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Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Biomarkers, JAMA, MRI / 22.05.2023

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ruben Smith MD, PhD Associate professor at Clinical Memory Research Division of Neurology Lund University   MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Since a few years it has become possible to visualize tau pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) using positron emission tomography (PET). The tau-PET radiotracer Flortaucipir (Tauvid) was recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as an AD diagnostic tool. Since PET imaging is costly and exposes the patient to radioactivity we wanted to study the added clinical value of tau-PET in the diagnostic work-up of patients with cognitive symptoms, before widespread implementation in clinical practice. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cancer Research / 25.02.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: group-picture Catharina Svanborg M.D., Ph.D. Professor at Lund University Department of Laboratory Medicine, Division of Microbiology, Immunology and Glycobiology Founder/Chairman of the Board at HAMLET Pharma MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Like many unexpected scientific developments, this finding was serendipitous. In our search for the molecular basis of host susceptibility to infection, we discovered that infection directly affects MYC levels. Gene expression analysis revealed that MYC itself was inhibited and that genes regulated by MYC were affected in children with acute kidney infection. Rapid reductions in MYC levels was further confirmed by infecting human kidney cells with the pathogenic E. coli bacteria isolated from patients with acute pyelonephritis, allowing us to formulate the hypothesis that bacteria regulate host MYC levels during acute infection and to investigate the mechanism leading to this inhibition. This work was conducted by the Laboratory Medicine group at Lund University in Sweden led by Professor Catharina Svanborg. (more…)
Author Interviews, Genetic Research, Orthopedics / 18.12.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Karin Magnusson PT, PhD Associate Researcher Lund University and Norwegian Institute of Public Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is one of the most common knee injuries, for which very limited data has been presented on the genetic contribution. Based on our knowledge of the role of genetics in the development of ACL-rupture related traits, such as joint hypermobility and knee osteoarthritis, we hypothesized that heritability might play a role also in ACL injury. Using the Swedish Twin Registry, which is the world's largest twin registry and in this study including more than 88.000 twins, we had unique data to for the first time reliably estimate the heritability for this common knee injury.  (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, JAMA, Mental Health Research / 28.03.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Madeleine Liljegren, MD Division of Oncology and Pathology Department of Clinical Sciences Lund University Lund, Sweden MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: We know from former studies including patients with a clinical diagnosis of dementia, that criminal and socially inappropriate behaviors can be signs of dementia, sometimes even the first signs of a neurodegenerative disorder. We wanted to study this relatively large (n=220) cohort of neuropathologically verified Alzheimer disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients, who had been followed clinically by specialists in cognitive medicine or geriatric psychiatry during their disease period, to see if we could confirm results from previous studies. In this paper, we further wanted to study potential differences regarding protein pathology and criminal behavior in frontotemporal dementia patients. This has, to our knowledge, never been done before. (more…)