Aging, Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Frailty, Geriatrics, JAMA / 22.09.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ariela Orkaby, MD, MPH Geriatrics & Preventive Cardiology Associate Epidemiologist Division of Aging, Brigham and Women's Hospital Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: As the population is living longer, there is increased risk of frailty and vulnerability. Frailty is defined as reduced physiological reserve and decreased ability to cope with even an acute stress. Up to half of adults over the age of 85 are living with frailty and preventative measures are greatly needed. We tested the effect of vitamin D and marine omega-3 fatty acid supplementation on the risk of developing frailty in healthy older adults in the US enrolled in the VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL) trial. (more…)
Aging, Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Frailty, Geriatrics, JAMA, Medical Research Centers, Supplements / 15.09.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ariela Orkaby, MD, MPH Geriatrics & Preventive Cardiology Associate Epidemiologist Division of Aging, Brigham and Women's Hospital Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: As the population is living longer, there is increased risk of frailty and vulnerability. Frailty is defined as reduced physiological reserve and decreased ability to cope with even an acute stress. Up to half of adults over the age of 85 are living with frailty and preventative measures are greatly needed. We tested the effect of vitamin D and marine omega-3 fatty acid supplementation on the risk of developing frailty in healthy older adults in the US enrolled in the VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL) trial. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cancer Research, JAMA, Lancet, Lung Cancer, Medical Imaging, Technology / 07.09.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Raymond H. Mak, MD Radiation Oncology Disease Center Leader for Thoracic Oncology Director of Patient Safety and QualityDirector of Clinical Innovation Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School Cancer - Radiation Oncology, Radiation Oncology Department of Radiation Oncology Brigham and Women's Hospital MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What is the algorithm detecting? Response: Lung cancer, the most common cancer worldwide is highly lethal, but can be treated and cured in some cases with radiation therapy.  Nearly half of lung cancer patients will eventually require some form of radiation therapy, but the planning for a course of radiation therapy currently entails manual, time-consuming, and resource-intensive work by highly trained physicians to segment (target) the cancerous tumors in the lungs and adjacent lymph nodes on three-dimensional images (CT scans). Prior studies have shown substantial variation in how expert clinicians delineate these targets, which can negatively impact outcomes and there is a projected shortage of skilled medical staff to perform these tasks worldwide as cancer rates increase. To address this critical gap, our team developed deep learning algorithms that can automatically target lung cancer in the lungs and adjacent lymph nodes from CT scans that are used for radiation therapy planning, and can be deployed in seconds. We trained these artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms using expert-segmented targets from over 700 cases and validated the performance in over 1300 patients in external datasets (including publicly available data from a national trial), benchmarked its performance against expert clinicians, and then further validated the clinical usefulness of the algorithm in human-AI collaboration experiments that measured accuracy, task speed, and end-user satisfaction. (more…)
Author Interviews, NEJM, Pulmonary Disease, Tobacco Research, University of Michigan / 04.09.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Meilan K Han MD, MS Henry Sewall Professor of Medicine Professor of Internal Medicine and Section Head Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Medical School University of Michigan MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: In the NIH sponsored SPIROMICS study we demonstrated that symptomatic, tobacco exposed individuals have frequent exacerbations. Many of these individuals are treated with the same inhaled medications that have shown benefit in COPD, but we don’t have any evidence basis for this practice. (more…)
Aging, Annals Internal Medicine, Author Interviews, NIH, Nutrition / 01.09.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Maki Inoue-Choi, Ph.D., M.S., R.D. Staff Scientist Metabolic Epidemiology Branch National Institutes of Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Tea is rich in bioactive compounds that can possibly protect against health conditions such as cancer and heart disease. A lower risk of death was seen among tea drinkers than non-drinkers in previous studies, but these were largely in populations where green tea drinking is common. In contrast, the studies in populations where black tea drinking is more common have been limited and the findings from these studies have been inconsistent. (more…)
