28 Feb Drivers of More Expensive Cars Less Likely To Yield For Pedestrians
I think a take away message is that only about 28% of cars actually yielded....
medical research Tag
28 Feb Antipsychotic Medication Linked to Brain Cortex Thinning in People in Remission from Psychotic Depression
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53338" align="alignleft" width="190"] Dr. Voineskos[/caption]
Dr. Aristotle Voineskos MD, PhD, FRCPC
Director, Slaight Family Centre for Youth in Transition and Head,
Kimel Family Translational Imaging-Genetics Laboratory
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute
CAMH
University of Toronto
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Uncontrolled studies in humans have shown conflicting results regarding effects of antipsychotic medications on brain structure. Recent studies in animals (e.g. rats and non-human primates) show that these medications may be associated with brain volume loss. To date, our knowledge of the effects of antipsychotic medications on brain structure in humans have been limited by the lack of a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial with brain imaging. Ours is the first such study. It is considered unethical to do such a study in people with schizophrenia, because of the life-saving benefits of these medications in this illness. However, in people with depression also experiencing psychosis, it was possible to do such a study once people experienced remission from their illness.
27 Feb Most Women Report Weight Gain After Breast Cancer Diagnosis
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53328" align="alignleft" width="120"] Dr. Ee[/caption]
Carolyn Ee PhD
NICM Health Research Institute
Western Sydney University
Australia
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Worldwide and in Australia, breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Weight gain is common after diagnosis of breast cancer and may increase tumour recurrence risk, mortality rate, and worsen quality of life. As there was no national data on the prevalence of weight gain after breast cancer in Australia, we undertook a national survey which was open to any woman living in Australia who had breast cancer.
27 Feb Cancers That Survive Chemotherapy Acquire Resistance Genes in Different Ways
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53325" align="alignleft" width="160"] Dr. Pusztai[/caption]
Lajos Pusztai, M.D, D.Phil.
Professor of Medicine
Director, Breast Cancer Translational Research
Co-Director, Yale Cancer Center Genetics and Genomics Program
Yale Cancer Center
Yale School of Medicine
New Haven, CT 05620
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: We analyzed breast cancer tissues obtained before any therapy and the same cancers after 20 weeks of chemotherapy. This setting is ideal to find out what genomic changes have occurred in cancers that survived therapy. Due to the paucity of such specimens few other studies exist in this space.
27 Feb Link Between Short Telomeres and Mortality Increases with Age
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53301" align="alignleft" width="150"] Dr. Arbeev[/caption]
Dr. Konstantin G. Arbeev, PhD
Associate Research Professor
Biodemography of Aging Research Unit (BARU)
Social Science Research Institute (SSRI)
Duke University
[caption id="attachment_53302" align="alignleft" width="125"]
Dr. Aviv[/caption]
Dr. Abraham Aviv, MD
Department Pediatrics
Director, The Center of Human Development and Aging
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: A body of research has shown that having comparatively short leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is associated with increased risk of death in adults.
27 Feb IVF, Twins and Risk of Congenital Heart Disease
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Shi Wu Wen PhD Senior Scientist, Clinical Epidemiology Program Professor, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology University of Ottawa MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Previous studies have shown that having a baby as a result of using assisted procedures such as IVF nearly doubles the chance that a baby will have heart problems.
27 Feb Widowhood Exacerbates Cognitive Decline in Alzheimer’s Disease
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53305" align="alignleft" width="200"] Dr Donovan[/caption]
Nancy J. Donovan, M.D.
Chief, Division of Geriatric Psychiatry
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA 02115
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Prior research has shown that widowed older adults are more likely to experience cognitive decline than those who are married. However, there have been no prior studies of widowhood as a risk factor for cognitive decline due to Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of severe cognitive impairment.
