PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [February 27, 2023] — Today, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®)—a not-for-profit alliance of leading United States cancer centers—announced a new collaboration with the Institute of Hematology and Transfusion Medicine in Poland (IHIT), and the Alliance For Innovation—Polish-American Foundation (AFI). The three organizations have signed an agreement enabling clinicians to share their established expertise and international experience in order to improve quality of care and outcomes for patients with hematologic ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Black people are receiving medications for dementia less often than white people, according to a preliminary study released today, February 26, 2023, that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 75th Annual Meeting being held in person in Boston and live online from April 22-27, 2023. “Previous research has shown that due to racial disparities, people with dementia do not always receive the same access to medications that may be beneficial in nursing homes and hospitals,” said Alice Hawkins, MD, of Mount Sinai in New York, New York, and a member of the ...

Three years into a five-year pledge to completely phase out lead shot in UK game hunting, a Cambridge study finds that 94% of pheasants on sale for human consumption were killed using lead. The pledge, made in 2020 by nine major UK game shooting and rural organisations, aims to protect the natural environment and ensure a safer supply of game meat for consumers. Lead is toxic even in very small concentrations, and discarded shot from hunting poisons and kills tens of thousands of the UK’s wild birds each year. A Cambridge-led team of 17 volunteers bought whole pheasants from butchers, game ...

“Although contracting herpes simplex or herpes zoster is unpleasant, the mechanism by which these herpesvirus infections can produce a therapeutic effect […]” BUFFALO, NY- February 24, 2023 – A new editorial was published in Genes & Cancer on January 19, 2023, entitled, “Severe herpesvirus infection beats adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma.” In this recently published editorial, researcher Tatsuro Jo from the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Genbaku Hospital’s Department of Hematology discussed aggressive type adult T-cell ...

Octopus arms coordinate nearly infinite degrees of freedom to perform complex movements such as reaching, grasping, fetching, crawling, and swimming. How these animals achieve such a wide range of activities remains a source of mystery, amazement, and inspiration. Part of the challenge comes from the intricate organization and biomechanics of the internal muscles. This problem was tackled in a multidisciplinary project led by Prashant Mehta and Mattia Gazzola, professors of mechanical science & engineering at the University of Illinois ...

As the mental health crisis continues across the nation, many people struggle to find the care they need. Health insurers publish directories of mental health providers to help consumers obtain care; however, inaccurate directories and a shortage of providers within many insurance networks can make finding covered mental health services challenging. The U.S. federal government and those of many states have put regulations in place to ensure provider directory accuracy, with California having some of the most stringent rules. However, research on the accuracy of mental health care provider directories has been limited. Simon Haeder, PhD, associate ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Workers tasked with moving products in the immense U.S. food system are at a high risk of serious injury, according to a new Penn State-led study, and pandemic-caused, supply-chain problems have worsened the situation, researchers suggest. The modern food supply chain presents unique hazards to employees that result in higher rates of death and injury when compared to most other industries, noted lead researcher Judd Michael, Penn State professor of agricultural and biological engineering. ...

BOSTON – As legislation in multiple states eases former restrictions around medical and recreational cannabis in the United States, an increasing proportion of the population reports use of the drug. Between 2016 and 2018, more than 22 percent of Massachusetts residents reported any prior cannabis use for medical or recreational reasons. However, little is known about cannabis use in patients who undergo surgery or interventional procedures, where cannabis use has important additional clinical implications. In a new study published in The Lancet’s eClinical Medicine, researchers led ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Perovskites, a family of materials with unique electric properties, show promise for use in a variety fields, including next-generation solar cells. A Penn State-led team of scientists created a new process to fabricate large perovskite devices that is more cost- and time-effective than previously possible and that they said may accelerate future materials discovery. “This method we developed allows us to easily create very large bulk samples within several minutes, rather than days or weeks using traditional methods,” said Luyao Zheng, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Materials Science at Penn State and lead author on the ...

Washington — PETA scientists have just released a new edition of the groundbreaking Research Modernization Deal (RMD), the world’s first comprehensive plan for phasing out the use of animals in experimentation. The update is packed with new, cutting-edge information and reflects the latest scientific developments and regulatory changes since the RMD was first introduced in 2018.   The RMD provides detailed information about the pressing need to transition toward human-relevant research, and this new edition outlines non-animal methods for studying COVID-19. It also ...

Excess weight or obesity boosts risk of death by anywhere from 22% to 91%—significantly more than previously believed—while the mortality risk of being slightly underweight has likely been overestimated, according to new CU Boulder research. The findings, published Feb. 9 in the journal Population Studies, counter prevailing wisdom that excess weight boosts mortality risk only in extreme cases.  The statistical analysis of nearly 18,000 people also shines a light on the pitfalls of using ...

Ancient climates can help us understand the past, but also the future. 23 million years ago, in a time called the Miocene Epoch, Connecticut was around five to six degrees warmer than today and located roughly where Long Island is now. By the end of the Miocene, around five million years ago the earth had gradually cooled, Antarctica was glaciated, and there was some Arctic ice as well. This cooling scenario moved in the opposite direction of today’s changing climate. One difference UConn Department of Earth Sciences Assistant Professor in Residence Tammo Reichgelt points out is that in the past, these changes happened gradually, spaced ...

