AACR, Author Interviews, Cancer Research, MD Anderson / 12.04.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Vivek Subbiah, MD Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics Division of Cancer Medicine The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: RET fusions occur predominantly in 2% of lung cancers and 10-20% of thyroid cancers, and in low frequency in an increasing number of diverse cancers, including pancreatic cancer, salivary gland cancer, and colorectal cancer. The therapeutic relevance of RET fusions occurring outside of lung and thyroid cancers has not been well established.. (more…)
AACR, Baylor College of Medicine Houston, Cancer Research, Genetic Research, Prostate Cancer, Race/Ethnic Diversity, Social Issues / 10.04.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Nicholas Mitsiades MD Associate Professor of Medicine - Hematology and Oncology Baylor College of Medicine Oncologist at the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: African American men have higher risk of developing prostate cancer and up to 2.2-times higher mortality rate from prostate cancer relative to men of other ancestries. This is the largest health disparity across all cancers in the US. Socioeconomic factors, especially access to healthcare, definitely contribute to this disparity. African American men are diagnosed with prostate cancer at a more advanced stage than other races, and this is unfortunately very common at Ben Taub Hospital, our safety-net hospital in the Houston area, where we serve large racial and ethnic minority populations and patients who lack commercial insurance. (more…)
Author Interviews, Erectile Dysfunction, Heart Disease, JACC, Karolinski Institute / 10.04.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Martin J Holzmann MD PhD Department of Emergency Medicine Karolinska University Hospital Stockholm, Sweden  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: ​We published a paper 2007 in Heart where we showed that PDE5i lower mortality in men with a recent myocardial infarction. With this study we wanted to investigate if PDE5i led to a beneficial outcome in men with stable coronary artery disease. (more…)
AACR, Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cancer Research, Nutrition, Prostate Cancer / 10.04.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Anna Plym PhD Postdoctoral Research Fellow Brigham and Women's Hospital Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main elements of the healthy lifestyle? Response: Prostate cancer is the most heritable of all cancers, with genetic factors accounting for a large proportion of cases. Although we do not currently know about all the genetic factors contributing, a recent study identified 269 genetic markers for prostate cancer, validated in multiple independent populations (Conti et al., Nature Genetics 2021, Plym et al, JNCI, 2021: https://academic.oup.com/jnci/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jnci/djab058/6207974). Based on a polygenic risk score derived from these 269 markers, we observed that men with a high polygenic risk score have over a 50% risk of developing prostate cancer within their lifetime. With this excess risk in mind, we were interested in possible ways in which the genetic risk of prostate could be attenuated. An increasing number of studies have suggested that lifestyle factors can affect the risk of lethal prostate cancer – however, these studies have seldom incorporated genetic factors. We know from other diseases that a healthy lifestyle is of benefit for individuals at high genetic risk, and we hypothesized that this would be the case for prostate cancer as well. In this study, we examined a healthy lifestyle score for lethal prostate cancer consisting of six components: healthy weight (BMI < 30), not smoking (never smoked or quit > 10 years ago), vigorous physical exercise (3 or more hours per week), high intake of tomatoes or tomato-based products (7 servings or more per week), high intake of fatty fish (1 or more serving per week) and low intake of processed meat (less than 3 servings/week of beef or pork hot dogs, bacon, salami, bologna, or other processed meat sandwiches) (Kenfield et al, JCO, 2016).  (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 25.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Hesam Dashti, PhD Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School Senior Computational Scientist The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What parameters does the SARS2 score take into consideration? Response: While complex models have been developed for predicting the severity of COVID-19 from the medical history, laboratory, and imaging results of patients, simplified models with similar accuracy would be more practical for individualizing the decision making, especially when detailed medical history of patients is not readily available. In this study, we developed the SARS2 risk equations for estimating risk of hospitalization of patients with COVID-19 and also the risk of mortality among hospitalized patients. The “SARS2” risk equations are named for their input variables: Sex, Age, Race, Socioeconomic and Smoking status. To develop and validate the models, we used the electronic records from 12,347 patients who tested positive for COVID-19 at the Mass General Brigham medical centers in Massachusetts between 02/26/2020 and 07/14/2020 to construct derivation and validation cohorts for estimating 1) risk of hospitalization within 30 days of COVID-19 positive PCR test, and 2) for the hospitalized patients, risk of mortality within approximately 3 months. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Endocrinology, Insomnia, Menopause, Sleep Disorders, Weight Research / 23.