MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Li-Shu Wang, PhD
Department of Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee, WisconsinMedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Answer:Ulcerative colitis (UC) is frequently an intermediate step to colon cancer. The interleukin-10 knock-out (KO) mouse is a genetic model of this progression. We have now shown that KO mice fed 5% black raspberries (BRBs) had significantly less colonic ulceration as compared to KO mice that consumed the control diet. Dysfunction of the Wnt signaling pathway is a key event in UC-associated colon carcinogenesis. We investigated the effects of BRBs on the Wnt pathway and found that the BRB-fed KO mice exhibited significantly decreased promoter methylation of Wnt antagonists and a significantly lower level of β-catenin nuclear translocation. Our results suggest that BRBs inhibit colonic ulceration partly through inhibiting aberrant epigenetic events that dysregulate Wnt signaling.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Raakel Luoto, MD
Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine
Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings...
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Alize J. Ferrari
University of Queensland
School of Population Health
Herston, Queensland, Australia
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Answer: In our paper recently published in PloS Medicine, we report findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 for depression. We found that depression (defined as major depressive disorder and dysthymia) accounted fr 8% of the non fatal burden in 2010, making it the second leading cause of disability worldwide. Burden due to depression increased by 35% between 1990 and 2010, although this increase was entirely driven by population growth and ageing. Burden occurred across the entire lifespan, was higher in females compared to males, and there were differences between world regions.When depression was considered a risk factor for other health outcomes it explained 46% of the burden allocated to suicide and 3% of the burden allocated ischemic heart disease.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Ira Tabas, M.D., Ph.D.
Richard J. Stock Professor and Vice-Chair of Research
Department of Medicine
Professor of Anatomy & Cell Biology (in Physiology and Cellular Biophysics)
Columbia University New York, NY 10032
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Tabas: We discovered a new pathway in the liver, relevant to humans, that controls the two hallmarks of type 2 diabetes (T2D), namely, excessive glucose production and defective insulin signaling. Thus, if drugs could be developed to inhibit this pathway, they could be very effective at treating or preventing T2D.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Prof Eric Lawitz MD
Vice President of Scientific and Research Development at The Texas Liver Institute
Clinical professor of Medicine
San Antonio University of Texas Health Science Center.
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Lawitz: Currently available treatments for HCV involve weekly injections of pegylated interferon and daily doses of oral antivirals that must be taken for up to a year. These regimens are not only burdensome for patients, but are not always effective and can cause serious and debilitating side effects, including anemia. So there is a significant need for new tablet-based treatment regimens for HCV that eliminate interferon and ribavirin, are more effective, better tolerated and easier for patients to take.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Ilke Sipahi, MD
Department of Cardiology
Acibadem University Medical School, Istanbul, Turkey
Harrington Heart and Vascular Institute, University Hospitals Case Medical Cente, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio
MedicalResearch.com: Were you surprised at the extreme difference between these 2analyses?Answer: I was surprised. However, it is not unusual to find completely
contradictory results in medical studies. I was more surprised at the
fact that FDA paid more attention to it administrative observational
dataset rather than the huge large randomized clinical trials, all
showing excess GI bleeds with dabigatran (Pradaxa). Anyone who is even
slightly familiar with the medical literature knows that randomized trials are the gold standard in medical studies.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Frits R. Rosendaal PhD
Department of Clinical Epidemiology
Leiden University Medical Center,
Leiden, The Netherlands
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Answer: In our study, we found that moderately to severely decreased kidney function was associated with a 2.6-fold (95%CI 2.0-3.5) increased risk of venous thrombosis as compared with normal kidney function. Several hemostatic factors showed a procoagulant shift with decreasing kidney function, most notably factor VIII and von Willebrand factor. We showed that the increased risk of venous thrombosis in chronic kidney disease could not be explained by confounding factors such as body mass index, diabetes, hospitalization, or corticosteroid use. However, we found that factor VIII and von Willebrand factor fully explained the increased risk of venous thrombosis associated with impaired kidney function.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Dr. Kelly K. Hunt, M.D., F.A.C.S.
