Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, JAMA, Pediatrics / 20.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Guoqing Hu, PhD Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics Xiangya School of Public Health Central South University Changsha, Hunan, China    On behalf of the authors MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: We've known for some time that suffocation is a leading cause of death for American infants - in fact, it is the cause of over 3/4 of the injury deaths to babies under 12 months of age. We've also known that there are strategies, such as "safe sleeping", that can greatly reduce the risk of a baby suffocating to death. The surprise in our study is that the suffocation rate for infants under 12 months of age appears to be increasing in the United States over the past 15 years. More babies are dying from suffocation today than in the 1990s, and that is a significant public health concern. Think about the implications of each one of those deaths to the infant's parents and loved ones. There are few things more devastating than losing a baby to an unintentional, or "accidental" death. There are ways we can prevent unintentional suffocations, and we need to work together to inform parents and ensure babies are kept safe to reduce those deaths, especially as rates in the US appear to be increasing. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Genetic Research / 19.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Amanda Toland, PhD, Cancer biology and genetics researcher of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center -- Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The Breast Information Core (or BIC) is a database that catalogs BRCA1 and BRCA2 sequenced variants.  The BIC is hosted by the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH and has a steering committee that oversees the BIC and has members from Europe, the middle East, Australia and the US.  In BIC SC discussions, we learned that there are differences in how BRCA1/2 clinical is testing between countries. To characterize this variation, we performed an international survey of 86 genetic testing labs from around the world. Our main findings are that there were many variations between testing laboratories.  These include: technologies differed for finding “large” genetic sequence variants, what parts of the genes were assessed, how genetic variants were classified as disease associated or not being associated with diseases, if genetic sequencing information was shared in public databases and testing volume. (more…)
Author Interviews, Radiology, Technology / 17.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Eric Karl Oermann, MD Instructor Department of Neurosurgery Mount Sinai Health System New York, New York 10029  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: Supervised machine learning requires data consisting of features and labels. In order to do machine learning with medical imaging, we need ways of obtaining labels, and one promising means of doing so is by utilizing natural language processing (NLP) to extract labels from physician's descriptions of the images (typically contained in reports). Our main finding was that (1) the language employed in Radiology reports is simpler than normal day-to-day language, and (2) that we can build NLP models that obtain excellent results at extracting labels when compared to manually extracted labels from physicians.  (more…)
Author Interviews, BMC, Pediatrics, Tobacco / 17.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Summer Sherburne Hawkins, PhD, MS Associate Professor School of Social Work Boston College Summer Sherburne Hawkins, PhD, MS Associate Professor School of Social Work Boston College MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Increasing cigarette taxes has been a major policy driver to decrease smoking, including adolescent smoking, while taxes on other tobacco products have received less attention. Taxes on cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, and cigars are all fiscal policies, but they are not all equal. While state taxes on cigarettes have increased substantially over the past decade, there has been little change in policies governing alternative tobacco products. Realsitcally, everyone wants to pay as little tax as they can, which is why Tax software deals are so great for helping people pay the right amount. The aim of our study was to evaluate the impact of chewing tobacco and cigar taxes, cigarette taxes, and the enactment of smoke-free legislation on adolescent male and female use of smokeless tobacco and cigars. (more…)
Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Mental Health Research, Neurology / 16.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Joseph Therriault Integrative Program in Neuroscience  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: Neurologists have known for a long time that Anosognosia, or unawareness of illness, appears in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. For example, these patients will have diminished awareness of their memory loss, and will also engage in dangerous behaviors, such as leaving the house to go for a walk, without knowing they are at high risk of getting lost. However, it was not known if decreased awareness of cognitive problems existed in the pre-dementia phase of Alzheimer’s disease. In our study, we compared the ratings of cognitive decline from the patient and their close relative, who also filled out the same questionnaire. When a patient reported having no cognitive problems but the family member reported significant difficulties, the patient was considered to have poor awareness of illness. We found that patients who are less aware had increased disease pathology, and were nearly three times as likely to progress to dementia within two years, even when taking into account other factors like genetic risk, age, gender and education. The increased progression to dementia was mirrored by increased brain metabolic dysfunction in regions vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease. (more…)
