Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Chemotherapy, Personalized Medicine / 24.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Eran Andrechek, PhD Eran Andrechek, PhD Associate Professor Department of Physiology Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Associate Professor Department of Physiology Michigan State University East Lansing, MI  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Of the various types of breast cancer, triple negative breast cancer (lacking estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor and HER2) has the worst outcome and is largely limited to chemotherapy for treatment.  Other types can be treated with personalized medicine, resulting in better outcome.  For instance, a HER2+ve breast cancer can be treated with Herceptin, which targets HER2 itself.  The fact that triple negative breast cancer lacks these sort of targeted treatments presents a clear need in breast cancer therapy. The goal of this study was to bring together our computational work using large databases from breast cancer with research into therapeutic options.  Essentially we wanted to ask if we could use patterns in what genes were being expressed to predict optimal therapy for triple negative breast cancer.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Stroke, Technology / 23.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michel Piotin, MD PhD Principal investigator and Interventional Neuroradiologist Rothschild Fondation Hospital, Paris  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Mechanical thrombectomy (MT) with a stent retriever (SR), in association with intravenous rtPA, is now the standard of care in anterior circulation ischemic stroke caused by large vessel occlusion Thrombectomy (MT) with a stent retriever (SR), in association with intravenous (IV) rtPA, is now the standard of care in anterior circulation ischemic stroke caused by large vessel occlusion. Favorable outcome is strongly associated with the successful reperfusion status. New techniques for MT such as ADAPT (A Direct first pass Aspiration Technique) is promising to increase reperfusion status and clinical outcome in retrospective studies. Our study objective was to determine which technique should be used in frontline strategy (ADAPT or Stent Retriever) to achieve maximum reperfusion. The ASTER study is the first independent large randomized controlled trial focusing on ADAPT technique with blinded assessment data. (more…)
AHA Journals, Author Interviews, Heart Disease, Menopause, University of Pittsburgh, Women's Heart Health / 23.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Samar R. El Khoudary, Ph.D., M.P.H. Assistant professor Department of Epidemiology University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Our study revealed a previously unknown, menopause-specific indicator of heart disease risk. For the first time, we’ve pinpointed the type of heart fat, linked it to a risk factor for heart disease and shown that menopausal status and estrogen levels are critical modifying factors of its associated risk in women. My team evaluated clinical data, including blood samples and heart CT scans, on 478 women from Pittsburgh and Chicago enrolled in the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN). The women were in varying stages of menopause, averaged 51 years old and were not on hormone replacement therapy. In a previous study, we showed that a greater volume of paracardial fat, but not epicardial fat, after menopause is associated with a decline in the sex hormone estradiol—the most potent estrogen—in women. The higher volume of epicardial fat was tied to other risk factors, such as obesity. In the new study, we built on those findings to discover that not only is a greater paracardial fat volume specific to menopause, but—in postmenopausal women and women with lower levels of estradiol—it’s also associated with a greater risk of coronary artery calcification, an early sign of heart disease that is measured with a heart CT scan. (more…)
Author Interviews, Biomarkers, Genetic Research, PLoS, Prostate Cancer / 23.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: G. Andrés Cisneros, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Chemistry Center for Advanced Scientific Computing and Modeling, University of North Texas MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The accurate maintenance of DNA is crucial, if DNA damage is not addressed it can lead to various diseases including cancer. Therefore, the question arises about what happens if enzymes in charge of DNA repair are themselves mutated. We previously developed a method to perform targeted searches for cancer-related SNPs on genes of interest called HyDn-SNP-S. This method was applied to find prostate-cancer SNPs on DNA dealkylases in the ALKB family of enzymes. Our results uncovered a particular mutation on ALKBH7, R191Q, that is significantly associated with prostate cancer. Subsequent computer simulations and experiments indicate that this cancer mutation results in a decreased ability of ALKBH7 to bind its co-factor, thus impeding its ability to perform its native function. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, CMAJ, Lifestyle & Health / 23.