Professor, Department of Surgical Oncology, Division of Surgery
Chief, Breast Surgical Oncology Section, Department of Surgical Oncology
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Hunt: The primary endpoint of the Z1041 trial was the proportion of patients who had pathological complete response in the breast, defined as the percentage of women who started the neoadjuvant treatment with no histological evidence of disease in the breast at surgery. We found that high pathologic response rates were observed in both treatment groups with similar cardiac safety profiles in both arms of the trial. Specifically, 56.5% of patients in the sequential group (fluorouracil, epirubicin and cyclophosphamide on day one of a 21-day cycle for four cycles followed by paclitaxel plus trastuzumab weekly for 12 weeks) had a complete pathological response versus 54.2% of the patients who received the concurrent regimen (paclitaxel and trastuzumab weekly for 12 weeks followed by fluorouracil, epirubicin and cyclophosphamide on day one of a 21-day cycle with trastuzumab on days one, eight and 15 of the 21-day cycle for four cycles). The difference in pathologic complete response rates between the treatment arms was not statistically significant. Cardiac safety was a secondary endpoint of the trial and we found that both regimens had acceptable cardiac safety profiles.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Alyshah Abdul Sultan, doctorate student
Division of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Nottingham, Clinical Sciences Building Phase 2, City Hospital, Nottingham NG5 1PB, UK
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Answer: Overall, we found that hospitalisation during pregnancy was associated with an excess risk of 16.6 cases per 1,000 person-years compared with time outside hospital (17.5-fold increase in risk). There was also an excess risk of 5.8 cases per 1,000 person years in the 28 days after discharge with VTE events more likely to occur in the third trimester of pregnancy and in women aged 35 years and over.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Dr. Soo Borson, M.D.
Professor Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,
University of Washington School of Medicine
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Borson: We developed a new short screen to help clinicians and health care systems identify dementia patients and their caregivers who have unmet needs for dementia care services - extra help from primary care providers or clinical specialists skilled in understanding and managing problems related to dementia, working with caregivers to alleviate stress and burden, and locating community-based support services.
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MedicalResearch.com InterviewYuri E. Nikiforov, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Pathology, Vice Chair for Molecular Pathology
Director, Division of Molecular & Genomic Pathology
Department of Pathology, University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Nikiforov: This is examined temporal changes in mutational profiles and standardized histopathologic features of thyroid cancer in the U.S. over the last four decades. It showed a significant change in molecular profiles of thyroid cancer during the past 40 years as it determined two major trends in changing the mutational make-up of thyroid cancer: a rapid increase in the prevalence of RAS mutations, particularly for the last 10 years, and continuous decrease in frequency of RET/PTC rearrangement. The rising incidence of RAS mutations points to new and more recent etiologic factors, probably of a chemical or dietary nature. The decreasing incidence of RET/PTC rearrangements, a known marker of high-dose environmental and medical radiation, suggest that the impact of ionizing radiation, at least as related to high-dose environmental exposures and historical patterns of radiation treatment for benign conditions, is diminishing.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Dr Bu Beng Yeap MBBS, FRACP, PhD
Professor, School of Medicine and Pharmacology, University of Western Australia
Endocrinologist, Department of Endocrinology and Diabetes, Fremantle Hospital.
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Answer: We found that older men with testosterone levels in the middle of the range had the lowest mortality risk. Having a low testosterone level predicted higher mortality, and there was no benefit of having a high-normal testosterone level. Men with optimal rather than high testosterone levels lived longest.
The other important finding was that men with higher dihydrotestosterone levels had lower mortality from ischaemic heart disease, suggesting that androgens may protect against heart disease in older men.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Mahyar Etminan
Assistant Professor University of British Columbia
Therapeutic Evaluation Unit, Provincial Health Services Authority
University of British Columbia, Vancouver
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Answer: Tamsulosin resulted in a roughly doubled risk for hypotension needing hospital admission during the first eight weeks after tamsulosin initiation and first eight weeks after restarting tamsulosin treatment.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Andrew D. Barreto, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Neurology
University of Texas, Houston
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Barreto: Applying a novel, operator-independent device used to produce ultrasound energy through the skull of stroke patients receiving IV-tPA (intravenous clot-busting medication that is the standard treatment for stroke patients) was safe – no signal of increased risk of symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage (brain bleeding).
Rates of recanalization (clot dissolution) were consistent with prior work that suggest aiming transcranial Doppler ultrasound energy at the clot amplifies the clot-busting effect of tPA alone.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dan Nation
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology at University of Southern California
Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Answer: The main study findings indicate that high blood pressure, specifically pulse pressure (systolic - diastolic pressure), is associated with increased markers of Alzheimer's disease in the cerebral spinal fluid of healthy middle-aged adults. These results suggest a connection between blood pressure and Alzheimer's disease prior to the onset of any symptoms of the disease.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Ying Bao, MD, ScD
Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA.
