LOS ANGELES -- Every year, more than 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke. Of these, approximately 80% lose arm function and as many as 50-60% of this population still experience problems six months later. Traditionally, stroke patients try to regain motor function through physical rehabilitation, where patients re-learn pre-stroke skills, such as eating motions and grasping. However, most patients eventually plateau and stop improving over time. Now, results of a clinical trial published in The Lancet gives patients new hope in their recovery. Patients who received a novel treatment that combines vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) and rehabilitation showed ...

A new study performed in human lung airway cells is one of the first to show a potential link between exposure to organophosphate pesticides and increased susceptibility to COVID-19 infection. The findings could have implications for veterans, many of whom were exposed to organophosphate pesticides during wartime. Exposure to organophosphate pesticides is thought to be one of the possible causes of Gulf War Illness, a cluster of medically unexplained chronic symptoms that can include fatigue, headaches, joint pain, indigestion, insomnia, dizziness, respiratory disorders and memory problems. More than 25% of Gulf War veterans are estimated to experience this condition. "We have identified a basic mechanism linked with inflammation that could increase susceptibility to COVID-19 infection ...

During infection, SARS-CoV-2 binds to a cellular receptor known as angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) before entering a cell and replicating. Because it is not well established whether common blood pressure medications can increase the levels of ACE2, there has been some concern that patients taking these medications might be more susceptible to COVID-19. In a new study, researchers led by Hans Ackerman, MD, DPhil, in the Laboratory of Malaria and Vector Research (LMVR) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, found that mice treated with an ACE inhibitor blood pressure medication showed increased levels of ACE2. However, mice that received both an ACE inhibitor and a different blood pressure medicine known as an angiotensin ...

Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs chomped through bone by keeping a joint in their lower jaw steady like an alligator, rather than flexible like a snake, according to a study being presented at the END ...

Thousands of livers donated for transplantation are discarded or turned down every year due to concerns about organ quality and function. New insights into why these organs are considered unusable and how they function during external perfusion could help save lives by greatly increasing the number of livers that are transplantable. After a liver is removed from a donor's body, it undergoes a process known as perfusion which flows blood or a blood replacement though the organ's blood vessels to keep them open and active before the transplantation surgery. "Our new findings will allow us to design therapies that could be used during external perfusion to improve the quality of organs so that these livers can be transplanted instead of being discarded," ...

New research suggests a simple step could help millions of people reduce their risk of heart disease: make sure to get enough vitamin D. Elucidating linkages between skin pigmentation, vitamin D and indicators of cardiovascular health, the new study, combined with evidence from previous research, suggests vitamin D deficiency could contribute to the high rate of heart disease among African Americans. "More darkly-pigmented individuals may be at greater risk of vitamin D deficiency, particularly in areas of relatively low sun exposure or high seasonality of sun exposure," said S. Tony Wolf, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the Pennsylvania State University and the study's lead author. "These ...

The brain encodes information about our relationships and the relationships between our friends using areas involved in spatial processing, according to new research published in JNeurosci. Humans maintain hundreds of social relationships, requiring the brain to catalogue countless details about each person and their connections to other people. But it is not known how exactly the brain stores all of this information. To uncover how the brain encodes social network structure, Peer et al. used Facebook data to map out participants' social connections. Then the researchers measured their brain activity with fMRI as they thought about people from their network. Thinking about a connection generated ...

A new guideline for reporting research results has been developed to improve reproducibility, replication, and transparency in life sciences. The new Research Materials, Design, Analysis and Reporting (MDAR) Framework will harmonise the recording of outcomes across several major journals, its developers say. Existing guidelines address specific parts of biomedical research, such as ARRIVE - which relates to animal research - and CONSORT, associated with clinical trial reporting. The MDAR Framework - developed by a team from the University of Edinburgh, the Centre for Open Science and six major journal publishers - complements these by establishing basic minimum reporting requirements and best practice recommendations. The Framework ...

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), children generally appear to be less severely impacted by COVID-19 than adults. But a new study from Children's Hospital Los Angeles shows that the pandemic could be affecting children's health in unexpected ways. The study reveals a surge of patients presenting with diabetic ketoacidosis, a severe complication of type 2 diabetes. Published today in Diabetes Care, these data offer additional insights into how the pandemic may be impacting the nation's children. Diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA, is life-threatening. "DKA happens when insulin levels in the blood drop too low for too long," says Lily Chao, MD, MS, ...

Like beauty, fairness is in the eye of the beholder. In the workplace, whether or not we believe that a supervisor has treated us fairly depends on a number of factors, including motive, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame. Employees evaluate the fairness of an interaction with an authority figure based on what researcher Cindy Muir (Zapata), associate professor of management at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, describes as justice criteria or rules. These include relying on decision-making processes that grant employees voice and are consistent among employees, ethical and free of bias; treating team members with dignity, respect and ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A small study from Mayo Clinic researchers raises the concern that some transplant patients may have a limited immune response after being vaccinated for COVID-19 with an mRNA vaccine. Their findings are published as a letter to the editor in the American Journal of Transplantation. The letter covers seven organ transplant recipients diagnosed with COVID-19 at Mayo Clinic in Florida six to 44 days after receiving either of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines that have been authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration. Two patients had received one dose, and five patients had received both doses. COVID-19 infection was confirmed in all patients with a polymerase chain reaction nasal swab test. The study team, led by Hani Wadei, M.D., ...

Millions of tons of plastic end up in landfills every year. It's a big societal problem and an even larger environmental threat. In the United States, less than 9% of plastic waste is recycled. Instead, more than 75% of plastics waste ends up in landfills and up to 16% is burned, a process that releases toxic gases into the atmosphere. Researchers from the University of Delaware's Center for Plastics Innovation (CPI) have developed a direct method to convert single-use plastic waste -- plastic bags, yogurt containers, plastic bottles and bottle caps, packaging and more -- to ready-to-use molecules for jet fuels, diesel and lubricants. The work, reported in a paper in Science ...

