Hamilton, ON (May 5, 2021) - Schools and child care centres should train staff on food allergies and have epinephrine available to treat anaphylaxis, but new guidelines do not recommend food bans. The recommendations come from an international team, led by McMaster University, which has developed practice guidelines for the prevention and management of allergic reactions to food at child care centres and schools. The guidelines were published today in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. "The management of food allergy is a sensitive topic," said Susan Waserman, ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 5, 2021) - Collaborative research between the University of Kentucky (UK) and University of Southern California (USC) suggests that a noninvasive neuroimaging technique may index early-stage blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction associated with small vessel disease (SVD). Cerebral SVD is the most common cause of vascular cognitive impairment, with a significant proportion of cases going on to develop dementia. BBB dysfunction represents a promising early marker of SVD because the BBB regulates a number of important metabolic functions, including clearance of toxic brain substances. Advanced ...

Current guidelines for managing osteoporosis specifically call out hip or spine fractures for increasing the risk for subsequent bone breaks. But a new UCLA-led study suggests that fractures in the arm, wrist, leg and other parts of the body should also set off alarm bells. A fracture, no matter the location, indicates a general tendency to break a bone in the future at a different location, said Dr. Carolyn Crandall, the study's lead author and a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Current clinical guidelines have only been emphasizing hip and spine fractures, but our findings challenge that viewpoint," Crandall said. "By not paying attention to which types of fractures increase the risk of future fractures, we are missing the opportunity to ...

Research led by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research has for the first time mapped the unique genetic profile of the skeleton's 'master regulator' cells, known as osteocytes. The study published today in Nature Communications outlines the genes that are switched on or off in osteocytes, a type of bone cell that controls how other types of cells make or break down parts of the skeleton to maintain strong and healthy bones. "This new information provides a kind of genetic shortlist we can look to when diagnosing bone diseases that have a genetic component," says the study's first author Dr Scott Youlten, Research Officer in the Bone Biology ...

Mammals see with their eyes, hear with their ears and smell with their nose. But which sense or organ allows them to orient themselves on their migrations, which sometimes go far beyond their local foraging areas and therefore require an extended ability to navigate? Scientific experiments led by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW), published together with Prof. Richard A. Holland (Bangor University, UK) and Dr. Gunārs P?tersons (Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies) now show that the cornea of the eyes is the location of such an important sense in migrating bats. If the cornea is anaesthetised, the otherwise ...

A study involving researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Gothenburg University in Sweden has found that low levels of a protein called PDGFRb are associated with particularly good results of radiotherapy in women with early-stage breast cancer. The study, which is published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, also suggests that the efficacy of radiotherapy can be improved with drugs that block this protein. Some 900 women in Sweden are diagnosed with DCIS (ductalcarcinoma in situ), the earliest possible form of invasive breast cancer. Standard treatment is ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Chronic kidney disease is when a person's kidneys progressively lose their ability to filter waste from the blood and eliminate fluids. Now a new study has found that people with reduced kidney function may have an increased risk of developing dementia. The study is published in the May 5, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Chronic kidney disease affects approximately 15% of adults in the United States and it is more common as people age. However, since many people don't experience ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (May 5, 2021)--Vitamin D is a critical part of a healthy diet. Among other benefits, it has been shown to protect against bone disease and maintain soft tissue health. A new study suggests that it may also play a role in the degree of postoperative pain postmenopausal women experience after undergoing total knee replacement. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). Vitamin D deficiency is a major issue globally. It is estimated that 60% of adults have insufficient levels of the bone-building vitamin. Estrogen deficiency in perimenopausal women has been associated with decreased levels of vitamin D. A sedentary lifestyle and lack of sun exposure have also been shown to contribute to vitamin D ...

A new study published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology ¬provides insights on how common hospitalized patients develop liver injury from taking different medications. When investigators analyzed the records of 156,570 hospitalized patients, they found 499 cases of drug-induced liver injury (DILI), for an incidence of 0.32%. Anti-infective agents, cancer medications, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were the major categories of drugs causing DILI, and the highest incidence was due to voriconazole (an antifungal medication). Patients with high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, ...

A new study published in Arthritis Care & Research indicates that few individuals with the autoimmune disease lupus who were publicly insured through Medicaid received recommended vaccines in 2000-2010. Also, those who were unvaccinated needed more acute care for vaccine-preventable illnesses. From 2000-2010, there were 1,290 patients who visited the emergency department or were hospitalized for vaccine-preventable illness, and 93% of these visits occurred in patients without billing codes for related vaccinations. Patients who were Black had a 22% higher risk of needing such care than those who were white. "These episodes represent missed opportunities to deliver essential ...

Untreated mental health disorders can be a serious problem for women and their children during pregnancy and after giving birth, during the postpartum period. A recent analysis funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and published in Psychiatric Research & Clinical Practice notes that few studies have examined the benefits of medications for mental health disorders in pregnant and postpartum women. And while many studies have reported on potential harms, the large majority could not separate the effect of medications from the effect of the underlying disorder. As a result, it ...

Investigators found similarities in the bacterial composition of the mouth among patients with early rheumatoid arthritis and those at risk of developing the disease, compared with healthy individuals who were not at risk. The findings come from a study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology. Patients and at-risk individuals had an increased relative abundance of potentially pro- inflammatory bacteria in the mouth, suggesting a possible link between oral microbes and rheumatoid arthritis. "Prevotella and Veillonella--both gram-negative anaerobes--were at higher relative abundance in saliva, and ...

