Author Interviews, Cannabis, JAMA, Pediatrics / 25.10.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Carmen Lim BSc(Hons), MSc, CStat PhD Candidate National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences The University of Queensland Brisbane Australia MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: This review has systematically summarized the trends and products used for cannabis vaping using 17 studies published globally between Jan 1, 2003 and August 19, 2020. The pooled prevalence has increased for lifetime use (6.1% in 2013 to 13.6% in 2020), past-year use (7.2% in 2017 to 13.2% in 2020) and past-month use (1.6% in 2013 to 8.4% in 2020). Adolescents' preference for cannabis products may be shifting from less potent products (e.g., herbal cannabis) to highly potent vape oil and concentrates. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, Lung Cancer, Stanford, USPSTF / 24.10.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Summer S Han, PhD Assistant Professor Quantitative Sciences Unit Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research (BMIR) Neurosurgery and Medicine Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford, CA 94304  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) issued their 2021 recommendation on lung cancer screening lowering the start age from 55 to 50 years and the minimum pack-year criterion from 30 to 20, relative to the 2013 recommendations. Although costs are expected to increase with the expanded screening eligibility, it is unknown if the new guidelines for lung cancer screening are cost-effective. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cognitive Issues, COVID -19 Coronavirus, JAMA, Occupational Health / 24.10.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jacqueline H. Becker, Ph.D. Clinical Neuropsychologist Associate Scientist Division of General Internal Medicine Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: This study leverages data being collected through the ongoing Mount Sinai Health System Post-COVID-19 Registry, which is led by Dr. Juan Wisnivesky, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and senior author of the study. Our study concluded that there may be long-term cognitive repercussions from COVID-19 that impact individuals in various age groups and across the spectrum of disease severity, although the frequency of cognitive impairment was highest among patients who were previously hospitalized for COVID-19.  (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, JAMA / 22.10.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Destin Groff, BA Ashley Sun BA Department of Surgery and Paddy Ssentongo MD PhD Department of Public Health Sciences Center for Neural Engineering Department of Engineering, Science and Mechanics The Pennsylvania State University, State College Penn State College of Medicine and Milton S. Hershey Medical Center Hershey, Pennsylvania  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Most people who get sick from COVID-19 will survive. However, the burden of long-term consequences among the survivors is not well-characterized. That is what inspired this study.  MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings? Response: After compiling data from 57 studies involving 250,351 unvaccinated individuals, our study shows that more than half of those worldwide who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 experience six months after recovering. The most common sequelae involve functional mobility impairments, pulmonary abnormalities, and mental health disorders, including memory deficits, concentration difficulty, post-traumatic stress disorders, depression, and anxiety. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cancer Research, Cost of Health Care, JAMA / 20.10.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Anita Katharina Wagner, PharmD, MPH, DrPH Associate Professor of Population Medicine Director, Ethics Program, Point32Health (parent company of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan) Co-Director, HMS Fellowship in Health Policy and Insurance Research Co-Director, Center for Cancer Policy and Program Evaluation (CarPE) Department of Population Medicine Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The expectation for new cancer drugs is that they help patients live better longer. Increasingly more cancer drugs are approved without documented quality of life or overall survival benefits.   At the same time, cancer drug prices are rising.  We studied use of and spending on selected new cancer drugs among patients with employer-sponsored health insurance. We found that among 37348 patients who received one or more of 44 oral targeted cancer drugs, the proportion of patients who received a drug without documented overall survival benefit increased from 13% in 2011 to 59% in 2018.  By 2018, spending on drugs without documented overall survival benefit accounted for 52% of the $3.5 million spend on the 44 drugs since 2011. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Race/Ethnic Diversity, Surgical Research, Weight Research / 18.10.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Amresh D. Hanchate, PhD Professor, Department of Social Sciences and Health Policy Director, Program in Health Services Research Division of Public Health Sciences Wake Forest School of Medicine Medical Center Boulevard Winston-Salem, NC  27157-1063 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: There is strong evidence of increase in access to outpatient physicians among low income individuals who gained Medicaid following changes initiated with the Affordable Care Act. But there is little evidence of whether Medicaid expansion has similarly resulted in increased use of elective inpatient procedures. Bariatric surgery is a particularly important service to study, as the number of adults with severe obesity continues to grow in the United States, and this is the most effective available treatment. Additionally, bariatric procedures are primarily performed among the age group targeted by Affordable Care Act expansions (18-64), and there is a lot of evidence that only a small fraction of eligible uninsured patients are having surgery.  (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, OBGYNE, USPSTF / 06.10.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Aaron B. Caughey, M.D., M.P.P., M.P.H., Ph.D. Professor and ChairDepartment of Obstetrics and Gynecology Associate dean for Women’s Health Research and Policy Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, OR. Founder and Chair, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–funded Oregon Perinatal Collaborative MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Preeclampsia is one of the most serious health problems that can occur during pregnancy. It can lead to preterm birth, and in some cases even death of the pregnant person and their baby. The Task Force looked at the latest available evidence and found that low-dose aspirin can help prevent preeclampsia in pregnant people who are at highest risk, and it can also protect their babies. This new final recommendation is consistent with the Task Force’s 2014 recommendation statement and has the potential to save many lives.  (more…)
Author Interviews, CDC, Emergency Care, JAMA / 06.10.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Daniel S.  Budnitz MD MPH CAPT, USPHS Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Medication Safety Program Atlanta, Georgia  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?  Response: Medications are generally safe when used as prescribed or as directed on the label, but there can be risks in taking any medication. Adverse drug events are harms resulting from the use of medication. The risk of adverse drug events is highest among older adults and very young children. Older adults have higher risks because they typically take more medications and are more likely to have underlying medical conditions. Very young children have higher risks because they often find and ingest medications meant for others. Previous studies of medication safety have focused on harm from medications when taken for therapeutic reasons. Separate studies have focused on harm from specific types of non-therapeutic use (taking medications for recreational use or self-harm). This study examined the number of emergency department (ED) visits that resulted when people who took medications for any reason – as directed by a clinician or for other reasons, including recreational use or intentional self-harm.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Biomarkers, Heart Disease, JAMA, Technology / 05.10.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Pinar Zorlutuna, PhD Sheehan Family Collegiate Professor of Engineering Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (Concurrent) Bioengineering Graduate Program University of Notre Dame  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is the primary cause of death among cardiovascular diseases. The current clinical standard of diagnosis combines echocardiogram (ECG) and several circulating protein biomarkers from plasma. In their current state, both are incapable of distinguishing between patients with and without complete coronary occlusion, unless additional invasive testing is implemented, and both have significant false positive rates. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have shown great potential as rapid and discriminating biomarkers for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) diagnosis. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Heart Disease, JAMA, Stroke / 30.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Daniel E. Singer, MD Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School Professor in the Department of Epidemiology Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Division of General Internal Medicine Massachusetts General Hospital Boston, MA, 02114 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Atrial fibrillation (AF) raises the risk of ischemic stroke 4-5-fold and this risk is largely reversible by oral anticoagulants (OAC). These facts are part of the core knowledge of internal medicine and the basis of multiple guidelines. They are based on studies of patients with persistent or predominantly “heavy burden” paroxysmal AF completed in the 1990s. More recent studies using cardiac implantable devices (CIEDs: implantable defibrillators, pacemakers, etc) which have the capacity to monitor heart rhythm continuously have found that many older patients have brief, often undiagnosed, episodes of AF. Several of these studies have found that strokes occur during periods of sinus rhythm temporally distant from a preceding episode of AF. This has led to a widespread suspicion that AF is not a direct causal risk factor but a risk “marker” indicating the presence of other truly causal features like a diseased left atrium (atrial myopathy). If the risk marker hypothesis is correct, then long-term anticoagulation is needed even for brief and rare episodes of AF (assuming the patient’ s CHA2DS2-VASc score is high enough). The key problem with prior prospective studies using CIEDs was that only a small number of strokes were observed leading to inadequate statistical power. Our study addressed this power problem by linking the very large Optum electronic health record database which could identify ischemic strokes with the Medtronic CareLink database of long-term, continuous heart rhythm records of patients with CIEDs. We ended up studying 891 individuals who had an ischemic stroke and had 120 days of continuous heart monitoring prior to the stroke. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, JAMA, Kidney Disease, Transplantation / 27.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Joel T. Adler, MD, MPH Department of Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Surgery and Public Health Brigham and Women’s Hospital Boston, Massachusetts  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: For patients who require renal replacement therapy for failed kidneys, kidney transplantation increased length of life and improves quality of life.  For many of these patients, their dialysis centers are the source of referral for evaluation for transplantation.  