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ellen Warner, MD, FRCPC, FACP, M.Sc. Affiliate scientist Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Toronto, ON MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this review? Response: As a medical oncologist who has treated breast cancer patients for over 30 years, I have found that most of the women in my practice are desperately looking for things they can do beyond standard surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, etc. to increase their chance of cure.  Unfortunately, many fall prey to false claims they read over the Internet or hear from well-meaning friends and relatives.  As a result they turn to absurdly restrictive diets (eg. No meat, dairy or sugar) or to ‘supplements’ with unproven effectiveness or even safety. So I thought it would be helpful to review the literature to determine what evidence-based lifestyle changes these women could make that would at least improve their overall health and, ideally, reduce their risk of dying of recurrent breast cancer.  For this review I thought it would be great to team up with Julia Hamer, a pre-med student with a degree in nutrition who just happens to also be an Olympic level athlete! (more…)
Author Interviews, Heart Disease, Microbiome, Nutrition, Race/Ethnic Diversity / 23.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Akira Sekikawa, Ph.D. Associate professor of epidemiology University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: We found that Japanese men who are able to produce equol—a substance made by some types of “good” gut bacteria when they metabolize isoflavones (micronutrients found in dietary soy)—have lower levels of a risk factor for heart disease than their counterparts who cannot produce it. All monkeys can produce equol, as can 50 to 70 percent of people in Asian countries. However, only 20 to 30 percent of people in Western countries can. Scientists have known for some time that isoflavones protect against the buildup of plaque in arteries, known as atherosclerosis, in monkeys, and are associated with lower rates of heart disease in people in Asian countries. It was surprising when a large trial of isoflavones in the U.S. didn’t show the beneficial effects on atherosclerosis. My colleagues and I recruited 272 Japanese men aged 40 to 49 and performed blood tests to find out if they were producing equol. After adjusting for other heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking and obesity as well as dietary intake of isoflavones, we found that the equol-producers had 90-percent lower odds of coronary artery calcification, a predictor of heart disease, than the equol non-producers. (more…)
Addiction, Alcohol, Author Interviews, Cannabis, Education, Pediatrics, Smoking / 23.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. James Williams UCL Medical School UCL, London, UK MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Despite a downward trend over the last decade in the usage of particular substances amongst adolescents in the UK, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis remain prevalent behaviours in this demographic. These risky health behaviours present a large problem in terms of public health due to the immediate and long-term health problems they cause, as well as negative non-health outcomes such as poor educational attainment and reduced employment. The role of academic ability in determining patterns of substance use is not clear and no study has evaluated academic ability at age 11 in relation to the onset and persistence of all three substances from early to late adolescence and into young adulthood. Our study sought to determine the association between academic ability and the onset and persistence of substance use in adolescence in a representative sample of English school pupils. This would answer for the first time whether ability was associated with ‘experimentation’ in early adolescence or if the association persists into late adolescence. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Orthopedics, Osteoporosis, Testosterone / 23.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Tony M. Keaveny, Ph.D. Professor, Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering; Co-Director, Berkeley BioMechanics Laboratory University of California Berkeley, CA 94720-1740 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: As men age, they experience decreased serum testosterone concentrations, decreased bone mineral density (BMD) and increased risk of fracture. While prior studies have been performed to determine the effect of testosterone treatment on bone in older men, for various reasons those studies have been inconclusive. The goal of this study was to overcome past limitations in study design and determine if testosterone treatment — versus a placebo — in older men with low testosterone would improve the bone. Specifically, we used 3D quantitative CT scanning to measure changes in BMD and engineering “finite element analysis” to measure changes in the estimated bone strength, both at the spine and hip. The study was performed on over 200 older men (> age 65) who had confirmed low levels of serum testosterone. (more…)