Author Interviews, Neurology, Stanford / 25.08.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Prof. Lawrence Steinman MD Zimmermann Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences, and Pediatrics Beckman Center for Molecular Medicine Stanford University Stanford, CA MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: We are publishing the results of two successful phase 3 trials in relapsing MS (multiple sclerosis). We tested a glycoengineered antibody to B cells. The glycoengineered antibody are more potent in killing the target. They can be delivered more easily. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Endocrinology, Hip Fractures, NEJM, Osteoporosis, Vitamin D / 27.07.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Meryl S. LeBoff, MD Chief, Calcium and Bone SectionDirector of the Skeletal Health and Osteoporosis CenterDirector, Bone Density UnitDistinguished Chair in Skeletal Health and Osteoporosis Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension, Women's Health Brigham And Women's Hospital JoAnn E. Manson, MD, DrPH Professor, Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School Of Public Health Michael and Lee Bell Professor of Women's Health, Medicine, Harvard Medical School Chief, Preventive Medicine, Brigham And Women's Hospital Co-Director, Womens Health, Brigham And Women's Hospital   MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings? Response: Osteoporosis is a major public health problem. Although supplemental vitamin D has been widely used to reduce the risk of fractures in the general population, studies of the effects of vitamin D on fractures, the most important bone health outcome, have been conflicting. Randomized controlled trials, the highest quality studies, from around the world have shown benefit, no effect, or even harm of supplemental vitamin D on risk of fractures. Some of the trials used bolus dosing, had small samples sizes or short study duration, and co-administered calcium. No large RCTS of this scale tested whether daily supplemental vitamin D (without co-administration with calcium) prevented fractures in the US population. To fill these knowledge gaps, we tested the hypothesis in this ancillary study to VITAL, whether daily supplemental vitamin D3 reduced the risk of incident total, non-spine and hip fractures in women and men in the US. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, JAMA, Race/Ethnic Diversity, Social Issues, Yale / 15.07.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Mytien Nguyen, MS MD-PhD Program, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  Response: It is well-recognized that diversity in the medical workforce is critical to improve health care access and achieve equity for neglected communities. Despite increased efforts to recruit diverse medical trainees, there remains a large chasm between the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic composition of the patient population and that of the physician workforce. (more…)
Author Interviews, Infections, NIH / 30.06.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Nihal Altan-Bonnet, Ph.D. Chief of the Laboratory of Host-Pathogen Dynamics NHLBI  MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings? Response: Enteric viruses such as norovirus, rotavirus and astrovirus are responsible for nearly 1.5 billion global infections per year resulting in gastrointestinal illnesses and sometimes leading to death in the very young, in the elderly and in the immunocompromised. These viruses have been thought to traditionally infect and replicate only in the intestines, then shed into feces and transmit to others via the oral-fecal route (e.g. through ingestion of fecal contaminated food items). Our findings reported in Nature, using animal models of norovirus, rotavirus and astrovirus infection, challenge this traditional view and reveal that these viruses can also replicate robustly in salivary glands, be shed into saliva in large quantities and transmit through saliva to other animals. In particular we also show infected infants can transmit these viruses to their mothers mammary glands via suckling and this leads to both an infection in their mothers mammary glands but also a rapid immune response by the mother resulting in a surge in her milk antibodies. These milk antibodies may play a role in fighting the infection in their infants .  (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Heart Disease, JAMA, Lung Cancer, Supplements, USPSTF / 30.06.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michael J. Barry, M.D Director of the Informed Medical Decisions Program Health Decision Sciences Center Massachusetts General Hospital. Professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School Dr. Barry was appointed as Vice Chair of USPSTF in March 2021. He previously served as a member from January 2017 through December 2020.   MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings? Response: The Task Force looked at the use of vitamin and mineral supplementation specifically for the prevention of heart disease, stroke, and cancer. We found that there is not enough evidence to recommend for or against taking multivitamin supplements, nor the use of single or paired nutrient supplements, to prevent these conditions. However, we do know that you should not take vitamin E or beta-carotene for this purpose. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 23.06.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: SCOTT DRYDEN-PETERSON, MD Assistant Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School Research Affiliate, Immunology and Infectious Diseases Harvard T.H. Chan School Of Public Health Associate Physician, Medicine, Infectious Diseases Brigham And Women's Hospital Research Associate, Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  Response: The combination of the antiviral medicine nirmatrelvir and ritonavir (Paxlovid) which boosts antiviral levels was found to reduce the need for hospitalization by nearly 90% among unvaccinated people. Whether nirmatrelvir plus ritonavir can also help vaccinated people was uncertain. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Neurology, Parkinson's / 21.06.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Vikram Khurana, MD, PhD Chief of the Division of Movement Disorders Department of Neurology Brigham and Harvard Medical School Principal investigator, Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at the Brigham MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?   Response: Proteins abnormally accumulate in brain cells (neurons and glial cells) in all neurodegenerative diseases. In Parkinson’s disease and related disorders, the key protein that accumulates and aggregates is called “alpha-synuclein.” Presumably, when a protein like alpha-synuclein abnormally folds and aggregates, the abnormal form of the protein can become toxic to the neuron, eventually leading to cell death. Equally, the protein may no longer be able to carry out its normal function. This begs the question – what does alpha synuclein actually do? Most evidence to date points to alpha-synuclein being involved in the transport of other proteins and chemicals around the cell, by closely associating with vesicles that are small circular containers enclosed by fat (“lipid) membranes. But alpha-synuclein is not just found associated with these vesicle membrane. It is found away from the membrane and it’s been unclear what it does there. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, JAMA, Mammograms, Medical Imaging, UCSF / 15.06.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Karla Kerlikowske, MD. Professor, Departments of Medicine and Epidemiology/Biostatistics, Cancer Center Program Membership. Breast Oncology UCSF MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  Response: Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) was developed with the expectation it would improve detection of breast cancer in women with dense breasts and decrease false-positive results. DBT is now available at most breast screening centers. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cost of Health Care, JAMA / 09.06.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Benjamin N. Rome MD Instructor, Harvard Medical School Internal Medicine Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics Brigham and Women’s Hospital MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: Manufacturers of brand-name drugs are granted periods, free from direct competition, during which they can set and raise prices as they choose. We found that the prices for newly marketed brand-name drugs increased by 20% per year from 2008 to 2021. In 2020 and 2021, nearly half of new drugs were launched at a price greater than $150,000 per year, compared with 9% of drugs in 2008-2013. These dramatic trends are only partly explained by changes in the types of drugs coming to market. (more…)
ASCO, Author Interviews, Cancer Research, COVID -19 Coronavirus, NYU / 08.06.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Katherine Garcia MD NYU Langone Health MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  Response: Studies on cancer patients during the COVID-19 pandemic have shown a decrease in new diagnoses, delays in care, and a shift to later stage disease presentations. Considering that NY has been an epicenter for COVID-19 in the U.S., we investigated its impact on new cancer diagnoses at the two campuses of NYU’s Perlmutter Cancer Center and hypothesized that there would be a decrease in presentations during the peak outbreaks in NY. (more…)
Annals Internal Medicine, Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Diabetes, Heart Disease / 07.06.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: HoJin Shin, BPharm, PhD Postdoctoral Research Fellow Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics Department of Medicine Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School Boston, Massachusetts MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  Response: The public health burden of cardiovascular disease has been increasing in people with diabetes along with the burden of diabetes itself.