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Leilah K. Grant, PhD Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Medicine Brigham and Women’s Hospital Harvard Medical School  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The prevalence of obesity increases in women around the age of menopause which increases the risk of diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Changes in hormones, like estrogen, are thought to contribute to weight gain during menopause, but other common symptoms of menopause such as sleep interruption may also play a role. While short sleep is known to adversely affect metabolism, little is known about the metabolic consequences of the type of sleep disruption most common in menopausal women – increased nighttime awakenings (i.e., sleep interruption) caused by hot flashes, but no change in overall sleep duration. We therefore did this study to see how an experimental model menopause-related sleep interruption would affect metabolic outcomes that may contribute to weight gain.  (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, UCLA / 20.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Richard K. Leuchter, MD Resident Physician Department of Internal Medicine UCLA Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: There has been significant research demonstrating racial healthcare disparities among patients with COVID-19, but less exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the healthcare of racial & ethnic minority groups without COVID-19. It is important to understand the ways in which the pandemic has exacerbated the inequitable delivery of healthcare in order to design policies to address these racial injustices. We focused on potentially avoidable hospitalizations, which are admissions to a hospital (not for COVID-19) that likely could have been prevented through timely and high-quality outpatient care. Prior research has shown that avoidable hospitalizations are markers for access to outpatient care, and expose patients to preventable financial burden, separate them from their families, and put them at risk for hospital-acquired infections. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 17.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Benjamin E. Gewurz MD, PhD Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Division of Infectious Disease, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Department of Microbiology, Harvard Medical School Boston, MABenjamin E. Gewurz MD, PhD Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Division of Infectious Disease, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Department of Microbiology, Harvard Medical School Boston, MA  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: When the Covid-19 virus infects cells, it takes over and redirects our cells resources towards the projection of virus building blocks and new viruses.  Building blocks include large amounts of RNAs that encode for the viral proteins, much as the mRNA vaccines direct our bodies to make the spike protein. We wondered how the virus changes cell metabolism in order to support the synthesis of vast amounts of viral RNAs within hours of infection. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Infections, UCSD / 13.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Abhishek Saha, PhD Assistant Professor Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering University of California San Diego MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: At a very early stage of COVID 19 pandemic, the scientific community identified that respiratory droplet is the primary mode of transmission of the SARS-CoV2 virus. Naturally, the health agencies have encouraged facemasks to restrict these droplets from spreading during respiratory events, like coughing, sneezing, talking, etc. While WHO recommended using either N95 masks or other types of three-layer masks, due to a sharp increase in demand and scarcity in supplies, a variety of either home-made or locally purchased masks became popular. Naturally, one wonders if these single- and double-layer masks provide enough protection. To provide some insight into this critical question, our team, which also includes Professor Swetaprovo Chaudhuri from the University of Toronto, and Professor Saptarshi Basu of the Indian Institute of Science, experimentally analyzed what happens to the respiratory droplets when they impact single- and multi-layer masks.  (more…)
Author Interviews, CDC, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Emory, JAMA, Occupational Health / 12.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jesse T. Jacob, MD School of Medicine Director, Antibiotic Stewardship Program Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Since coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was recognized in the United States in January 2020, the risk of infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) attributed to exposures in the health care workplace has been studied with conflicting results, and the role of job functions (such as nurse) or specific workplace activities, including care for individuals with known and unknown SARS-CoV-2 positivity, increase the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. We assessed more than 24,000 healthcare providers between April and August 2020 across four large academic medical systems (Emory, Johns Hopkins, Rush University Medical Center, and University of Maryland) which collaborate in the CDC’s Prevention Epicenter Program and conduct innovative infection prevention research. Each site conducted voluntary COVID-19 antibody testing on its health care workers, as well as offered a questionnaire/survey on the employees’ occupational activities and possible exposures to individuals with COVID-19 infection both inside and outside the workplace. We also looked at three-digit residential zip-code prefixes to determine COVID-19 prevalence in communities.   (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Kidney Disease, Transplantation / 12.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jamil R. Azzi MD Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School Medical Director, Vascularized Composite Allotransplantation Associate Director, Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation Director, Kidney Transplant Fellowship Engineering in Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Renal Division, Brigham and Women's Hospital MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Would you explain what is meant by an exosome?  Response: Kidney transplant recipients are always at risk of developing rejection where the immune system recognizes the transplanted kidney as “foreign body” and attacks it. The risk is up to 20% the first year after transplant and many more develop chronic rejection which ultimately leads to kidney failure. Currently, most clinicians monitor for kidney rejection by measuring serum creatinine and urine protein. However, creatinine is neither sensitive nor specific for rejection. On the other hand, performing kidney biopsies to make accurate diagnosis of rejection is invasive and has many complications. In our study, when clinicians decided on performing biopsies based on the clinical informations they have including changes in serum creatinine, the biopsies did not show rejection in almost 70% of the cases. Furthermore, serum creatinine can remain stable while the patient may be undergoing a rejection (subclinical rejection). In fact, some centers currently perform routine biopsies at different time points for all their patients regardless of creatinine despite the high risks, costs and inconveniences of doing biopsies. Out of this frustration with the current tools, we have been working on novel technologies to diagnose rejection through the urine. The idea started from the bench as we were studying exosomes, those are tiny vesicles (less than 100 nm in size) released by all cells. We were interested on how immune cells communicate via those vesicles so we developed assays to identify them. We then showed that if immune cells are invading the kidney during rejection, vesicles derived from those immune cells are found in the urine. This gave us the idea of developing a urine test based on these findings. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, JAMA, Kidney Disease, Yale / 11.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jim Nugent, MD MPH Pediatric Nephrology Fellow Yale University School of Medicine MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: It is now well-established that acute kidney injury is common in patients hospitalized with COVID-19. In addition, patients with COVID-19 tend to have more severe acute kidney injury than patients who have acute kidney injury due to other causes. However, the intermediate and longer-term kidney outcomes after COVID-19-associated acute kidney injury have not yet been described. Our study compares the rate of change in estimated glomerular filtration rate after hospital discharge between patients with and without COVID-19 who experienced in-hospital acute kidney injury. Due to their more severe acute kidney injury in the hospital, we hypothesized that patients with COVID-19-associated acute kidney injury would have greater decline in kidney function after discharge compared to patients with acute kidney injury who tested negative for COVID-19. In order to answer this question, we reviewed the medical records of adult patients at 5 hospitals in Connecticut and Rhode Island admitted between March and August 2020 who had developed acute kidney injury during their hospitalization, survived until discharge, and were discharged off dialysis. For our study, we included patients who had at least one outpatient serum creatinine measurement after discharge. (more…)
Annals Internal Medicine, Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Tobacco, Tobacco Research, UCLA / 09.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Brian P. Lee, MD, MAS Assistant Professor Clinical Medicine University of Southern Californi Keck School of Medicine Los Angeles, California MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with mental health stressors, including anxiety, loneliness, and social instability. We hypothesized the pandemic may have led to increased alcohol and tobacco use as a coping mechanism for these stressors. National retrospective questionnaires had suggested higher reports of substance use, but these are limited by selection and recall biases, in addition to subjective report – we sought to address this knowledge gap by using a nationally-representative longitudinal cohort (Nielsen National Consumer Panel) tracking real-time purchases of households across the US.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Diabetes, FDA, JAMA / 07.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Marie C. Bradley, PhD, MPharm, MScPH Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology Center for Drug Evaluation and Research US Food and Drug Administration Silver Spring, Maryland MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Long-acting insulin analogs, insulin glargine (glargine) and insulin detemir (detemir) are increasingly used in the management of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).  In recent years the price of long-acting insulin analogs has increased substantially2 Higher costs for these insulin analogs may limit patient access.1 Clinical trials showed the risk of severe hypoglycemia did not differ between long-acting insulin analogs and neutral protamine Hagedorn (NPH) insulin in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). An observational study examining severe hypoglycemia in T2DM patients found similar results. However, these previous studies did not focus on patients aged ≥65 years, who are at an increased risk for hypoglycemia, or did not include patients with concomitant prandial insulin use. Therefore, to investigate this further we used Medicare data to assess the risk of severe hypoglycemia among older T2DM patients who initiated a long acting analog ( glargine or detemir) compared to NPH in real-world settings. (more…)
