Black patients with early-stage breast cancer who were treated with docetaxel chemotherapy every 3 weeks had less drug-induced peripheral neuropathy and significantly fewer dose reductions compared to those who received weekly paclitaxel, according to a trial by the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN). Study EAZ171 is the first National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored trial to focus specifically on enrolling a minority or underserved population to assess drug-induced toxicity (rather than drug efficacy) ...

In materials science, particularly in the study of glasses, the intermediate range order (IRO) is one of the most intriguing research areas owing to its significant influence over the physical properties of glasses. The IRO refers to the structural arrangement of atoms beyond the short-range order (atomic arrangement within a few atomic distances) but shorter than the long-range order (arrangement patterns over macroscopic distances). Notably, for covalent glasses, the IRO is marked by atomic density fluctuations. Scattering experiments provide a distinct signature of ...

Crucial shift in River Nile’s evolution during ancient Egypt discovered Researchers have explored how the River Nile evolved over the past 11,500 years and how changes in its geography could have helped shape the fortunes of ancient Egyptian civilisation. Research published in Nature Geoscience reveals a major shift in the Nile around four thousand years ago, after which the floodplain in the Nile Valley around Luxor greatly expanded. The findings raise the possibility that this shift could have contributed to the success of the ancient Egyptian agricultural economy at points between the Old and New Kingdom periods. ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2024 annual meeting found robust evidence that implicates lower alertness, a key outcome of insufficient sleep, as a predictor of muted empathic responding, which suggests alertness may support both cognitive and affective empathy. Results show that slower response times on objective alertness tests were significantly associated with lower levels of empathic concern, and that lapses and false starts on these tests were significantly associated with poorer empathic accuracy. Additionally, those ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2024 annual meeting found that sleep apnea is associated with increased odds of future utilization of health care services including hospitalization among older adults. Results show that participants aged 50 years and older with sleep apnea had a 21% higher odds of reporting future use of any health service compared with those without sleep apnea. Specifically, individuals with sleep apnea had 21% higher odds of hospitalization after controlling for potential confounders including demographics, body mass index, health conditions, and depressive symptoms. “Our research indicates that older adults who have sleep apnea are more ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2024 annual meeting found that most sleep tips shared on TikTok are supported by empirical evidence. The research findings show that of 35 unique sleep tips shared in popular videos, there was empirical support for 29. Only six sleep tips were unsupported by scientific evidence. “These results suggest that the sleep research and sleep medicine communities have done a good job of promoting appropriate tips for sleep hygiene,” said lead author Brian T. Gillis, who has studied sleep for eight years and is an assistant professor of marriage and family therapy in the College of Human Sciences ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2024 annual meeting found that low-dose acetylsalicylic acid, also known as aspirin, can reduce inflammatory responses to sleep restriction. Results show that compared with placebo, preemptive administration of low-dose aspirin during sleep restriction reduced pro-inflammatory responses. Specifically, aspirin reduced interleukin-6 expression and COX-1/COX-2 double positive cells in lipopolysaccharide-stimulated monocytes, as well as C-reactive protein serum levels. “The novelty of this study is that it investigated whether we can pharmacologically reduce the inflammatory consequences of sleep restriction,” ...

A team of New York University researchers has created a new way to visualize crystals by peering inside their structures, akin to having X-ray vision. Their new technique—which they aptly named “Crystal Clear”—combines the use of transparent particles and microscopes with lasers that allow scientists to see each unit that makes up the crystal and to create dynamic three-dimensional models. “This is a powerful platform for studying crystals,” says Stefano Sacanna, professor of chemistry at NYU and the principal investigator for the study, published in the journal Nature ...

AMHERST, Mass. – A team of scientists led by François Lapointe, a research associate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has combined paleoclimatic data from the last 2,000 years with powerful computer modeling and in-the-field research on lake sediments and tree rings to show that an understudied phenomenon, known as atmospheric blocking, has long influenced temperature swings in the Arctic. As temperatures warm due to climate change, atmospheric blocking will help drive ever-wilder weather events. The study focused ...

Nextdoor is the world’s largest hyperlocal social media network, used by 13% of American adults. Yet little is known about the make-up of the actual neighborhoods—numbering approximately 220,000 across the United States—in which these accounts exist and what people in those communities talk about on the platform.  To address our limited understanding of this population, a team of New York University and University of Michigan researchers generated a demographic portrait of communities in which Nextdoor neighborhoods exist, the presence of public agencies in those communities, and what topics are most often discussed. Using U.S. Census data, other publicly available ...

Permafrost soils store large quantities of organic carbon and are often portrayed as a critical tipping element in the Earth system, which, once global warming has reached a certain level, suddenly and globally collapses. Yet this image of a ticking timebomb, one that remains relatively quiet until, at a certain level of warming, it goes off, is a controversial one among the research community. Based on the scientific data currently available, the image is deceptive, as an international team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has shown in a recently released study. According to their findings, there is no single ...

San Antonio, Texas – June 3, 2024 – Recognizing an unusual prevalence of bloodstream infections (BSI) that threatened extremely ill patients receiving Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, or ECMO, Tampa General Hospital (TGH) infection preventionists started an intervention that eliminated these infections completely from their 18-bed Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit (CTICU). At the APIC 2024 Annual Conference, presenters from the 1,000-bed, tertiary care, academic medical system  reported on how they reduced bloodstream infections in ECMO patients from a rate of 36% in October 2021 to a rate of 0% in April 2022. This rate was sustained for seven ...

The primary cause of lung cancer is smoking. However, the incidence of lung cancer among never-smokers has been steadily increasing, especially among women. While approximately 80% of never-smoking lung cancer patients are prescribed targeted therapies that focus on mutations in proteins such as EGFR and ALK, the remaining patients often receive cytotoxic chemotherapy with high side effects and relatively low response rates, highlighting the urgent need for targeted therapies. Dr. Lee Cheolju's ...

