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 8976 interviews to date!
More than
1811 interviews with researchers from JAMA,
313 Lancet
304 NEJM,
401 TheBMJ interviews.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Ahmedin Jemal, DVM, PHD
Scientific Vice President, Surveillance & Health Services Rsch
American Cancer Society, Inc.
Atlanta, GA 30303
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Historically, lung cancer rates have been higher in men than women at all ages because of the substantially higher cigarette smoking prevalence in men.
However, cigarette smoking prevalences over the past few decades have become similar between young men and women. Consistent with this pattern, we previously reported the convergence of lung cancer rates between young men and young women. In this paper, we examined the lung cancer incidence rates in young women versus young men in the contemporary cohorts.
We found that the historically higher lung cancer incidence rates in young men than in young women have reversed in whites and Hispanics born since the mid-1960s. However, this emerging incidence patterns were not fully explained by sex difference in smoking prevalence as cigarette smoking prevalences among whites and Hispanics were not higher in young women than young men.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Joann G. Elmore, MD, MPH
Professor of Medicine
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Director of the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program
Affiliate Professor of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: In a recent study published in 2017 in the British Medical Journal, our team found that pathologists disagreed on their diagnoses of some melanocytic skin biopsy lesions and early stage invasive melanoma more than 50% of the time. This concerning level of disagreement was particularly true for diagnoses in the middle of the disease spectrum, such as atypical lesions and melanoma in situ. For example, Figure 1 from this paper shows the diagnoses of 36 pathologists who interpreted the same glass slide of a skin biopsy using their own microscopes; the diagnoses ranged from a benign lesion to invasive melanoma.
Since that study, the American Joint Committee on Cancer has released new guidelines for melanoma staging. Given this change, we wanted to examine whether the updated guidelines improved the reliability of melanoma diagnosis.
We found that using the new guidelines improved the accuracy of pathologists’ diagnoses for invasive melanoma (Elmore J, et al, JAMA Network Open 2018). Continue reading
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Fishbane
Steven Fishbane, MD,
Chief, Division of Kidney Disease and Hypertension, Northwell Health
Vice President, Northwell Health for Network Dialysis Services, Northwell Health
Professor of Medicine, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell
Lead investigator of the ZS 005 study
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this announcement? Would you briefly explain what is meant by hyperkalemia?What are the dangers of an elevated potassium and how does LOKELMA differ from prior standard treatments?
Response: Hyperkalemia is when the potassium in the blood rises to potentially harmful levels. High potassium is primarily harmful for the heart. As the potassium level rises the risk for abnormal electrical rhythms or disruption of the heart’s pumping occur. When severe, a high potassium level can cause death.
Lokelma has been demonstrated to be effective for lowering potassium levels with a great degree of consistency. It is well tolerated and has a fairly rapid onset of potassium lowering compared to other drugs for the purpose. Continue reading
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr Caroline M Taylor
Wellcome Trust Research Fellow
Centre for Child and Adolescent Health
Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol
Oakfield House, Oakfield Grove, Bristol
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Mercury is a toxic metal that is widespread in the environment. In pregnancy, mercury in the mother’ bloodstream is transferred through the placenta to the fetus, where is can affect development of the nervous system. Mercury from vaccines has been the focus of attention particularly in regard to a link with autism in children. However, the amount of mercury used in the vaccines is small in comparison with mercury from the diet and atmospheric pollution, and in the EU at least, childhood vaccines no longer contain this preservative. The fear that mercury is linked to autism has persisted, despite increasing evidence that this is not the case.
The aim of our study was to look at mercury from the diet rather than vaccines – specifically from fish – in pregnant women. We measured the women’s mercury levels in their blood and asked them about how much fish they ate. We then followed up their children for 9 years and recorded how many of them had autism diagnosed within that time. We also measured how many of them had autist traits by measuring their social and communication difficulties. The data were part of the Children of the 90s study (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children – ALSPAC), which is based in Bristol, UK.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Premal Patel, MD, PGY-5
Urology
University of Manitoba
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? What should readers take away from your report?
