Author Interviews, Cancer Research, Clots - Coagulation / 18.04.2022
Cancer: Blood Type Linked to Risk of Blood Clots
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
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Dr. Englisch[/caption]
Dr. med. univ. Cornelia Englisch
Medical University of Vienna
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Patients with cancer are at high risk for developing venous thromboembolism (VTE). Venous thromboembolism includes deep vein thrombosis (DVT), when blood clots form in the deep veins of the legs and pulmonary embolism (PE), a potential life-threatening condition when a clot breaks free and lodges in the arteries of the lung.
Having a non-O blood type, meaning blood types A, AB or B, is a known risk factor for VTE in the general – non-cancer – population. Interestingly, it is the most common genetic risk factor for thrombosis.
If this is also the case in patients with cancer has not been clarified yet. We therefore wanted to assess the role of ABO blood type in cancer-associated thrombosis.
To achieve our goal, we utilized the dataset of the Vienna Cancer and Thrombosis Study (CATS); an observational cohort study including adult patients with active cancer.
Dr. Englisch[/caption]
Dr. med. univ. Cornelia Englisch
Medical University of Vienna
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Patients with cancer are at high risk for developing venous thromboembolism (VTE). Venous thromboembolism includes deep vein thrombosis (DVT), when blood clots form in the deep veins of the legs and pulmonary embolism (PE), a potential life-threatening condition when a clot breaks free and lodges in the arteries of the lung.
Having a non-O blood type, meaning blood types A, AB or B, is a known risk factor for VTE in the general – non-cancer – population. Interestingly, it is the most common genetic risk factor for thrombosis.
If this is also the case in patients with cancer has not been clarified yet. We therefore wanted to assess the role of ABO blood type in cancer-associated thrombosis.
To achieve our goal, we utilized the dataset of the Vienna Cancer and Thrombosis Study (CATS); an observational cohort study including adult patients with active cancer.
Dr. Cheng-Ying Ho[/caption]
Cheng-Ying Ho, MD, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Pathology
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Smell loss is one of the most common symptoms of COVID-19 infection. The mechanism of COVID-19-related smell loss is unclear. Previous studies mainly focused on the effect of the viral infection on the lining of the nasal cavity. We went a step beyond to examine the olfactory bulb, a region that transmits smell-related signals to the brain.
Dr. Ferris[/caption]
Laura Ferris, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Dermatology
Director of clinical trials for UPMC Department of Dermatology
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: In this quality initiative at UPMC (a large academic and community health system in Western PA and surrounding areas) Primary Care Physicians were trained to perform annual skin cancer screening examinations of their patients who were aged 35 years and older at routine medical visits.
Over a 5-year period more than 595,000 patients who were eligible to be screened were seen by a UPMC PCP and about 24% of them were screened. We compared the number and thickness (an important indicator of prognosis) of the melanomas diagnosed in those patients who were screened to those who were not screened.
Brett King, MD, PhD, FAAD
Associate Professor of Dermatology
Yale School of Medicine
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Alopecia areata is an autoimmune disorder marked by disfiguring, non-scarring hair loss, and there are no therapies approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treatment of the disease. JAK inhibitors are showing promise for treatment of severe alopecia areata. In this work, the pooled results of two phase 3 clinical trials of the JAK inhibitor baricitinib were reported out to 52 weeks.
Dr. Klimis-Zacas[/caption]
Dorothy Klimis-Zacas, MS, PhD, FACN
Professor of Clinical Nutrition
School of Food and Agriculture
Graduate Faculty
School of Biomedical Sciences
Associate Faculty, Institute of Medicine
Fulbright Fellow
University of Maine Orono, Maine 04469
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Bioactive compounds such as polyphenols have been documented to have wound healing properties . In the Klimis-Zacas laboratory, phenolic extracts (PE) from wild blueberries (WB) were reported to promote angiogenesis in HUVEC cells via cell migration, angiogenesis, through VEGF/P13K/AKT pathway documented that the PE, primarily composed of chlorogenic acid significantly promoted cell migration and closure speed of wound by 38% above the control as well as angiogenesis and gene expression for proteins critical for cell movement while the anthocyanin fraction inhibited the above processes (5,6).
Ali M. Fazlollahi[/caption]
Ali M. Fazlollahi, MSc, McGill Medicine Class of 2025
Neurosurgical Simulation and Artificial Intelligence Learning Centre
Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
McGill University, Montreal, Canada
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: COVID-19 disrupted hands on surgical exposure of medical students and academic centres around the world had to quickly adapt to teaching technical skills remotely. At the same time, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) allowed researchers at the Neurosurgical Simulation and Artificial Intelligence Learning Centre to develop an intelligent tutoring system that evaluates performance and provides high-quality personalized feedback to students. Because this is the first AI system capable of providing surgical instructions in simulation, we sought to evaluate its effectiveness compared with learning from expert human instructors who provided coaching remotely.
Dr. Ying-Hui Fu[/caption]
Ying-Hui Fu, PhD
Professor, Neurology
Weill Institute for Neurosciences
UCSF
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Most people are aware that a lack of sleep is associated with all sorts of health issues. However, familial natural short sleeper (FNSS) individuals sleep 4-6.5 hours a night most of their live and stay healthy. We set out to determine whether natural short sleep mutations can offer protection from various diseases. We chose Alzheimer as an example to start.
Dr. Palatini[/caption]
Paolo Palatini, M.D.
Professor of Internal Medicine
University of Padova
Padova, Italy
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Up to now doctors measured blood pressure (BP) on standing only in elderly people on pharmacological treatment with the purpose of detecting orthostatic hypotension. In young-to-middle-age people BP is currently measured only in the lying or the sitting posture.
Our starting point was that young borderline hypertensive people have an increased sympathetic activity and thus they might be hyperreactive to physical stimuli such as assuming the orthostatic posture which may be deleterious in the long run. This hypothesis was tested in the HARVEST, a study initiated in Italy in 1990, in which over 1200 young patients screened for stage 1 hypertension were enrolled.
Dr. Rathmann[/caption]
Prof. Wolfgang Rathmann MSPH
Prof. of Epidemiology
Deputy Director, Institute for Biometrics and Epidemiology,
German Diabetes Center, Heinrich Heine University
Düsseldorf, Germany
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Diabetes is associated with a poor prognosis of COVID-19. There have been raised concerns about a bidirectional relationship between diabetes and COVID-19. Recent studies raised the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 can cause diabetes. However, there is a lack of studies investigating the incidence of diabetes after recovery from COVID-19 in mild cases.
To provide more evidence, we analyzed electronic health records from 1,171 general and internal medicine practices across Germany between March 2020 and January 2021. This included 35,865 patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19. The incidence of diabetes after COVID-19 was compared with patients, who were diagnosed with an acute upper respiratory tract infection (AURI), matched for sex, age, and comorbidities including obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attack, and stroke.