Some triptans are a more effective treatment for acute migraines than newer, more expensive drugs, finds an analysis of the latest evidence published by The BMJ today. Triptans work by narrowing blood vessels in the brain and preventing the release of chemicals that cause pain and inflammation. The findings show that four triptans - eletriptan, rizatriptan, sumatriptan, and zolmitriptan - were better at relieving migraine pain than the recently marketed and more expensive drugs lasmiditan, rimegepant, and ubrogepant, which were comparable to paracetamol ...

Researchers found that a medicine called ferric carboxymaltose given in drip through the vein works faster and better than an iron tablet taken by mouth for the treatment of anaemia – and it is as safe as the tablet. The findings were published in Lancet Global Health.  Anaemia (low blood level) is a common cause of ill-health or death in mothers and their babies, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia where more than four out of ten pregnant women have the condition. A sizeable proportion of pregnant women in Nigeria proceed to giving birth while still anaemic ...

Between 1990 and 2021, the number of people who had a new stroke (up by 70%), died from a stroke (up by 44%), and stroke-related health loss (up by 32%), has risen substantially worldwide. Stroke is highly preventable, with 84% of the stroke burden in 2021 attributable to 23 modifiable risk factors, including air pollution, excess body weight, high blood pressure, smoking, and physical inactivity—presenting a public health challenge and an opportunity for action. Notably, the contribution of high temperatures to poor health and early death due to stroke has ...

A new study in the peer-reviewed Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology estimated the incidence of neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS), a potentially fatal adverse effect of antipsychotic treatment, among individuals ages 5-24 years. Click here to read the article now. Wayne Ray, PhD, from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and coauthors, used national Medicaid data from 2004-2013 to identify patients beginning antipsychotic treatment and calculated the incidence of NMS during antipsychotic use. The investigators identified five ...

Cyclists choosing a new helmet can see how much protection different helmets offer, thanks to new safety testing and ratings from Imperial College London.    Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a simple new cycle helmet safety rating system with simple-to-understand scores from 0-5, designed to help buyers select which helmet to buy and assist manufacturers in future helmet design. The system is based on extensive new safety testing experiments on medium-sized helmets at Imperial.    Testing on the UK’s 30 most popular helmets, funded by The Road Safety Trust, revealed significant ...

Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are continuing to fall behind their peers with the gap widening despite the introduction of SEND legislation. This is according to a new study by Durham University which analysed data on 2.5 million Year 6 pupils across four school years from 2014-2019. The research suggests there is a need to re-evaluate the policies for SEND provision and how pupils with SEND are supported in schools. It calls for more investment to support SEND pupils and for increased professional development for teachers and teaching assistants. Using ...

Half of heavier drinkers say calorie labels on alcohol would lead to a change in their drinking habits Just over half of heavier drinkers in England say they would make changes to their drinking if calorie labels for alcohol were introduced, according to a new study by UCL researchers. The findings, the researchers said, suggested calorie labels could help some drinkers maintain a healthier weight. The study, published in the journal BMJ Open, looked at survey responses from 4,683 adults in England to assess the impact that alcohol calorie labelling might have on people’s attitudes and drinking ...

LAWRENCE – Xiaobo Quan is proud that his study is the first of its kind to link operating room design to the length of knee- and hip-replacement surgeries. Thus, the University of Kansas School of Architecture & Design associate professor believes its findings can be used to optimize spaces that will both produce better outcomes, via shorter surgeries, for patients and boost the hospital’s bottom line. For the article “Can Operating Room Design Make Orthopedic Surgeries Shorter, Safer, and More Efficient?: A Quasi-Experimental Study,” ---------- link to: https://doi.org/10.1177/19375867241254529 --------- in the journal Health Environments Research & Design, ...

A study has revealed significant therapeutic inertia in the treatment of women with multiple sclerosis (MS), highlighting gender disparities that could impact long-term health outcomes for women of childbearing age.1 The findings, presented today at ECTRIMS 2024, suggest that concerns related to pregnancy may lead to delayed or reduced use of disease-modifying treatments (DMTs), even before pregnancy becomes a consideration. In an extensive analysis of 22,657 patients with relapsing MS (74.2% women) who were on the French ...

With publicly funded correlative science in the nation’s Cancer Cooperative Groups reduced to a trickle, Group leaders propose implementing a long-standing National Academy of Medicine recommendation to bring new money to this area of research through public-private partnerships. They also recommend major process changes to remove significant barriers for researchers to access the biological samples contributed by patients. The current Journal of Clinical Oncology issue features ‘Correlative Science in the Cooperative Group System—Re-Engineering for Success.’ This Position Paper represents consensus among Evanthia Galanis, MD, DSc for the Alliance for Clinical ...

Kashif Nawaz, distinguished researcher and section head for Building Technologies Research at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, or ASME. The Fellow grade recognizes outstanding engineering achievements for members with 10 or more years of active practice. Nawaz joined ORNL in 2016 as a research scientist in buildings equipment. He specializes in the heating, cooling and dehumidification systems of buildings including the development of novel heat exchangers and enhanced phase-change material ...

U2opia Technology has licensed Situ and Heartbeat, a package of technologies from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory that offers a new method for advanced cybersecurity monitoring in real time. Situ, which discovers and understands otherwise-undetectable events by analyzing security data, will go to the market through a commercial license. The company will continue to explore opportunities for Heartbeat, which detects cyber attacks by focusing on the physical behavior of a protected device, through a research and development license.  U2opia Technology, a woman- and minority- led company, is directed by Maurice Singleton III, chief executive officer, ...

