MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Pravin U. Dugel MD Managing Partner, Retinal Consultants of Arizona Phoenix AZ Clinical Professor USC Eye Institute Keck School of Medicine ...
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Prof. David Mackey
Centre for Ophthalmology and Vision Science/Lions Eye Institute Perth
Managing Director/Chair of University of Western Australia,
Perth, Australia
Centre for Eye Research Australia, Melbourne University
MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Prof. Mackey: Too much or too little sun? Excessive sun exposure is associated with the eye disease pterygium, while lack of outdoor activity in childhood increases the risk of myopia (short sightedness).
Measuring the amount of early sun damage to a person’s eyes would be of great use to researchers and potential use in clinical practice.
Over the last few years we have developed a biomarker for sun exposure to the eye by photographing Conjunctival UV Auto-Fluorescence (CUVAF).
The study published in JAMA Ophthalmology looked at the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to CUVAF levels in three Australian studies from Tasmania, Perth and Brisbane.
People who live in sunnier environments closer to the equator have more evidence of sun damage using CUVAF. However, genetic factors also play a role.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Thomas C. Tsai, MD, MPH
Departments of Surgery and Health Policy and Management
Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Tsai: Emerging evidence is suggesting that fragmented care is associated with higher costs and lower quality. For elderly patients undergoing major surgical procedures, fragmentation of care in the post-discharge period may be especially problematic. We therefore hypothesized that elderly patients receiving fragmented post-discharge care would have worse outcomes. We found that among Medicare patients who are readmitted after a major surgical operation, one in four are readmitted to a different hospital than the one where the original operation was performed. Even taking distance traveled into account, we find that this type of postsurgical care fragmentation is associated with a substantially higher risk of death.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
M. Justin Coffey MD
Associate Professor
Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Baylor College of Medicine
MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Coffey: Although both the US Surgeon General and the Institute of Medicine have called on health care systems to reduce suicide, the few assessments of suicide in such systems have examined only specific patient groups and not the entire population of health plan members. Our study reports the first information on suicide for the entire membership of a large health maintenance organization (HMO). The findings provide a previously unavailable baseline data for health care systems who are engaged in important efforts to measure and prevent suicide.
We identified all suicides among the entire membership of our HMO network between 1999 and 2010, determining the date and cause of death using official state mortality records. In our sample, the annual suicide rate among all HMO members (including non-patient members) did not change over time, whereas the annual suicide rate in the general population of the state of Michigan increased significantly. Importantly, suicides actually decreased among HMO members who received specialty mental health services, whereas suicides increased among HMO members who accessed general medical services but not specialty mental health services.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Michael Noto, MD, PhD
Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Noto: Health care-associated infections are the most common complication for hospitalized patients and several studies have suggested that bathing critically ill patients with the antimicrobial chlorhexidine reduces health care-associated infections. In the largest study of chlorhexidine bathing to date, however, we were unable to demonstrate a reduction in infections.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Vasantha Padmanabhan, MS, PhD
Professor, Departments of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Molecular and Integrative Physiology, and Environmental Health Sciences
University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Mi 48109
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Controversy exists regarding the human health effects of bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine-disrupting industrial chemical, present in plastic products, baby bottles, food can liners, and wide array of paper products including cash receipts. BPA has been linked to adverse metabolic effects, including obesity, diabetes and cardiac disease. This study examined if exposure to bisphenol A during pregnancy, at levels humans are exposed to, induces oxidative stress, a major contributor to the development of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease. Findings from this multi species study show an association between higher maternal- and cord-blood BPA levels and 3-nitrotyrosine Y (NY), a marker of oxidative stress, in 24 pregnant women. Similar effect on oxidative stress was also found when human-comparable BPA doses were given to pregnant sheep and rats. Similarity of findings between BPA exposure and oxidative stress in the human association study and animals testing study raises concern about potential risk of BPA later in life.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Juliane Kämmer Postdoctoral Researcher
on behalf of the authors
Max Planck Institute for Human Development
Center for Adaptive Rationality Berlin Germany
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Kämmer: Diagnostic errors contribute substantially to preventable medical error. Of the multiple reasons for diagnostic error (such as technical failures or poorly cooperating patients), cognitive error is among the most frequent. Although a vast amount of literature explores ways to reduce cognitive errors, for example, during data synthesis, the collaborative character of clinical decision making has been largely neglected so far. Thus, the aim of our study was to investigate the effect of working in teams as opposed to working alone on diagnostic accuracy and the diagnostic decision process as such (including the time to diagnosis, number of ordered diagnostic tests and calibration of diagnostic confidence to diagnostic accuracy).