These dialysis centers have a number of publicly-reported quality measures, but they largely focus on the provision of dialysis care and not how often the centers’ patients undergo a kidney transplant.  Because these higher-rated facilities provide better dialysis care, we wanted to know if that benefit also spilled over into higher transplant listing rates. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Methamphetamine, NIH, Race/Ethnic Diversity / 24.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Beth Han, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H. Epidemiologist, Science Policy Branch of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institutes of Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: In the U.S., overdose deaths involving psychostimulants with abuse potential other than cocaine (i.e. largely methamphetamine), increased dramatically during the past decade. Psychostimulant-involved overdose deaths also often involved opioids (50% in 2017). However, it was still undetermined how trends in methamphetamine use among vulnerable populations and specific patterns of use [e.g. methamphetamine use with or without other substances, frequent methamphetamine use, methamphetamine use disorder (MUD), and injection] may contribute to greater risk for overdose mortality. Moreover, understanding characteristics that are associated with methamphetamine use, frequent use, MUD, and injection is of value in guiding strategies to address the root causes for the recent surge in methamphetamine overdose deaths. (more…)
Author Interviews, CDC, JAMA, Sexual Health, STD, USPSTF / 21.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Martha Kubik, Ph.D., R.N. Professor, School of Nursing College of Health and Human Services George Mason University Member, U.S. Preventive Services Task Force MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Are these infections increasing in incidence in the US? Response: Chlamydia and gonorrhea are two of the most common sexually transmitted infections in the U.S. More people are being diagnosed with both of these STIs than ever, with nearly 2 million cases of chlamydia and more than 600,000 cases of gonorrhea reported in 2019, according to the CDC. Because most do not have symptoms, screening is vitally important to help ensure that these infections are discovered and treated, and serious health complications prevented. (more…)
Author Interviews, Columbia, Emergency Care, JAMA, Pediatrics, Race/Ethnic Diversity, Yale / 17.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Destiny Tolliver, MD National Clinician Scholars Program Yale University School of Medicine New Haven, CT 06510-8088 Katherine Nash MD, MHS Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Columbia University Irving Medical Center MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: This study was motivated by work from our colleagues in the adult Emergency Medicine world. Earlier this year Dr. Ambrose Wong and colleagues published work describing racial disparities in the physical restraint of adults in the ED. This prompted our group to consider whether these disparities were also present for children. (more…)
Author Interviews, CDC, HPV, JAMA, Vaccine Studies / 17.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Kalyani Sonawane, PhD Assistant Professor of Management, Policy and Community Health UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Safety concern regarding the HPV vaccine is one of the most significant barriers to vaccination. Our objective was to determine how many US adolescents did not initiate the HPV vaccine during 2015-2018 because their parents had concerns regarding the vaccine’s safety. We also analyzed vaccine adverse event reporting data, in parallel, to understand if the public sentiment of HPV vaccine safety is in alignment with evidence from the vaccine safety surveillance system.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Critical Care - Intensive Care - ICUs, JAMA / 17.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Hirotaka Kato, PhD Graduate School of Health Management Keio University  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response:  Physicians are increasingly engaging in clinical practice on a part-time basis, but little is known about the quality of care provided by these physicians. In this analysis of nationally representative data of the elderly patients admitted to hospitals, we found that patients treated by hospitalists who worked more clinical days per year had significantly lower 30-day mortality compared with patients treated by hospitalists working fewer clinical days, even after accounting for the differences in severity of illness.  (more…)
Author Interviews, HPV, JAMA, OBGYNE / 16.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Helen Trottier Ph.D Assistant Professor, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Researcher, CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center Université de Montréal Montréal, Québec, Canada MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We know that HPV infection can have serious consequences such as the development of cancerous lesions in the cervix. HPV infection is also very prevalent in young women of childbearing age but the possible consequences of HPV in pregnancy have been poorly studied. Some population registers around the world have shown a reduction in the risk of preterm birth with HPV mass vaccination, but we must be careful with this kind of ecological correlation. We have set up a large cohort study in pregnant women to study the association between HPV in pregnancy and preterm birth by targeting certain HPV genotypes and the duration of the infection. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Primary Care, Social Issues / 13.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Karina W. Davidson, Ph.D., M.A.Sc. Professor of Behavioral Medicine Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University/Northwell Health Chairperson, USPSTF MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: The social and economic conditions in someone’s life, such as whether or not they have secure food, housing, or transportation, can affect their health in multiple ways. As part of our commitment to improving health equity, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force took two key steps. We both thoroughly reviewed the existing research around screening and interventions for social risk factors, and audited our own portfolio of recommendation statements to determine how and how often social risks have been considered in the past. This information serves as a benchmark and foundation for our ongoing work to further advance health equity through our methods and recommendations. (more…)
