Whether dialysis is the best option for kidney failure and, if so, when to start, may deserve more careful consideration, according to a new study. For older adults who were not healthy enough for a kidney transplant, starting dialysis when their kidney function fell below a certain threshold — rather than waiting — afforded them roughly one more week of life, Stanford Medicine researchers and their colleagues found. More critically, perhaps, they spent an average of two more weeks in ...

A multidisciplinary team of UC Davis Health experts are calling on health systems to create wildfire preparedness action plans to support patients with preexisting respiratory diseases. They are urging providers to proactively put in place interventions to mitigate the effects of poor air quality from smoke. Their article, published in the Journal of the COPD Foundation, identifies the needs of high-risk populations when affected by wildfire smoke. It outlines an action plan for health systems to help these groups with the burdens of poor air quality from wildfires. “Patients ...

Legal documents are notoriously difficult to understand, even for lawyers. This raises the question: Why are these documents written in a style that makes them so impenetrable? MIT cognitive scientists believe they have uncovered the answer to that question. Just as “magic spells” use special rhymes and archaic terms to signal their power, the convoluted language of legalese acts to convey a sense of authority, they conclude. In a study that will appear in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers found that even non-lawyers use this type of language when asked to write laws. “People seem to understand that there’s ...

STARKVILLE, Miss.—With a new understanding of past life on the planet through fossils, a Mississippi State biological sciences faculty member is helping researchers better predict Earth’s future. In a new paper published in July in the esteemed peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Donald L. Hall Professor of Biology Matthew Brown unearths a specific area of under-studied fossils: microbial eukaryotes—more specifically, testate amoebae from 750 million ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (08/19/2024) — Mindfulness-based interventions delivered via telehealth in a scalable format can improve pain and overall well-being among veterans with chronic pain, according to new research published today in JAMA Internal Medicine.  In a randomized clinical trial, researchers aimed to test the effectiveness of two eight-week telehealth mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) designed to be scalable and widely implemented in healthcare systems. MBIs help people pay attention non-judgmentally in the present moment and often involve practices like meditation, breathing exercises or gentle movement. “Although mindfulness interventions are evidence-based ...

Novel findings attend to attitudes of the stigmatized, rather than stigmatizers Past research identified perception of promiscuity and assumptions that PrEP users are HIV-positive as key drivers of perceived stigma Perception of stigma is highest among those who believe their sexual behavior puts them at risk for HIV Knowing others who use PrEP does not influence one’s fear of potential discrimination CHICAGO --- Public health messaging that drives stigma around Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), a medication that can reduce HIV risk by up to 99%, appears to play a role in uptake of the medication. While the potential mismarketing of the drug is well-understood and ...

Research has shown that in many animals, the winners of a fight are more likely to win subsequent contests, while the losers tend to lose their following fights. In experiments where male stickleback fish were randomly introduced to another fish, 65% of the winning fish won the second match, while all losing fish lost the second contest. Such winner and loser effects can greatly influence individual behavior and fitness. This effect happens in humans as well. In "Winner and Loser Effects and Social Rank in Humans," recently published in The Quarterly Review of Biology, authors Noah M. T. Smith and Reuven ...

People with Down syndrome are likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease at a young age, with autopsy studies showing that by age 40 years, the brains of individuals with Down syndrome have amyloid plaques. Yet people with Down syndrome have been excluded from or underrepresented in clinical trials of new therapies for treating AD. Lecanemab, which has been shown to target and remove beta-amyloid plaques, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat AD early in the disease’s progression. ...

Dr. Reed Gurchiek, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioengineering, Clemson University, and an Early-stage Investigator, was a co-first author of a recent publication in the Journal of Biomechanics titled “International Society of Biomechanics recommendations on the definition, estimation, and reporting of joint kinematics in human motion analysis applications using wearable inertial measurement technology”. A collaborative effort that incorporated feedback from the biomechanics community has produced recommendations in five categories: sensor characteristics ...

Rutgers researchers have found a new way to manage the receptors that control the sense of touch, which could lead to treating chronic pain more effectively. “Identifying a natural molecule that specifically reduces pain sensitivity offers hope for new therapeutic strategies in the management of pain,” said Tibor Rohacs, a professor in the Department of Pharmacology, Physiology and Neuroscience at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and a member of the Rutgers Brain Health Institute. “Our goal is to translate these findings into effective treatments that improve the quality of life for people suffering from chronic ...

A $3.3 million study at the University of Houston College of Optometry will track the health of patients with prediabetes and diabetes to find out who might develop eye problems and be at risk for future vision loss. The study is being led by Wendy Harrison, associate professor, and is underwritten by the National Eye Institute.   Vision loss in type 2 diabetes results from diabetic retinopathy, caused by damage to blood vessels in the retina, the light-sensitive layer of tissue in the back of your eye. The disease can appear without warning.   “The ...

Lifestyle diseases, also known as non-communicable diseases (NCDs), have emerged as a major health burden globally, including in India. These diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and metabolic disorders, are primarily caused by unhealthy lifestyle choices like sedentary behavior, poor dietary habits, and stress. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), NCDs are responsible for 41 million deaths annually, accounting for 74% of all global deaths. Notably, 86% of these premature deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. The increasing prevalence of lifestyle diseases ...