Some of the most dramatic climatic events in our planet’s history are “Snowball Earth” events that happened hundreds of millions of years ago, when almost the entire planet was encased in ice up to 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) thick. These “Snowball Earth” events have happened only a handful of times and do not occur on regular cycles. Each lasts for millions of years or tens of millions of years and is followed by dramatic warming, but the details of these transitions are poorly ...

Wednesday, September 18, 2024, CLEVELAND: A clinical trial has demonstrated that the cancer drug pomalidomide is safe and effective in treating hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT), a rare bleeding disorder that impacts more than 1 in 5,000 people worldwide. The trial, led by Keith McCrae, M.D., of Cleveland Clinic and supported by the National Institutes of Health, was stopped early because of these successful findings, and has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The impetus for this trial was a single patient. About ...

A clinical trial supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was stopped early after researchers found sufficient evidence that a drug used to treat bone marrow cancer and Kaposi sarcoma is safe and effective in treating hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT), a rare bleeding disorder that affects 1 in 5,000 people worldwide. The trial results, which are published in the New England Journal of Medicine, detail how patients with HHT given the drug, called pomalidomide, experienced a significant reduction in the severity of nosebleeds, needed fewer of the blood transfusions and iron infusions that HHT often demands, ...

A drug approved for treating the blood cancer multiple myeloma may offer a safe and effective way to reduce the risk of severe nosebleeds from a rare but devastating bleeding disorder. Hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT), the world's second-most-common inherited bleeding disorder, affects approximately 1-in-5,000 people and can have life-threatening complications, but there are currently no U.S. FDA-approved drugs to treat HHT. The PATH-HHT study, the first-ever randomized, placebo-controlled ...

Associate professor of chemical engineering Bryan Berger received funding from the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce the impact of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, in food and farming communities. The award is part of the over $15 million the EPA granted to 10 institutions for PFAS reduction research, aimed at improving farm viability and increasing knowledge of PFAS accumulation.  Water sample collection for testing in Limestone, Maine. (Contributed photo) Known as forever chemicals, PFAS are man-made substances that have been used in industry ...

Superintelligence — AI systems that surpass human intelligence — could be just a decade away, raising urgent questions about how to ensure their safety and alignment with human values, according to OpenAI.  These AI systems could be hugely beneficial, but more sophisticated systems create the possibility for unpredictability. Misinterpreting human values or intent, algorithmic biases and security risks are all cause for concern, especially with highly developed AI systems where the potential consequences are far greater. Yu Meng, assistant professor of computer science at ...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—A new website, AnimalMethodsBias.org, created by the Coalition to Illuminate and Address Animal Methods Bias (COLAAB), provides researchers guidance and resources aimed at helping them successfully publish nonanimal biomedical research by overcoming the preference some peer reviewers have for animal-based research methods. “We recently found that half of researchers surveyed had been asked by reviewers to add an animal experiment to their otherwise animal-free study,” says Catharine ...

MINNEAPOLIS – People whose diet more closely resembles the MIND diet may have a lower risk of cognitive impairment, according to a study published in the September 18, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Results were similar for Black and white participants. These results do not prove that the MIND diet prevents cognitive impairment, they only show an association. The MIND diet is a combination of the Mediterranean and DASH diets. It includes green leafy vegetables like spinach, ...

MINNEAPOLIS – A class of drugs for diabetes may be associated with a lower risk of dementia and Parkinson’s disease, according to a study published in the September 18, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study looked at sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors, which are also known as gliflozins. They lower blood sugar by causing the kidneys to remove sugar from the body through urine. “We know that these neurodegenerative diseases like dementia and Parkinson’s disease are common and the number of cases is growing as the ...

SECORE International’s Coral Seeding approach utilizes assisted reproduction, the breeding of corals, for reef restoration. This approach is realized within a training and partner network throughout the Caribbean. Now, a peer-reviewed study shows that all the effort was worthwhile: during the devastating heatwave in the Caribbean in 2023, the young, bred corals out on the reef stayed healthy while most of the remaining wild corals bleached and many died in the aftermath. The summer of 2023 was deadly for many corals in the Caribbean Basin. An unprecedented heatwave, in intensity as well as in duration, hit the Caribbean with catastrophic ...

A mysterious tusked animal depicted in South African rock art might portray an ancient species preserved as fossils in the same region, according to a study published September 18, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Julien Benoit of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. The Horned Serpent panel is a section of rock wall featuring artwork of animals and other cultural elements associated with the San people of South Africa, originally painted between 1821 and 1835. Among the painted figures is ...

Climate change and a range of other human impacts are putting marine animals at risk of extinction – even those living in almost pristine marine habitats and diverse coastal regions – reports a new study by Casey O'Hara of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, and colleagues, published September 18, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. Human activities on land and sea, in combination with climate change, are degrading coastal ...

Stuttgart – Scientists at the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) have developed hexagon-shaped robotic components, called modules, that can be snapped together LEGO-style into high-speed robots that can be rearranged for different capabilities. The team of researchers from the Robotic Materials Department at MPI-IS, led by Christoph Keplinger, integrated artificial muscles into hexagonal exoskeletons that are embedded with magnets, allowing for quick mechanical and electrical connections. The team’s work, “Hexagonal electrohydraulic modules for rapidly reconfigurable high-speed robots” will be published in Science ...