Author Interviews, Depression, Mental Health Research, Nature, PTSD / 21.10.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Amit Etkin, MD, PhD Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Stanford Universitu Stanford, CA    MedicalResearch.com: What is the mission of Cohen Veterans Bioscience - CVB?  Cohen Veterans Bioscience Response: Cohen Veterans Bioscience (CVB) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) research biotech dedicated to fast-tracking the development of diagnostic tests and personalized therapeutics for the millions of Veterans and civilians who suffer the devastating effects of trauma-related and other brain disorders. To learn about CVB’s research efforts visit www.cohenveteransbioscience.org.   MedicalResearch.com: How can patients with PTSD or MDD benefit from this information? Response: With the discovery of this new brain imaging biomarker, patients who suffer from PTSD or MDD may be guided towards the most effective treatment without waiting months and months to find a treatment that may work for them.   MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: This study, which was supported with a grant from Cohen Veterans Bioscience, grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH and other supporters, derives from our work over the past few years which has pointed to the critical importance of understanding how patients with a variety of psychiatric disorders differ biologically. The shortcomings of our current diagnostic system have become very clear over the past 1-2 decades, but the availability of tools for transcending these limitations on the back of objective biological tests has not kept pace with the need for those tools. In prior work, we have used a variety of methods, including different types of brain imaging, to identify brain signals that underpin key biological differences within and across traditional psychiatric diagnoses. We have also developed specialized AI tools for decoding complex patterns of brain activity in order to understand and quantify biological heterogeneity in individual patients. These developments have then, in turn, converged with the completion of a number of large brain imaging-coupled clinical trials, which have provided a scale of these types of data not previously available in the field. (more…)
Author Interviews, Critical Care - Intensive Care - ICUs, Yale / 09.11.2013

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: John Ney, MD, MPH Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology, University of Washington [email protected] MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Ney: My colleagues and I used a large, publicly available dataset to examine the usage and effectiveness of electroencephalography (EEG) in adult intensive care units (ICUs) in the United States over a five year period.  We compared routine EEG, which consists of a portable machine hooked up to the patient to record brainwaves for a short duration, usually 20-40 minutes, with continuous EEG monitoring, where a patient’s brainwaves are recorded continuously for 24 hours or more and examined, ideally in real-time.  Because most patients in the ICU are comatose, we have generally poor and crude indicators of their brain function.  ICU patients are particularly at risk for non-convulsive seizures, where the brain is seizing, but there are few outward signs of a seizure.  EEG is the only means of detecting non-convulsive seizures, and is useful in determining the brain’s reactions to drugs, monitoring for stroke and other abnormal activity. Our main finding is that ICU patients receiving continuous EEG monitoring was associated with increased survival relative to those who received routine EEG only.    In our sample, 39% of ICU patients who received routine EEG died compared to only 25% of those with continuous EEG monitoring. This finding was both substantial and statistically significant, even after adjustment for age and other demographics, clinical disease comorbidity severity measures, and hospital factors.  Although continuous EEG monitoring was more expensive, the increase in hospital charges were not significant after adjustment. (more…)