Author Interviews, Blood Pressure - Hypertension, Diabetes, JAMA, Race/Ethnic Diversity / 13.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Megan B. Cole, PhD, MPH Assistant Professor | Dept. of Health Law, Policy, & Management Co-Director | BU Medicaid Policy Lab Boston University School of Public Health Boston, MA 02118 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Under the Affordable Care Act, states were given the option to expand Medicaid eligibility to nonelderly adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level, where in January 2014, 25 states plus Washington, DC expanded eligibility, with 13 additional states expanding thereafter. State Medicaid expansion decisions were particularly consequential for federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), which serve nearly 30 million low-income, disproportionately uninsured patients across the US. We know from earlier work that in the shorter-term, Medicaid expansion was associated with improvements in quality of care process measures and FQHC service capacity. However, we conducted the first known nationally representative study to examine how Medicaid expansion impacted key chronic disease outcome measures at FQHCs over the longer-term by looking at changes five years after implementation, including changes by race/ethnicity.  (more…)
Aging, Author Interviews, Cancer Research, Dermatology, Frailty, JAMA / 08.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Marieke van Winden MD MSc PhD candidate Dermatology Radboud Institute for Health Sciences Department of Dermatology Radboud University Medical Center Nijmegen, the Netherlands MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What underlying conditions would factor in a decision for Watchful Waiting?  Response: Basal cell carcinomas are frequently treated because of the risk for progression, which can cause a significant morbidity due to local tissue invasion and destruction. However, most BCCs are characterized by a relatively indolent nature, growing slowly and frequently asymptomatically. Because patients with a limited life expectancy might not live long enough to develop symptoms from basal cell carcinoma progression, they might not live long enough to benefit from treatment. Underlying conditions that determine life expectancy should therefore be considered when weighing BCC management options. When life expectancy is expected to be relatively short, and the consequences of  watchful waiting (WW) are relatively low risk (low tumor burden expected within the remaining lifespan), WW should be considered. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, Surgical Research / 07.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Andrew P. Loehrer, MD, MPH Assistant Professor Department of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology Dartmouth-Hitchcock MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Patient cost sharing represents the portion of costs covered by insurance that individuals pay out of pocket, including deductibles, co-payment, and co-insurance. Cost sharing is increasingly common and also increasingly expensive for patients with commercial health insurance across the United States. While designed to increase patient responsibility for health care spending, prior work has shown that higher cost sharing is also associated with decreased use of health care overall, both needed and discretionary. However, little work has been done as to how high cost sharing may affect common and costly conditions like acute appendicitis and acute diverticulitis.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Cancer Research, HPV, JAMA, Vaccine Studies / 07.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Yuehan (Jenny) Zhang, ScM PhD Candidate in Cancer Epidemiology Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infectious virus worldwide. Oral HPV infection has resulted in a continual increase in the incidence of oropharynx cancer over the past two decades in the US. New HPV infections are preventable with vaccines, which first entered use in the US in 2006. (more…)
Aging, Author Interviews, Exercise - Fitness, Heart Disease, JAMA / 07.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Amanda Paluch, PhD Assistant Professor University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Kinesiology Institute for Applied Life Sciences Life Science Laboratories Amherst, MA 01003 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We wanted to understand the association of total steps per day with premature mortality among middle-aged, Black and White women and men.  This study included 2110 adults; age 38-50 years old at the start of this study.  These adults wore a step counting device for one week and then followed for death from any cause over the next 10 years. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cannabis, JAMA / 07.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Mark Anderson, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics Montana State University, IZA, and NBER  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: In a previous study that was published in JAMA Pediatrics, we used Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data and found that the adoption of recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) was associated with an 8% decrease in the odds of marijuana use among high school students.  