In our study, we asked senior medical students to imagine being at the emergency ward and having to diagnose six simulated patients with respiratory distress on a computer – either working individually or in pairs. We indeed found that working in pairs reduced diagnostic error without requiring more diagnostic data gathering. Interestingly, neither differences in knowledge nor in amount and relevance of acquired diagnostic information could explain the superior accuracy of the pairs; neither did the statistically increased likelihood of containing a knowledgeable member. We thus have shown that – similar to other studies outside medicine – collaboration may help correct errors, fill knowledge gaps and counteract reasoning flaws – and thus save lives. Moreover, we found that reflecting on their personal confidence may point members of teams towards an increased probability of a diagnostic error.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Anna Geraghty
Department of Integrative Biology
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley,
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: RFRP3 in mammals has been well characterized as a negative regulator of the hormonal reproductive axis. It shuts down release of gonadotropins necessary for successful reproduction, similar to how stress inhibits reproduction. Our lab has previously shown that stress can directly regulate RFRP3 levels in males-both acute and chronic stress lead to an upregulation of RFRP3 levels in the male rat. As a followup to that study, we were interested in looking at whether this response was similar in females, and how that may affect long term fertility. We found that chronic (18 days) of stress led to an increase in RFRP3 levels all all stages of the estrous cycle. This increase was also sustained for at least 4 days, or one whole estrous cycle, after the stress ended- the equivalent to a month menstrual cycle in humans. In rats that were stressed and then allowed to recover for 4 days, animals that were stressed were significantly less successful at reproducing- 76% success rate in controls compared to 21% in the stressed animals. This was a result of a combination of deficits in the mating process- less stressed animals successfully copulated, those that did successfully mate had fewer pregnancies, and gave birth to smaller litters. However, utilizing an inducible virus to knockdown RFRP levels in the hypothalamus specifically during the stress period prevented all of these problems- stressed animals without stress-induced RFRP3 increases looked indistinguishable to controls.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Alan I Faden, M.D.
David S. Brown Professor in Trauma
Professor, Departments of Anesthesiology, Anatomy & Neurobiology, Neurosurgery, and Neurology
Director, Center for Shock, Trauma & Anesthesiology Research (STAR) University of Maryland School of Medicine
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Faden: Accumulating clinical and pre-clinical research data indicate that traumatic brain injury (TBI) can lead to chronic progressive neurodegeneration. In this regard, most attention has focused on the connections between TBI and with Alzheimer disease (AD) or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). However, recent epidemiological studies raise questions about the association between TBI and AD, and CTE is likely a less common end-stage result resulting from complex pathobiological changes. In contrast, both older and newer studies underscore that traumatic brain injury can cause chronic neuroinflammation that leads to chronic neurodegeneration. In contrast to AD and CTE, the latter condition appears to be potentially treatable, even long after injury. Our paper critically assesses the mechanisms and treatment of chronic post traumatic neurodegeneration.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Allan G Kermode MBBS MD FRACP FRCP
Clinical Professor of Neuroimmunology, Murdoch University
Clinical Professor of Neurology, University of Western Australia
Head, Department of Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology SCGH
Centre for Neuromuscular and Neurological Disorders
Australian Neuromuscular Research Institute Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital Perth WA Australia Institute of Immunology and Infectious Diseases
Murdoch University, Western Australia
MedicalResearch: You found that H. pylori sero-positivity was significantly lower in female patients with MS than in female healthy controls, but you didn’t find such a trend in men with Multiple Sclerosis… Briefly, what might explain this association between H. pylori and Multiple Sclerosis in women? (i.e the hygiene hypothesis I suppose?).
Prof. Kemode: There are a number of possible explanations, but we believe that the most likely is that helicobacter colonisation is a surrogate marker for the baseline levels of exposure to environmental pathogens and organisms during childhood. We have argued this point of view in our manuscript. It should be emphasised that perhaps not all exposure to infectious agents need necessarily be pathogenic, and the concept of the protobiome is an important one. Every healthy (and unhealthy) individual is host to very many organisms, with the gut having the widest diversity. Other explanations for the association might include that there is some specific antigenic interaction occurring promoting specific immune tolerance to CNS antigens, but I believe that this conclusion would be drawing a very long bow with our current stage of knowledge regarding Multiple Sclerosis.
MedicalResearch: Why does this relationship exist in women but not in men? (presumably, they are exposed to the same sanitation, hygiene etc.)