AHA Journals, Author Interviews, Technology / 23.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ricardo A Hanel, MD PhD Endovascular and Skull Base Neurosurgery Director, Baptist Neurological Institute Endowed Chair, Stroke and Cerebrovascular Surgery Jacksonville, FL MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Medtronic Pipeline Embolization Device has been approved for carotid artery aneurysms over 10mm in size, from the petrous to clinoid segment but given the efficacy of results on these larger lesions, it has been widely utilized for treatment of smaller lesions. PREMIER came from the need of assessing the results , safety and efficacy, of pipeline for use of aneurysms under 12mm, located on the carotid artery, all segments, and V3 segment of the vertebral artery. PREMIER enrolled 141 patients treated at 22 centers (21 US, 1 Canada). Primary Safety effectiveness defined as total aneurysm occlusion, core lab adjudicated , at 1 year was 83.5%; with safety endpoint of major stroke/death at 30 days of 1.4% (2 patients), with 1-year major stroke and death rate of 2.1%. (more…)
Author Interviews, Depression, JAMA, Pharmacology, Yale / 23.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Adam Chekroud PhD Candidate Human Neuroscience Lab Department of Psychology Yale University MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We know that depression includes a wide range of symptoms, from low mood and feeling worthless, to problems sleeping, slowed thinking, and suicidal ideation. We wanted to know whether antidepressants work well in treating all of these symptoms, or whether they are primarily effective on certain kinds of symptoms. (more…)
Author Interviews, Heart Disease, JAMA, Testosterone, UCLA / 23.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ronald S. Swerdloff, MD Chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Department of Medicine and Director of a World Health Organization Collaborative Center in Reproduction a Mellon Foundation Center for Contraceptive Development and a NIH Contraceptive Clinical Trial Center Director of the Harbor-UCLA Reproductive Program LA BioMed Lead Researcher David Geffen School of Medicine UCLA Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: While we have long known that testosterone levels decrease as men age, very little was known about the effects of testosterone treatment in older men with low testosterone until last year. Our team of researchers from LA BioMed and 12 other medical centers in the U.S., in partnership with the National Institute on Aging, conducted a coordinated group of seven trials known as The Testosterone Trials (TTrials). We studied the effects of testosterone treatment for one year as compared to placebo for men 65 and older with low testosterone. The TTrials are now the largest trials to examine the efficacy of testosterone treatment in men 65 and older whose testosterone levels are low due seemingly to age alone. The first published research from the TTrials last year reported on some of the benefits to testosterone treatment. We have now published four additional studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and JAMA Internal Medicine that found additional benefits and one potential drawback. (more…)
Author Interviews, Depression, JAMA, Telemedicine / 23.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Eirini Karyotaki, MSc Department of Clinical Psychology and EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam, the Netherlands MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Depression is broadly acknowledged as a major health issue associated with a great risk of mortality and morbidity. Nevertheless, help-seeking rates are low among individuals with depression. Some of the barriers that impede help seeking are the limited availability of trained clinicians, the fear of stigmatisation and the cost of treatment. Self-guided Internet based Cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) has the potential to overcome many of these treatment barriers. However, recent randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have produced mixed evidence regarding the effects of self-guided iCBT in treating adults with depressive symptoms. To gain more insight in the effectiveness of self-guided iCBT, an Individual Participant Data meta-analysis was performed. 3876 individual participant data across 13 RCTs were collected and analysed. (more…)
Author Interviews, Environmental Risks, Heart Disease, Radiology / 22.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Alessandro Sciahbasi, MD, PhD Sandro Pertini Hospital Rome, Italy MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Radiation exposure is an important issue for interventional cardiologists due to the deterministic and stochastic risks for operators, staff and patients. Consequently, it is important to know which are the determinants of operator radiation exposure during percutaneous coronary procedures in order to reduce radiation exposure. Despite different studies have already evaluated the radiation dose during percutaneous coronary procedures, most data were obtained using an indirect measure of the operator dose expressed in term of fluoroscopy time or dose area product (DAP) and only in a minority of studies dedicated operator dosimeters were used. The aim of our study was to evaluate operator radiation exposure during percutaneous coronary procedures with dedicated electronic dosimeters in a high volume center for transradial procedures. (more…)
Author Interviews, Heart Disease, JAMA, Testosterone / 21.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: T. Craig Cheetham, PharmD, MS Southern California Permanente Medical Group Department of Research & Evaluation Pasadena, CA 91101 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Concerns have been raised about the cardiovascular safety of testosterone replacement therapy. Patient selection criteria may have been a factor in the findings from studies reporting an increased cardiovascular risk with testosterone replacement therapy. Many men who were receiving testosterone replacement therapy don’t fall into the categories of ‘frail elderly’ or ‘high cardiovascular risk’. We therefore studied testosterone replacement therapy in a population of androgen deficient men within Kaiser Permanente Northern and Southern California. (more…)
