The most obvious take away is that correcting the magnesium levels can help patients to normalize calcium levels due to the synergy between the two....
Dr. McGregor[/caption]
Tracy McGregor, MD MSCI
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals
Cambridge, Massachusetts
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Rivka Green[/caption]
Rivka Green, MA
Doctoral Candidate
Clinical Developmental Neuropsychology
York University
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: We conducted a study on 512 mother-child pairs from 6 major cities across Canada, about half of whom lived in a region that receives fluoridated water.
We found that prenatal fluoride exposure was associated with lower IQ scores in 3-4 year old children.
Dr. Fishbane[/caption]
Steven Fishbane MD
Chief, Division of Kidney Disease and Hypertension
Vice President, Northwell Health for Network Dialysis Services, Northwell Health
Professor of Medicine
Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell
Department of Medicine, Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell,
Great Neck, New York
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Patients on hemodialysis have a great frequency of hyperkalemia. The hemodialysis treatment removes some potassium but not enough to get rid of this problem. Available medications to bind potassium have not been tested among these patients.
The purpose of the study was to see if sodium zirconium cyclosilicate could be used as a potassium binder to reduce the risk of hyperkalemia in patients on a hemodialysis.
Prof. Reid[/caption]
Prof Ian Reid MD
Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences
University of Auckland
Auckland New Zealand
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Bisphosphonates prevent fractures in patients with osteoporosis, but their efficacy in women with osteopenia is unknown. Most fractures in postmenopausal women occur in osteopenic patients, so therapies with efficacy in osteopenia are needed.
Titanium’s vast array of uses in medical science, as well as other fields, points toward our civilization heading into a titanium-rich future. ...
Dr. Agrawal[/caption]
Rahul Agrawal MD PhD
VP, Global Medicines Leader
AstraZeneca
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
About the study: HARMONIZE Global is a Phase III, randomized, multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving 267 patients with hyperkalemia (mean potassium levels greater than 5.0 mEq/L) in 47 study locations across the Asia Pacific region, which will support registration in Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Russia.
Study design: The trial design of HARMONIZE Global is similar to HARMONIZE (NCT02088073) but evaluated two doses of LOKELMATM (sodium zirconium cyclosilicate) instead of three, as well as patients in different geographical regions.
Dr. Ivarsson[/caption]
Dr Mattias Ivarsson PhD
CEO, Inositec, co-author of data
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: When control of factors in the blood that regulate mineral balance in the body is lost, the subsequent build-up of calcium deposits in the arterial walls and cardiac valves lead to an increase in cardiac events, particularly in patients with chronic kidney disease or diabetes, as well as all-cause mortality.
There is a significant unmet need for therapeutic agents capable of reducing pathological mineral accumulation regardless of their root cause. To date, there is no approved therapy for treating calcification-dependent cardiovascular disease.
Dipender Gill[/caption]
Dipender Gill
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
London, United Kingdon
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Iron status has previously been associated with risk of various types of cardiovascular disease, including stroke. However, the observational research methodologies that identified these associations can be affected by confounding from environmental factors and reverse causation.
We used randomly allocated genetic variants that affect iron status to investigate its effect on risk of different types of ischemic stroke, and found evidence to support that higher iron status increases risk of cardioembolic stroke.
Dr Mark J Bolland PhD
Bone and Joint Research Group
Department of Medicine
University of Auckland
New Zealand
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Vitamin D supplements have long been recommended for older people to treat or prevent osteoporosis.
Early evidence suggested vitamin D supplements might have benefits for musculoskeletal health, but more recent systematic reviews have reported no effect of vitamin D supplementation on fractures, falls or bone mineral density. Some authors have suggested that inadequate vitamin D doses might explain these null results.
Dr. Jonathan Silverberg[/caption]
Dr. Jonathan L. Silverberg MD PhD MPH
Assistant Professor in Dermatology
Medical Social Sciences and Preventive Medicine
Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Persons with atopic dermatitis have a number of risk factors for osteopenia and osteoporosis, including systemic atopy and inflammation, being less physically active and using a lot of topical and/or systemic corticosteroids. We aimed to determine whether adults with atopic dermatitis in fact have higher rates of physician-diagnosed osteopenia and osteoporosis.