Prof. Kemode: This is arguably one of the most fascinating observations of our study. Historically the sex ratio in Multiple Sclerosis was equal, yet in the last 100 years the prevalence of Multiple Sclerosis has increased markedly and the majority of this increase has occurred in women such that in Australia the sex ratio F:M approximates 3:1. The fact that over the same period prevalence of helicobacter in Western countries has declined markedly is a tantalising observation. At this stage scientific knowledge has not explained the changing sex ratios in Multiple Sclerosis nor can we yet explain the strong helicobacter association in females but not males in our study, but our study provides useful navigation to direct further research.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Sheree L. Boulet, DrPH, MPH
Division of Reproductive Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Boulet: Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection is generally considered a safe and effective treatment for male factor infertility; however, some studies have shown that ICSI is increasingly used in patients without male factor infertility without clear evidence of a benefit over conventional in vitro fertilization (IVF). In addition to increasing the cost of an IVF cycle, use of Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection has been found to increase the risk for adverse infant outcomes such as birth defects, chromosomal abnormalities and autism. Using data from CDC’s National Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance System, we found that use of ICSI increased by fourfold from 1996 through 2012 (from 15.4% to 66.9%). Furthermore, we found that use of Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection did not improve reproductive outcomes such as rates of pregnancy, miscarriage and live birth, when compared with conventional IVF, regardless of whether male factor infertility was present.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Ji Su Hong, MD
Department of Psychiatry
Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis, MO
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Ji Su Hong: The estimated prevalence of preschool conduct disorder is 3.9%-6.6%. Approximately 1 out of 20 preschoolers has conduct disorder. Disruptive behaviors are common in the preschool period of development. However, to date we have not had scientific data to help guide clinicians to distinguish between normal disruptive behaviors in preschoolers and behaviors that are markers of later Conduct disorder at school age.
There were common misbehaviors which were found in preschoolers with mental health problems as well as healthy preschoolers. Those were losing temper, low intensity destruction of property and deceitfulness/stealing.
Preschoolers who exhibited high-intensity defiant behavior, aggression toward people or animals, high-intensity destruction of property, peer problems and deceitfulness, including stealing, were more likely to have preschool conduct disorder and they were more likely to be diagnosed with a conduct disorder at school-age. (more…)MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Daniel Klein, MD Kaiser Permanente Northern California San Leandro Medical Center San Leandro, CA Medical Research: What is the background for...
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Katharine A. Neill PhD
Alfred C. Glassell III Postdoctoral Fellow in Drug Policy
Baker Institute, Rice University
Houston, TX 77005
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Neill: This study is a historical review of drug policy in 20th century United States. It examines drug policy decisions and consequences through a socio-political lens and argues that the prominence of the law-and-order approach to dealing with drug offenders--that emphasizes punishment and incarceration over prevention and treatment--is a result of the construction of drug offenders as social deviants that threaten society. This punitive model has been especially harmful because it has occurred to the detriment of harm reduction approaches to drug use that have greater potential to negate the negative individual and public health consequences of drug use.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Timo Partonen MD, Research Professor
National Institute for Health and Welfare
Helsinki, Finland
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Alcohol-use disorders are often comorbid conditions with mood and anxiety disorders. Clinical studies have demonstrated that there are abnormalities in circadian rhythms and intrinsic clocks in patients with alcohol-use disorders. Circadian clock gene variants are therefore a fruitful target of interest.
The main findings are that variants of key clock genes, namely those of ARNTL, ARNTL2, PER1 and PER2, have association with alcohol consumption, with alcohol abuse, or with alcohol dependence. It is of interest that variants of a fifth clock gene of key importance, that is those of CLOCK, are associated with alcohol-use disorders only if comorbid with depressive disorders.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Robert S. Rosenson, MD
Professor, Cardiology
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Cardiovascular Institute
New York, New York 10029
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Rosenson: High intensity statin therapy is evidence-based and guideline directed for patients with acute coronary syndromes. In a 5 percent random sample of Medicare patients, we investigated the utilization of high vs low-moderate dosage statin in older adjusts who were admitted with an acute myocardial infarction of severe myocardial ischemia requiring hospitalization for a revascularization procedure (PCI or CABG).