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Bao: Frequent nut consumption is inversely associated with risk of pancreatic cancer in women, independent of other potential risk factors for pancreatic cancer.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Andrew R. Mayer, PhD
The Mind Research Network Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Mayer:
a) Just because mTBI patients self-report reduced and/or no post-concussive symptoms does not mean that they have completed the healing process.
b) Current gold-standards in the clinical world (CT scans and self-report) may not be accurately capturing brain health after injury.
c) Diffusion imaging shows promise for being a more sensitive biomarker for measuring recovery than currently used techniques.
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MedicalResearch.comMelissa K. Holt, PhD
School of Education, Boston University
Boston, Massachusetts
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings?Dr. Holt: Results from this study indicated that among the sample of adolescents surveyed, bullies and bully-victims (i.e., youth who are both perpetrators and targets of bullying) engaged in more sexual risk taking behaviors than their peers. Specifically, they were more likely to report casual sex and sex under the influence of alcohol or drugs. For instance, 33.8% of bullies and 23% of bully-victims reported sex under the influence of alcohol or drugs in contrast to 14% of youth not involved in bullying. Notably, findings suggested that bullying involvement might be a more salient predictor of sexual risk taking for heterosexual than GLBTQ adolescents.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with Kieron M. Dunleavy, M.D.
Metabolism Branch
Lymphoma Therapeutics Section
Center for Cancer Research
National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Dunleavy: We found that low-intensity therapy was highly effective in Burkitt's lymphoma and cured over 95% of patients with the disease.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Masato Tsutsui, MD, PhD, FAHA
Professor and Chairman
Department of Pharmacology
Graduate School of Medicine
University of the Ryukyus
Okinawa 903-0215, Japan
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Tsutsui: A recent large prospective study reported that coffee consumption is associated with reduced mortality for cardiovascular disease (NEJM 2012). However, its precise mechanisms remain to be clarified. Our double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study demonstrated, for the first time, that caffeine contained in a cup of coffee ameliorates microvascular endothelial function in healthy individuals. These findings may explain, at least in part, the association of coffee consumption with reduced mortality for cardiovascular disease.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:W. Scott Burgin, MD
Professor and Chief, Cerebrovascular Division
Director, Comprehensive Stroke Center
Department of Neurology
USF College of Medicine
Tampa General Hospital Stroke Center.
MedicalResearch.com What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Burgin: Two cases of stroke, of embolic appearance, shortly after smoking synthetic marijuana.
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MedicalResearch.com: Samantha Gardener PhD Student
Senior Research Assistant for DIAN and AIBL Studies
McCusker Alzheimer's Research Foundation
2/142 Stirling Hwy NEDLANDS
6009 Western Australia
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of your study?Answer: Our research indicates that consuming larger quantities of foods included in a western dietary pattern is associated with greater cognitive decline in visuospatial functioning after 36 months. Foods included in the western dietary pattern are red and processed meats, high fat dairy products, chips, refined grains, potatoes, sweets and condiments. Visuospatial functioning is an area which includes distance and depth perception, reproducing drawings and using components to construct objects or shapes.
In contrast, adherence to the Mediterranean diet, a healthy eating pattern is associated with less decline in executive function. Foods included in the Mediterranean diet are vegetables, fruits and fish. Examples of executive function include planning and organising, problem solving and time management.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Caleb Alexander, MD, MS
Department of Epidemiology, Bloomberg School of Public Health
Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Division of General Internal Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Alexander:
There have been large shifts in the types of treatments used to treat Type 2 diabetes during the past decade in the United States.
We document large declines in the use of glitazones and sulfonylureas and important increases in the use of the newer DPP-4 inhibitors and GLP-1 agonists.
We also found large shifts in the types of insulins used, with substantial reductions in the use of regular and intermediate insulins, and large increases in the use of long-acting and ultra short-acting therapies.
Costs have increased significantly over the past 5 years, driven primarily by insulin and DPP-4 inhibitors
All of these changes notwithstanding, biguanides continue to remain a mainstay of therapy.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Carlos Lorenzo, MD
Department of Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center
7703 Floyd Curl Drive
San Antonio, Texas 78229
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Lorenzo: Metabolically healthy obese individuals are at increased risk of developing of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. These findings were demonstrated in men and women and in Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic whites.
Management of excess weight and any metabolic abnormality appears to be important for all individuals.
Our study is also in agreement with previous studies that indicate that metabolically unhealthy normal weight individuals are at increased risk of developing of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Kumar Dharmarajan MD MBA
Fellow in Cardiovascular Medicine
Columbia University Medical Center
MedicalResearch.com: What were the main findings of the studyDr. Dharmarajan: In the United States, 1 in 5 older patients is readmitted to the
hospital within 30 days of hospital discharge. However, there is great
variation in rates of 30-day readmission across hospitals, and we do
not know why some hospitals are able to achieve much lower readmission
rates than others.