Author Interviews, Sexual Health, Social Issues / 21.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Nicholas H. Wolfinger PhD Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Studies Adjunct Professor, Department of Sociology University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0080 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: W. Bradford Wilcox and I have been studying marriage and divorce for fifteen years. Last year we published Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Love and Marriage among African Americans and Latinos (Oxford University Press). We’re always looking for opportunities to present our findings to the public, so Valentines Day is a great excuse! It’s probably too strong a statement to call our new research brief a study, as we’re not offering any novel findings. Instead, we’re just compiling data from different sources—some published by other scholars, some based on our own analysis of national data—to reaffirm a basic point: marriage is good for men in myriad ways (Marriage is also good for women, but they await their own research brief.) In particular, marriage offers these benefits to men:
  • Higher earnings, greater assets and more job stability. Married men make about $16,000 a year more than their single peers with otherwise similar backgrounds.
  • Better sex lives compared to both single and cohabiting men. According to data from the National Health and Social Life Survey, 51 percent of married men report they are extremely emotionally satisfied with sex, compared to 39 percent of cohabiting men and 36 percent of single men.
  • Longer and happier lives. Men who get and stay married live almost 10 years longer than their unmarried peers. Also, young married men are about twice as happy: 43 percent of married men report they are “very happy” with life, compared to 20 percent of single men and 24 percent of cohabiting men.
(more…)
Author Interviews, Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, Weight Research / 21.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Prof. Dr. Michael Roden Director, German Diabetes Center (DDZ) Leibniz Center for Diabetes Research at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf Chair/Professor, Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf Director, Department of Endocrinology and Diabetology University Hospital Düsseldorf Düsseldorf, Germany MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The prevalence of obesity, type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) continue to increase at an alarming rate. Their occurrence has been associated with intake of saturated fats, for example that of palm oil. This study aimed to shed light on how dietary fat initiates metabolic changes which lead to the aforementioned diseases. To this end we provided 14 young healthy volunteers an oral dose of palm oil or placebo randomly, in a crossover manner, with an 8-week washout period between each intervention. One acute dose of palm oil leads to insulin resistance in the main insulin sensitive tissues of the body: the liver, skeletal muscle and adipose tissue. In the liver, it also results in increased accumulation of triglycerides, increased production of glucose from lipid and amino acid precursors (rather than from glycogen), and increased energy metabolism, as denoted by increased hepatic adenosine triphosphate (ATP) content. Moreover, a similar experiment in mice revealed that one dose of palm oil differentially regulates genes and pathways which are known or suspected regulators of NAFLD, such as lipopolysaccharide (LPS), members of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) family and nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B-cells. (more…)
Author Interviews / 21.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michael E. Saladin, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Health Sciences and Research College of Health Professions Medical University of South Carolina Charleston, SC MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: To the extent that learning and memory processes govern all aspects of behavior, they also govern dysregulated or maladaptive behaviors such as addiction and anxiety states. In the former case, stimuli associated with drug administration can acquire the ability to control drug-related motivational states (urges and craving) as well as drug seeking behavior. To illustrate the point, the simple act of observing a person light up a cigarette will cause the typical smoker to desire a cigarette and engage in smoking. A nonsmoker, by contrast, would not be similarly affected because they have no history where stimuli associated with smoking (e.g., sight of a lighter, cigarettes, plumes of smoke) are reliably paired with, or followed by, the rewarding effects of nicotine. The research we conducted recently was based on neuroscience research showing that retrieved drug-associated memories (prompted with drug-paired cues) can be updated with information that decreases drug craving and/or administration. One such