Author Interviews, Blood Pressure - Hypertension, Heart Disease, JAMA / 16.02.2018

“Doctors” by Tele Jane is licensed under CC BY 2.0MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Apostolos Tsimploulis, Chief Medical Resident Dr. Phillip H. Lam, Chief Cardiology Fellow The Washington, DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Georgetown University, and MedStar Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Hypertension is a major risk factor for the development of new heart failure (HF). Findings from multiple randomized controlled trials in hypertension have consistently demonstrated that controlling systolic blood pressure (SBP) to normal levels such as to SBP <120 mm Hg reduces the risk of developing new HF. However, interestingly, once patients develop heart failure, those with a normal SBP value such as SBP <120 mm Hg tend to have poor outcomes. This paradoxical association – also called reverse epidemiology – although poorly understood – has been described with other HF risk factors such as smoking and obesity. Regarding poor outcomes associated with lower SBP in HF patients with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF – pronounced Hef-ref), it has been suggested that it may be a marker of weak heart muscle that is unable to pump enough blood. However, less is known about this association in patients with HF and preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF – pronounced Hef-pef) –– the heart muscle is not weak in the traditional sense. This is an important question for a number of reasons: nearly half of all heart failure patients have HFpEF which accounts for about 2.5 to 3 million Americans. These patients have a high mortality similar to those with HFrEF – but unlike in HFrEF few drugs have been shown to improve their outcomes. Thus, there is a great deal of interest in improving their outcomes. One of those approaches is to control . systolic blood pressure and the 2017 ACC/AHA/HFSA Focused Update of the HF guidelines recommend that SBP “should be controlled in patients with HFpEF in accordance with published clinical practice guidelines to prevent morbidity.” Thus, our study was designed to answer that simple question: do patients with HFpEF and SBP <120 mmHg, which is considered to be normal SBP, have better outcomes than those with SBP ≥120 mmHg. Using a sophisticated approach called propensity score matching we assembled two groups of patients with HFpEF – one group with SBP <120 mmHg and the other groups had SBP ≥120 mmHg – and patients in both groups were similar in terms of 58 key baseline characteristics. In this population of balanced patients with HFpEF, those with a normal systolic blood pressure had a higher risk of mortality – starting 30 days post-discharge up to about 6 years. Finding from our restricted cubic spline plots suggest that compared with SBP <120 mm Hg, SBP values ≥120 mm Hg (up to 200 mm Hg) was not associated with a higher risk of death. (more…)
Author Interviews, Autism, Pharmaceutical Companies, Roche, Vanderbilt / 16.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Kevin Sanders, MD Principle Medical Director-Product Development Neuroscience Assistant Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics Vanderbilt University  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this announcement?  Response: The FDA has granted Roche Breakthrough Therapy Designation for its investigational oral medicine balovaptan (previously known as RG7314), a vasopressin 1a (V1a) receptor antagonist for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation for balovaptan is primarily based on efficacy findings in the VANILLA (Vasopressin ANtagonist to Improve sociaL communication in Autism) study, a Phase II trial of balovaptan in adults with ASD. Trial results were first presented at the International Congress for Autism Research (IMFAR) in May 2017. Treatment effects were observed on the Vineland-II (secondary endpoint) and also demonstrated that balovaptan was safe and well tolerated by the subjects in the study. The Vineland-II is a scale that measures socialization, communication and daily living skills. This data was presented to the FDA and is part of the basis of the Breakthrough Designation.  (more…)
Author Interviews, PLoS, Sexual Health, Zika / 16.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Yogy Simanjuntak PhD Postdoctoral Research Fellow Institute of Biomedical Sciences Academia Sinica, Taiwan  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Despite the low case fatality, Zika virus infection has been associated with microcephaly in infants and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Primarily transmitted by Aedes species mosquitoes, Zika also can be sexually transmitted in humans. By August 2016, the sexual transmission of Zika had been documented in 11 countries worldwide and most of the cases were from male to female. Infectious Zika in semen has been reported. Moreover, unlike in serum or urine samples, Zika RNA can still be detected in semen up to 188 days after the onset of symptoms. In the absence of approved antiviral drugs or vaccines for Zika infection, preventing the disease transmission is critical. We observed Zika progressively damaged testes by gaining access to testicular cells including sperm. Notably, Zika caused signs of increased testicular oxidative stress and inflammation, characterized by high levels of reactive oxygen species and pro-inflammatory cytokines. Our data indicate that these factors may contribute to testicular damage as well as successful sexual transmission of Zika; thus, we speculate antioxidants might display beneficial effects to alleviate these disease outcomes. We found that antioxidant ebselen both alleviated testicular damage and prevented sexual transmission of Zika via sperm from infected male mice to uninfected female mice. (more…)