April 23, 2021, Mountain View, CA -- An international team of researchers searched for pieces of a small asteroid tracked in space and then observed to impact Botswana on June 2, 2018. Guided by SETI Institute meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens, they found 23 meteorites deep inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and now have published their findings online in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science. "Combining the observations of the small asteroid in space with information gleaned from the meteorites shows it likely came from Vesta, second largest asteroid in our Solar System and target of NASA's ...

A new study from Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers finds that new mothers who receive opioids after uncomplicated vaginal births face an increased risk of serious opioid-related events regardless of the opioid dosage, a finding that could significantly impact care delivery. Andrew Wiese, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of Health Policy in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology, authored the paper published online April 15 in Women's Health Issues, with Sarah Osmundson, MD, MPH, associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and other researchers in the departments of Biostatistics and Health Policy. The study examined roughly 147,000 women enrolled in TennCare -- Tennessee's Medicaid program -- between ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new study of advanced small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) led by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James) has identified molecular patterns linked to patients developing resistance to certain therapies. This study, published in the journal JTO Clinical and Research Reports, examined more than 60 tumors from five patients. OSUCCC - James researchers identified distinct mutational and molecular changes in four SCLC subtypes. The findings provide new insights into the patterns treatment resistance and could offer new targets for the development of more effective ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 20, 2021) - A new study from University of Kentucky Markey Cancer researchers shows that Artemisia annua, a plant that has been traditionally used for its anti-malaria components, shows promise in treating ovarian cancer. The study, recently published in Diagnostics, demonstrates that artesunate, a drug synthesized from Artemisia annua, kills ovarian cancer cells in multiple preclinical model systems. Despite accounting for only 1.3% of all new cancer cases, 2.3% of cancer deaths in 2021 are predicted to be caused by ovarian cancer. The current ...

Wild blueberry fields in Down East Maine are warming faster than the state as a whole, according to a new University of Maine study on the effects of climate change on the barrens over the past 40 years. The difference in rising temperature rates suggests the need to develop specific wild blueberry management strategies, such as irrigation and fertilizer use, to mitigate the effects of climate change on Down East fields, rather than using tactics devised from statewide climate patterns, according to researchers. Rafa Tasnim, a Ph.D. student of ecology and environmental sciences, led the study that explored changes in climate change patterns, particularly in temperature and precipitation, ...

The aquatic animal known as the sponge is often described as entirely sessile: once they've settled in a spot and matured, they aren't generally thought of as moving around. But, according to a new study in the journal Current Biology on April 26--in which researchers describe mysterious trails of light brown sponge spicules (spike-like support elements in sponges) across the Arctic seafloor--that isn't always so. "We observed trails of densely interwoven spicules connected directly to the underside or lower flanks of sponge individuals, suggesting these trails are traces of motility of the sponges," the researchers, led ...

DURHAM, N.C. - A digital app successfully detected one of the telltale characteristics of autism in young children, suggesting the technology could one day become an inexpensive and scalable early screening tool, researchers at Duke University report. The research team created the app to assess the eye gaze patterns of children while they watched short, strategically designed movies on an iPhone or iPad, then applied computer vision and machine learning to determine whether the child was looking more often at the human in the video, or objects. "We know that babies who have autism pay attention ...

Monday, April 26, 2021, CLEVELAND: Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, mutations of SARS-CoV-2 - the virus that causes COVID-19 - have spread to the U.S. and a host of other countries worldwide. Recent studies suggest that current COVID-19 variants are up to 70% more contagious than the pandemic's original strains. A multidisciplinary team of scientists at Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University used genomic sequencing to track SARS-CoV-2 as it mutated in Northeast Ohio from March 11 to April 22, 2020. The research findings, published in JAMA Network Open, demonstrated that initial strains and subgroups of virus strains (called ...

What The Study Did: COVID-19 rates in children and teenagers to age 19 before and after reopening schools in Israel are examined in this observational study. Authors: Eli Somekh, M.D., of the Mayanei Hayeshuah Medical Center in Bnei Brak, Israel, 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/jamanetworkopen.2021.7105) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The full study is linked to this news release. Embed ...

Women who have preeclampsia during pregnancy are at least three times more likely to have strokes later in life than women who do not have a history of this condition, according to University of Utah Health scientists. Based on this finding, the researchers recommend that women who have had preeclampsia should be carefully monitored in the years after it occurs. "Our study strongly suggests that, for women who have a history of preeclampsia, physicians should consider aggressive treatment of midlife vascular risk factors, including high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol and glucose levels," says Adam de Havenon, M.D., lead author of the study and an assistant professor of neurology at U of U Health. "Doing this could potentially reduce the risk of these women ...

What The Study Did: In this quality improvement study, hand hygiene compliance rates in a hospital with an automated hand hygiene monitoring system during the COVID-19 pandemic were assessed. Authors: Rachel Marrs, D.N.P., R.N., C.I.C., of University of Chicago Medicine, 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/jamainternmed.2021.1429) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The full study is ...

What The Study Did: The association of identified SARS-CoV-2 variants and virus groupings with disease severity and patient outcomes is evaluated in this study. Authors: Frank P. Esper, M.D., of Cleveland Clinic Children's in Ohio, 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/jamanetworkopen.2021.7746) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including ...

What The Study Did: The risk of stroke in later life among women with and without a history of preeclampsia in pregnancy was assessed in this study. Authors: Adam de Havenon, M.D., of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, 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/jamanetworkopen.2021.5077) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other ...