Erythropoietin (EPO) is a medication used to stimulate the production of new red blood cells, which is impaired in individuals with kidney failure. Unfortunately, however, the treatment may increase the risk of hip fractures. In an analysis published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research that examined 1997-2013 records from two large U.S. databases, investigators found that EPO doses administered to patients with kidney failure on hemodialysis fluctuated widely over time, and hip fracture rates closely tracked the average dose of EPO doses used in patients. "Patients with renal failure can benefit from EPO treatment; however, as with all medications, ...

Virtual care provided through telephone or videoconference has been broadly implemented in recent months because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A new analysis of published studies has examined the accuracy and reliability of virtual compared with in-person cognitive assessments for diagnosing dementia or mild cognitive impairment. The analysis, which is published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, included 121 studies. Three studies comparing videoconference with in-person cognitive assessments demonstrated good reliability and accuracy of virtual cognitive assessments in diagnosing dementia. Investigators ...

An analysis of published studies indicates that Twitter may be a useful learning tool in dental education. The analysis, which is published in the Journal of Dental Education, included 7 studies. Studies indicated that the real-time question and answer sessions using Twitter work well in an educational setting. Also, the semi-anonymous interactions on Twitter can be beneficial for students unwilling to speak in front of their peers. Twitter can also make lectures more engaging, and it can be used to ask questions that assess student comprehension. The ...

A new study provides a profile of teachers around the world who provide English Medium Instruction (EMI) in higher education, in which the English language is used to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries where the first language is not English. The study, which is published in the END ...

When investigators in the UK recorded the calls of migratory birds called thrushes at night, they found that call rates were up to five times higher over the brightest urban areas compared with darker villages. The findings, which are published in END ...

To improve our own health and the health of our planet, dietary habits will need to change. Because the composition of an optimal diet changes depending on the combination of location, season, and personalized dietary needs, investigators have built a tool that uses an extensive database of food items, nutrients, and environmental-impacts to develop optimized diets specific to an individual in a given country and month. As described in an article published in the END ...

The population growth of an endangered butterfly species is greatest in habitats with microclimatic variability, demonstrates a study carried out collaboratively by the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences and the Helsinki Institute of Life Science of the University of Helsinki as well as the Finnish Environment Institute. Insects are often very restricted in their capacity for movement. In many species, specific stages of life are spent entirely immobile, making them dependent on the temperature and moisture conditions of their immediate surroundings. In the Åland Islands on the southwest coast of Finland, Glanville fritillary butterflies (Melitaea cinxia) spend roughly 10 months of the year in the larval stage. In the middle of summer, the newly hatched ...

Researchers from University of Texas-Austin and Copenhagen Business School published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that offers actionable guidance to managers on the deployment of algorithms in marketing contexts. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "When Algorithms Fail: Consumers' Responses to Brand Harm Crises Caused by Algorithm Errors" and is authored by Raji Srinivasan and Gulen Sarial-Abi. Marketers increasingly rely on algorithms to make important decisions. A perfect example is the Facebook News Feed. You do not know why some of your posts show up on some people's News Feeds or not, but Facebook does. Or how about Amazon recommending books and products for you? All of these are driven by algorithms. Algorithms are software ...

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana - Stress levels of moms with preschoolers soared during the pandemic, with twice as many of the mothers reporting they lost sleep during the COVID-19 outbreak than before it. "Moms of young children are already less likely to get the recommended amount of sleep and physical activity than women who don't have children. These shortfalls could raise the risk for obesity and poor health, and the lockdown worsened the situation by increasing the levels of stress and household chaos," said Chelsea Kracht, Ph.D., a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Pediatric Obesity and Health Behavior Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical Research Center. The bottom line? "Mothers, especially ...

Joyce WG, Rollot Y, Evers SW, Lyson TR, Rahantarisoa LJ, Krause DW. 2021. A new pelomedusoid turtle, Sahonachelys mailakavava, from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar provides evidence for convergent evolution of specialized suction feeding among pleurodires. Royal Society Open Science 8:210098. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210098 First author: Prof. Dr. Walter Joyce (walter.joyce@unifr.ch), Professor of Paleontology, University of Fribourg, Switzerland Co-authors: - Yann Rollot (yann.rollot@unifr.ch), PhD student, University of Fribourg, Switzerland - Serjsocha Evers (serjoscha.evers@unifr.ch; preferred: serjoscha.evers@googlemail.com), ...

Researchers have discovered the most precise way to control individual ions using holographic optical engineering technology. The new technology uses the first known holographic optical engineering device to control trapped ion qubits. This technology promises to help create more precise controls of qubits that will aid the development of quantum industry-specific hardware to further new quantum simulation experiments and potentially quantum error correction processes for trapped ion qubits. "Our algorithm calculates the hologram's profile and removes any aberrations from the light, which lets us develop a highly precise technique for programming ...

A computer science engineer at Michigan State University has a word of advice for the millions of bitcoin owners who use smartphone apps to manage their cryptocurrency: don't. Or at least, be careful. Researchers from MSU are developing a mobile app to act as a safeguard for popular but vulnerable "wallet" applications used to manage cryptocurrency. "More and more people are using bitcoin wallet apps on their smartphones," said Guan-Hua Tu, an assistant professor in MSU's College of Engineering who works in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. "But these applications have vulnerabilities." ...

A new USC study suggests that certain neighborhoods - particularly those characterized by poverty and unemployment - may pose an environmental risk to the developing brains of children, impacting neurocognitive performance and even brain size. The research was published May 3 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. These findings highlight the importance of neighborhood environments for child and adolescent brain development, the researchers said, and suggest that policies, programs and investments that help improve local neighborhood conditions and empower communities could support children's neurodevelopment and long-term health. "This is the first large, national study ...