Media Contact: Robin.Marks@ucsf.edu, (415) 502-6397 Subscribe to UCSF News Taming Parkinson’s Disease with Intelligent Brain Pacemakers UCSF studies show personalized, self-adjusting, neuromodulation has the potential to enhance movement and sleep. Two new studies from UC San Francisco are pointing the way toward round-the-clock personalized care for people with Parkinson’s disease through an implanted device that can treat movement problems during the day and insomnia at night.  The approach, called adaptive deep brain stimulation, or aDBS, uses methods derived from AI to ...

A small feasibility study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that an implanted device regulated by the body’s brain activity could provide continual and improved treatment for the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD) in certain people with the disorder. This type of treatment, called adaptive deep brain stimulation (aDBS), is an improvement on a technique that has been used for PD and other brain disorders for many years. The study found aDBS was markedly more effective at controlling PD symptoms compared to conventional DBS treatments. “This study marks a big step forward towards ...

About The Study: Although firearm homicide mortality increased after Florida’s red flag law enactment (permitting the temporary removal of firearms by law enforcement officers from individuals posing a danger to themselves or others), this increase was lower than expected compared with its synthetic control, resulting in an 11% rate reduction (0.73 fewer deaths per 100,000). There were no differences from expected mortality rates for nonfirearm homicide, firearm suicide, or nonfirearm suicide. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Catherine Gimbrone, MPH, email c.gimbrone@columbia.edu. To ...

U.S. pediatric inpatient psychiatric bed capacity did not change 2017 – 2020, despite increases in pediatric mental health emergency visits, according to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics. Researchers also found substantial geographic variation in inpatient psychiatric bed capacity per 100,000 children, ranging from zero in Alaska to 75 in Arkansas. Over 90 percent of pediatric inpatient beds are in urban centers, raising concerns for youth living in rural areas. “Access to psychiatric inpatient care for youth is insufficient to meet the growing demand, forcing patients to wait for hours or even days in emergency departments or on medical units until a psychiatric bed becomes ...

A new study led by the University of Southampton has found that using temporary nursing staff to fill rotas only partially combats an increased risk of patient death associated with staff shortages. Researchers found that avoiding low nurse staffing levels lowers the risk of death among patients – particularly even when drafting in temporary registered nurses to maintain staffing levels. However, despite this, the risk of death remains elevated compared to when the ward is fully staffed by permanent nurses. Findings from the ...

About The Study: Scalable telehealth mindfulness-based interventions improved pain-related function and biopsychosocial outcomes compared to usual care among veterans with chronic pain in this randomized clinical trial. Relatively low-resource telehealth-based mindfulness-based interventions could help accelerate and improve the implementation of nonpharmacological pain treatment in health care systems. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Diana J. Burgess, PhD, email diana.burgess@va.gov. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

About The Study: Expanded Child Tax Credit (ECTC) enactment was associated with substantially lower food insecurity, and ECTC expiration was associated with substantially greater food insecurity in this cohort study. Key features of the ECTC—monthly payments and no earnings requirements—may be important for food insecurity prevention. Future studies should examine this, along with income as a potential effect modifier.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, ...

About The Study: The machine learning model developed in this study shows promise in the early identification of individuals with an elevated likelihood of autism spectrum disorder, using minimal information, which could affect early diagnosis and intervention strategies.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kristiina Tammimies, PhD, email kristiina.tammimies@ki.se. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.29229) Editor’s ...

A new machine learning model can predict autism in young children from relatively limited information. This is shown in a new study from Karolinska Institutet published in JAMA Network Open. The model can facilitate early detection of autism, which is important to provide the right support. “With an accuracy of almost 80 percent for children under the age of two, we hope that this will be a valuable tool for healthcare,” says Kristiina Tammimies, Associate Professor at KIND, the Department of Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska Institutet and last author of the study. The research team used a large US database (SPARK) ...

More than half of women globally experience bacterial vaginosis (BV) — an imbalance of naturally occurring microbes in the female genital tract — at least once in their life. The condition can cause painful symptoms and vaginal discharge, and although treatable with antibiotics, it frequently comes back within a short time. If left untreated, BV can lead to problems with pregnancy and an increased risk of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. A team of researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; the Ragon Institute of Mass General ...

Mitral regurgitation (MR) is a serious heart condition that often requires corrective surgery. It is characterized by the backflow or "regurgitation" of blood from the heart's left ventricle into the left atrium. Atrial Functional Mitral Regurgitation (AFMR), characterized by normal mitral valve (MV) function and left ventricular function but with atrial dilation and defects in the ring-like structure that supports the MV leaflets (mitral annulus), poses diagnostic and therapeutic challenges due to its distinct pathophysiological mechanisms. Historically, studies on AFMR have been limited by small ...

The sea anemone Nematostella vectensis is potentially immortal. Using molecular genetic methods, developmental biologists led by Ulrich Technau from the University of Vienna have now identified possible candidates for multipotent stem cells in the sea anemone for the first time. These stem cells are regulated by evolutionary highly conserved genes, which in humans are usually only active in the formation of egg and sperm cells, but give ancient animal phyla such as cnidarians a high degree of regenerative capacity to even escape ageing. The results are currently being published in Science Advances and could also provide insights into the human ...

Proteins left behind by COVID-19 long after initial infection can cause cortisol levels in the brain to plummet, inflame the nervous system and prime its immune cells to hyper-react when another stressor arises, according to new animal research by University of Colorado Boulder scientists. The study, published in the journal Brain Behavior and Immunity, sheds new light on what might underly the neurological symptoms of Long COVID, an intractable syndrome which impacts as many as 35% of those infected with the ...