Prior studies of uromodulin, the most abundant protein in urine, and kidney disease have focused primarily on urinary uromodulin levels. The current study evaluated associations of serum uromodulin levels with risk of end-stage kidney disease and mortality in a cohort of African American adults with hypertension and chronic kidney disease. The research, recently published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases (AJKD), found that participants with lower levels of uromodulin at baseline were more likely to develop end-stage kidney disease, even after accounting for baseline kidney ...

Jeffrey Raskin, MS, MD, a neurosurgeon at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, performed the first ever computer-guided radiofrequency ablation to decrease excessive muscle tone (called hypertonia) in a child with cerebral palsy. In hypertonia, muscles are constantly activated, which causes severe pain and deformity in the bones and joints, and profoundly impacts the child’s quality of life. Medications are not always effective, and these patients do not have any other surgical options. Dr. ...

Previous studies have shown that overweight and obesity are risk factors for several types of cancer. It is also known that obese women have a higher risk of cancer than their male counterparts, and that the risk level decreases with intentional weight loss. However, evidence of a link between obesity, weight loss and haematological cancer has been limited. The current study, published in the journal Lancet Healthy Longevity, used data from the Swedish Obese Subjects (SOS) study at the University of Gothenburg and data from e.g., the Cancer ...

Multiyear La Niña events have become more common over the last 100 years, according to a new study led by University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa atmospheric scientist Bin Wang. Five out of six La Niña events since 1998 have lasted more than one year, including an unprecedented triple-year event. The study was published this week in Nature Climate Change. “The clustering of multiyear La Niña events is phenomenal given that only ten such events have occurred since 1920,” said Wang, emeritus professor of atmospheric sciences in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean ...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of long-term disability and premature death, especially among military personnel and those playing contact sports. Substantial research has examined acute and chronic neurological consequences of TBI; however, non-neurological conditions associated with TBI are understudied. A new review paper by investigators from Mass General Brigham presents key findings on long-term associations between TBI and cardiovascular disease, highlighting that nervous system dysfunction, neuroinflammation, changes in the brain-gut connection, and post-injury comorbidities may elevate risk of both cardiovascular ...

Freelance journalist Adele Waters speaks to scores of doctors unable to work or play with their children, forced to sell their homes or facing financial destitution by an illness they caught while doing their jobs. She hears of “shockingly low” access to protective equipment faced by many doctors in their workplaces, and how some have struggled for medical colleagues to take their symptoms seriously. Charities that provide financial support to doctors in need have seen a sudden rise in demand, and now there are calls for long covid to be considered an occupational disease to help doctors and other healthcare workers access support and financial ...

New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes [EASD]) shows that morning and afternoon physical activity are associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes across all population levels of education and income, but found no statistically significant association between evening physical activity and risk type 2 diabetes. The study is by Dr Caiwei Tian, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, and Dr Chirag Patel, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. and colleagues. Physical activity is a preventive factor for type 2 diabetes, but its timing and consistency (in contrast with overall sum of physical activity) ...

New research has found that monkeys increase their use of scent markings to compensate for human noise pollution. Pied tamarins (Saguinus bicolor) use both vocal calls and scent markings to communicate, and the new study – published in the journal Ethology Ecology & Evolution – is the first to investigate how primates change their communication strategies in response to noise pollution. The pied tamarin has an extremely narrow geographic range in central Brazil, much of which now lies within the city of ...

Leesburg, VA, September 20, 2023—According to an accepted manuscript published in the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), upgrade and downgrade rates from targeted biopsy to radical prostatectomy were not significantly different between patients whose MRI examinations were clinically interpreted using PI-RADS Version v2.0 or v2.1. “Implementation of the most recent PI-RADS update did not improve the incongruence in prostate cancer grade assessment between targeted biopsy and surgery,” wrote corresponding author Baris Turkbey, MD, from the Molecular Imaging Branch ...

Almost 80% of plastic in the waste stream ends up in landfills or accumulates in the environment. Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have developed a technology that converts a conventionally unrecyclable mixture of plastic waste into useful chemicals, presenting a new strategy in the toolkit to combat global plastic waste. The technology, invented by ORNL’s Tomonori Saito and former postdoctoral researcher Md Arifuzzaman, uses an exceptionally efficient organocatalyst that allows selective deconstruction ...

A study of Canadian hospitalizations from 2007-2019 show that over 75% of patients with moderate to severe acute kidney injury (AKI) do not get appropriate follow-up kidney health testing after hospital discharge. A study in Alberta, Canada, examined care received by over 20,000 hospitalized with AKI during hospitalization and after discharge between 2009 and 2017. The results, recently published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases (AJKD), showed that a low proportion of patients with moderate to severe AKI were seen by a kidney specialist ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Living things from bacteria to plants to humans must constantly adjust the chemical soup of proteins -- the workhorse molecules of life -- inside their cells to adapt to stress or changing conditions, such as when nutrients are scarce, or when a pathogen attacks. Now, researchers have identified a previously unknown molecular mechanism that helps explain how they do it. Studying a spindly plant called Arabidopsis thaliana, a Duke University-led team discovered short snippets of folded RNA that, under normal conditions, keep levels of defense proteins low to avoid harming the plants themselves. But when the plants detect a pathogen, these folded RNA structures ...