This earlier study, however, had pre-legalization and post-legalization data from only 7 states and pre- and post-recreational sales data from only 3 states, calling into question the generalizability of our findings. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, JAMA, Vaccine Studies / 03.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jeffrey M. Wilson MD Assistant Professor of Medicine Allergy and Immunology University of Virginia MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: To date there have been few head-to-head studies evaluating the immune responses to COVID-19 vaccines. Here we measured IgG antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 spike-RBD in adults who received full vaccination with either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine. Our study is distinguished from many others because we developed a quantitative test with a read-out in standardized units (expressed as micrograms/mL). We found that antibody levels to the SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor-binding domain were lower in recipients of the Pfizer/BioNTech than Moderna vaccine. The difference in the antibody levels between vaccines was most evident in relatively older subjects. (more…)
Author Interviews, Diabetes, JAMA / 01.09.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Chien-Wen Tseng M.D., M.P.H., M.S.E.E. Professor,  Associate Research Director Department of Family Medicine and Community Health University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine Hawaii Medical Service Association Endowed Chair MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main recommendations? Response: Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States and raises a person’s risk for heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, and even blindness and limb amputation. The Task Force recommends screening for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes in adults who are 35 to 70 years old and have overweight or obesity, which is one of the leading risk factors for diabetes. By screening, we can detect prediabetes and type 2 diabetes early and prevent these conditions from getting worse and leading to serious health problems. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, JAMA, OBGYNE, Pediatrics, Weight Research / 28.08.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Emily Oken MD MPH Professor, Harvard Medical School Professor in the Department of Population Medicine Associate Director and Advisor, Oliver Wendell Holmes Society. Professor, Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: In this study of over 11,000 mothers and children, we found that a mothers with higher weight in late pregnancy had children with poorer performance on tests of cognition and behavior in childhood and adolescence. The findings are consistent with results from studies in other populations around the world, as well as animal experiments.  This research suggests that maternal nutrition is important for child health over the long-term, and specifically provides support for mothers to try to achieve healthy weight and nutritional status during pregnancy. (more…)
Author Interviews, Biomarkers, COVID -19 Coronavirus, JAMA / 28.08.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Laura Holberger, PhD Vice President, Strategic Partnerships Biolabs MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Dr. Laura Holberger is the lead author of a JNO article published today describing the results of a research study done on behalf of BioLabs, a global network of coworking laboratory spaces, and the Cambridge Consortium for Rapid COVID Tests (CCRCT). BioLabs co-sponsored the study which helped validate a high-frequency testing protocol using an antigen test for COVID-19 under development by E25Bio Inc., a biotechnology company that develops rapid tests for infectious diseases.  The study involved twice-weekly testing of members and affiliates working in person at coworking laboratories in Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts from September 2020 through March 2021. (more…)
Author Interviews, Exercise - Fitness, JAMA, Prostate Cancer / 24.08.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Kerry S. Courneya, PhD Professor and Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity and Cancer Director, Behavioral Medicine Laboratory and Fitness Center Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation | College of Health Sciences University of Alberta | Edmonton, Alberta | CANADA  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: An increasing number of men with low risk prostate cancer (PCa) do not receive any immediate medical treatments for their PCa. This practice is called active surveillance (AS). It can be very stressful for men because about one-third of them will eventually experience disease progression and require medical treatments. Right now, there is nothing these men can really do for themselves other than to attend all of their follow-up medical visits. Some research has shown that exercise may slow the progression of prostate tumours and metastasis in animal models and improve quality of life in men during and after PCa treatments. Very little research, however, has been conducted in the AS setting. We wanted to see if a high intensity interval training exercise program could improve fitness and prevent or delay biochemical progression of PCa in the AS setting. (more…)
Author Interviews, Diabetes, JAMA, USPSTF / 24.08.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Chien-Wen Tseng. M.D., M.P.H., M.S.E.E. Professor,  Associate Research Director Department of Family Medicine and Community Health University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine Hawaii Medical Service Association Endowed Chair MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Gestational diabetes is becoming more common and can cause serious health problems for pregnant people and their babies. Fortunately, the Task Force found that screening at or after 24 weeks of pregnancy is safe and effective and can keep pregnant people and their babies healthy. Currently, there is not enough evidence on screening earlier in pregnancy, so the Task Force is calling for more research. (more…)