Converting CO2 into fuel and chemicals using electricity, also known as electrochemical conversion of CO2, is a promising way to reduce emissions. This process allows us to use carbon captured from industries and the atmosphere and turn it into resources that we usually get from fossil fuels. To advance ongoing research on efficient electrochemical conversion, scientists from Doshisha University have introduced a cost-effective method to produce valuable hydrocarbons from CO2. The study was made available online on 17 May 2024 and formally published in the journal Electrochimica Acta on 20 July 2024. The research team, led by Professor Takuya Goto and including Ms. Saya Nozaki from ...

How can someone have alcohol intoxication without consuming alcohol? Auto-brewery syndrome, a rare condition in which gut fungi create alcohol through fermentation, is described in a case study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.231319. “Auto-brewery syndrome carries substantial social, legal, and medical consequences for patients and their loved ones,” writes Dr. Rahel Zewude, University of Toronto, with coauthors. “Our patient had several [emergency department] visits, was assessed by internists and psychiatrists, and was certified ...

Implementing human papillomavirus (HPV)-based screening in British Columbia could eliminate cervical cancer in the province before 2040, according to a modelling study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.231682. More than 90% of cervical cancer cases worldwide are caused by 9 types of high-risk HPV. The World Health Organization and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer (CPAC) have both set targets to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040, defined as an annual rate of less than 4 per 100 000 women. The Pap test has been the primary screening ...

Berlin, Germany:  While influenza infection is a significant public health threat, causing serious illness in between three and five million people worldwide per year and leading to about up to 650,000 deaths, the effectiveness of influenza vaccines varies considerably between individuals depending on vaccine types and individual circumstances. A person’s ability to resist infection (host immunity) plays an important role in this. Now, researchers have developed a way of classifying host immunity in individuals, which may lead to the early identification of those who will not respond well to a regular vaccine schedule and therefore ...

Berlin, Germany:  Aneuploidy (the presence of an abnormal number of chromosomes) in embryos is a major cause of impaired embryo development, leading to conditions such as Down syndrome, as well as to pregnancy loss. The transfer of such embryos in women undergoing IVF is therefore usually avoided because of unfavourable pregnancy outcomes. But mosaic embryos, comprising both genetically normal and abnormal cells, can result in perfectly normal babies. Now, researchers have been able to understand how these mosaic ...

BOSTON—Metformin is safe to use during pregnancy to manage diabetes, with no long-term adverse effects on the children born and their mothers for at least 11 years after childbirth, according to research presented Sunday at ENDO 2024, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Boston, Mass. This is the first study to look at longer term effects of metformin use during pregnancy. “Metformin has been extensively used for managing raised blood glucose values in pregnancy for many decades now. It is the only blood glucose-lowering oral medication approved ...

BOSTON—GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1s) and SGLT-2 inhibitors lower the risk of major cardiovascular events like heart attacks and severe liver complications compared to other diabetes treatments, according to data being presented Sunday at ENDO 2024, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Boston, Mass. “Before this study, there was limited information about how these specific diabetes medications work in patients with both type 2 diabetes and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD),” said Alexander Kutz, M.D., M.P.H., M.Sc., a research fellow in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Medicine, at Brigham ...

Immunotherapy before surgery for patients with metastatic melanoma appears to be especially successful. Fifty-nine percent of patients responds so well to this therapy that adjuvant treatment is no longer needed, according to the results of the NADINA study that were published today. The NADINA study, led by researchers from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, was named one of the eleven clinical studies with the biggest impact on health care in 2024 by Nature Medicine. The study now proves that this was not an empty claim, as shown by the results presented by medical oncologist and research leader Christian Blank today during ASCO 2024, the international congress ...

BOSTON—Vitamin D tests certified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Clinical Standardization Programs (CSP) are well calibrated overall, according to a new study presented Sunday at ENDO 2024, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Boston, Mass. However, the researchers found some inaccuracies among the assays studied. The blood tests show an “appropriate” level of analytical accuracy, said the study’s lead researcher, Otoe Sugahara, manager of the CDC Vitamin D Standardization-Certification Program (VDSCP) in Atlanta, Ga. Analytical accuracy is the test’s ability to correctly analyze vitamin D in this ...

BOSTON—Among transgender and gender-diverse adults whose gender identity is nonbinary—not exclusively male or female—and who choose low-dose hormone treatment, most prefer to continue testosterone therapy at lower-than-recommended doses after at least six months of treatment, a new study finds. The study will be presented Sunday at ENDO 2024, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Boston, Mass. “Current guidelines for initiation of testosterone for gender affirmation assume that transgender and gender-diverse, or trans, individuals desire both rapid and complete masculinization,” ...

BOSTON—High insulin levels contribute to worse outcomes for Black women compared to white women who have an aggressive form of breast cancer called triple-negative breast cancer, according to a study presented Sunday at ENDO 2024, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Boston, Mass. Triple-negative breast cancer accounts for about 10-15% of all breast cancers. The term triple-negative breast cancer refers to the fact that the cancer cells do not have estrogen or progesterone receptors and do not make any or too much of the protein called HER2. The cells test ‘negative’ on all 3 tests. Triple-negative breast ...

BOSTON—Exposure to increased neighborhood violence has the power to change the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) for the stress hormone, cortisol, which may influence the aggressiveness of lung cancer, according to data presented Sunday at ENDO 2024, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Boston, Mass. “This research uncovers a previously unknown link between exposure to neighborhood violence, GR and lung tumor aggressiveness that can help us understand and fix the lung cancer health disparity seen in Black men” said Hannah Heath, B.S., a graduate research assistant ...