  •  Cardiovascular disease affects approximately one-third of the population with type 2 diabetes and accounts for     50%–80% of their mortality
  • 1 in 10 people in the US has diabetes
Since 2008, the US FDA has recommended post-approval cardiovascular outcome trials to ensure the safety of new glucose-lowering drugs responding to this growing burden of cardiovascular disease in type 2 diabetes and the potential increase in cardiovascular risk with certain existing glucose-lowering drugs (e.g., rosiglitazone). Notably, SGLT-2i have demonstrated superiority to placebo in reducing the risk of cardiovascular events, including hospitalization for heart failure. Consequently, beginning in 2018, clinical guidelines in the US have recommended SGLT-2i as a preferred second-line treatment for patients with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. As the paradigm of second-line pharmacological treatment for type 2 diabetes has shifted to include the management of cardiovascular risk in addition to glycemic control, this further raised the question of whether SGLT-2i should be advanced to first-line treatment. Since 2019, SGLT-2i have been recommended as a first-line agent for patients with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease by the European guidelines (the European Society of Cardiology and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes). In the absence of head-to-head RCTs, non-randomized studies using real-world data could provide information on whether SGLT-2i may have greater cardiovascular benefits over metformin more timely than randomized clinical trials among both patients with and without existing CVD. Therefore, we evaluated the risk for cardiovascular events among adults with T2D who initiated treatment with first-line SGLT-2i versus metformin in clinical practice. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cancer Research, Nature, Pancreatic, University of Michigan / 03.06.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Imad Shureiqi, MD, MS Professor, Division of Hematology and Oncology Department of Internal Medicine Rogel Cancer Center Ann Arbor, MI, 48109 MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?   Response: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is a highly lethal form of cancer with rising occurrence, and strategies to prevent and treat the disease are urgently needed. Most cases of pancreatic cancer arise from pre-cancerous lesions called pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN); about 55-80% of adults over forty are estimated to have these low-grade pre-cancerous silent pancreatic lesions. But critical factors that promote the progression of pancreatic pre-cancerous lesions to pancreatic cancer remain poorly defined, especially those easy to target. Findings from this publication indicate that people who have silent PanIN pre-cancerous lesions, even those that are low-grade, could increase their risk of PanIN progression into pancreatic cancer by consuming activators of a nuclear lipid receptor called peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-delta (PPARδ). PPARδ activators can be natural substances, such certain fatty acids like palmitic and arachidonic acid in high-fat diets, or synthetic ones, like Cardarine (GW501516). (more…)
Abuse and Neglect, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Melatonin, Sleep Disorders / 24.05.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jeanne Duffy, MBA, PhD Associate Professor of Medicine Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders Harvard Medical School MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  Response: Aging is associated with changes in sleep timing, quality and duration, and even older adults without chronic medical problems have shorter and more disrupted sleep than young adults. Many prescription sleep aids increase the risk of nighttime falls, have adverse effects on next‐day cognition, and are associated with increased mortality, and so are not recommended for long-term use in older adults. In previous studies, we and others have shown that melatonin, a hormone secreted at night, increases sleep duration in young adults but only when administered during the day when endogenous melatonin levels are low. We wanted to explore whether melatonin could improve the sleep of healthy adults and whether, like young adults, its impact depends on when during the day the person is trying to sleep. (more…)
Author Interviews, BMJ, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Education, Health Care Systems, Sleep Disorders / 20.05.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Matthew D Weaver M.P.H., Ph.D. Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders Departments of Medicine and Neurology Brigham and Women's Hospital Boston, Massachusetts MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  Response: The name “resident” stems from the historical practice of resident-physicians residing in hospitals as part of their training. Even after that practice abated, it was common for resident physicians to work 36 consecutive hours followed by 12 or fewer hours of rest. In 1989, the state of New York restricted resident physicians to work no more than 24 consecutive hours and no more than 80 hours per week as part of collective intervention to improve patient safety. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) then followed in 2003 by limiting work hours to an average of 80 per week over a month and no more than 30 consecutive hours of work. Evidence accumulated demonstrating an association between shifts lasting ≥24 hours and adverse resident and patient safety. As a result, the Institute of Medicine convened a review and report on the issue, ultimately concluding that no resident should work more than 16 consecutive hours without sleep. This recommendation, combined with evidence following the 2003 rules, led the ACGME to issue new rules in 2011 that limited first-year resident physicians to work no more than 16 consecutive hours. Our study compares resident-reported patient safety outcomes before and after this 2011 policy change. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cancer Research, JAMA, NIH, Race/Ethnic Diversity / 05.05.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Megan Clarke, Ph.D., M.H.S., Earl Stadtman Investigator Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics National Cancer Institute MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study? 
