MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Zachary A. Kaminsky, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Department of Psychiatry
Baltimore, MD, 21205
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Kaminsky: A DNA methylation increase at the SKA2 gene was identified and observed across three post mortem brain tissue cohorts and was associated with suicide. The DNA methylation at the SKA2 gene was associated with lower gene expression of the gene. The same association was found in blood allowing us to attempt to predict suicidal behaviors in living individuals.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Petter Bjornstad, M.D.
Children's Hospital Colorado
University of Colorado Denver
Aurora, CO 80045
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Bjornstad: Type 2 diabetes is the most common cause of end-stage renal disease in the Western world. It is therefore of paramount importance to develop a better understanding of the determinants of diabetic nephropathy risk and progression, to improve outcome in adolescents with type 2 diabetes.
We report high rates of microalbuminuria and renal hyperfiltration in adolescents with type 2 diabetes, which forecast early renal morbidity and mortality. In our observational study, insulin sensitivity measured by hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp studies, rather than adiposity, blood pressure, lipid and glycemic control was associated with markers of renal health (albumin-to-creatinine ratio and estimated glomerular filtration rate).
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Daniel Weintraub, M.D.
Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-2676
Parkinson's Disease Research, Education and Clinical Center (PADRECC)
Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC)
Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Weintraub: That there is mixed evidence for the efficacy of naltrexone in the treatment of impulse control disorders in Parkinson’s disease, and the evidence is sufficient to support further study of this compound class for this indication. In addition, the study demonstrates that it is possible to conduct a clinical trial in this area.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Michelle Morris
Research Fellow
Nutritional Epidemiology Group
School of Food Science & Nutrition
University of Leeds
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Morris: The healthiest diets consumed by UK Women are the most expensive. This study is UK centric, using dietary patterns consumed by UK women and scored for healthiness according to the UK Department of Health Eatwell Plate. Cost of diet was estimated using average prices taken from an evaluated UK food cost database.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Grant Brinkworth PhD
Associate Professor
Senior Research Scientist
CSIRO Animal, Food and Health Sciences
Adelaide BC, South Australia
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Brinkworth: Both a very low carbohydrate, high protein, high unsaturated fat diet and a high carbohydrate, low fat diet achieved similar weight loss, improvements in body composition and health risk markers. However, compared to the high carbohydrate, low fat diet, a very low carbohydrate high protein, high unsaturated fat diet had more favourable effects on blood lipid profile, glycemic control (indicated by greater reductions in glycosylated haemoglobin – primary clinical measure of blood glucose control and the requirements for blood glucose controlling drugs) and for reducing daily blood glucose fluctuations.
The findings from this study suggests that a novel eating pattern that markedly limits carbohydrates, increases protein and unsaturated fat may have more favourable therapeutic potential for optimising the management of type 2 diabetes and reducing cardiovascular disease risk.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sharon Levy, M.D., M.P.H.
Director, Adolescent Substance Abuse Program
Assistant Professor in Pediatrics
Boston Children’s Hospital
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Levy: We found that questions that asked about the frequency of alcohol, tobacco and drug use accurately triaged adolescents into "risk categories". In other words, kids who reported using alcohol or marijuana "once or twice" last year were unlikely to have a substance use disorder, those who reported "monthly" use were very likely to meet diagnostic criteria for a "mild" or "moderate" substance use disorder while those who reported use weekly or more were very likely to meet diagnostic criteria for a "severe" substance use disorder.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Yung-Song Lin MD
Chi Mei Medical Center
Taipei Medical University
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Lin: The risks of developing oral cavity cancer, oropharyngeal cancer, and nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) were significantly higher in patients with diabetes.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: David C. Johnson, MD, MPH
Department of Urology
University of North Carolina School of Medicine
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Johnson: The first main finding from this study is that the likelihood of benign pathology after surgical removal of a renal mass suspected to be malignant based on pre-operative is inversely proportionate to size. This concept is well-established, however we systematically reviewed the literature for surgical series that published rates of benign pathology stratified by size and combined these rates to determine a single pooled estimate of benign pathology of pre-operatively suspicious renal masses for each size strata. Using benign pathology rates from US studies only, we found that 40.4% of masses < 1 cm, 20.9% of masses 1-2 cm, 19.6% of masses 2-3 cm, 17.2% of masses 3-4 cm, 9.2% of masses 4-7 cm, and 6.4% of masses >7 cm are benign.
The more novel finding from this study was the quantification of a previously unmeasured burden of over treatment in kidney cancer. By combining the above mentioned rates of benign pathology with epidemiological data, we estimated that the overall burden of benign renal masses surgically removed in the US to approach 6,000 per year in 2009. This represented an 82% increase over the course of a decade. Most importantly, we found an overwhelmingly disproportionate rise in the surgical treatment of renal masses in the smallest size categories – those which were most likely to be benign. We found a 233%, 189% and 128% increase in surgically removed benign renal lesions < 1 cm, 1-2 cm, and 2-3 cm, respectively from 2000 – 2009 in the US.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Professor Zuxun Lu
School of Public Health
Tongii Medical College
Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Wuhun, Hubei, China.