Author Interviews, Dengue, Genetic Research, PLoS / 16.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Luisa Pereira PhD Institute for Research and Innovation in Health University of Porto  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: By using admixture mapping along the genome in Thai cohorts, we were able to identify new candidate genes conferring protection/susceptibility to dengue fever. A very interesting result was that the set of genes differed with the dengue phenotype: genes coding proteins that may link to the virus, conditioning its entrance in the host cells and mobility therein were associated with the less severe phenotype; genes related with blood vessels permeability were associated with the dengue shock syndrome.  (more…)
ASCO, Author Interviews, Cancer Research / 16.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Prof. Michael B. Atkins, MD Deputy Director, Georgetown-Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center William M. Scholl Professor and Vice-Chair Department of Oncology and Professor of Medicine Georgetown University Medical Center  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Prior studies combining programmed death-1 (PD-1) checkpoint inhibitors with tyrosine kinase inhibitors of the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-pathway have been characterized by excess toxicity precluding further development. We hypothesized that axitinib, a more selective VEGF inhibitor would combine safely with pembrolizumab (anti-PD-1) and yield antitumour activity in treatment-naïve patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma. (more…)
Author Interviews, Hematology, Novo Nordisk, Surgical Research / 15.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Stephanie Seremetis, M.D. Corporate Vice President and Chief Medical Officer Biopharmaceuticals at Novo Nordisk MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this announcement? Response: We’re proud and excited to make Rebinyn® (Coagulation Factor IX (Recombinant), GlycoPEGylated) available as a new extended half-life treatment for hemophilia B management. Rebinyn® is an injectable medicine used to treat and control bleeding in adults and children with hemophilia B. It can be used to treat bleeds when they occur and to manage bleeding during surgery. Rebinyn® is not used for routine prophylaxis or for immune tolerance induction in patients with hemophilia B. Hemophilia B is a serious, chronic, inherited bleeding disease that affects about 5,000 people in the U.S. People living with hemophilia B have low levels of clotting Factor IX protein in the blood, often resulting in prolonged or spontaneous bleeding, especially into the muscles, joints or internal organs.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Endocrinology, Environmental Risks, PLoS, Weight Research / 15.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Gang Liu, PhD Postdoctoral Research Fellow Department of Nutrition Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Although many approaches can be used to achieve a short-term weight loss, maintenance of weight loss has become a key challenge for sustaining long-term benefits of weight loss. Accumulating evidence has suggested that certain environmental compounds may play an important role in weight gain and obesity development. The potential endocrine-disrupting effects of perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), which are extensively used in many industrial and consumer products including food packaging, paper and textile coatings, and non-stick cookware, have been demonstrated in animal studies, but whether PFASs may interfere with body weight regulation in humans is largely unknown. In a 2-year POUNDS Lost randomized clinical trial that examined energy-restricted diets on weight changes, baseline plasma concentrations of major PFASs were measured among 621 overweight and obese participants aged 30-70 years. Body weight was measured at baseline, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months. Resting metabolic rate (RMR) and other metabolic parameters, including glucose, lipids, thyroid hormones, and leptin, were measured at baseline, 6, and 24 months. We found that higher baseline levels of PFASs were significantly associated with a greater weight regain, primarily in women. On average, women in the highest tertile of PFASs regained 1.7-2.2 kg more body weight than women in the lowest tertile. In addition, higher baseline plasma PFAS concentrations, especially perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), were significantly associated with greater decline in RMR during the first 6 months and less increase in RMR during weight regain period.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Fertility, Sugar / 15.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Elizabeth E. Hatch, PhD Professor, Epidemiology School of Public Health Boston University MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?   Response: We are conducting a large, ongoing, preconception cohort study, PREgnancy STudy Online or PRESTO http://sites.bu.edu/presto/   in the U.S. and Canada of couples who are planning a pregnancy.  The overall goal of the study is to identify factors that affect fertility, measured by the time taken to conceive, and factors that affect the risk of miscarriage.  Since many women are postponing pregnancy until the later reproductive years, we would like to help find behavioral and environmental factors that might either help or harm fertility so that couples can avoid the stress and expense of infertility workups and treatment.  