Substance use disorder (SUD) is an extremely difficult disorder to overcome, and many individuals with SUD return to regular use after repeated attempts to quit. A return to regular drug use can be caused by the body’s physical dependence on the drug as well as experiences associated with prior drug use. Exactly how these drug associations are formed in the brain and how they trigger a return to drug use remain unclear. “Individuals make long-lasting associations between the euphoric experience of the drug and the people, places and things associated with drug use,” said Christopher Cowan, Ph.D. professor in the Department ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 24, 2023) — A recent University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center study suggests a new radiopharmaceutical compound may be a viable treatment option for patients with advanced cervical cancer. The study, led by UK Markey Cancer Center radiation oncologist Charles Kunos, M.D., and published in Frontiers in Oncology, validates that the radioactive drug 212Pb-DOTAM-GRPR1 may be useful in the treatment of persistent, recurrent, or metastatic cervical cancer. Radiopharmaceuticals are expected to play ...

For two decades, scientists have observed an elongated object named X7 near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way and wondered what it was. Was it pulled off a larger structure nearby? Was its unusual form the result of stellar winds or was it shaped by jets of particles from the black hole? Now, having examined the evolution of X7 using 20 years of data gathered by the Galactic Center Orbit Inintiative, astronomers from the UCLA Galactic Center Group and the Keck Observatory propose that it could be a cloud of dust and gas that was ejected during the collision of two stars. Over time, they report, X7 has stretched, and it is being pulled apart ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Our bodies are made up of 60,000 miles of complex pipes that play a vital role in transporting nutrients throughout our bodies, performing waste disposal, and supplying our organs with fresh oxygen and blood. Vascular malformations (VMs) are a group of rare genetic disorders that causes an abnormal formation of veins, arteries, capillaries, or lymphatic vessels at birth. VMs can interfere with the duties of our precious pipes by causing blockages, poor drainage, and the formation of cysts and tangles. To address a need for further study, William Polacheck, PhD, an assistant professor at the ...

Philadelphia, February 24, 2023—Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have identified variants of a chaperone molecule that optimizes the binding and presentation of foreign antigens across the human population, which could open the door to numerous applications where robust presentation to the immune system is important, including cell therapy and immunization. The findings were published today in Science Advances.  Class I major histocompatibility complex (MHC-I) proteins are ...

Antarctic bottom water (AABW) covers more than two-thirds of the global ocean bottom, and its formation has recently decreased. However, its long-term variability has not been well understood. Researchers led by Prof. DENG Chenglong from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their collaborators have reconstructed AABW history back to approximately 4.7 million years ago (mya). They found that AABW has collapsed several times and such collapses might have induced moisture transport to fuel the Northern Hemisphere ...

A study conducted by researchers at the University of Liège on group 2 innate lymphoid cells (or ILC2s) shows that the functional reprogramming of these cells following their exposure to viruses allows our body to react differently to exposure to certain respiratory allergens. This study is published in Science Immunology. The hygiene hypothesis states that exposure during childhood to certain micro-organisms protects against the development of allergic diseases such as asthma. In this context, researchers from the immunology-vaccinology laboratory (FARAH research ...

CÚRAM SFI Research Centre for Medical Devices researchers have published in Nature Communications a key study establishing a new pre-clinical model to develop clinically relevant treatments for heart attacks.    Heart attacks (myocardial infarction (MI)) occur due to an acute complication of coronary artery disease and are a major cause of global mortality. The two main types of heart attack are ST-elevation (STEMI) and Non-ST elevation (NSTEMI). A non-ST-elevation is a type of heart attack that usually happens when your heart's oxygen needs are unmet. This condition gets its name because it doesn't have an easily identifiable electrical pattern like with an ...

Palliative care — a specialized medical care focused on quality of life for people with a serious illness such as cancer or heart failure — isn’t likely to reduce psychological distress, according to a Rutgers study.   Researchers involved with the study, published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, found there were no statistically significant improvements in patient or caregiver anxiety, depression or psychological distress in a meta-analysis of 38 randomized clinical trials of palliative care interventions. This study took results ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (02/24/2023) — Published in JAMA, a University of Minnesota led study shows that verapamil, a drug commonly used to treat high blood pressure and heart conditions, can have a beneficial effect on the pancreas in children with newly-diagnosed type 1 diabetes (T1D).  Results of the CLVer clinical trial showed that oral verapamil taken once a day improved the pancreas' insulin secretion by 30% over the first year following diagnosis of T1D when compared with a control group that received a placebo.  “The beneficial effect of verapamil observed in the trial is extremely exciting,” said Antoinette Moran, MD, the ...

How society organizes affects different phenomena, from the transmission of information to the spread of contagious diseases. The more links we establish with each other via social and transportation networks, the more spread is favored. To study the dynamics of complex systems, such as society, we can infer these networks – in which nodes, representing individuals, connect through lines – from real-world data. However, these networks are usually large, dense, and cumbersome to manipulate.  In previous work, Luís M. Rocha’s group at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) found a way to simplify networks ...

Attention editors:  Under embargo by the journal Current Biology until Friday, February 24 at 11 a.m. eastern Scientists who study the origins and evolution of the plague have examined hundreds of ancient human teeth from Denmark, seeking to address longstanding questions about its arrival, persistence and spread within Scandinavia. In the first longitudinal study of its kind, focusing on a single region for 800 years (between 1000-1800AD), researchers reconstructed Yersinia pestis genomes, the bacterium responsible for the plague, and showed that it was reintroduced into the Danish population from other parts of Europe again and again, perhaps via ...

OAKLAND, Calif. — Long-term exposure to air pollution is tied to an increased risk of having a heart attack or dying from heart disease — with the greatest harms impacting under-resourced communities, new Kaiser Permanente research shows. The study, published February 24 in JAMA Network Open, is one of the largest to date to look at the effects of long-term exposure to fine particle air pollution, which is emitted from sources such as vehicles, smokestacks, and fires. Fine particle air pollution, also known as PM2.5, are fine particles that are 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller. The ...