  • Through our prior work, we have demonstrated that uterine cancer incidence rates have been significantly increasing in the U.S. from 2003 to 2015 and that these increases were primarily driven by rising rates of aggressive (non-endometrioid) subtypes of this cancer. We observed that rates of these aggressive cancers increased among all women and were more than twice as high among Non-Hispanic Black women compared to other racial and ethnic groups. Factors explaining these trends, as well as the disproportionately higher rates of these aggressive subtypes among non-Hispanic Black women, remain unclear, in part because risk factors are poorly understood.
  • In addition to differences in incidence rates by race and ethnicity, we have also observed strong disparities in our prior studies, with Non-Hispanic Black women having substantially lower 5-year survival, regardless of subtype or stage at diagnosis, compared to other racial and ethnic populations.
  • The next logical step, and the focus of the current study, was to evaluate how increases in the incidence of aggressive, non-endometrioid uterine cancer affects racial disparities and rates of death from uterine cancer.
(more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cognitive Issues, Exercise - Fitness / 23.04.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Robert A. Stern, Ph.D. Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Anatomy & Neurobiology Director of Clinical Research, BU CTE Center Senior Investigator, BU Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Boston University School of Medicine MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  Response: The link between playing American football at the professional level and later-life brain disorders like chronic traumatic encephalopathy – or CTE -- and ALS has received increasing attention over the past 15 years. Previous research has shown that former NFL players are more likely to die from CTE and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and more likely to report cognitive impairment, behavioral changes, and dementia during life. Despite previous research focusing on the later-life effects of playing American football at the professional level, the long-term effects of college football participation remain largely unknown. We had two goals for this new investigation. The first was to conduct a survey of the current overall health status, including cognitive and other neurological disorders, of older former college American football players compared with men in the general population. The second goal was to examine the mortality rate and causes of death in a cohort of older former college football players. The target population for this study was all 447 former Notre Dame football players who were listed as seniors on the varsity rosters during the 1964-1980 seasons. This was the era of legendary coaches Ara Parseghian and Dan Devine. I should add that this study was fully independent of the University of Notre Dame. (more…)
Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Race/Ethnic Diversity, UCSF / 20.04.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Erica Kornblith, PhD Assistant Professor, Psychiatry UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings?  Response: As the population of the United States grows more diverse and dementia is a serious public health concern, we hoped to understand whether differences in dementia risk exist based on race or ethnicity.  Older studies have shown that Black and Hispanic folks have higher risk of dementia, perhaps due to medical risk factors, diagnostic bias, lack of equal access to health care and education, or the health effects of racism, among other factors.  However, these older studies have been small or limited geographically or by only studying a few race and ethnicity groups. Our study used a nationwide sample of almost two million older Veterans who all had access to care through the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), and we examined 5 race or ethnicity groups: American Indians or Alaska Natives, Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites. Our results show that dementia risk is higher for Black and Hispanic Veterans compared to white Veterans, even when education and medical factors are considered. (more…)
Aging, Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Genetic Research, Nature / 20.04.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michael B. Miller, MD, PhD Instructor, Harvard Medical School Department of Pathology Brigham and Women's Hospital MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study? Would you explain what is meant by somatic genetic changes and how they might occur?  Response: Changes, also called mutations, in the DNA sequence of genes can be passed from parents to their children, and explain why many diseases run in families. This kind of DNA change is called a germline mutation and is present in every cell in a person’s body. Gene mutations can also occur in a subset of cells of a person, in which case they are called somatic mutations. Somatic mutations are well known as a cause of cancer, and recent research has found that somatic mutations can also happen in non-cancerous cells that appear otherwise normal. Recent studies have even found that somatic mutations are present in neurons, cells in the brain that transmit electrical signals and play an important role in how the brain functions. Furthermore, in neurons, somatic mutations increase with age, so we set out to understand if somatic mutations might be playing a role in age-related brain diseases like Alzheimer’s. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Fertility, Heart Disease, JACC / 19.04.