Christine Austin PhD
Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, NY 10029
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Previous studies have shown that some metals (nutrients and toxicants) are absorbed and metabolized differently in children with autism spectrum disorder compared to neuro-typical children. However, it is not known when this dysregulation occurs and it is incredibly difficult to study prenatal metal metabolism. Teeth, which begin forming prenatally, grow by adding a new layer every day, much like the yearly growth rings in trees. Each layer formed captures many of the chemicals circulating in the body at the time.
We have developed a method to measure metals in these layers to build a timeline of metal exposure during the prenatal and early childhood period. We found that the cycles of copper and zinc metabolism were disrupted in children with ASD and used this feature to develop a method to predict the emergence of autism spectrum disorder with 90% accuracy.
Dr. Fishbane[/caption]
Steven Fishbane, MD,
Chief, Division of Kidney Disease and Hypertension, Northwell Health
Vice President, Northwell Health for Network Dialysis Services, Northwell Health
Professor of Medicine, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell
Lead investigator of the ZS 005 study
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this announcement? Would you briefly explain what is meant by hyperkalemia?What are the dangers of an elevated potassium and how does LOKELMA differ from prior standard treatments?
Response: Hyperkalemia is when the potassium in the blood rises to potentially harmful levels. High potassium is primarily harmful for the heart. As the potassium level rises the risk for abnormal electrical rhythms or disruption of the heart’s pumping occur. When severe, a high potassium level can cause death.
Lokelma has been demonstrated to be effective for lowering potassium levels with a great degree of consistency. It is well tolerated and has a fairly rapid onset of potassium lowering compared to other drugs for the purpose.
Shivani Sahni, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Director, Nutrition Program
Associate Scientist, Musculoskeletal Research
Institute for Aging Research, Hebrew SeniorLife,
Boston MA 02131-1097
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Previous studies have shown that higher milk intake is associated with higher bone mineral density. In one of our previous studies, we reported that higher dairy food intake was protective against bone loss especially among older adults who used vitamin D supplements. Older adults are at high risk of vitamin D deficiency because recommended intakes are difficult to achieve without fortified foods (such as dairy) or supplements. Vitamin D stimulates calcium absorption, which is beneficial for building bones. However, it is unclear if the effect of vitamin D on calcium absorption is substantial enough to translate into beneficial effects on bone.
Therefore, the current study determined the association of dairy food intake with bone health. We further examined whether these associations would be modified by vitamin D status.
Dr. Lewis[/caption]
Dr. Joshua Lewis, PhD
National Health and Medical Research Council Career Development Fellow, Edith Cowan University, School of Medical and Health Sciences / Centre for Kidney Research
Children’s Hospital Westmead
Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Sydney Medical School, School of Public Health
University of Sydney
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Bone scans from bone density machines are widely used to predict future fracture risk. These scans can also be used to detect the presence and severity of abdominal aortic calcification (AAC), which is a marker of advanced atherosclerosis.
We examined bone scans of over one thousand Australian women that were taken in the late 1990s using a method developed many years ago by one of the authors Dr. Kiel from the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife and Harvard Medical School, and validated on scans from bone density machines by the joint first author Dr. Schousboe from the University of Minnesota. More than 2/3rd of these women had detectable AAC and women with more advanced calcification had increased likelihood of long-term cardiovascular hospitalizations and deaths as well as deaths from any cause. These finding remained significant even after adjusting for conventional cardiovascular risk factors.
Dr Jia-Guo Zhao
Tianjin Hospital
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
Tianjin, China
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: The increased social and economic burdens for osteoporotic-related fractures worldwide make its prevention a major public health goal.
Calcium and vitamin D supplements have long been considered a basic intervention for the treatment and prevention of osteoporosis. Survey analysis showed that 30–50% of older people take calcium or vitamin D supplements in some developed countries. Many previously published meta-analyses, from the high-ranking medical journals, concluded that calcium and vitamin D supplements reduce the incidence of fracture in older adults. And many guidelines regarding osteoporosis recommend calcium and vitamin D supplements for older people. The final aim for these supplements is to prevent the incidence of osteoporotic-related fracture in osteoporosis management.
Dr. Fajardo[/caption]
Val Andrew Fajardo, PhD.
NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow | Centre for Bone and Muscle Health
Brock University | Department of Health Sciences
St. Catharines, ON, Canada
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Lithium is best known for its role as a mood stabilizer, and several ecological studies across a number of different regions have shown that trace levels of lithium in tap water can exert its mood stabilizing effect and reduce rates of suicide, crime, and homicide.
The results from our study show that these trace levels of lithium could also potentially protect against Alzheimer’s disease. These findings are actually supported by several years of research using pre-clinical and clinical models to demonstrate low-dose lithium’s neuroprotective effect against Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, we also found that trace lithium in tap water may potentially protect against obesity and diabetes – an effect that is also supported with previous literature. In fact, some of the earlier reports of lithium’s effect of increasing insulin sensitivity and improving glucose metabolism were first published in the 1920s. Finally, we found that trace lithium’s effect on Alzheimer’s disease may be partly mediated by its effect on obesity and diabetes.
My collaborator Dr. Rebecca MacPherson who is an expert on Alzheimer’s disease as a metabolic disorder explains that this effect is in support of recent research demonstrating that obesity and diabetes are important risk factors in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. So interventions aiming to reduce obesity and diabetes such as physical activity can go a long way in lowering risk for Alzheimer’s disease, which is also something we present in our study.
Dr. Cousminer[/caption]
Diana L. Cousminer, PhD
Division of Human Genetics
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Philadelphia, PA 19104
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Osteoporosis is a significant public health burden, with origins early in life. Later puberty and lower adolescent bone mineral density are both risk factors for osteoporosis.
Geneticists have identified hundreds of genetic variants across the genome that impact pubertal timing, and we found that collectively this variation also plays a role in bone mineralization during adolescence. Additionally, we found that later puberty caused lower adult bone density.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_37439" align="alignleft" width="125"] Dr. Danby[/caption] Dr. Simon G. Danby, PhD Independent Research Fellow Sheffield Dermatology Research, Department of Infection & Immunity & Cardiovascular Disease, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Healthy, University of Sheffield UK MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Living in a hard water area has been...
Dr. Berglund[/caption]
Staffan Berglund MD PhD
Umeå University
Sweden
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Iron deficiency has been associated with impaired neurodevelopment and iron supplementation is recommended to those at risk. While it is well known that very low birth weight infants are at risk of iron deficiency, less has been known regarding the large subgroup of children born with only marginally low birth weight (2000-2500g). In the present study, we previously showed that this relatively common group of otherwise healthy children is at risk of iron deficiency during infancy (Berglund Pediatrics 2010;126).
In the study published this week, we now also found that supplementation during the first six months of life had long term positive effects on their behavioral profile, with significant reduction of externalizing behavioral problems.
Dr. Arora[/caption]
Manish Arora, PhD
Associate Professor
Environmental Medicine & Public Health
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Autism has both genetic and environmental risk factors. Our aim was to study if exposure to toxic metals, such as lead, or disruptions in the uptake of essential nutrient elements such as manganese or zinc would be related to autism risk. Furthermore, we were interested in not only understanding how much exposure had taken place but also which developmental periods were associated with increased susceptibility to autism risk.
Researchers suspect that the risk factors for autism start early in life, even prenatally, but measuring in utero exposures is technically very challenging. We used a newly developed technique that uses lasers to map growth rings in baby teeth (like growth rings in trees) to reconstruct the history of toxic metal and essential nutrient uptake. We applied this technology in samples collected from twins, including twins who were discordant for autism. This allowed us to have some control over genetic factors.
We found that twins with autism had higher levels of lead in their teeth compared to their unaffected twin siblings. They also had lower levels of zinc and manganese. The lower uptake of zinc was restricted to approximately 10 weeks before birth to a few weeks after birth, indicating that as a critical developmental period.
Shifra Mincer[/caption]
Ms. Shifra Mincer
Medical Student in the class of 2019
SUNY Downstate Medical School
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Hypophosphatemia is commonly encountered in the post-transplant setting. Early post-transplant hypophosphatemia has been ascribed to excess FGF23 and hyperphosphaturia.
Many patients remain hypohosphatemic months or even years after their transplant and the mechanism was assumed to be the same, however, our group recently reported that patients with late post-transplant hypophosphatemia had very little phosphorous in their urine (Wu S, Brar A, Markell, MS. Am J Kidney Dis. 2016,67(5): A18). We hypothesized that they were not eating enough phosphorous to compensate for the acute phosphorous losses they experienced immediately post-transplant.