study showed that heroin craving in heroin addicts can be decreased by retrieving memories for heroin use via a brief heroin cue presentation (video of people using heroin) and then, a short time later, presenting an extensive variety of heroin cues (video, pictures and heroin use paraphernalia) over a 1-hour period. The logic of this intervention was that once the heroin memories were prompted into a labile state by the brief video presentation, the extensive heroin cue exposure would serve to update the content of the original memories with new information (i.e., cues are not followed by heroin reward) that is inconsistent with the original cue-drug contingency (i.e., cues are followed with heroin reward). Remarkably, just two sessions of this type of training, which we call retrieval-extinction training, resulted in significant reductions in heroin craving that persisted for six months. This study was done with heroin addicts who were inpatients so there was no way to assess the effects of this treatment on actual heroin use. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Pediatrics, Social Issues, University of Pittsburgh / 21.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Christian D. Pulcini, MD, MEd, MPH Pediatric Resident Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC Chair, Section on Pediatric Trainees (SOPT) American Academy of Pediatrics MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Poverty influences the well-being of children and adolescents in a negative way. Poor children are often exposed to toxic health stressors, including violence, environmental toxins, and inadequate nutrition. Children in poverty with chronic health conditions also are more likely to have higher rates of secondary disorders and worse outcomes. We studied children with asthma, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), to describe the how much disease and if the children had multiple (comorbid) conditons and how these vary by poverty status. Parents reported through the National Survey of Children's Health that asthma and ADHD rose 18% and 44% from 2003-2011/2012, respectively, whereas the lifetime prevalence of ASD rose 32% from 2007-2011/2012 in all income levels. For asthma, the rise was most among the poor at 25.8%. For ADHD, the percent change among the poor was similar, however the rise in autism spectrum disorder was associated with being non-poor. Publicly insured children with asthma, ADHD, and ASD also had a significant higher chance (1.9×, 1.6×, 3.0×, respectively) of having higher more than one chronic condition. In addition, kids who were poor with asthma and ADHD. (more…)
Annals Internal Medicine, Author Interviews, Pain Research, Telemedicine / 21.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Rachel Nelligan, BPhysio Physiotherapist & Research Physiotherapist Department of Physiotherapy | Centre for Health, Exercise and Sports Medicine The University of Melbourne Victoria Australia MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: This novel study investigated the efficacy of an internet delivered model of service delivery that combined online education, Skype delivered exercise physiotherapy and an Internet-based interactive pain coping skills training program for people with persistent knee pain. Osteoarthritis, the leading cause of chronic knee pain and disability globally, has a significant individual, societal and economic burden. On an individual level knee osteoarthritis causes loss of function, reduced quality of life, and psychological distress. Clinical guidelines recommend adoption of a biopsychosocial approach to management which should include nondrug, nonsurgical treatments. Specifically exercise, education and psychological interventions (including pain coping skills training (PCST)) that foster self-management are recommended. Evidence identifies that many knee OA sufferers are not receiving adequate management due in part to challenges of accessing these effective treatments. There is an urgent need for new models of health service delivery to rectify this. Tele-rehabilitation is growing in acceptance as an effective, time efficient and convenient means for people to access effective health interventions. In knee OA internet delivered interventions specifically remotely delivered physiotherapy exercise using specialised tele-rehabilitation equipment and an Internet-based interactive PCST program (PainCOACH), designed to translate key therapeutic elements of clinician-delivered face-to-face PCST, have shown improved patient outcomes. Prior to this study the combination of these two internet-based treatments has not been investigated. (more…)
