Author: Marie Benz MD FAAD
05 Apr Risk factors for first venous thromboembolism around pregnancy: a population based cohort study from the United Kingdom
Author Interview with Dr Matthew Grainge Achieved his BSc in Statistics at Reading University and his MSc in Medical Statistics at the University of Leicester, before going on to complete his PhD on the topic of cervical screening and human papillomavirus at the University of Nottingham. MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings...
04 Apr Melatonin Secretion and the Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes
Posted at 03:02h
in Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Diabetes, JAMA, Medical Research Centers, Melatonin, Sleep Disorders
MedicalResearch.com Interview with Dr. Ciaran McMullan MD
from Channing Division of Network Medicine in Boston, a research division within the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Mass
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. McMullan: In this observational study performed in non-diabetic women we found that lower nocturnal melatonin secretion predicted future risk of developing type 2 diabetes. When we categorized the individuals by category of nocturnal melatonin secretion we found that those in the lowest category had twice the risk as those in the highest category of nocturnal melatonin secretion. This association remained even after adjusting for other well established risk factors for development of diabetes including body mass index, physical activity, dietary factors, family history of diabetes, smoking and hypertension. This increased risk translates into the lower melatonin secretion group having an additional 5 cases of incident diabetes per 1000 person years than the high melatonin secretion group.
03 Apr Rapid Improvement of Diabetes After Gastric Bypass Surgery: Is It the Diet or Surgery?
MedicalResearch.com Author Interview: Ildiko Lingvay, MD, MPH, MSCS Departments of Internal Medicine–Endocrinology and Clinical Sciences, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Lingvay: We found that the restrictive diet imposed after a bariatric procedure like RYGB is the key element to the rapid improvement in the diabetes seen immediately after surgery.03 Apr Genome-wide reprogramming of the chromatin landscape underlies endocrine therapy resistance in breast cancer
MedicalResearch.com eInterview with Dr. Mathieu Lupien PhD
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network
Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI)
Assistant Professor
Department of Medical Biophysics
University of Toronto
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Lupien: Approximately 50% of breast cancer patients fail to respond to the standard of care based on endocrine (hormonal) therapy. Our research identifies a mechanism that accounts for this resistance. Drugs against this mechanism are already tested for other diseases. Hence, our discovery should rapidly help reposition these drugs against endocrine therapy resistant breast cancer.
02 Apr Interpolated memory tests reduce mind wandering and improve learning of online lectures
MedicalResearch.com Interview with Karl K. Szpunar PhD
Department of Psychology,
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Szpunar: The results of our experiments demonstrate that students can have difficulty paying attention to online lectures, and that including brief quizzes during lectures can help to alleviate this problem. Specifically, we found that students who were tested throughout a 21-minute long Statistics lecture were half as likely to mind wander during the lecture, three times as likely to take additional notes, and much better able to retain the contents of the lecture at a later time.
02 Apr Pathway-based personalized analysis of cancer
MedicalResearch.com Author Interview: Prof. Eytan Domany
Department of Physics of Complex Systems and Department of Biological Regulation, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Prof. Domany: The findings are two-fold: methodological and clinical. A novel method was introduced for personalized analysis of cancer, and was applied on large colon cancer and glioblastoma datasets.
The method uses high throughput (gene expression) data to infer a pathway deregulation score (PDS) for individual tumors, for hundreds of pathways and biological processes. The method is knowledge-based in that it uses well known information about the assignment of genes to biologically relevant pathways. No detailed knowledge of the underlying networks of interactions and activations is necessary. Each tumor is represented by a few hundred of these PDSs, and further analysis uses this representation.
02 Apr Discontinuation of Statins in Routine Care Settings: A Cohort Study
MedicalResearch.com Interview Dr. Alexander Turchin M.D.,M.S.