As part of the larger study, we looked at consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) by both the male and female partner, since some previous research suggested that sugar-sweetened beverages might harm semen quality and ovulation. For this analysis, we included 3,828 women aged 21 to 45 and 1,045 of their male partners. We asked both males and females (in separate baseline questionnaires) about their usual consumption of SSBs over the last month, and we had a drop-down menu with names of individual sodas (both sugar-sweetened and diet) and energy drinks.  We also asked general questions about the frequency of fruit juice and ‘sports drink’ consumption.   In our analysis, we controlled for multiple factors that might ‘confound’ the associations, such as body mass index, education, caffeine, smoking and alcohol consumption, as well as a measure of overall diet quality. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Gender Differences / 15.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: David C. Geary, Ph.D. Curators' Distinguished Professor Thomas Jefferson Fellow Department of Psychological Sciences Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program University of Missouri Columbia, MO 65211-2500  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?   Response:   We were interested in international variation in the percentage of women who obtain college degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, focusing on degrees in inorganic areas, such as physics and computer science (topics that do not deal with living things).  There is no sex difference in the life sciences, but there is in these fields. The gap is about 3 to 1 in the U.S. and has been stable for decades. We wanted to link international variation in these degrees to student factors, including their best subject (e.g., science vs. reading) and their interests in science, as well as to more general factors such as whether the country provided strong economic opportunities and its rating on gender equality measures. (more…)
Author Interviews, NYU, PLoS / 15.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Glenn N. Saxe, MD Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Child Study Center, One Park Avenue New York, NY 10016  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Would you briefly explain what is meant by brain entropy and how it relates to intelligence? Response: Think of human intelligence as the capacity for a human being to understand their complex and ever-changing world. The world of a person is really complex and constantly in flux so the human brain must be ready to understand whatever may come – when there is no way beforehand to predict what might come. How does the brain understand its world? It creates specific models of the information it receives through specific patterns of neuronal connection. These are called brain states. The way the brain understands its world is largely through using such models, or brain states, to accurately predict what comes next. So you can see that for an intelligent brain to properly understand and predict events in the world, it will need to have access to a very, very large number of brain states. And this is how entropy is defined. Entropy is a very old and very powerful concept in the history of science. Not only is it fundamental for thermodynamics – what we learned in high school physics – but it is also fundamental for the nature of information and it’s processing. Entropy is defined as the number of states – or distinct configurations – any system has access to at any point in time. High entropy means access to a very large number of states. Low entropy means access to a very small number of states. A solid is a phenomenon with very low entropy. A gas is a phenomenon with very high entropy. Life, and the brain, are somewhere in between. Although it is impossible to precisely measure the number of states a brain has access to at any one moment, there is a highly related concept that can be measured. A system with access to a very high number of possible states (like a gas) has components with behavior that is highly unpredictable. A system with access to very few possible states (like a solid) has components whose behavior is highly predictable. We measured brain entropy through the predictability of the brains components at the smallest scale we had access to: what are called voxels in an fMRI scan. These are 3mm cubes of neurons in a functional MRI scan, and there are many thousands of these voxels in our measurement and each of these voxels contains information on the activity of hundreds of thousands of neurons. We measured the predictability of each of these voxels and then found clusters of voxels where their predictability - or entropy - was related to intelligence. (more…)
Author Interviews, Neurology / 15.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jan R. Wessel, Ph.D. Asst. Professor Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences Department of Neurology Iowa Neuroscience Institute University of Iowa  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: We found that the occurence of unexpected events, such as sudden, surprising sounds lead to an automatic engagement of a well-known brain network for action-stopping, thereby leading to a suppression of ongoing motor activity. Specifically, we found that when participants had to stop an action, their ability to do so was significantly improved when the cue to stop was accompanied by a sudden, unexpected sound. This improvement was accompanied by an amplification of the brain activity that is related to action-stopping, and was also accompanied by an increase of suppression of excitability of the motor cortex.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Social Issues / 14.