Metagenomic sequencing can provide rapid and actionable antimicrobial resistance predictions to treat bloodstream infections much faster than conventional laboratory tests, and has the potential to save lives and better manage the use of antibiotics, according to new research being presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Copenhagen, Denmark (15-18 April). The study led by Dr Kumeren Govender from the John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, ...

Mortality from COVID-19 in people with intellectual disabilities five times higher than general population Study showed death rates for cancers, mental health disorders, circulatory disorders, external causes, and other natural causes in people with intellectual disabilities were higher during the COVID pandemic than pre-pandemic Observed effects likely to be due a range of factors including disruptions to care during pandemic PLEASE NOTE Embargo: 0030H CEST Copenhagen time Monday 17 April  *Note: ...

Researchers at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology have discovered a network of connections in the brain linked to seizures in people with epilepsy. The team believe that their findings, published in Brain, will help redesign neurological operations for patients whose epilepsy can’t be controlled by medication. By disconnecting certain pathways in the frontal lobe, patients may be able to enjoy long-lasting freedom from seizures. There are 500,000 people in the UK with epilepsy and 50 million people have the condition worldwide. But one in three cannot ...

For more than half a century, the Tully monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium), an enigmatic animal that lived about 300 million years ago, has confounded paleontologists, with its strange anatomy making it difficult to classify. Recently, a group of researchers proposed a hypothesis that Tullimonstrum was a vertebrate similar to cyclostomes (jawless fish like lamprey and hagfish). If it was, then the Tully monster would potentially fill a gap in the evolutionary history of early vertebrates. Studies ...

PCB has been banned in most countries since the 1970s, but that doesn't mean it no longer exists. Now, deep-sea researchers report that they have found PCB at the bottom of the Atacama Trench in the Pacific Ocean. During their expedition to the deep-sea trench, the research team retrieved sediment cores and analyzed them for PCB occurrences at five different locations in the trench. All the samples of surface sediment analyzed contained PCB. The study, led by Professor Anna Sobek from the Department of Environmental Science at Stockholm University and Professor Ronnie N. Glud, director of the Danish Center for Hadal Research at ...

The Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI, President Kim Nam-Kyun), an internationally accredited testing and certification body for electrical equipment, has been accredited as a Type A Inspection Body by ACCREDIA, an international accreditation body in Italy. An Inspection Body verifies the performance and quality of products, and an Accreditation Body attests and supervises Inspection Bodies to ensure their competence and impartiality. ACCREDIA is a world leader in accreditation for electrical equipment. It is a full member of the International Accreditation ...

Singapore, 16 April 2023 – The SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre (AMC) announced that Distinguished Professorships have been awarded to two research luminaries from the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS). The Professorships are the highest honour bestowed upon faculty members by the SingHealth Duke-NUS AMC. Professor Teh Bin Tean, Deputy Chief Executive Officer (Research), NCCS, and Professor, Duke-NUS Medical School, was conferred the Tan Yew Oo Professorship in Pathology and Associate Professor Iain Tan Bee Huat, Division Director of Research and Senior Consultant, Division of Medical Oncology, ...

Newborns of non-refugee immigrant females are at overall lower risk of serious illness and death than those of Canadian-born females in low-income neighbourhoods in Ontario, according to new research published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.221711. Previous research has looked at the risk of adverse outcomes for newborns in low- v. high-income neighbourhoods, but there is little evidence on the respective risks for immigrant and nonimmigrant mothers living in similar low-income neighbourhoods. Both immigration status and living in a low-income ...

A new study of worldwide polling data suggests that a person’s income rank relative to their peers is linked to their experience of physical pain, with a lower income rank linked to a higher likelihood of experiencing pain. It is the first time such a relationship has been shown. The study found the link to persist, to the same degree, irrespective of whether the person lives in a rich country or a poor country. Income rank is the position of an individual’s absolute personal income amount in a list of those amounts ordered from lowest to highest.  The higher the position in the list, the higher the income ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio ­– Data from a national clinical trial shows that a striking 89% of patients with desmoplastic melanoma responded to immunotherapy (pembrolizumab) alone, suggesting that many patients could avoid the risk for toxicity from combination therapies and achieve cancer control with this approach to treatment. Desmoplastic melanoma is a subset of melanoma skin cancer that is caused by high levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation damage and, therefore, a high number of tumor mutations that all contribute to aggressive ...

Close to 90 percent of patients with unresectable (inoperable) desmoplastic melanoma, a rare form of skin cancer, saw their cancer improve after treatment with the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab in a recent clinical trial. These results from the S1512 trial conducted by the SWOG Cancer Research Network, a group funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), are being delivered in an oral presentation at the clinical trials plenary session of the 2023 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Orlando, Florida, on April 16th. The S1512 ...

ABSTRACT: CT006 ORLANDO, Fla. ― The first-in-class YAP/TEAD inhibitor VT3989 was well tolerated with durable antitumor responses in patients with advanced malignant mesothelioma and other tumors with NF2 mutations, according to results of a Phase I trial led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The first-in-human study was presented today at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2023. Seven of 69 patients had radiological partial responses that persisted up to at least 21 months, indicating tumor shrinkage, while 34 had stable disease. Patient benefit was observed in patients with both mesothelioma ...

ORLANDO – Despite recent advances, ovarian cancer remains the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women, and there’s a critical need for new treatment options, especially for advanced cancers that grow back after standard of care treatment. Results from a preclinical study, led by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, verified a new target for drug-resistant ovarian cancer and provided data to support a treatment approach that is already making its way into clinical trials. Sarah Gitto, PhD, an instructor of Pathology and Laboratory ...