For the first time, scientists have mapped the reproductive strategies and life cycle of an endangered coral species, offering hope it can be clawed back from the path to extinction.  The purple cauliflower soft coral, Dendronephthya australis, is endemic to south-eastern Australia, with the largest populations historically found in the Port Stephens estuary in New South Wales. It is one of the 100 priority species on the Federal Government’s Threatened Species Strategy.  Not only is the future ...

Brown adipocytes are specialized cells that can use energy to produce heat. This property makes them attractive tools for the treatment of diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes. Until recently, this therapeutic potential was constrained by limited understanding of how brown adipocyte tissue (BAT) develops from precursors. A team led by investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, identified a set of cellular signaling cues that lead up to brown ...

Philadelphia, September 20, 2023 – Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) found that college athletes had worse post-injury outcomes related to concussions they experienced outside of sports than those they experienced while playing sports. Additionally, female athletes who sustained their injury outside of sports had more severe symptoms and more days in sports lost to injury relative to male athletes. These findings suggest the need for improved concussion recognition, reporting, and monitoring outside of sports. The study was recently published online by the Journal of Athletic Training. Concussions have the potential to ...

Philadelphia, September 20, 2023 – Zebrafish have revolutionized research into a wide variety of rare and complex genetic diseases. In early development stages, their transparent bodies allow researchers to more easily study tissues and organs. However, studying organ-level defects in adult zebrafish presents a variety of challenges that prevent researchers from studying them at a microscopic level. In a new study, researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed a noninvasive method for conducting magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in adult zebrafish. ...

The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) and the Journalists Network on Generations are welcoming 15 distinguished reporters for the next cohort of the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program, now in its 14th year. They represent a wide range of general audience, ethnic, and community media outlets, including local and national publications. This year’s group brings the program’s total number of participating reporters to 232. The new fellows were chosen — by a panel of gerontological and editorial professionals — based on their proposals for ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Do you want to improve your brain health? Neurologists, the experts in brain health, have a plan. The American Academy of Neurology (AAN), the world’s largest association of neurologists and neuroscience professionals with over 40,000 members, is sharing its vision to improve the nation’s brain health by 2050. The new vision is part of a new AAN position statement on brain health, published online September 20, 2023, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The AAN’s vision for national brain health by 2050 includes: Brain health research that leads to scientific breakthroughs Preventive neurology as a thriving ...

(Memphis, Tenn.— Sept. 20, 2023) Hyperdiploidy is a genetic condition observed in cancer cells, where the cells contain more chromosomes than usual. The condition is particularly prevalent in childhood B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), the most common form of pediatric cancer. To bring clarity to the field, researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital worked to better define this type of ALL in the context of modern therapy to more accurately predict patient outcomes and guide treatment decisions. The findings were published today in the Journal of Clinical ...

It is an all-too-common fact that potential drugs can look extremely promising in preclinical laboratory testing but fail when it comes to effectively treating humans. To better translate promising lab findings into effective new treatments, a team of researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC, supported by the National Institutes of Health, has developed, and tested, an innovative new system for conducting preclinical research on six potential new stroke treatments, identifying the strongest candidate for further study. “We now have a feasible preclinical research system ...

The American College of Cardiology (ACC), NCD Alliance and World Heart Federation (WHF), with support from Viatris, brought together leaders in global health and technology for a “Enhancing the Health Workforce Through Innovation,” forum yesterday in New York. The event was held in advance of the 78th session of the U.N. General Assembly discussion on the need for universal health coverage to improve global access to care and reduce the out-of-pocket burden of rising health care costs. “ACC has been committed to improving health care for all ...

“[...] we demonstrated that DPP4 inhibition increased sunitinib efficacy in DPP4-high RCC spheroids and DPP4 was upregulated in sunitinib-resistant RCC cells.”  BUFFALO, NY- September 20, 2023 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on September 15, 2023, entitled, “Potential repurposing of DPP4 inhibitors for target therapy resistance in renal cell carcinoma.” In their new editorial, researchers Kuniko Horie and Satoshi Inoue from Saitama Medical University and Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Geriatrics and Gerontology discuss renal cell carcinoma (RCC) — a major ...

“This etoposide-induced senescence model may help investigate the initiation of cellular senescence in chondrocytes [...]” BUFFALO, NY- September 20, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 17, entitled, “Development of a DNA damage-induced senescence model in osteoarthritic chondrocytes.” Senescent cells (SnCs) have been described to accumulate in osteoarthritis (OA) joint tissues in response to injury, thereby participating in OA development and progression. However, clinical therapeutic approaches targeting SnCs using senolysis, ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. –  People experiencing a high degree of social vulnerability are also more exposed to wildfires in Oregon and Washington as wildfire risk increases, a new study shows. Social vulnerability is a characteristic of a person or community, such as age, race or ethnicity or socioeconomic status, that affects their susceptibility to incur harm from a hazard. From 2011 through 2021, the number of people with high social vulnerability who were exposed to wildfire in Oregon, Washington and California more than tripled compared to the previous decade. This compounding ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- For diabetes patients who must give themselves frequent insulin injections, the risk of low blood sugar can be life-threatening. A potential solution is a type of engineered insulin that circulates in the body and springs into action only when needed. Researchers working on this type of “glucose-responsive insulin” (GRI) hope that it could be injected less often and help the body maintain normal blood sugar levels for longer periods of time. To help in the efforts to develop this kind of insulin, MIT engineers have created a computational model that ...