Response: Within the literature there has only been small experimental studies which looked at impaired sleep and testosterone. To our knowledge, there has been no study that has evaluated sleep and testosterone using a population dataset. We utilized the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to assess the association of sleep with serum testosterone. NHANES examines a nationally representative sample of about ~5000 persons each year.
After performing a multivariate linear regression of numerous variables within the NHANES database (age, marital status, prior co-morbidities, number of hours of sleep, etc…) we found that a reduction in the number of hours slept, increasing body mass index and increasing age were associated with lower testosterone levels.
Given that this is a cross-sectional analysis, we are unable to provide causality of this relationship but we do feel it is important to counsel patients with low testosterone about the importance of living a healthy lifestyle which includes a well-balanced diet, exercise and sufficient sleep.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Lustig
Dr. Stuart Lustig, M.D., M.P.H
National Medical Executive for Behavioral Health
Cigna
Dr. Lustig discusses Cigna’s efforts to curb the opioid epidemic.
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for the Applying American Society of Addiction Medicine Performance Measures in Commercial Health Insurance and Services Data study?
Response: In 2016 Cigna announced a collaboration with the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) to improve treatment for people suffering from substance use disorders and establish performance measures and best practices for addiction treatment. Mining anonymized data from Cigna’s administrative data, Brandeis University researchers have validated a new way to hone in on trouble spots where substance use disorder treatment for opioid, alcohol and other drug dependence is suboptimal, like the way police departments use computers to identify high crime areas in need of greater scrutiny and attention.
The technique uses ASAM-defined performance measures to assess substance use disorder treatment patterns, giving researchers the ability to sort through administrative data and measure to the extent to which patients being treated for opioid or alcohol use disorder are receiving and using evidenced-based medications proven to be effective in improving outcomes and retention in treatment. It also measures whether those patients received support during substance withdrawal – a critical factor in the success of addiction treatment plans. The performance measures were first tested on the Veterans’ Health Administration in 2016 and now, on data from Cigna.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Weeks
William B Weeks, MD, PhD, MBA
The Dartmouth Institute
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: The background for the study is that a common narrative is that end-of-life healthcare costs are driving overall healthcare cost growth. Growth in end-of-life care has been shown, in research studies through the mid 2000’s, to be attributable to increasing intensity of care at the end-of-life (i.e., more hospitalizations and more use of ICUs).
The main findings of our study are that indeed there have been substantial increases in per-capita end-of-life care costs within the Medicare fee-for-service population between 2004-2009, but those per-capita costs dropped pretty substantially between 2009-2014. Further, the drop in per-capita costs attributable to Medicare patients who died (and were, therefore, at the end-of-life) accounts for much of the mitigation in cost growth that has been found since 2009 in the overall Medicare fee-for-service population.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Villani
Jennifer Villani, PhD, MPH
Office of Disease Prevention
National Institutes of Health
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) develops recommendations for the delivery of clinical preventive services based on the highest quality scientific evidence available. We performed a comprehensive assessment of the sources of funding for the research studies in this evidence base.
The results showed that government agencies supported the most articles (56%), with the remaining support coming from nonprofits or universities (32%), and industry (17%). The National Institutes of Health was the single largest funder of research articles underlying the USPSTF recommendations. Continue reading
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Drr. Castro
Mario Castro, M.D., M.P.H.
Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine,
Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, and Radiology
Washington University School of Medicine
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: This is a confirmatory phase 3 pivotal study that assessed the efficacy and safety of dupilumab in a population of uncontrolled moderate to severe asthmatics.
This was the largest phase 3 placebo controlled trial conducted in this population evaluating a biologic. It enrolled patients without any minimum requirement for any type of biomarker such as blood eosinophils. It clearly confirmed the efficacy of dupilumab in reducing severe asthma exacerbations, improving lung function, asthma control and quality of life in the overall population. It also showed that patients with evidence of type 2 inflammation (increased blood eosinophils or exhaled NO) had a greater magnitude of effect.