Director of Informatics Research
Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School
Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension
Brigham and Women's Hospital Boston, MA
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Turchi: A large number of patients – 17% of individuals included in our study – report side effects to statins in routine care settings. Nearly 60% of these patients stopped the statin at least temporarily. However, overwhelming majority of patients who stopped taking a statin after experiencing a possible side effect, could tolerate a statin long-term if they tried taking one again. In other words, it appears that many statin-related events are tolerable, specific to individual statins or have other causes. These findings are consistent with the current guidelines that urge a conservative approach to statin discontinuation. They are particularly important because statins have been convincingly shown to save lives – they decrease all-cause mortality, and also cardiovascular mortality and incidence of cardiovascular events in patients with ischemic heart disease and / or elevated cholesterol levels.
01 Apr Time to First Cigarette and 4-(Methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-Pyridyl)-1-Butanol (NNAL) Levels in Adult Smokers; National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2007–2010
MedicalResearch.com Author Interview:
Dr. Steven A. Branstetter, PhD
The Pennsylvania State University, 315 E. HHD, University Park, PA 16810.
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Branstetter: This study demonstrated that the time to the first cigarette of the day after waking is associated with increased levels of a NNAL, a metabolite of a powerful tobacco-specific carcinogen, NNK -- even after controlling for the total number of cigarettes smoked per day.
For years, the time to the first cigarette of the day after waking was one of several questions assessing nicotine dependence on the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND), the gold standard questionnaire int he field. Over time, it was found that much of the predictive validity of the FTND was due to the time to first cigarette item. Researchers have found that single time to first cigarette item was highly correlated with other measures of nicotine dependence, and was predictive of more difficulty quitting smoking and increased intake of nicotine. Our current study demonstrates that this behavioral measure, is predictive of exposure to the cancer-causing components of cigarettes, regardless of the total number of cigarettes smoked per day. The results suggest that researchers, clinicians and smokers can assess the level of nicotine dependence and potential cancer risk by looking at the time to the first cigarette of the day after waking.
30 Mar Cancer Survivors in the United States: Prevalence across the Survivorship Trajectory and Implications for Care
Posted at 21:57h
in Cancer Research
MedicalResearch.com Interview with Janet S. de Moor, PhD, MPH
Program Director, Office of Cancer Survivorship
Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences
National Cancer Institute/National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD 20891-8336
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. de Moor: The number of people who have been diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime has been steadily increasing. As of January 1, 2012, approximately 13.7 million cancer survivors were living in the United States with projected prevalence to approach 18 million by 2022. Women with breast cancer and men with prostate cancer represent the two largest groups of cancer survivors, accounting for 22% and 20% of the population respectively. Sixty-four percent of cancer survivors have survived 5 years or more; 40% have survived 10 years or more; and 15% have survived 20 years or more after diagnosis. Over the next decade, the number of people who have lived 5 years or more after their cancer diagnosis is projected to increase approximately 37% to 11.9 million.
30 Mar The subjective–objective mismatch in sleep perception among those with insomnia and sleep apnea
MedicalResearch.com Interview with
Matt T. Bianchi MD PhD MMSc
Assistant Professor
Department of Neurology
Director, Sleep Division
Massachusetts General Hospital
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Bianchi: We showed that patients reporting symptoms of insomnia tend to under-estimate the amount of time they slept during overnight sleep testing in our clinical sleep laboratory.
28 Mar Predictors of depression in breast cancer patients treated with radiation: Role of prior chemotherapy and nuclear factor kappa B
Posted at 13:40h
in Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cancer Research, Depression, Mental Health Research
MedicalResearch.com Interview with Mylin A. Torres, M.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Radiation Oncology
Emory University School of Medicine
Atlanta, GA 30322
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Torres: Radiation treatment for breast cancer is not associated with increased depressive symptoms, but of disease and treatment-related factors, prior chemotherapy treatment is a significant predictor of depression before and after radiation treatment. Prior chemotherapy treatment was associated with inflammatory mediators, including nuclear factor-kappa B DNA binding, soluble tumor necrosis factor-alpha receptor 2, and interleukin-6, which predicted for depressive symptoms after radiation on univariate analysis.