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Prof. Lu: The main finding of this systematic review and meta-analysis was that shift work is associated with an increased risk of diabetes mellitus (DM). The association between shift work and DM appeared to be independent of physical activity, family of history of DM and body mass index. We found that the increased risk of diabetes mellitus was more pronounced in rotating shift group and male shift workers than in other shift group and female shift workers, respectively.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview withDr. Richard Haynes
Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit
Roosevelt Drive, Headington
Oxford OX3
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Haynes: The main result from this analysis is that alemtuzumab-based induction therapy (ie, alemtuzumab followed by low-dose mycophenolate and tacrolimus with steroid avoidance) reduced biopsy-proven acute rejection by about half during the first 6 months after transplantation among a wide variety of different types of participant, compared to standard basiliximab-based induction therapy (basiliximab followed by standard dose mycophenolate, tacrolimus and steroids). This reduction was achieved despite the lower doses of tacrolimus used and there was no excess of infection observed.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Wendy Macias Konstantopoulos, MD, MPH
Department of Emergency Medicine
Division of Global Health & Human Rights
Massachusetts General Hospital
Harvard Medical School
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Macias-Konstantopoulos: Nearly two-thirds (64%) of 3240 emergency department (ED) patients who endorsed using drugs in the last 30 days, met criteria for problematic drug use (DAST-10 score ≥3). Of patients who identified their primary drug of use as being a substance other than cannabis, approximately 91% met criteria for problematic drug use, including nearly 94% of those using illicit drugs and 76% of those using pharmaceuticals. Compared to those who used cannabis primarily, primary non-cannabis users had an almost 15 times higher odds of meeting criteria for problematic drug use. Finally, we know from previous studies that drug-using individuals are more likely to access medical care through the ED and more likely to require hospitalization than their non-drug using counterparts. Our study found that drug-using ED patients who met criteria for problematic drug use tended to have ED triage levels associated with higher levels of severity or resource utilization when compared to drug-using ED patients who did not meet criteria for a drug problem.
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MedicalResearch.com: Interview with:Gabriel Arefalk
Department of Medical Sciences
Uppsala University Hospital
Uppsala, Sweden
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Answer: In this prospective cohort study, we investigated mortality risk in 2474 smokeless tobacco users who had been hospitalized for a myocardial infarction between the years of 2005-2009 in Sweden. We used a nationwide quality register and database called SWEDEHEART and found that those who stopped using snus (the Swedish type of snuff) after their MI had half the risk of dying during follow up relative to those who continued to use snus. This association, which was of the same magnitude as for smoking cessation, seemed to be independent of age, gender and smoking habits, as well as of many other relevant covariates.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Danny Dvir MD
St Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver
British Columbia, Canada
Medical Research: Who were the patients studied?Dr. Dvir: The VIVID registry included high-risk patients with failed aortic bioprostheses treated with valve-in-valve. These patients had many comorbidities and high risk scores for early mortality with conventional redo surgery.
Medical Research: What are the treatment options for these patients?Dr. Dvir: Patients with failed bioprosthetic valves are conventionally treated with redo surgery. Transcatheter valve-in-valve is a less-invasive approach.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Tomasz M. Beer, M.D. FACP
OHSU Knight Cancer Institute
Oregon Health and Science University
OR 97239
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Beer: In the study, we found that compared to placebo, enzalutamide improves overall survival, progression-free survival, quality of life, and delays the need for chemotherapy. Enzalutamide is superior to placebo with respect to all planned endpoints, across all subsets of the patient population in the study. Enzalutamide treatment is associated with an excellent safety profile.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michael A. Collins PhD
Professor of Molecular Pharmacology
Loyola University Chicago
Stritch School of Medicine
Maywood IL 60153
Medical Research: What are the main findings of your study?Dr. Collins: There were several:
First, we found that a cadre of neuroinflammatory proteins which promote or are stimulated by increased oxidative stress were significantly altered in a brain neurodegeneration model involving high alcohol binges in adult (male) rats. Most surprising was that the alterations were selectively evident in the three brain regions that contain a lot of dying neurons, and not in regions lacking neurodamage.
Additionally, in an alcohol-binged adult rat brain cultures, the same neuroinflammatory protein alterations, along with the neuronal damage, were replicated.
We further observed that binging the cultures depleted a key omega-3 fatty acid, termed DHA, in brain membranes. When these binged brain cultures were then supplemented with DHA, the neuroinflammatory protein changes and the neurodegeneration were largely or completely inhibited.