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Emily Lau, MD, MPH Cardiologist Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School Director, Menopause, Hormones & Cardiovascular Disease Clinic Massachusetts General Hospital MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings? Response: Emerging data suggest that a woman’s reproductive history influences her future risk of heart disease. Infertility is a reproductive risk factor that affects ~14% of women but has not been rigorously studied with respect to its relationship with cardiovascular disease risk. We studied over 38,000 women enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative and found that infertility was associated with greater risk of heart failure. In particular, we found that the association was driven by greater risk of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, a form of heart failure that is far more common among women. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cancer Research, Genetic Research, Nature / 18.04.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jason Vassy, MD, MPH Brigham and Women's Hospital Division of General Internal Medicine & Primary Care Brigham’s Precision Population Health at Ariadne Labs and VA Boston  MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?    Response: A person’s risk of developing diseases such as type 2 diabetes or breast cancer may be influenced by thousands of genetic differences, the effects of which can be combined to derive a single score, often called a polygenic risk score (PRS). PRS might be useful to help patients and their physicians make tailored decisions about their health care, but several challenges to the clinical implementation of PRS remain. Most importantly, most PRS are less accurate in individuals of non-European descent, since most genomic research to date has been conducted in European populations. Another key challenge is that physicians and patients will need support to understand polygenic risk score and use them to make medical decisions. Clinical guidelines do not yet exist to help a physician know whether and how they should treat a patient with a high-risk score differently than an average-risk patient. We designed the Genomic Medicine at VA (GenoVA) Study to address some of these challenges. (more…)
AACR, Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cancer Research / 18.04.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ajit Johnson Nirmal PhD Instructor of Medicine, DFCI, HMS Laboratory of systems pharmacology Harvard Medical School MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  Response: Like many other types of cancers, melanoma arises from gene mutations within cells that impact cell growth and division. These abnormal cells should be rapidly eliminated by our immune system, however, the failure to do so leads to the development of cancer. Hence researchers have long been interested to study the tumor environment that nurtures and sustains these dangerous cells. In the past, researchers have used single-cell technologies to delineate the cell types and cell states that make up the tumor microenvironment. However, the spatial relationships between these cell types and how they organize themselves such as to provide a favorable environment for the tumor to develop remains unknown. In the last couple of years, researchers have developed a new suite of new technologies called spatial omics which includes CYCIF a method that was developed at Sorger lab. Using this method, we can not only measure the molecular information of cells at a single cell level but also their spatial context. This allows us to build a google map like view of the skin with melanoma and study what is exactly happening that allows the tumors to develop. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cleveland Clinic, Diabetes, JACC, Surgical Research, Weight Research / 14.04.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Amgad Mentias, MD MS FACC FESC Assistant Professor, CCLCM Section of Clinical Cardiology, Heart and Vascular Institute. Cleveland, OH 44195Amgad Mentias, MD MS FACC FESC Assistant Professor, CCLCM Section of Clinical Cardiology, Heart and Vascular Institute. Cleveland, OH 44195  MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?    Response:  There is evidence that bariatric or weight loss surgery can decrease the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death in young and middle age patients with obesity and diabetes. However, the evidence is less clear for older patients and patients without diabetes. There is also no long-term data on outcomes of bariatric surgery in the Medicare beneficiaries. So, in our study, we aimed to report long-term outcomes of bariatric surgery from a contemporary nationwide cohort from the US, while also looking into outcomes in patients older than 65 years, and patients without type 2 diabetes specifically. (more…)
Author Interviews, Dermatology, JAMA, Melanoma, University of Pittsburgh / 08.04.2022

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Laura Ferris, M.D., Ph.D. Professor of Dermatology Director of clinical trials for UPMC Department of Dermatology University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  Response: In this quality initiative at UPMC (a large academic and community health system in Western PA and surrounding areas) Primary Care Physicians were trained to perform annual skin cancer screening examinations of their patients who were aged 35 years and older at routine medical visits. Over a 5-year period more than 595,000 patients who were eligible to be screened were seen by a UPMC PCP and about 24% of them were screened. We compared the number and thickness (an important indicator of prognosis) of the melanomas diagnosed in those patients who were screened to those who were not screened. (more…)