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Marriage” by Susan Nicole Cinci Csere is licensed under CC BY 2.0Ashley LeBaron Brigham Young University Provo  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: This study was a really fun one for me. Previous research had linked materialism with lower marital satisfaction. However, no one had really looked into why that is--what is it about materialism that tends to facilitate less-happy marriages? As I thought about it and explored different theories, I came to the hypothesis that perhaps it is a matter of competing values. Perhaps those who highly value money and possessions are less likely to highly value their marriage, and then subsequently do not put into their relationship the time, effort, etc. needed for high marital satisfaction. And that's exactly what our findings show! Perception of marriage importance mediated (i.e., explained) the negative association between materialism and marital satisfaction. Of course it is more complex than this and there are likely other mediators out there, but I think this was an important contribution to the couple finance field.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Exercise - Fitness, Weight Research / 14.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Elliptical Stationary Bikes GVSU Winter Hall Exercise Center 2-4-15” by Steven Depolo is licensed under CC BY 2.0Jennifer L. Kuk, PhD Associate Professor York University School of Kinesiology and Health Science Sherman Health Science Research Centre Toronto, Ontario MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? - The benefits of fitness are well know, but it was unclear whether the benefits applied to those with severe obesity. This is even more important give that the health risks associated with severe obesity are exponentially higher than in mild obesity. Fitness in this study was defined as the top 80% of a normal population.This means that unfit is the bottom 20%. In the past, research has shown that this threshold of fitness is associated with the biggest health benefits. - We see that 40% of individuals with mild obesity are fit, while 11% of those with severe obesity are fit. Individuals with high fitness had no differences in health risk, despite the large differences in obesity (~50-100 pounds). Conversely, those within the unfit group did have significantly higher glucose, blood pressure and lipids with higher obesity levels. In other words, fitness was able to protect individuals with severe obesity from many of the expected negative health consequences. (more…)
Author Interviews, Stroke, Technology / 14.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with E. Paul Zehr PhD Professor & Director Centre for Biomedical Research, Rehabilitation Neuroscience Laboratory, McKinnon Division of Medical Sciences Exercise Science, Physical & Health Education International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD)| Affiliate, Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, UBC MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: For many years we explored the role of the spinal cord in regulating rhythmic arm and leg movements like we do during walking, running and swimming.  Although we humans tend to move and locomote around on our two legs as bipeds, we are basically quadrupeds in terms of how our nervous system controls our limbs during walking. We have an extensive network of brain and spinal cord connections that help coordinate our limbs while we move. A lot of our work showed that using the arms rhythmically, like during arm cycling, strongly affected the activity of the spinal cord controlling leg muscles. Getting the spinal cord for leg muscles more coordinated and activated is a major goal of rehabilitation  of walking after neurotrauma so we wanted to see if training the arms could help with this. This is particularly important because a lot of the time, the arms are not engaged at all in rehabilitation training for the legs. We found that after only 5 weeks of arm cycling (3 x 30 minutes each week), neural excitability, strength, and leg function were increased along with enhanced clinical tests of balance and walking ability. (more…)
Author Interviews, Lancet, Melanoma, Weight Research / 14.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jennifer McQuade, M.D., lead author Melanoma Medical Oncology The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Melanoma is the most deadly of the common skin cancers, and for many years we lacked effective therapies for patients with disease that had spread (metastatic). Over the past 7 years, there has been FDA approval of 2 new classes of drugs that have dramatically improved the survival of patients with metastatic melanoma. Checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapies “take the brakes” off patients’ immune system to allow the immune system to eliminate the cancer. Targeted therapies turn off key molecules expressed by some tumors (BRAF mutant) that they rely on for sustained growth and division. While these types of therapies can result in dramatic long-term disease control in some patients, others may not have any shrinkage of their tumors. Some differences may lie in the tumors themselves, but there is also increasing evidence that “host” factors such as the microbiome and lifestyle choices might influence outcomes in cancer patients. Obesity has been associated with an increased risk of many cancers, and is in fact poised to overtake smoking as the leading preventable cause of cancer. One of the ways that obesity may increase tumor growth is by increasing levels of insulin and other growth factors which then activate a pathway called the PI3K pathway that leads to continued tumor growth. As that PI3K pathway has also been shown to cause resistance to targeted and immune therapies in melanoma, we hypothesized that obesity would be associated with worse outcomes in patients with metastatic melanoma treated with these therapies. (more…)