We report that only 27 percent of hospitalized patients received high-intensity statin therapy based on their first outpatient fill for a statin medication. The most important determinant for the utilization of statin therapy is the dosage of the statin previously prescribed as an outpatient. When patients were started on a high-intensity statin, the continued use diminished in the ensuing year
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
David Alter, MD, PhD FRCPC Senior Scientist
Toronto Rehabilitation Institute-University Health Network and Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences
Research Director, Cardiac Rehabilitation and Secondary Prevention Program Toronto Rehabilitation Institute
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Alter: We knew going into the study that exercise was an important lifestyle factor that improved health. We also knew from studies that sedentary time was associated with deleterious health-effects. What we didn’t know was whether the health-outcome effects of sedentary time and exercise were really one and the same (i.e., albeit opposite ends of the same spectrum) or alternatively, whether the health effects of each were independent of one another. We explored over 9000 published studies to quantify the health-outcome effects associated with sedentary behaviour and extracted only those which took into account both sedentary time and exercise. We found a consistent association between sedentary time and a host of health outcomes independent of exercise. Specifically, after controlling for an individual’s exercising behaviour, sitting-time was associated with a 15-20% higher risk of death, heart-disease, death from heart disease, cancer-incidence, and death from cancer. Sitting time was also independently associated with a marked (i.e., 90% increase) in the risk for diabetes after controlling for exercise. In short, sedentary times and exercise are each independently associated with health outcomes. We hypothesize that the two may have different mechanism, and may require different therapeutic strategies. But, the health-outcome implications of both are each important in their own right.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. P. Michael Ho, MD PhD
Denver Veteran Affairs Medical Center,
University of Colorado, Denver, Section of Cardiology
Denver, Colorado 80220.
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Ho: There is increasing interest in measuring health care value, particularly as the healthcare system moves towards accountable care. Value in health care focuses on measuring outcomes achieved relative to costs for a cycle of care. Attaining high value care - good clinical outcomes at low costs - is of interest to patients, providers, health systems, and payers. To date, value assessments have not been operationalized and applied to specific patient populations. We focused on percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) because it is an important aspect of care for patients with ischemic heart disease, is commonly performed and is a costly procedure. In this study, we evaluated 1-year risk-adjusted mortality and 1-year risk-standardized costs of care for all patients who underwent PCI in the VA healthcare system from 2008 to 2010.
We found that median one-year unadjusted hospital mortality rate was 6.13% (interquartile range 4.51% to 7.34% across hospitals). Four hospitals were significantly above the one-year risk standardized median mortality rate, with median mortality ratios ranging from 1.23 to 1.28; no hospitals were significantly below median mortality. Median 1-year total unadjusted hospital costs were $46,302 (IQR of $37,291 to $57,886) per patient. There were 16 hospitals above and 19 hospitals below the risk standardized average cost, with risk standardized ratios ranging from 0.45 to 2.09 reflecting much larger magnitude of variability in costs compared to mortality. These findings suggest that there are opportunities to improve PCI healthcare by reducing costs without compromising outcomes. This approach of evaluating outcomes and costs together may be a model for other health systems and accountable care organizations interested in operationalizing value measurement. (more…)
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Andreas Kalogeropoulos, MD MPH PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine (Cardiology)
Emory University School of Medicine Emory Clinical Cardiovascular Research Institute
Atlanta GA 30322
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Kalogeropoulos: There is ongoing debate on how low should we go when it comes to dietary sodium (salt) restriction recommendations. In this study, we examined the association between self-reported dietary sodium intake and 10-year risk for death, cardiovascular disease, and heart failure in approximately 2,600 adults 71-80 years old. The subjects (women: 51.2%; white: 61.7%; black: 38.3%) were participants of the community-based Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study, which is sponsored by NIH and focuses on aging processes, i.e. was not specifically designed to address the issue of dietary salt intake. Also, it is important to note that salt intake was self-reported (not objectively measured) using a food frequency questionnaire, which underestimates salt intake. Keeping these limitations in mind, we did not observe a significant association between self-reported sodium intake and 10-year mortality, cardiovascular disease, and heart failure. Ten-year mortality was lower in the group reporting 1500–2300 mg daily sodium intake (30.7%) compared to those reporting daily intake less than 1500 mg (33.8%) or over 2300 mg (35.2%); however, this difference was not statistically significant. The 10-year event rates for cardiovascular disease (28.5%, 28.2%, and 29.7%) and heart failure (15.7%, 14.3%, and 15.5%) were also comparable across the <1500-mg, 1500-2300-mg, and >2300-mg dietary sodium intake groups.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Jose Gutierrez MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Neurology
Division of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease
Columbia University Medical Center NY, NY
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Gutierrez: There is growing interest in the effects of vascular health in cognition. The prevailing thought is that vascular disease leads to worse cognition due to direct structural damage of the brain, as in the case of brain infarcts, microhemorrhages or white matter hyperintensities, which are themselves associated with traditional cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, smoking etc. Arterial stiffness, particularly of the aorta, has gained interest among researchers as predictors of vascular disease and worse cognition, but it is not clear whether arterial stiffness in the absence of traditional definition of vascular disease may be associated with worse cognition.
