MedicalResearch.com specializes in exclusive interviews with medical researchers from major and specialty journals and presenters at health care meetings.
Learn directly from the researchers as they discuss the ideas behind their investigations and their plans for future studies. Over 7830 interviews to date!
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Sun
Ruirui Sun, Ph.D.
Doctoral Research Associate at University at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government
State University of New York at Albany
Albany, New York Area
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Hospital inpatient care has experienced changes due to factors such as population growth, rising of prevalence of chronic disease and efforts to reduce unnecessary hospitalizations. We generated information from the National Hospital Utilization and Costs path on Fast Stats (https://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/faststats/landing.jsp ), to present the trends on national hospitalization and costs from 2005 to 2014, as well as the most common diagnoses among inpatient stays over the 10-year period.
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings?
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Hidradenitis suppurativa
Wikipedia image
Dr Jean Fletcher
Assistant Professor
Schools of Medicine and Biochemistry & Immunology
Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin
Dublin, Ireland
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is an inflammatory skin disease which causes deep, painful lesions in areas such as the underarms and groin. 1-4% of people are thought to suffer from the disease, however as it is under recognised and often misdiagnosed these may be conservative estimates. The pain and distress associated with HS leads to a poor quality of life with many patients experiencing depression.
Current interventions include combinations of antibiotics, surgery to remove lesions and more recently the use of the biologic therapies such as TNF inhibitors; however these are often ineffective and there is a pressing need for more effective treatments.
The cause of Hidradenitis suppurativa is unknown, however there are known risk factors which include smoking and obesity, and there is an association with inflammatory bowel disease, which suggests that dysregulation of the immune system may play a role.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Petrosky
EmikoPetrosky MD M.P.H
Science Officer, National Violent Death Reporting System at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Emory University Rollins School of Public Health
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Homicide is one of the leading causes of death for women aged 44 years and younger. In 2015, 3,519 girls and women died by homicide in the United States. It is the 5th leading cause of death for women under 45 years age (defining women as 18-44 years of age).
The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) links together data from death certificates, coroner/medical examiner reports, and law enforcement reports, resulting in more information about the circumstances of death than what is available elsewhere.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Dellinger
E. Patchen Dellinger, M.D.
Professor, Department of Surgery
University of Washington, Box 356410
Seattle, Washington 98195-6410
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: As I passed the age of 70 myself and began considering when to slow down and/or retire I decided to examine the literature about age and physician competence. I have had a wonderful, rewarding time in surgery but have always wanted to provide the best possible care for my patients. On my review of an extensive literature on this topic I found examples of physicians who had become dangerous to their patients with age but persisted because of their eminence and also of physicians who continued to deliver high quality care well into old age.
In medicine, unlike most other safety conscious industries, we have not really taken a systematic approach to the issue of policies related to the aging physician.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Parvati Singh B. Tech, MBA, MPA
PhD student, Department of Public Health,
University of California, Irvine and
Dr. Tim Bruckner, first author
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: This study builds upon earlier research by our group which showed that male fetal deaths rose and the number of liveborn males fell after the 9/11 attacks. Here we show that, in California, the number of live born males with birth defects fell after 9/11.
This finding appears consistent with the notion that frail male gestations, such as those with defects, may have been lost in utero as a result of the stress induced by the 9/11 attacks.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Damiano Pizzol
Damiano Pizzol
Operational Research Unit, Doctors with Africa Cuamm
Beira, Mozambique
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Since the 1970s the association between diabetes and the development of erectile dysfunction has been documented both in animal models and humans Several studies have considered the prevalence of erectile dysfunction in diabetes and the majority agree that the incidence of erectile dysfunction in men with diabetes is two- to three-fold higher than in the general population. It is estimated that erectile dysfunction affects up to 75% of all men with diabetes, it is age correlated and occurs at a younger age in men with diabetes.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Prof. Wesnes
Professor Keith A. Wesnes
BSc PhD FSS CPsychol FBPsS
Head Honcho, Wesnes Cognition Ltd
Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Medical School, University of Exeter, UK
Visiting Professor, Department of Psychology
Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK
Adjunct Professor, Centre for Human Psychopharmacology, Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia
Visiting Professor, Medicinal Plant Research Group
Newcastle University, UK
Wesnes Cognition Ltd, Little Paddock, Streatley Hill, Streatley on Thames UK
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: This data we reported were taken from the PROTECT study, a 10-year research programme being conducted jointly by Kings College London and the University of Exeter Medical School. It started in November 2015 and over 20,000 individuals aged 50 to 96 years have enrolled.
A highly novel feature of the study is that it is run entirely remotely, the participants logging on via the internet at home and providing demographic and life style information, and also performing online cognitive tasks of key aspects of cognitive function. The tasks are from two well-validated systems, CogTrack and the PROTECT test system, and assess major aspects of cognitive function including focused and sustained attention, information processing, reasoning and a range of aspects of memory.
One of the lifestyle questions was ‘How frequently do you engage in word puzzles, e.g. crosswords?’ and the 6 possible answers were: never; occasionally; monthly; weekly; daily; more than once per day. We analysed the cognitive data from 17,677 individuals who had answered the question, and found that the more often the participants reported engaging in such puzzles, the better their cognitive function on each of the 9 cognitive tasks they performed. The group who never performed such puzzles were poorest on all measures, and the improvements were mostly incremental as the frequency of use increased. The findings were highly statistically reliable, and we controlled for factors including age, gender and education. To evaluate the magnitudes of these benefits, we calculated the average decline over the age-range on the various tasks in the study population. The average difference between those who ‘never’ did puzzles to those who did so ‘more than once a day’ was equivalent to 11 years of ageing; and between those who never did puzzles and all those who did was 8 years.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Eralda Asllanaj
Eralda Asllanaj
Department of Epidemiology
Erasmus University Medical Center
Rotterdamthe Netherlands
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: It is known that women with early onset of menopause (age below 45 years) have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and overall mortality. This increased risk is thought to be due to the adverse effects of menopause on cardiovascular risk factors.
Type 2 diabetes is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, but it remains unclear whether age at menopause affects the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Our study shows that women who experience menopause before the age of 40 were almost 4 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those experiencing menopause after 55 years old. Moreover, those who had menopause between 40 to 44 years were 2.4 times more likely to have diabetes later in life. The risk of having diabetes reduced by 4 % per year older the women experienced menopause. Adjustment for the various confounding factors and differences in genetic predisposition to early menopause did not affect the results.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Prof. Thangaratinam
Shakila Thangaratinam
Professor of Maternal and Perinatal Health
Joint Director of BARC
(Barts Research Centre for Women’s Health)
Women’s Health Research Unit | Multidisciplinary Evidence Synthesis Hub (MESH)
Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry
R & D Director for Women’s Health
Queen Mary University of London
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Pregnant women who are overweight or obese, or who gain excess weight gain in pregnancy are at high risk of complications. We wanted to find
We established a network (International Weight Management in Pregnancy i-WIP) of researchers from 16 countries, and 41 institutions to answer the above.
We found that women who followed a healthy diet and moderate physical activity gained less weight in pregnancy than other women; this beneficial effect was observed irrespective of mother’s body mass index, parity, ethnicity, and underlying medical condition.
Diet and physical activity in pregnancy has a beneficial effect on weight gain in pregnancy, and lowers the odds of caesarean section, and gestational diabetes.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Ravesteijn
Bastian Ravesteijn PhD
Department of Health Care Policy
Harvard Medical School
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: We find that higher out-of-pocket costs for mental health care could have the unintended consequence of increasing the use of acute and involuntary mental health care among those suffering from the most debilitating disorders. Continue reading