Author Interviews, Hepatitis - Liver Disease, Imperial College, Technology / 14.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Marcus Dorner, PhD Non-Clinical Senior Lecturer in Immunology Wellcome Trust Investigator Imperial College London Department of Medicine, Section of Virology School of Medicine London United Kingdom  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response:  Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection globally affects over 250 million people and is currently not curable. This infection can lead to liver cirrhosis and liver cancer and is among the leading causes for liver transplantation. Unfortunately, HBV is among the most difficult viruses to study in the laboratory, since model systems are not very good at recapitulating what happens in infected humans. We have just described the first model to effectively change this. Using an artificial “Liver-on-a-Chip”, we have developed a tool, which can potentially revolutionise how we study viral infections by merging the study of viruses with tissue engineering. This model is over 10,000-fold more susceptible to HBV infection and accurately mimics, what happens in an infected patient. This can now be utilised to develop novel and potentially curative therapies, which would benefit millions of people currently living with chronic HBV infection.  (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews / 14.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Alcohol” by zeevveez is licensed under CC BY 2.0Thomas Denson PhD University of New South Wales Australia  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: Decades of research have shown that alcohol is a powerful psychotropic contributor to aggressive behaviour. Researchers have long suspected that alcohol increases aggression because it dampens activation in the prefrontal cortex, which leads to reduced inhibition, narrows attentional processing, and exaggerates hostile thinking. However, direct evidence has been lacking. We compared brain activity in intoxicated versus sober participants when they were given the opportunity to behave aggressively in the scanner against other men who provoked them. We gave 50 healthy young men alcohol or a placebo. Participants who consumed alcohol breathalysed at .05. They did show decreased activation in the prefrontal cortex as expected. This was the first evidence to show that when intoxicated participants behave aggressively, they show reduced prefrontal activity. Interestingly, we found a positively correlation between prefrontal cortex activity and aggression, but only among intoxicated men. We think this reflects the fact that the participants in the alcohol condition were likely engaging in more hostile thinking about the provoking men.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Mayo Clinic, Neurology / 13.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Eoin Flanagan, M.B., B.Ch. Mayo Clinic Rochester, Minnesota  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?   Response: Traditionally it has been thought that infections (e.g., viruses)  account for the majority of encephalitis cases. Recent discoveries of neural autoantibody markers of encephalitis (e.g., NMDA receptor autoantibodies) have led to an appreciation that encephalitis cases can be caused by the body’s own immune system attacking the brain, what we term autoimmune encephalitis. (more…)
Author Interviews, Diabetes, Occupational Health / 13.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Night Shift - Hard@Work (5of8)” by cell105 is licensed under CC BY 2.0Dr. Céline Vetter Assistant Professor Department of Integrative Physiology University of Colorado at Boulder Boulder, CO MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: Shift work, particularly night shifts, can change our social rhythms, as well as the internal biological rhythms including our sleep, and these effects could explain why shift work is linked to conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. However, we don’t know which type of shift pattern is most strongly linked to type 2 diabetes. In addition, we know that some lifestyle factors can modify the link between a genetic predisposition to a disease and the disease itself, but we don’t know if this applies to shift work and type 2 diabetes. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, JAMA, Occupational Health, UCSF / 13.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Christina Mangurian, MD, MAS Associate Professor of Psychiatry Vice Chair for Diversity, Department of Psychiatry UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences Director, UCSF Public Psychiatry Fellowship at ZSFG Core Faculty, UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: We examined paid family and childbearing leave policies at top-10 medical schools across the US. Despite recommendation from national medical societies for 12 weeks paid childbearing leave because of the benefits to both infant and mother, the average leave at these top schools of medicine was only around 8 weeks. In addition, most policies are very difficult to understand, and are at the discretion of departmental leadership – both of which put women at a disadvantage at getting leave they deserve. Additionally, family leave was only available to the parent that identifies as the "primary caregiver" at five universities, disallowing cooperative parenting. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Compliance / 13.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Alcohol” by zeevveez is licensed under CC BY 2.0Sarah Dermody PhD Assistant professor School of Psychological Science College of Liberal Art Oregon State University  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Naltrexone is an FDA-approved medication to treat alcohol use disorder. We know that people have difficulty adhering to the prescribed daily medication regimen, and that people who do not adhere to the medication tend not to fair as well in treatment as people who take the medication regularly. This particular study attempted to address the question of why do people with alcohol use disorder have difficulty taking the medication daily? What we found was that people were less likely to take naltrexone after days of heavy drinking or strong alcohol craving versus typical drinking and craving levels. Furthermore, individuals were less likely to take the medication on weekends versus weekdays, which is particularly worrisome because heaviest drinking episodes tend to happen on the weekends. (more…)