28 Mar Adipocyte Fatty Acid storage factors enhance subcutaneous fat storage in postmenopausal women
MedicalResearch.com Interview with
Dr. Sylvia Santosa, PhD
Department of Exercise Science
Concordia University
Department of Exercise Science
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H4B 1R6
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Santosa: Our results show that postmenopausal women burn less fat making more available to be stored. Our results also suggest that greater fat storage in postmenopausal women are likely to be attributed to changes in the pathways our fat cells use to store fat. We found that some of the proteins that help our fat cells store fat were more active and this greater activity corresponded with the amount of fat stored from our circulation.
28 Mar Relationship of Early-Onset Baldness to Prostate Cancer in African-American Men
MEDICALRESEARCH.COM INTERVIEW WITH Charnita Zeigler-Johnson, Ph.D., M.P.H. Research Assistant Professor CCEB University of Pennsylvania MEDICALRESEARCH.COM: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Zeigler-Johnson: The main findings of the study are:- Younger African-American men diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer at an early age (under the age of 60) are more likely to have had a personal history of early-onset baldness (baldness by age 30.)
- For older patients, this is not necessarily the case, and future studies will need to focus on which factors place men in this age group at risk for prostate cancer.
27 Mar Genetic factors in evolution of sleep length – a longitudinal twin study in Finnish adults
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Christer Hublin Apulaisylilääkäri, neurologian dosentti (Helsingin yliopisto) - Assistant Chief Medical Officer, Docent (Adjunct Professor) in Neurology (Helsinki University) Unilääketieteen erityispätevyys (Suomen lääkäriliitto) Sleep medicine specialist (NOSMAC/ESRS) Työterveyslaitos - Finnish Institute of Occupational Health FIN-00250 Helsinki Finland MedicalResearch.com What are the main findings of the study? Answer: We found in an adult twin cohort (the Finnish Twin Cohort) that the proportion of variance in sleep length accounted for by genetic effects was relatively low (about one third) but stable (correlation 0.76 over a period of 15 years.). In contrast, the proportion of variance accounted for by environmental effects was high (about 0.7) and these effects were less stable (correlation over the time period 0.18). The proportion of short sleepers was more than doubled in both genders, whereas in the proportion of long sleepers no major change was seen during the follow-up. To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study providing data on the contribution of genetic factors to stability and change of sleep length over time.26 Mar Independent associations between fatty acids and sleep quality among obese patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with Dr. Christopher Papandreou Department of Social Medicine, Preventive Medicine and Nutrition Clinic, Medical School, University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece. MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Papandreou: Certain adipose tissue fatty acids measured in the gluteal site were found to be associated with sleep quality parameters in obese patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome after controlling for possible confounders.23 Mar Novel Susceptibility Variants at 10p12.31-12.2 for Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in Ethnically Diverse Populations
Posted at 03:16h
in Author Interviews, Duke, Genetic Research, Leukemia, MD Anderson, UT Southwestern
MedicalResearch.com Author Interview: Jun J. Yang, Ph.D.
Assistant Member Dept. of Pharm. Sci.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
262 Danny Thomas Pl., MS313 Memphis, TN 38105
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Yang: We performed a comprehensive survey of inherited genetic variations for their contribution to the susceptibility of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common cancer in children. This is by far the largest study of its kind (in terms of the number of subjects involved), and also the first one to include multi-ethnic populations. We identified 4 genomic loci related to the predisposition to ALL, 2 of which contributed to racial differences in the incidence of ALL. This study provided unequivocal evidence for inherited susceptibility of childhood ALL and pointed to novel biology of the pathogenesis of this disease.
22 Mar Coupled Cognitive and Functional Change in Alzheimer’s Disease and the Influence of Depressive Symptoms.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Laura B. Zahodne, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow in the cognitive neuroscience division in the Department of Neurology and the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain
Columbia University Medical Center.
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Zahodne: Having more depressive symptoms early on in Alzheimer’s disease was associated with more rapid declines in the ability to handle tasks of everyday living, and this relationship was independent of cognitive decline.