Author Interviews, Gender Differences, JAMA, Johns Hopkins, Mental Health Research, Pediatrics / 21.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Julia R.G. Raifman, ScD Post-doctoral fellow Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents between the ages of 15 and 24 years old in the United States. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents have elevated rates of suicide attempts. In our study, we found that 29% of gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents reported attempting suicide in the past year relative to 6% of heterosexual adolescents. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Gender Differences / 20.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jeanne Mager Stellman, PhD Professor Emerita & Special Lecturer Department of Health Policy & Management Mailman School of Public Health Columbia University York NY 10032 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We examined the experiences of 1285 American women, military and civilian, who served in Vietnam during the war and responded to a mail survey conducted approximately 25 years later in which they were asked to report and reflect upon their experiences and social and health histories. The data were collected as part of a much larger study that centered about methodological approaches to studying health effects of the military herbicides used in Vietnam. To our knowledge, this is the first study (a) to describe the experiences of civilian women deployed to a war zone and to compare them to those of military women; (b) to differentiate the experiences and outcomes among military women by the length of their military career service; (c) to contextualize the general health and happiness, marital characteristics, and childbearing patterns of women deployed to Vietnam and those of their peers by comparing them to a contemporaneous nationally representative age-matched cohort, the General Social Survey (GSS). Overall, this paper provides insight into the experiences of the understudied women who served in Vietnam, and sheds light on subgroup differences within the sample. (more…)
Author Interviews, HIV, Pharmacology / 20.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Kati Vandermeulen Senior Director, Global Regulatory Leader and Compound Development Team Lead IDV Janssen MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response:  SWORD is the first large trial program specifically conducted to look at the combination of dolutegravir and rilpivirine as a complete, two-drug antiretroviral regimen. Results of the two identical Phase III SWORD studies have been positive and demonstrate that the two-drug regimen of dolutegravir and rilpivirine is as effective, with comparable tolerability, to traditional three- or four-drug (integrase inhibitor-, non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-, or boosted protease inhibitor-based) antiretroviral regimens for the maintenance treatment of HIV. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brain Cancer - Brain Tumors, Radiation Therapy / 20.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: N. Scott Litofsky, M.D. Chief of the Division of Neurological Surgery University of Missouri School of Medicine MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Radiosurgery is being used more often for treatment of brain metastases to avoid potential side effects of whole-brain radiation, such as cognition and mobility impairment. After surgical resection of a brain metastases, some radiation treatment is generally needed to control brain disease. Few studies have directly compared efficacy of tumor control between surgery followed by whole-brain radiation and surgery followed by radiosurgery. Our objective was to compare outcomes in two groups of patients – one whose brain metastasis was treated with surgery followed by whole-brain radiation and one whose surgery was followed by radiosurgery to the post-operative tumor bed. We found that tumor control was similar for both groups, with survival actually better in the radiosurgery group. The complications of treatment were similar. (more…)
Author Interviews, Pediatrics, Social Issues / 20.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: James K. Rilling, PhD Professor, Anthropology, Psychiatry and Behavioral Science Emory University School of Medicine MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: It has been known for a long time that female mammals experience hormonal changes during pregnancy that prepare them to care for their offspring. More recently, it has been shown that some mammalian males, including humans, can also experience hormonal changes that prepare them to care for their offspring. For example, oxytocin levels can increase in human fathers and studies have shown that oxytocin facilitates paternal physical stimulation, play and emotional synchrony with their children. We examined the effects of intranasal oxytocin on brain function in human fathers. We found that intranasal oxytocin increased activation in brain areas involved with reward and empathy when human fathers viewed pictures of their children, but not unknown children. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Prostate Cancer / 20.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Neeraj Agarwal, MD Associate Professor, Division of Oncology, Department of Medicine University of Utah School of Medicine MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Biomarkers predicting response to cancer therapy help guide physicians personalize medicine. Significant advances have been made in the development of therapeutic biomarkers in various malignancies, but not in prostate cancer. Dr. Nima Sharifi’s group at the Cleveland Clinic recently discovered that a germline inherited polymorphic variant (1245A→C) in the HSD3B1 gene correlates with shorter duration of response to androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in hormone sensitive prostate cancer (HSPC). HSD3B1 gene encodes the enzyme 3β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase-1 (3βHSD1), which catalyzes adrenal androgen precursors into dihydrotestosterone, the most potent androgen. The authors found that the variant allele of HSD3B1 led to decreased progression-free survival in a dose-dependent manner in post-prostatectomy biochemical recurrence and metastatic HSPC (mHSPC). These results needed external validation before application in the clinic. In our study, we sought to provide the first independent validation of these results in patients with mHSPC. (more…)