We therefore wondered whether top performing hospitals with low 30-day
readmission rates are systematically better at preventing readmissions
from particular conditions or time periods after discharge. For
example, are hospitals with low 30-day readmission rates after
hospitalization for heart failure especially good at preventing
readmissions due to recurrent heart failure or possible complications
of treatment? Similarly, are top performing hospitals especially good
at preventing readmissions that occur very soon after discharge, which
may signify poor transitional care as the patient moves form the
hospital back home?
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Gerard Nuovo MD
Professor College of Medicine, The Ohio State University
Satellite Laboratory, Ohio State Univ Comprehensive Cancer Center
Phylogeny Inc, Powell, Ohio
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Nuovo: The main finding of the study was that idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis was strongly associated with an infection by a herpesvirus. The data that supported this main finding included:
1) detection of the viral DNA by in situ hybridization in each case of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and in none of the controls;
2) the localization of the viral DNA to the nucleus of the cell that orchestrates IPF, the regenerating epithelial cell (herpes viruses localize to the nucleus of the target cell);
3) the demonstration that the viral DNA co-localized with "pirated proteins" that the virus makes during productive infection (these were IL-17. cyclin D, dihydrofolate reductase, and thymidylate synthase); this combination of proteins are rarely if ever co-expressed in lung disease and their co-expression per se was highly suggestive of a viral infection;
4) the demonstration by RTPCR that the cyclin D RNA in IPF comes from the virus and not the human cells;
5) the recognition that this family of herpesviruses (called gammaherpesvirus) causes IPF in other animals including horses, mice, and donkeys;
6) the cloning of part of the gene of the virus from a clinical IPF sample that showed 100% homology to the published sequence of the likely viral pathogen - herpesvirus saimiri.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Prof. Prashanthan Sanders
Director, Centre for Heart Rhythm Disorders
University of Adelaide | Royal Adelaide Hospital | SAHMRI
NHMRC Practitioner Fellow
Centre for Heart Rhythm Disorders
Department of Cardiology | Royal Adelaide Hospital
Adelaide 5000 | Australia
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Answer:Aggressive treatment of risk factors and weight reduced the symptom burden associated with atrial fibrillation. It is therefore important that in a similar manner to how we treat coronary artery disease, in atrial fibrillation there should be management directed at the reasons why these individuals got AF in the first place.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Alison E. Field, ScD
Associate Professor of Pediatrics Boston Children's Hospital
Division of Adolescent Medicine
Boston, MA 02115
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Answer: Girls who engage in frequent binge eating are much more likely than their peers with the same BMI to develop diabetes. The risk was greatest among girls with binge eating disorder.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Dr. Kathryn Orzech PhD
Postdoctoral fellow,Charting the Digital Lifespan
University of Dundee, Scotland, UK
MedicalResesarch.com: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Orzech: We found that acute illnesses, such as colds, flu, and gastroenteritis were more common among healthy adolescents with shorter sleep. Specifically, our main analysis found that reported bouts of illness (analyzed on a bouts-of-illness-per-interview basis) declined with longer sleep for both male and female high school students. Longer sleep was also generally protective against school absences that students attributed to illness. There were sex differences, with males reporting fewer illness bouts than females, even with similar sleep durations. This is consistent with another recent study that showed a lower impact of shorter sleep on male adolescents (in that case the outcome was male adiposity), but more research is needed.
We also conducted a secondary analysis to examine total sleep time in matched 6-day windows before illness and before wellness in the same adolescents. Although the number of participants who met our strict criteria for a healthy 6-day window before illness or wellness was only 18 (I was amazed at how difficult it was to find adolescents who reported being completely well for 6 consecutive days), we were able to see a trend in the data toward shorter sleep before illness vs. wellness. Because of the difficulty in comparing sleep before illness vs. wellness, we conducted a qualitative analysis as well, choosing two 17 year old males who were both shorter sleepers, but who reported very different illness profiles - 0 days of illness vs. 35 days of illness across the school term. An in-depth look at notes made by interviewers allowed us to create brief case studies to illustrate that not all shorter sleepers are alike. More irregular sleep timing across weeknights and weekends (much shorter sleep during the week and longer sleep times on the weekend), and a preference for scheduling work and social time later in the evening hours may both contribute to differences in illness outcomes.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview Invitation
Klaus Bønnelykke MD, PhD
The Faculty of Health Sciences University of Copenhagen
The Danish Pediatric Asthma Center Copenhagen University Hospital
Gentofte Ledreborg Alle...
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