We investigated in a representative sample of the US among adults 60 years or older who underwent cognitive testing with the Digit Symbol Subtraction test and who also had other measures of vascular disease, including blood workup, blood pressure measurement and Pulse pressure. We hypothesized that indirect measures of arterial stiffness such as ABI > 1.3 or pulse pressure would be associated with worse cognition, even among those without any clinical vascular disease or traditional vascular risk factors. We Included 2573 US adults in the sample, segregated those with any self-reported vascular disease or vascular risk factors and we found that among those without vascular disease or risk factors, an ABI > 1.3 and increased intra-visit blood pressure variability were predictors of worse cognitive performance compared with those without these indicators. Among participants with both indirect markers of arterial stiffness, their cognitive performance was worse that having only one of them suggesting additive effects of these two variables.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Jane Wardle
University College London
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Wardle: Previous studies have shown that couples tend to have similar health behaviours to one another, but no studies had compared having a partner who takes up a healthy behaviour (e.g. quits smoking) with having one whose behaviour is consistently healthy (e.g. never smoked). Nor have there been other studies in the older age group – our participants were over 60 on average. We used data from 3722 couples participating in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) to explore this issue for three behaviours: smoking, physical activity, and weight loss. For each behaviour, we found that when one partner changed their behaviour, the other partner was more likely to make a positive change, and the effect was stronger than having a partner whose behaviour was consistently healthy (i.e. never smoked/always exercised).
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Jinnie J. Rhee MSc, ScD
Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine Palo Alto, CA
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: The goal of this study was to see if the dietary determinants of type 2 diabetes observed in predominantly white populations were similar to those in other racial and ethnic groups. We created a dietary diabetes risk reduction score using eight different dietary factors found to be associated with risk of type 2 diabetes, where a higher score indicates a healthier overall diet (A higher score included low intakes trans fat, sugar-sweetened beverages, and red and processed meats; lower glycemic index; and higher intakes of cereal fiber, nuts, and coffee; and higher polyunsaturated to saturated fat ratio). We found a protective association of similar magnitude between a healthy overall diet and type 2 diabetes risk in all racial and ethnic groups. However, in terms of the actual number of preventable cases, a healthier diet conferred even greater benefit for minority women because they were initially at higher risk than white women.
This study is significant because diabetes is a rapidly growing epidemic in most parts of the world, but most previous studies of diet and diabetes have been conducted in populations of European origin. This analysis was very powerful because it combined two large populations with a total of 156,030 women who were followed for up to 28 years with many repeated assessments of diet. This allowed us to conduct detailed analyses within specific racial and ethnic groups.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Cecilia Cesa Schiavon
Department of Nutrition, Federal University of Santa Catarina
Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: The study was based on a nutritional intervention for patients undergoing treatment for breast cancer. The intervention took place right after the surgical procedure and lasted about a year, until the end of chemotherapy. The patients were submitted to a special methodology of intervention, aimed at increasing fruit and vegetable intake and reducing red and processed meat, following the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research in the document entitled Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective”.
The main findings show that women undergoing breast cancer treatment may benefit from immediate, individualized, and detailed nutrition monitoring through appropriate nutrition education.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Lee Zou, Ph.D.
Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School
The Jim & Ann Orr MGH Research Scholar
Associate Scientific Director, MGH Cancer Center
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Lee Zou: Cancer cells must rely on telomerase or the alternative lengthening of telomere (ALT) pathway to maintain telomeres and bypass replicative senescence. The ALT pathway is active in about 10-15% of human cancers, and it is particularly prevalent in specific cancer types, such as osteosarcoma, glioblastoma, and neuroendocrine pancreatic tumors. ALT is a recombination-mediated process. Whether the reliance of cancer cells on alternative lengthening of telomere can be exploited therapeutically was not known.
In our study, we discovered that the ATR kinase is a key regulator of alternative lengthening of telomere. We found that ATR inhibitors disrupt ALT effectively. Furthermore, we found that ATR inhibitors selectively kill ALT-positive cancer cells in a panel of caner cell lines. These findings have suggested the first rational therapeutic strategy for the treatment of ALT-positive cancer. (more…)
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Francisco Mesa
Department of Periodontics,
School of Dentistry, University of Granada, Spain
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Mesa: The size of an acute myocardial infarct (AMI) is one of the determinants of its severity, i.e., the degree of myocardial necrosis. This necrosis is indicated by peak troponin I levels in the blood. Among the acute myocardial infarct patients in our study, mediated regression analysis demonstrated that troponin I levels were higher, i.e., the infarct size was larger, in those with chronic periodontitis.
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