Author Interviews, Prostate Cancer, Urology / 19.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Yoshifumi Kadono, MD. PhD. Department of Integrative Cancer Therapy and Urology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Science, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: I had experienced some patients who underwent radical prostatectomy (RP) complained penile shortening after RP. Once I checked that kind of reports, some reports mentioned the phenomenon of penile shortening (PS) after radical prostatectomy; however, the results were little bit different and the reasons of PS after RP were not well elucidated. Therefore, we started our study to obtain our data. In our study, the penile length (PL) was measured before, 10 days after, and at 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 months after RP. And the PL at 10 days after RP was shortest, and it gradually recovered thereafter. Penile length at 12 months after radical prostatectomy was not significantly different from preoperative penile length. Based on MRI investigation, slight vertical repositioning of the membranous urethra after radical prostatectomy caused chronological changes in penile length. (more…)
Author Interviews, Neurological Disorders, Zika / 19.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ping Wu, MD, PhD John S. Dunn Distinguished Chair in Neurological Recovery Professor, Department of Neuroscience & Cell Biology University of Texas Medical Branch Galveston, TX 77555-0620 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Zika viral infection poses a major global public health threat, evidenced by recent outbreaks in America with many cases of microcephaly in newborns and other neurological impairments. A critical knowledge gap in our understanding is the role of host determinants of Zika-mediated fetal malformation. For example, not all infants born to Zika-infected women develop microcephaly, and there is a wide range of Zika-induced brain damage. To begin to fill the gap, we infected brain stem cells that were derived from three human donors, and found that only two of them exhibited severer deficits in nerve cell production along with aberrant alterations in gene expression. (more…)
Author Interviews, Global Health, HIV, Lancet / 19.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jennifer A. Downs, M.D., Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Medicine and Microbiology & Immunology Department of Medicine Weill Cornell Medicine Center for Global Health New York, NY 10065 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Between 2002 and 2006, three large randomized controlled trials in sub-Saharan Africa demonstrated that male circumcision reduces new HIV infections in men by approximately 60%. Based on these findings, the World Health Organization recommended male circumcision as an HIV prevention strategy in countries with high levels of HIV and a low prevalence of male circumcision. This led to prioritization of 14 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa for massive scale-up of male circumcision beginning in 2011. In many of these countries, the uptake of male circumcision was lower than expected. In northwest Tanzania, where we work, there are a number of barriers to male circumcision. Some of these barriers are cultural, tribal, economic, and religious. We conducted focus group interviews in 2012 that showed that many Christian church leaders and church attenders in our region in Tanzania had major concerns about whether male circumcision was compatible with their religious beliefs. This led us to hypothesize that the uptake of male circumcision could be increased when religious leaders were taught about male circumcision, with the goal that they would then be equipped to discuss this issue with their congregations. (more…)
Author Interviews, Biomarkers, Pharmacology, Prostate Cancer / 19.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Teemu J Murtola, MD, PhD, adjunct professor University of Tampere, Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences Tampere University Hospital, Department of Urology Tampere, Finland MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: A previous study called Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT) showed that finasteride, which belongs to a drug group called 5alpha-reductase inhibitors lowers serum PSA and increases sensitivity of PSA to detect high-grade prostate cancer in men who had little or no symptoms of the lower urinary tract. We postulated that this effect would increase the accuracy and benefits of PSA-based prostate cancer screening. Finnish Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer was a large trial of over 80,000 men randomized either to be screened for prostate cancer with a PSA test at 4-year intervals or to be followed for prostate cancer incidence and mortality via national registries. Three consecutive screening rounds were commenced between 1996-2008. In the current study we compared the effects of PSA-based screening on prostate cancer risk and mortality separately among men who were using 5alpha-reductase inhibitors finasteride or dutasteride and among men who were not. (more…)