The results link specific oxidative stress-associated neuroinflammatory routes to the brain neuronal demise arising from high binge alcohol exposures.
They also reveal that supplementation with an omega-3 fatty acid reported to be neuroprotective with respect to other insults may be effective as well in suppressing the brain-damaging effects of excessive alcohol binges.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Qi Zhang, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Community and Environmental Health
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Zhang: This study found the child-parent resemblance in body weight status varied by socio-demographics in the U.S. In short, the resemblance in BMI is weaker in minorities, older children and lower socioeconomic groups.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sean Davies PhD
Department of Pharmacology
Vanderbilt University
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Davies: N-acyl phosphatidylethanolamine (NAPE) is a fat-like molecule normally produced by small intestine of mammals in response to eating high fat foods that helps signal a feeling of fullness to the brain. This sensation of fullness is what normally helps us decide to stop eating, but in obese people it appears that not enough NAPE is produced so that not enough of that signal gets sent to the brain. So we wanted to find a way to increase the amount of NAPE made in the intestinal tract, with the hope that this would help protect against obesity. Our approach was to engineer a probiotic bacteria that normally colonizes the gut of humans and other mammals so that it would make NAPE. Our hope was that when this gut bacteria made the NAPE, it would be absorbed by the intestine and help supplement the NAPE already being made by the intestine so that a more complete sensation of fullness would be send to the brain.
What we found was that our engineered bacteria made a significant amount of NAPE and that when fed to mice, the bacteria would colonize the gut like normal and that the intestinal cells could absorb this NAPE. Most importantly, we found that mice that received this bacteria ate less of the high fat diet than mice that were not treated or that received bacteria that did not make NAPE. Because the mice ate less of the high fat diet, and also because they burned the fat they had more effectively, the mice receiving the bacteria producing NAPE had only 50% of the body fat of the control mice. While the control mice showed the early signs of developing diabetes, the mice that received the NAPE producing bacteria showed almost no signs of developing diabetes. So the presence of these NAPE producing bacteria protected the mice from the harmful effects of the high fat diet.
Another key findings was that because the bacteria live in the GI tract and keep producing the NAPE for many weeks, we didn’t have to keep administering the bacteria to the mice to keep up the protective effect. Even a month after we stopped giving the bacteria producing NAPE, the mice were still protected from the effects of the high fat diet. Eventually after about six weeks, the bacteria died out and the mice started eating the same amount of food as the control mice, but even for at least another six weeks after this, they still weighed less than the control mice.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Joe Verghese, MBBS, MS
Professor of Neurology and Medicine,
Chief, Integrated Divisions of Cognitive & Motor Aging (Neurology) and Geriatrics (Medicine), Director, Resnick Gerontology Center,
Murray D Gross Memorial Faculty Scholar in Gerontology,
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY 10461
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Answer:Motoric Cognitive Risk Syndrome (MCR) is a newly described pre-dementia syndrome that is characterized by presence of slow gait and cognitive complaints in older adults without dementia or mobility disability. In this study, we report that the prevalence of Motoric Cognitive Risk Syndrome was 9.7% in 26,802 adults aged 60 and older from 22 cohort studies based in 17 countries. Presence of Motoric Cognitive Risk Syndrome was also associated with an almost two-fold risk of developing dementia.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview withSteven M. Hill, Ph.D.
Professor, Structural & Cellular Biology
Edmond & Lily Safra Chair for Breast Cancer Research
Co-Director, Molecular Signaling Program, Louisiana Cancer Research Consortium
Director, Tulane Circadian Biology Center
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Hill: The main findings of our study are that exposure to even dim light at night can drive human breast tumors to a hyper metabolic state, activating key tumor cell signaling pathways involved in tumor cell survival and proliferation, leading to increased tumor growth, all resulting in a tumor which is completely resistant to therapy. Our work shows that this effect is due to the repression of nighttime melatonin by dim light at night. When nighttime melatonin is replace the tumors become sensitive to tamoxifen resulting in cell death and tumor regression.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: John Blosnich, Ph.D., M.P.H.,
Post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion
Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System.
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Blosnich: I think there are two main findings from our study:
First, since the beginning of the All-Volunteer U.S. military in 1973, there has been a shift in childhood experiences among men who have served in the military.
Second, the childhood experiences of women who have served in the military have been largely similar across the Draft and All-Volunteer Eras.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Rajkumar Lakshmanaswamy, PhDBasic Science Research Director of the Center of Excellence in Cancer Research.