VIDEO OF RESEARCHER AND PATIENT COMMENTARY IS AVAILABLE AT: https://bcove.video/3mxxASq   The combination of an experimental mRNA vaccine with an immunotherapy reduced the likelihood of melanoma recurring or causing death by 44% when compared to immunotherapy alone, a new clinical trial shows. Led by researchers at NYU Langone Health and its Perlmutter Cancer Center, the randomized phase 2b trial involved men and women who had surgery to remove melanoma from lymph nodes or other organs and were at high risk of the disease returning in sites distant from the original cancer.            ...

ABSTRACT: CT005  ORLANDO, Fla. ― A regimen of pre-surgical immunotherapy and chemotherapy followed by post-surgical immunotherapy significantly improved event-free survival (EFS) and pathologic complete response (pCR) rates compared to chemotherapy alone for patients with operable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to Phase III trial results presented today by researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2023.   The ...

Recently, a team of South Korean scientists led by Director C. Justin LEE of the Center for Cognition and Sociality within the Institute for Basic Science made a new discovery that can revolutionize both the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease. The group demonstrated a mechanism where the astrocytes in the brain uptake elevated levels of acetates, which turns them into hazardous reactive astrocytes. They then went on further to develop a new imaging technique that takes advantage of this mechanism to directly observe the astrocyte-neuron interactions. Alzheimer’s disease (AD), one of ...

Barcelona, Spain – 16 April 2023:  A region-wide study in more than 50,000 patients with atrial fibrillation has found reduced risks of stroke and transient ischaemic attack in those who started statins within a year of diagnosis compared with those who did not. The findings are presented at EHRA 2023, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1   “Our study indicates that taking statins for many years was even more protective against stroke than short-term use,” said study author Ms. Jiayi Huang, a PhD student at the University of Hong Kong, China.   Atrial fibrillation is the most common ...

Honolulu, HI | April 16, 2023—An award-winning Scientific Online Poster presented during the 2023 ARRS Annual Meeting on the island of Oahu explained how the novel technique of three-dimensional (3D) slice-to-volume (SVR) MRI allows for precise delineation and measurement of the fetal optic pathway (FOP). Noting the limited fetal presentation and low reproducibility of ultrasound-based techniques, as well as conventional MRI’s inconsistencies in FOP visualization due to low resolution (i.e., large slice thickness), “our preliminary results nevertheless demonstrate the promises and utility of this technique,” said Eric Juang, MS, of Creighton University ...

Honolulu, HI | April 16, 2023—Erik K. Paulson, MD, chair of the radiology department at Duke University, has been named the 123rd President of the American Roentgen Ray Society (ARRS) during the opening ceremony of the 2023 ARRS Annual Meeting in Honolulu, HI. “I am absolutely honored and delighted to serve as the President of our country’s oldest radiology society, a society whose sweet spot is member education,” Dr. Paulson said in his ARRS Annual Meeting opening remarks at ...

  **Note: the release below is from the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2023, Copenhagen, 15-18 April). Please credit the conference if you use this story** Measures introduced to reduce transmission of COVID-19 infections during 2020-2021 suppressed transmission of group A streptococcal (GAS) infections, particularly in children. Following the lifting of public health restrictions in the UK in Feb-2022, Group A Streptococcus presentations – including scarlet fever and invasive Group A Strep – rose significantly in England, although iGAS still remained very ...

**Note: the release below is from the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2023, Copenhagen, 15-18 April). Please credit the conference if you use this story** During the 2022-2023 winter season Denmark experienced a surge in infections caused by group A streptococci (GAS), including the more dangerous, invasive types of infections (iGAS). Incidence of iGAS is highest among the elderly, but the largest relative increase from previous seasons was seen among children. The study is being presented to the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2023, Copenhagen, ...

**Note: the release below is from the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2023, Copenhagen, 15-18 April). Please credit the conference if you use this story** New research from France shows that infections cause by Group A Streptococcus (GAS) fell by 80% as the first COVID lockdown took effect in March 2020 and stayed at low levels until March 2022, from which point they increased by 18% a month to rise well above pre-COVID levels. The study is being presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases in Copenhagen, Denmark (15-18 ...

**Note: the release below is from the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2023, Copenhagen, 15-18 April). Please credit the conference if you use this story** Antibiotics help to fight bacterial infections, but they can also harm the helpful microbes living in the gut, which can have long-lasting health consequences. Now new research being presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Copenhagen, Denmark (15-18 April) has identified ...

*Note: this is a joint press release from the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) and The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.  Please credit both the congress and the journal in your stories* A major UK study has discovered that the disturbed sleep patterns in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 was likely to be a driver of breathlessness. The study of patients in 38 institutions across the UK was led by University of Manchester and Leicester, presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (Copenhagen, 15-18 April) and published in The Lancet ...

About The Study: Among adults with laboratory-confirmed Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) with one or more prior CDI episodes in the last six months and those with primary CDI at high risk for recurrence, high-dose VE303 (a novel oral microbiome-directed therapy composed of nonpathogenic, nontoxigenic, commensal strains of Clostridia) prevented recurrent CDI compared with placebo. A larger, phase 3 study is needed to confirm these findings.  Authors: Jeffrey L. Silber, M.D., of Vedanta Biosciences Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 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.2023.4314) Editor’s ...