Author Interviews, Columbia, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Exercise - Fitness, Heart Disease, JAMA / 05.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: David J. Engel, MD, FACC Division of Cardiology Columbia University Irving Medical Center New York, New York MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: ​​Early reports and observations in the COVID-19 pandemic found that patients recovering from mild to severe forms of COVID-19 illness had a higher prevalence of cardiac injury in comparison with what historically has been seen and reported with other viruses. This cardiac injury, categorized as inflammatory heart disease, could have serious implications, including a risk for exercise-triggered sudden cardiac death, for athletes and highly active people who have had prior COVID-19 illness and who return to intensive exercise activity with unknowing subclinical cardiac injury. To address these concerns in COVID positive athletes, the ACC generated return to play cardiac screening recommendations (troponin blood test, ECG, resting echocardiogram) for all competitive athletes after COVID-19 infection prior to resumption of competitive and intensive sport activity. The professional leagues were among the first organizations to return to full-scale sport activity in the setting of the pandemic, and they uniformly adopted and implemented the ACC return to play screening recommendations for all athletes that tested positive for COVID-19. The leagues recognized that there was value in collaborating and formally analyzing their pooled cardiac data, not only for league athlete health and safety purposes, but also to share broadly this information to add to the growing body of knowledge about the virus. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Stem Cells / 05.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Khalid Shah, MS, PhD Vice Chair of Research, Department of Neurosurgery Director, Center for Stem Cell Therapeutics and Imaging Director, Center for Excellence in Biomedicine Brigham and Women's Hospital Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School Principal Faculty, Harvard Stem Cell Institute  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Approximately 15-to-30 percent of patients with metastatic breast cancer have brain metastasis (BM), with basal-like breast cancer (BLBC) metastasizing to the brain most frequently. The prognosis for BLBC-BM patients is poor, as the blood-brain barrier prevents most therapeutics from reaching the brain. Testing candidate therapies in clinical trials is also challenging because animal models that mimic BM are limited. In this study we engineered a bimodal tumor-suppressing and killing molecule that can be delivered to the brain by stem cells and tested them in mouse models of brain metastases that mimic clinical setting. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cost of Health Care, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Electronic Records, JAMA, Technology / 04.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Carlo Giovanni Traverso, MB, BChir, PhD Associate Physician, Brigham and Women's Hospital Assistant Professor, Peter R. Chai, MD, MMS Emergency Medicine Physician and Medical Toxicologist Harvard Medical School Brigham and Women's Hospital Department of Medicine   Dr-Spot-HealthCare-Assistant.jpgMedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are some of the functions that Dr. Spot can facilitate? Response: During the COVID-19 pandemic, we wanted to consider innovative methods to provide additional social distance for physicians evaluating low acuity individuals who may have COVID-19 disease in the emergency department. While other health systems had instituted processes like evaluating patients from outside of emergency department rooms or calling patients to obtain a history, we considered the use of a mobile robotic system in collaboration with Boston Dynamics to provide telemedicine triage on an agile platform that could be navigated around a busy emergency department. Dr. Spot was built with a camera system to help an operator navigate it through an emergency department into a patient room where an on-board tablet would permit face-to-face triage and assessment of individuals. (more…)
Author Interviews, Heart Disease, MD Anderson, Menopause, University of Pittsburgh, Weight Research / 04.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Samar El Khoudary, PhD, MPH, BPharm, FAHA Associate Professor of Epidemiology University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Research increasingly shows that it isn’t so important how much fat a woman is carrying, which doctors typically measure using weight and BMI, as it is where she is carrying that fat. To investigate this, we looked at 25 years of data on 362 women from Pittsburgh and Chicago who participated in the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN) Heart study. The women, who were an average age of 51, had their visceral adipose tissue—fat surrounding the abdominal organs—measured by CT scan and the thickness of the internal carotid artery lining in their neck measured by ultrasound, at a few points during the study. Carotid artery thickness is an early indicator of heart disease. (more…)
Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, UCSD / 03.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Steven L. Wagner PhD University of California, San Diego Department of Neurosciences Professor in Residence School of Medicine, Medical Teaching Facility Room 150 La Jolla, California 92093-0624  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: Amyloid plaques are pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)—clumps of misfolded proteins that accumulate in the brain, disrupting and killing neurons and resulting in the progressive cognitive impairment that is characteristic of the widespread neurological disorder.  Amyloid plaques are composed of small protein fragments called amyloid beta (Aβ) peptides. These peptides are generated by enzymes called β-secretase and γ-secretase, which sequentially cleave a protein called amyloid precursor protein on the surfaces of neurons to release Aβ fragments of varying lengths. Some of these fragments, such as Aβ42, are particularly prone to forming plaques, and their production is elevated in patients with mutations predisposing them to early-onset AD. Several attempts have been made to treat or prevent AD using drugs that inhibit either β-secretase or γ-secretase, but many of these drugs have proved to be highly toxic or unsafe in humans, likely because β-secretase and γ-secretase are required to cleave additional proteins in the brain and other organs. Instead, Wagner and colleagues investigated the therapeutic potential of drugs known as γ-secretase modulators or GSMs, which instead of inhibiting the γ-secretase enzyme, slightly alter its activity so that it produces fewer Aβ peptides that are prone to form plaques while continuing to duties cleaving other protein targets. “GSMs offer the ability to mitigate mechanism-based toxicities associated with γ-secretase inhibitors,” said Wagner.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Microbiome, UCSD / 24.02.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Richard Gallo, MD, PhD Ima Gigli Distinguished Professor of Dermatology Chair of the Department of Dermatology UC San Diego School of Medicine MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Would you briefly explain what is meant by atopic dermatitis/eczema? How common is it and what are the symptoms. Response: Atopic Dermatitis is a common inflammatory disease of the skin that appears in up to 20% of children and 3% of the adult population. People suffering from atopic dermatitis have red, itchy skin. In many cases this rash will disrupt sleeping and severely impact quality of life. Also, people with atopic dermatitis are more susceptible to infections of the skin and are more likely to have other allergies and asthma. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Education, JAMA, UCLA / 22.02.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Frederick Zimmerman, PhD Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management Fielding School of Public Health UCLA   MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The science on school transmissions of COVID is becoming clearer all the time in its conclusion that there is little to no transmission in school environments as long as reasonable precautions are taken.  Yet one recent study got a lot of attention for claiming that states that allowed their schools to remain open in the early days of the pandemic saw more cases.  That study did not control for several important factors that might explain this association, so our study aimed to correct that work. (more…)
Author Interviews, Environmental Risks, NYU / 11.02.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Terry Gordon PhD Professor, Department of Environmental Medicine NYU Grossman School of Medicine NYU Langone Health  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We are air pollution researcher and interested in unique exposure scenarios.  Based on the work by Dr. Steve Chillrud, Columbia University, we did a study 5 years ago to assess air quality in over 30 subway stations in NYC.  We found poor air quality in all of the underground stations but the air quality was better in some locations.  So we wondered what would be air quality in different transit systems in NE United States.  David Luglio, pre-doctoral candidate, led a team of students to monitor particles in the air of subway stations in metropolitan NYC's MTA, LIRR, and PATH systems, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.   (more…)