Author Interviews, Heart Disease, JACC, Stroke / 13.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: João Pedro Ferreira, MD, PhD & Faiez Zannad, MD, PhD National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), Center for Clinical Multidisciplinary Research 1433, INSERM U1116, University of Lorraine, Regional University Hospital of Nancy, French Clinical Research Infrastructure Network (F-CRIN) Investigation Network Initiative–Cardiovascular and Renal Clinical Trialists, Nancy, France Department of Physiology and Cardiothoracic Surgery, Cardiovascular Research and Development Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: It is uncertain whether patients with a myocardial infarction with systolic dysfunction but without atrial fibrillation have increased risk for stroke. In this study including >22,000 patients and 600 stroke events we found a subgroup of patients at high risk for stroke despite not having atrial fibrillation. These patients are older, have worse renal function, frank signs of pulmonary congestion, hypertension and previous stroke history. We created a simple and “ready to use” score that allows the identification of these patients in routine clinical practice.  (more…)
Author Interviews, BMJ, Education, Nutrition, Pediatrics, Weight Research / 13.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Lt. Governor Brown Visits Hamilton Elem_Mid School to Highlight Summer Meals Program” by Maryland GovPics is licensed under CC BY 2.0Peymané Adab, MD University of Birmingham in England MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Childhood obesity is an increasing problem worldwide. In the UK, the proportion of children who are very overweight doubles during the primary school years. Furthermore during this period inequalities emerge. At school entry there is little difference in the likelihood of being overweight between groups. However on leaving primary school, children from minority ethnic groups and those from more deprived, compared to more affluent backgrounds are more likely to be overweight. Excess weight in children is linked with multiple health, emotional and social problems.  As children spend a lot of time at school, it seems intuitive that they are an ideal setting for prevention interventions. Although a number of studies have investigated the evidence for school obesity prevention programmes, the results have been mixed and methodological weaknesses have prevented recommendations being made. As a result we undertook a major high quality trial to evaluate an intervention that had been developed in consultation with parents, teachers and the relevant community. The 12 month programme  had four components. Teachers at participating schools were trained to provide opportunities for regular bursts of physical activity for children, building up to an additional 30 minutes each school day. There was also a workshop each term, where parents came in to cook a healthy meal (breakfast, lunch of dinner) with their children. In conjunction with a local football club, Aston Villa, children participated in a six-week healthy eating and physical activity programme. Finally, parents were provided with information about local family physical activity opportunities. We involved around 1500 year 1 children (aged 5-6 years) from 54 state run primary schools in the West Midlands. At the start of the study, we measured their height and weight and other measures of body fat, asked the children to complete a questionnaire about their wellbeing, to note everything they ate for 24 hours, and to wear an activity monitor that recorded how active they were. After this, the schools were randomised to either receive the programme or not. We then repeated the measures 15 and 30 months later. (more…)
Author Interviews, Infections, Opiods, Vanderbilt / 13.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Andrew Wiese, PhD Postdoctoral Research Fellow Department of Health Policy Vanderbilt University Medical Center MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: As opioid use has increased in the U.S., the safety of prescription opioids has come under further scrutiny. In animal studies, use of certain opioids has been associated with increased susceptibility to bacterial infections, including infectious due to Streptococcus pneumoniae, the pathogen that causes invasive pneumococcal disease. Invasive pneumococcal disease includes bacteremia, meningitis, and invasive pneumonia, all of which are associated with high mortality. Although those associations have been well established in animal experiments, it is important to understand the risk of serious infections among humans taking prescription opioid analgesics. We found that prescription opioid use is associated with a significantly increased risk for laboratory-confirmed invasive pneumococcal diseases, and that this association was strongest for opioids used at high doses, those classified as high potency and long-acting formulations. The data also showed that opioids previously described as immunosuppressive in prior experimental studies conducted in animals had the strongest association with invasive pneumococcal diseases in humans. (more…)