraging results in a clinical trial involving patients with advanced neuroendocrine tumors, according to a study led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute investigators. Jennifer Chan, MD, MPH, director of the Program ...

The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology today announced detailed results will be presented at ESMO 2023 from CABINET (A021602), a phase III pivotal trial evaluating cabozantinib compared with placebo in two cohorts of patients with previously treated neuroendocrine tumors: one cohort of patients with advanced pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNET) and a second cohort of patients with advanced extra-pancreatic NET (epNET). The study met the primary objective for each cohort, demonstrating that cabozantinib provided dramatic improvements in median progression-free survival (PFS) for the patients in the pNET and epNET cohorts. ...

MADRID ― Compared with pre-surgical (neoadjuvant) chemotherapy alone, adding perioperative immunotherapy – given before and after surgery – significantly improved event-free survival (EFS) in patients with resectable early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Results from the Phase III CheckMate 77T study were presented today at the 2023 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress by researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. At a median follow-up of 25.4 months, the median EFS with chemotherapy alone was 18.4 months, while the median had not yet been reached for patients receiving perioperative nivolumab, meaning EFS was prolonged ...

Boston – Belzutifan significantly reduced the risk of progression of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), the most common type of kidney cancer, in patients previously treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors and anti-angiogenic therapies compared with everolimus in a phase 3 clinical trial. The trial, led by Toni K. Choueiri, MD, Director of the Lank Center for Genitourinary Cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, showed the risk of progression was reduced by 25-26%. The results were presented at the annual European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress on October ...

The following Lancet papers will be presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress 2023 (#ESMO 2023). The conference will take place between Friday 20th – Tuesday 24th October 2023.  Contact details for corresponding authors are provided should you wish to arrange an interview with the authors. Funding information is listed on the first page of each Article. **Embargo: 13.00 [BST] / 14.00 [CEST] Friday 20th October 2023** The Lancet: Pembrolizumab plus trastuzumab and chemotherapy for HER2-positive gastric or gastro-oesophageal junction adenocarcinoma: interim analyses from the phase ...

A secondary analysis from the SWOG S0931 EVEREST trial has found that in the subgroup of patients with clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who were at very-high risk of recurrence, those who were treated with everolimus after surgery had a statistically significant improvement in recurrence-free survival compared to patients getting placebo after surgery. The results will be presented at the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2023 in Madrid, Spain, on Oct. 23, 2023 (poster 1887P) by Primo N. Lara, Jr., MD, lead author on the abstract. ...

  Media contacts: Lisa Black, lblack@aap.org; or Adam Alexander, aalexander@aap.org     The parent’s universal cry in response to loud music-- “Turn that thing down!” -- is well-founded, as evidence shows that children and teens risk hearing loss by cranking up their personal listening devices. What families may not realize is that children are exposed to potentially harmful noise from infancy and that the effects are cumulative over a lifetime.   The American Academy of Pediatrics discusses the common sources and effects of noise, from infant sleep ...

Four senior bioengineering students at The University of Texas at Arlington have won the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Coulter College for Healthcare Innovation competition for their work on an early detection device for atrial fibrillation. Brady Killham, Juan Ramirez, Jeannette Santos and Michael Ikefuna, all seniors in UTA’s Bioengineering Department, earned the Best Overall award for their plan to develop FibGuard, a wearable, non-invasive atrial fibrillation early detection device. UTA competed against teams from Vanderbilt, Purdue, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Texas A&M, the University of Oklahoma and Rensselaer Polytechnic ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Lung development in the fetus occurs at low oxygen tension in the womb, but after a very premature birth, the partly developed lungs of the tiny infants experience far greater oxygen tensions even without the prolonged supplemental oxygen that is often required. This can produce well-known disastrous effects on the structure and function of the neonatal lung, causing the serious lung condition of bronchopulmonary dysplasia in high-risk premature infants. Using a neonatal mouse model, researchers ...

“The majority of wound infections often manifest themselves immediately postoperatively, so close followup should take place [...]” BUFFALO, NY- October 20, 2023 – A new research perspective was published in Oncoscience (Volume 10) on October 4, 2023, entitled, “Diagnosis and management of postoperative wound infections in the head and neck region.” In everyday clinical practice at a department for oral and maxillofacial surgery, a large number of surgical procedures in the head and neck region take place under both outpatient and inpatient conditions. The basis ...

The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation announced it is awarding $10.2 million in Young Investigator Grants to 150 promising early career scientists who are working to identify causes, improve treatments, and develop methods of prevention for psychiatric illnesses that impact millions of people in the United States and around the world. The 2023 Young Investigators are focused on a broad range of psychiatric illnesses. More than half of the projects are relevant to the study or treatment of depression and schizophrenia. Addiction/substance-use disorders, anxiety, and ...

Cannabis use, even for medical purposes, could make some people sick due to harmful fungi that contaminate the plants. That is the finding of a recently published peer-reviewed journal article, whose authors recommend further study and consideration of changes to regulations to protect consumers, especially those who are immunocompromised. They examined data, previous studies, and U.S. and international regulations related to the cannabis and hemp industry. The article was published in Frontiers in Microbiology. It was researched and written by Kimberly Gwinn, professor of entomology and plant pathology at the University of Tennessee Institute ...

Since 2011, California has significantly reformed its criminal justice system, reducing the size of its prison population, with no effect on violent crime and only marginal impacts on property crime statewide. The COVID-19 pandemic furthered decarceration as the state reduced state prison and jail populations to slow the spread of the virus. Concerns emerged that releases under the auspices of COVID mitigation harmed public safety. A new study explored this notion and found no consistent relation between COVID-19-related jail decarceration and violent or property ...

It’s a familiar story to many of us: In prehistoric times, men were hunters and women were gatherers. Women were not physically capable of hunting because their anatomy was different from men. And because men were hunters, they drove human evolution. But that story’s not true, according to research by University of Delaware anthropology professor Sarah Lacy, which was recently published in Scientific American and in two papers in the journal American Anthropologist.  Lacy and her colleague Cara Ocobock from the University of Notre Dame examined the division of labor according to sex during the Paleolithic era, approximately 2.5 million to 12,000 ...