The Paul L. Foster School of Medicine
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Lakshmanaswamy: Our study supports a growing body of research suggesting a safe and effective role for natural steroid hormones in treating postmenopausal breast cancer, with fewer detrimental side effects and an improved health profile than with standard anti-hormone therapies. Using a mouse model mimicking human breast cancer after menopause, we found that treatment with estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone was associated with greater physical activity, improved cognition, and better cardiovascular and bone health, which demonstrates the potential significance of hormone treatment in postmenopausal women.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview Invitation Dr. Eileen Hsich MD
Director of the Women’s Heart Failure Clinic
Associate Medical Director for the Heart Transplant Program
Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Hsich:Women are dying on the heart transplant waiting list at a faster rate than men for almost a decade (see Figure 1) and few studies have even addressed this problem. The occurrence is largely driven by gender differences in survival at the most urgent status (UNOS Status 1A) but the cause remains unclear. Although data is limited our findings raise concern that women are not successfully bridged to transplantation while they remain at high status and are inactivated due to worsening condition.
Figure 1. Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients: Mortality on Waiting List For Heart Transplantation
Figure derived from table in Scientific registry of transplant recipients: Heart waiting list by gender 2000-2009. Available at:
Http://srtr.Transplant.Hrsa.Gov/annual_reports/2010/1103_can-gender_hr.Htm
accessed january 9, 2014.(more…)
MedicalResearch.com Interview Invitation Dr. Bryan K. Woodruff
Assistant Professor of Neurology
Mayo Clinic, Arizona
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Woodruff: There is evidence in the medical literature supporting a negative impact of losing a spouse for health conditions such as cancer or cardiovascular disease, but this has not been evaluated in terms of the impact of widowhood on the development of dementia. We used the National Alzheimer’s Disease Coordinating Center (NACC) database, which pools data gathered by multiple federally-funded Alzheimer’s disease research centers to try to answer this question. Specifically, we looked at the age at which individuals ultimately developed dementia in both individuals who lost their spouse and in those who remained married over the course of the study. Surprisingly, the data we analyzed did not support a negative impact of losing a spouse in individuals who had no cognitive difficulties when they entered the study, and we saw a paradoxical effect of widowhood in those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Alison E. Field, ScD
Professor of Pediatrics
Boston Children's Hospital
Division of Adolescent Medicine
Boston, MA 02115
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Answer: We found that intake of regular soda is decreasing, whereas, sports drink consumption is increasing. More importantly, we found that intake of sports drinks predicted greater weight gain among adolescent boys and girls.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Stephanie Faubion, M.D
Director of the Women’s Health Clinic
Mayo Clinic in Rochester
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Faubion:In this study that included over 1800 women, we found that caffeine intake was associated with more bothersome hot flashes and night sweats in postmenopausal women.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jason D. Wright, M.D.
Levine Family Assistant Professor of Women's Health
Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Division of Gynecologic Oncology
Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
161 Fort Washington Ave, New York, New York 10032
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Wright:This study is one of the first large scale studies to examine the risk of cancer specifically in women who underwent hysterectomy with electric power morcellation. Among 32,000 women treated at over 500 hospitals across the US we noted cancer in 27 per 10,000 women.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: R Chris Williams PhD
Honorary Fellow, Musculoskeletal Division
The George Institute for Global Health
Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Williams:We found that in addition to advice and reassurance, ‘regular’ or ‘as needed’ paracetamol did not improve recovery time for people with low back pain, compared to placebo. We also found the pain intensity and a range of other relevant measures, such as patient’s physical function was not different between the treatment groups.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Eva DuGoff, PhD, MPP
Graduate Student
Department of Health Policy and Management
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. DuGoff:In this study we investigate average life expectancy in older adults living with one to 10 or more different chronic conditions. Our main finding is that life expectancy decreases with each additional chronic condition.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Qiuyin Cai, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Medicine
Vanderbilt University
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Cai: We conducted a genome-wide association study in East Asians to search for additional genetic changes that are linked to breast cancer development. The study was conducted as part of the Asia Breast Cancer Consortium, which includes 22,780 women with breast cancer and 24,181 control subjects. We found DNA sequence changes in two genes, PRC1 and ZC3H11A, and a change near the ARRDC3 gene were associated with breast cancer risk. These results were also replicated in a large consortium, including 16,003 breast cancer cases and 41,335 control subjects of European ancestry.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Allison Lipitz-Snyderman, PhD
Assistant Attending Outcomes Research Scientist
Center for Health Policy and Outcomes
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center New York, NY 10065
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Lipitz-Snyderman:Long-term central venous catheters are used to administer intravenous fluids and treatments such as chemotherapy. These catheters can also be a source of bloodstream infections which can be harmful to cancer patients. However, this risk is not well understood. In our study, we found that the use of these catheters was associated with an increased risk of infections for patients with cancer. We used a population-based dataset, SEER-Medicare, to study this issue in older adult cancer patients. This dataset allowed us to study patients treated in different institutions and follow them over time.
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