MedicalResearch.com: Were any of the findings unexpected?
Dr. Zahodne: Previous studies have shown that depressive symptoms are associated with more difficulties with thinking and daily activities. This study additionally shows that depressive symptoms herald not only more rapid declines in thinking, but also daily functioning, over time.
20 Mar Outcomes of transplantation using various hematopoietic cell sources in children with Hurler’s syndrome after myeloablative conditioning
MedicalResearch.com Interview with Dr. Boelens Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Boelens: For children with Hurler’s syndrome, the receipt of a hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) early in life with the best available human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-matched donor offers the best event free survival (EFS). Also, HCT with a well matched unrelated cord blood unit is particularly attractive as the unit is readily available.20 Mar Short Telomere Length, Cancer Survival, and Cancer Risk in 47102 Individuals
MedicalResearch.com Interview with Stig E. Bojesen
Staff specialist, MD, PhD, DMSci
Dept. of Clinical Biochemistry, Copenhagen University Hospital
Herlev Hospital DK-2730 Herlev Denmark
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
19 Mar Effect of Aerobic Exercise (Walking) Training on Functional Status and Health-related Quality of Life in Chronic Stroke Survivors
MedicalResearch.com Interview with Carron D. Gordon, PhD Section of Physical Therapy, University of the West Indies, Mona, Box 126, Kingston 7, Jamaica, West Indies MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Gordon: The walking group showed a 17.6% improvement in distance walked in six minutes (measure of endurance) compared to 4% in the control group and 16.7% improvement in SF36-Physical Component (health-related quality of life) compared to 2.6% in the control group.18 Mar The Impact of Green Tea and Coffee Consumption on the Reduced Risk of Stroke
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Yoshihiro Kokubo, MD, PhD, FACC, FAHA, FESC Department of Preventive Cardiology, National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, 5-7-1, Fujishiro-dai, Suita, Osaka, MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Kokubo: In this study, higher green tea (2 or more cups/day) and coffee (3 to 6 times/week, 1 or more cups/day) consumption were found to be inversely associated with the incidences of cardiovascular disease and stroke. Higher green tea (2 or more cups/day) or coffee (1 or more cups/day) consumption reduced the risks of cardiovascular disease, strokes, and its subtypes, especially in intracerebral hemorrhage (P for interaction between green tea and coffee=0.04).17 Mar Maternal caffeine intake during pregnancy is associated with birth weight but not with gestational length
MedicalResearch.com Interview with : Verena Sengpiel, researcher Institute of Clinical Sciences, Sahlgrenska Academy University of Gothenburg MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Response: 1. Coffee, but not caffeine, consumption was associated with marginally increased gestational length but not with the risk of spontaneous preterm delivery. 2. Caffeine intake was consistently associated with decreased birth weight and increased odds of SGA (small for gestational age). This might have clinical implications as even caffeine consumption below the recommended maximum (200 mg/d in the Nordic countries and USA, 300 mg/d according to WHO) was associated with increased risk for SGA.15 Mar Cognitive function and other risk factors for mild traumatic brain injury in young men
Medical Research.com Interview with
Dr. Anna Nordström MD
Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation, Rehabilitation Medicine, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden
Medical Research.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Nordström: We have found that low cognitive function and factors related to low socioeconomic status and intoxications are strong independent risk factors for mild traumatic brain injury in men.
Medical Research.com: Were any of the findings unexpected?
Dr. Nordström: Our knowledge of risk factors that predispose people to sustaining such injury is limited. Previous research has inferred that mild traumatic brain injuries have important long-term consequences on cognitive function. However, we found similar deficits in cognitive function in subjects that sustained a mild traumatic brain injury before and after cognitive testing. Thus our data suggest that the injury itself may not reduce cognitive function.