In this study, using both 3-day diet journals and 24-hour diet recall questionnaires, we found that mean intake of phosphorous and protein was barely at the Recommended Daily Allowance, and that despite 70% of the patients using EBT, 30% of those patients still reported concerns regarding food security. Patients who reported that the cost of food influenced their dietary choices ate 43% less protein (average 48,5 gms vs. 85.8 gms) and 29% less phosphorous (average 887 mg vs 1257 mg). When ability to rise from a chair over a 30 second period was evaluated, only patients who expressed food cost concerns were unable to complete the test.
Dr. Kunutsor[/caption]
Dr Setor Kunutsor Ba(Legon), MBChB(Legon), MA(Cantab), PhD(Cantab)
Research Fellow
Musculoskeletal Research Unit
University of Bristol
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Bone fractures are one of the leading causes of disability and ill health especially among the ageing population and are a burden to health care systems. There is established evidence that calcium and vitamin D play an important role in bone health.
Magnesium is an essential trace element, being the second most abundant intracellular cation after potassium and the fourth most abundant cation in the body. It serves several important functions in the body, which include protein synthesis, nucleic acid synthesis, enzymatic reactions, and has also been shown to be cardio-protective. It is also an important component of bone, with majority (67 percent) of total body magnesium known to be found in the bone tissue. There have been suggestions from both human and animal experiments that magnesium may have a beneficial effect on bone health; however, its relationship with fractures is not very certain.
Dr. Joshua I. Barzilay[/caption]
Joshua I. Barzilay, MD
Kaiser Permanente of Georgia
Duluth, GA 30096
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Hypertension (HTN) and osteoporosis (OP) are age-related disorders. Both increase rapidly in prevalence after age 65 years. Prior retrospective, post hoc studies have suggested that thiazide diuretics may decrease the risk of osteoporosis. These studies, by their nature, are open to bias. Moreover, these studies have not examined the effects of other anti HTN medications on osteoporosis.
Here we used a prospective blood pressure study of ~5 years duration to examine the effects of a thiazide diuretic, a calcium channel blocker and an ACE inhibitor on hip and pelvic fractures. We chose these fractures since they are almost always associated with hospitalization and thus their occurrence can be verified.
After the conclusion of the study we added another several years of follow up by querying medicare data sets for hip and pelvic fractures in those participants with medicare coverage after the study conclusion.
Dr. Silke Kern[/caption]
Silke Kern, MD, PhD
Neuropsychiatric Epidemiology Unit and Clinical Neurochemistry Laboratory
Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology
Sahlgrenska Academy
University of Gothenburg
Gothenburg, Sweden
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Calcium has an important role in ischemic neuronal cell death and atherosclerosis. Several studies suggest that increased serum calcium increases the risk for vascular events and worsens the outcome after stroke. Widespread ischemic neuronal cell death and atherosclerosis might lead to dementia. We therefore examined if Calcium supplementation is associated with development of dementia. Our study is the first to show a relationship between Calcium supplementation and increased risk for dementia in older women. This risk is mainly confined to women with cerebrovascular disease (history of stroke or presence of white matter lesions).
Dr. Vongpatanasin[/caption]
Wanpen Vongpatanasin, MD
Professor of Medicine
Norman & Audrey Kaplan Chair in Hypertension Research
Director, Hypertension Section
Cardiology Division
UT Southwestern Medical Center
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Inorganic phosphate has been added to our processed food at an enormous amount as food preservatives and flavor enhancer such that typical American diet contains twice as much as the recommended daily allowance. A high phosphate (Pi) diet was recently shown to trigger blood pressure (BP) elevation in otherwise normal rats but the mechanisms are still unknown.We found that rats treated with high phosphate diet that mimics the excess Pi consumed by the general American population developed high BP related to increased sympathetic nerve activity (SNA), resulting in excessive peripheral vasoconstriction. This exaggerated increase in SNA and BP is evident particularly during exercise. This study is conducted in collaboration with Drs. Masaki Mizuno and Scott Smith, the two leading experts in neural control of circulation at UT Southwestern in the Department of Health Care Sciences.