Over 37 million Americans have diabetes, and 90-95% of that population are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Lifestyle interventions, such as a healthy diet and a regular physical activity program, are methods to manage diabetes. A new study from a collaboration of investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, and Joslin Diabetes Center, part of Beth Israel Lahey Health, uses data from the Look AHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes) study, a randomized controlled trial that compared an intensive lifestyle intervention with diabetes support and education in patients diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and overweight or obesity to track the development of cardiovascular disease over time. In the current study, the research team assessed whether physical activity at certain times of day was associated with greater improvement in blood glucose control. Their findings suggest patients with type 2 diabetes who were ...
The collaboration aims to develop novel preclinical models with a view to identifying new treatments Almirall – a company which concentrates on medical dermatology – has linked up with the Centre for Genomic Regulation. The collaboration aims to develop novel preclinical models with a view to identifying new treatments for non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC). The condition poses a considerable health challenge, with basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma representing 70% and 25% of NMSC cases, respectively. The partnership – led by Almirall’s investigators Dr Cristina Gutiérrez and Dr Amadeu Gavaldà – will also incorporate CRG group leader and ICREA research professor Luciano Di Croce and his team. In partnership, they will establish experimental models that enable the validation of new therapeutic approaches and therapies for these diseases. The collaboration has emerged following the request for proposals from AlmirallShare – the company’s open innovation platform dedicated to discovering treatments for ...
Using artificial intelligence, researchers say, they’ve found a new type of antibiotic that works against a particularly menacing drug-resistant bacteria. When they tested the antibiotic on the skin of mice that were experimentally infected with the superbug, it controlled the growth of the bacteria, suggesting that the method could be used to create antibiotics tailored to fight other drug-resistant pathogens. What’s more, the compound identified by AI worked in a way that stymied only the problem pathogen. It didn’t seem to kill the many other species of beneficial bacteria that live in the gut or on the skin, making it a rare narrowly targeted agent. If more antibiotics worked this precisely, the researchers said, it could prevent bacteria from becoming resistant in the first place. The study was published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. “It’s incredibly promising,” said Dr. Cesar de la Fuente, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s ...
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is a case where the death of an apparently healthy infant before their first birthday remains unexplained even after thorough investigation. Death generally seems to occur when infants are sleeping. While rare, it is the leading post-neonatal infant death in the United States today, occurring in 103 out of 100,000 live births a year. Despite the initial success of national public health campaigns promoting safe sleep environments and healthier sleep positions in infants in the 1990s in the United States, rates of cases have remained the same over the last three decades. Researchers here collected tissue from the San Diego Medical Examiner’s Office related to infant deaths between 2004 and 2011. They then examined the brain stems of 70 infants who died during the period and tested them for consistent abnormalities. They found that the serotonin 2A/C receptor is altered in sudden infant death cases ...
A growing team of nearly 50 employees at the neurotech startup Paradromics is working on a brain implant that sounds like the work of science fiction. And it has caught the attention of federal regulators. Paradromics, founded in 2015, is developing a device that could help patients with severe paralysis regain their ability to communicate by deciphering their neural signals. And on Thursday, the Austin, Texas-based company announced that it has received the Breakthrough Device designation from the Food and Drug Administration for its flagship system, called the Connexus Direct Data Interface. CEO Matt Angle said the designation, in addition to a $33 million funding round the company also announced Thursday, will help Paradromics bring its device to market. Paradromics is part of the emerging brain-computer interface, or BCI, industry. A BCI is a system that deciphers brain signals and translates them into commands for external technologies. Experts believe the ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s independent panel of advisors Thursday recommended full approval of Pfizer’s vaccine that protects infants from respiratory syncytial virus, but raised safety concerns over premature births that may be tied to the shot. The committee unanimously said the vaccine efficacy data was sufficient. Ten of the advisors said the safety data on Pfizer’s shot was adequate, while four said it was not. “If the vaccine actually lives up to the data we’ve seen today, I can guarantee many infants and their parents will breathe easier in the coming years,” said Dr. Jay Portnoy, medical director at the Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, after voting in favor of the safety and efficacy of the shot. Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said he doesn’t believe there is enough data that indicates the safety of the vaccine is “reassuring.” “If ...
F. Perry Wilson, MD, MSCE This transcript has been edited for clarity. Welcome to Impact Factor, your weekly dose of commentary on a new medical study. I’m Dr F. Perry Wilson of the Yale School of Medicine. The thing to realize about this story is that even if it were just a problem for the military, it would be a huge problem. But although this is a story about the military, in the end, it may affect a much larger segment of the population. It’s a story about a military base, Camp Lejeune, and the toxins that leached into the water system there, poisoning the base residents for decades. It is about the most rapidly growing neurologic disease in the country. And it is very much about a simple molecule, trichloroethylene (TCE). TCE was first synthesized in 1864 and quickly became a sensation as an early anesthetic. Less toxic to ...
As more people use cannabis for recreational purposes, attitudes towards the drug have changed. For example, research has shown that dispensaries often recommend cannabis—also referred to as marijuana—to pregnant women to ease pregnancy symptoms, especially morning sickness. There is a growing body of literature attesting to poor child outcomes if cannabinoids are consumed during pregnancy. The exact effects on the developing fetus, however, remain unclear. Researchers in the US have now examined how timing of cannabis exposure during pregnancy impacts fetal development. “We show that even when marijuana use occurred only in the first trimester of pregnancy, birth weight was significant reduced, by more than 150g on average,” said Dr. Beth Bailey, professor and director of population health research at Central Michigan University and senior author of the study published in Frontiers in Pediatrics. “If that use continued into the second trimester, newborn head circumference was significantly decreased as well.” ...
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES By Nick Triggle Health correspondent Hospitals in England have failed to hit key targets to tackle the backlogs in cancer care and routine treatment. Waiting times show too many patients were still facing long waits at the end of March. The targets were to eliminate 18-month waits for planned care, such as knee and hip replacements, and to bring 62-day cancer waits to pre-pandemic levels. NHS England said huge progress had been made, particularly on routine care. The numbers waiting more than 18 months for treatment peaked in September 2021 at nearly 125,000. By the end of March, just over 10,700 were waiting that long – but NHS England said about 4,000 of them were complex cases or patients who had been offered treatment but had chosen to wait. Half of the people were concentrated in 10 NHS trusts. Overall, there are now a record 7.3 million ...
By Dr. Priyom Bose, Ph.D.May 11 2023Reviewed by Benedette Cuffari, M.Sc. Among all neurological diseases, the incidence of Parkinson’s disease (PD) has increased significantly. PD is typically diagnosed on the basis of motor nerve symptoms, such as resting tremors, rigidity, and bradykinesia. However, the detection of non-motor symptoms, such as constipation, apathy, loss of smell, and sleep disorders, could help in the early diagnosis of PD by several years to decades. In a recent ACS Central Science study, scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) discuss a machine learning (ML)-based tool that can detect PD years before the first onset of symptoms. Study: Interpretable Machine Learning on Metabolomics Data Reveals Biomarkers for Parkinson’s Disease. Image Credit: SomYuZu / Shutterstock.com Background At present, the overall diagnostic accuracy for PD based on motor symptoms is 80%. This accuracy could be increased if PD was diagnosed based on biomarkers rather than primarily depending on physical symptoms. Several ...
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