15 Mar Treatment of Patients with a History of Penicillin Allergy in a Large Tertiary-Care Academic Hospital
MedicalResearch.com Matthieu Picard, MD, FRCPC Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont Université de Montréal Montréal, Qc, Canada MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Picard: We found that patients reporting a history of penicillin allergy were often treated with penicillins despite their history of allergic reaction to that drug. In this study, which took place in a large tertiary-care academic hospital without allergists on staff, more than half of patients with a presumed penicillin allergy and a need for antibiotics were treated with beta-lactams, a class of antibiotics that includes penicillins and drugs that can cause allergic reactions in penicillin allergic individuals because of cross-reactivity.15 Mar Regional Variation in Spending and Survival for Older Adults With Advanced Cancer
MedicalResearch.com Interview with Gabriel Brooks MD
Fellow, Medical Oncology
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Brooks: First, we found that there is substantial regional variation in Medicare spending for patients with advanced cancer. For patients with a new diagnosis of advanced stage cancer, spending in the six months following diagnosis varied by 32% between regions in the highest and lowest quintiles of spending. And for patients who died from cancer, spending in the last six months of life varied by 41% between the highest and lowest spending regions.
Second, we tested the association between area-level spending and survival from the time of advanced cancer diagnosis. We found that there was no consistent association between increasing spending and survival for any of the five cancer sites included in our study (non-small cell lung cancer, colorectal cancer, pancreas cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer).
11 Mar Influenza Virus Aerosols in Human Exhaled Breath: Particle Size, Culturability, and Effect of Surgical Masks
MedicalResearch.com Author Interview: Dr. Donald K. Milton, MD, Dr.P.H
Dr. Donald K. Milton, MD, Dr.P.H
Professor and Director
Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health
University of Maryland
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Milton: We found that total viral copies detected by molecular methods were 8.8 times more numerous in fine (≤5 µm) than in coarse (>5 µm) aerosol particles and that the fine particles from cases with the highest total number of viral RNA copies contained infectious virus.
Surgical masks reduced the overall number of RNA copies by 3.4 fold.
08 Mar Selection Criteria for Lung-Cancer Screening
Medical Research.com
Author Interview: Dr. Martin C. Tammemägi
Professor (Epidemiology) Brock University
Department of Community Health Sciences
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1
Medical Research.com What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Tammemägi: Our study accomplished three things:
1. We presented an updated Lung Cancer Risk Prediction Model, which compared to our previously JNCI-published model, incorporates more predictors but is simpler to use because we changed the way we modeled nonlinear effects.
2. We demonstrated that using the Lung Cancer Risk Prediction Model to select individuals for lung cancer screening was much more effective than using the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) enrolment criteria. 41.3% fewer lung cancers were missed. Sensitivity and positive predictive value of identifying individuals who develop lung cancer were significantly improved. Shortly after our NEJM paper was published, Ma et al published in CANCER their findings that 8.6 million Americans are NLST-criteria positive and if they were CT screened under ideal conditions 12,000 lung cancer deaths would be averted. Our NEJM article findings indicate that an additional 2,764 lives would be saved if the selection criteria had enrolled 8.6 million individuals for screening based on highest risk by our Lung Cancer Risk Prediction Model.
3. Importantly, using NLST data we demonstrated that the beneficial effect of CT screening did not vary by model predicted lung cancer risk.
08 Mar Extended Use of Dabigatran, Warfarin, or Placebo in Venous Thromboembolism
MedicalResearch.com Author Interview: Sam Schulman M.D., FRCPC(C)
Professor, Division of Hematology and Thromboembolism, Department of Medicine
Associate Professor, Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
Director, Clinical Thromboembolism Program Hamilton Health Sciences, Hamilton General Hospital, Hamilton, Ontario
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Response: Similar effect of dabigatran as warfarin, 92% risk reduction compared to placebo. The risk of bleeding is reduced by almost 50% compared to warfarin but in comparison with placebo there is an increased risk of minor bleeding. No routine coagulation monitoring or dose adjustments are required, making the treatment convenient for patients and physicians.
13 Jan Breast Cancer News from Medical News Today
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