Author Interviews, NIH, Pulmonary Disease / 09.02.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Stavros Garantziotis MD Division of Intramural Research National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Research Triangle Park, NC MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? How does hyaluronan differ from other medications for COPD? Is it used for other medical conditions? Response: Hyaluronan is a natural sugar found in the human body, including in the lung. We have found that when the lungs are exposed to pollution, this sugar breaks down, and the breakdown fragments cause inflammation in the lung. We also found that if we give back the natural form of hyaluronan, it protects the lung from inflammation. Patients suffering from COPD also have a lot of hyaluronan breakdown in their lungs. We therefore reasoned, that giving them back the natural form of hyaluronan, as an inhalation treatment, would help them reduce inflammation. We tested this, as a first step, in the treatment acute inflammation of the lungs in COPD patients who are suffering an exacerbation of their disease. Hyaluronan is different from existing medications in that it is a natural product of the body. It is used in Europe for conditions like cystic fibrosis, and after sinus surgery to humidify the airways. Because it is given by inhalation, it acts locally in the lungs.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Diabetes, JAMA, Johns Hopkins / 08.02.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Mary R. Rooney, PhD, MPH Postdoctoral research fellow Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study? Response: Prediabetes is defined by elevated blood glucose levels below the threshold for diabetes diagnosis. Physicians screen for prediabetes to identify patients at high risk for diabetes. Prediabetes is common in middle-aged adults but has not been well-studied in older age. We undertook this study to examine the natural history of prediabetes in older adults. (more…)
Asthma, Author Interviews, JAMA, Karolinski Institute, Pediatrics / 08.02.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Yun-Han Wang MSc PhD student, Karolinska Institute MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The use of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) in children has increased substantially in recent years, concurrently with emerging concerns that these drugs may increase the risk of asthma. Whether PPI use in the broad pediatric population is associated with increased risk of asthma is not known.  (more…)
Addiction, Author Interviews, Columbia, JAMA / 05.02.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Elodie C. Warren, MPH Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Graduate MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: We know that the US has been experiencing an opioid crisis for the past two decades. And we know that among communities of color, rates of overdose deaths are continuing to increase, even though overall national rates decreased between 2017 and 2018. To better understand how the opioid crisis has differently affected racial/ethnic groups, we looked at how heroin treatment admissions changed over time by race/ethnicity, age, and sex. We found that there were stark differences when comparing non-Hispanic Black men and women to non-Hispanic White men and women. Importantly, our study suggests the existence of an aging cohort of Black men and women (likely including survivors of a heroin epidemic that hit urban areas more than 40 years ago) that continues to struggle with heroin addiction. This points to the need for targeted interventions in chronically underserved communities.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Heart Disease, Nature / 04.02.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Hugo Aerts, PhD Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Associate Professor, Brigham and Women's Hospital Harvard Medical School Director, Program for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Brigham And Women's Hospital  MedicalResearch.com: Deep convolutional neural networks to predict cardiovascular risk from computed tomography  Response: Cardiovascular disease is the most common preventable cause of death in Europe and the United States. Effective lifestyle and pharmacological prevention is available, but identifying those who would benefit most remains an ongoing challenge. Hence, efforts are needed to further improve cardiovascular risk prediction and stratification on an individual basis. One of the strongest known predictors for adverse cardiovascular events is coronary artery calcification, which can be quantified on computed tomography (CT). The CT coronary calcium score is a measure of the burden of coronary atherosclerosis and is one of the most widely accepted measures of cardiovascular risk. Recent strides in artificial intelligence, deep learning in particular, have shown its viability in several medical applications such as medical diagnostic and imaging, risk management, or virtual assistants. A major advantage is that deep learning can automate complex assessments that previously could only be done by radiologists, but now is feasible at scale with a higher speed and lower cost. This makes deep learning a promising technology for automating cardiovascular event prediction from imaging. However, before clinical introduction can be considered, generalizability of these systems needs to be demonstrated as they need to be able to predict cardiovascular events of asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals across multiple clinical scenarios, and work robustly on data from multiple institutions. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Heart Disease, JAMA, Social Issues, University of Pennsylvania / 02.02.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sameed Khatana MD, MPH Instructor, Cardiovascular Medicine Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Physician, Philadelphia VA Medical Center  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: After declining for decades, the fall in cardiovascular mortality rates in the US has started to slow down and rates may be rising in certain groups. This stagnation in mortality has been most start among middle-aged adults. These trends have occurred at the same time as growing economic inequality. Our analysis aimed to study the relationship between change in cardiovascular mortality rates between 2010 and 2017 for middle-aged adults across the US and change in economic prosperity levels. (more…)