26 Feb Women With Ischemia but No Obstructive CAD Remain at Risk of Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53308" align="alignleft" width="150"]
Dr. Aldiwani[/caption]
Haider Aldiwani, MD
Fellow in Internal Medicine
and
[caption id="attachment_53309" align="alignleft" width="150"] Dr. Bairey Merz[/caption]
C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, FACC, FAHA
Director
Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center
Smidt Heart Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Los Angeles, CA, 90048
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women in the United States. Women are found to have a higher prevalence of ischemia but no obstructive coronary artery disease (INOCA) compared to men. These women are often labeled as “normal” and their symptoms and cardiovascular risk are not managed appropriately. Women with INOCA are higher risk of developing major adverse cardiovascular events including death, myocardial infarction (MI), stroke and heart failure hospitalization. Presenting symptoms of ischemia are variable and more often labelled “atypical” in women.
25 Feb Radiation Kills Cancer Cells, But May Also Protect Some Tumor Stem Cells That Can Spread
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53297" align="alignleft" width="133"] Dr. Sims-Mourtada[/caption]
Jennifer Sims-Mourtada, Ph.D.
Senior Rsearch Scientist
Director of Translational Breast Cancer Research
Center for Translational Cancer Research
ChristianaCare
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Cancer stem cells are resistant cancer cells that are able to continuously grow and are very resistant to radiation and chemotherapy. Cancer stem cells can also escape to the blood stream and travel to another site causing metastasis.
25 Feb After Age 75 Mammograms May Not Decrease Chance of Dying of Breast Cancer
Posted at 11:52h
in Annals Internal Medicine, Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cancer Research, Mammograms
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
[caption id="attachment_53229" align="alignleft" width="124"] Dr. Garcia-De-Albeniz[/caption]
Xabier Garcia-De-Albeniz MD PhD
Research Associate
Department of Epidemiology
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Mongan Institute for Health Policy
Massachusetts General Hospital
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: The goal of breast cancer screening is to reduce deaths from breast cancer by finding breast cancer at early, more treatable stages. The main way to screen for breast cancer is periodic mammography, which is an x-ray of the breast that can show tumors before they are large enough to feel. High-quality studies called clinical trials have shown that screening women in their 50s and 60s decreases breast cancer deaths. However, the point at which women can safely stop screening because it no longer decreases breast cancer deaths has not been studied. More than half of women in the United States continue screening mammography after age 75 years.
25 Feb Drugs That Suppress Gastric Acid Linked to Risk of Resistant Organisms
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Drs. R.P.J. Willems | Arts-onderzoeker Medische Microbiologie en Infectiepreventie Amsterdam MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Does your study refer to both PPIs and H2-blockers? Response: There is mixed evidence on the associated risk of colonization and infection with multidrug-resistant microorganisms with acid suppressive therapy. We therefore aimed to investigate current literature in order to determine whether acid suppressants facilitate intestinal colonization with multidrug-resistant microorganisms. We included studies on PPIs, H2 blockers and antacids.25 Feb Machine Learning Allows Empathy To Be Predicted in Resting Brain
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53285" align="alignleft" width="200"]
Dr. Christov-Moore[/caption]
Leonardo Christov-Moore, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Scholar
Brain and Creativity Institute
University of Southern California
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: We've known for some time that empathy has both bottom-up, affective, somatomotor components, that let us quickly feel and internally simulate other peoples' internal states, and more cognitive, top-down components through which we make conscious inferences about others' beliefs, intentions and internal states. And there is interesting work suggesting that in many cases, these components work together. In our work, we took this idea further to propose that they exist in constant interaction, with the bottom-up systems providing information that informs the top-down processes (aiding in our inference), which in turn provide modulation and control to the bottom-up processes (modulating the extent to which we "resonate" with others based on context, affiliation, etc.).
Specifically, we found that you could predict many aspects of prosocial decision-making ( a top-down task) from bottom-up and top-down systems' interaction during simple bottom-up empathy tasks (passively observing someone experience emotion or pain). This led us to hypothesize that peoples' levels of empathic concern for others are dictated by stable patterns of interaction between these systems.
In the current study, we made a strong test of this hypothesis: if these empathy-predicting patterns of interaction are stable across task demands, we should be able to observe them (and predict empathic concern from them) even when the brain is not doing anything ostensibly related to empathy! So that's what we did.
24 Feb What is the Link Between Body Height and Dementia?
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53278" align="alignleft" width="200"] Dr. Jørgense[/caption]
Terese Sara Høj Jørgensen PhD
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences
University of Copenhagen
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Dementia may develop as a result of both genetics and environmental exposures operating throughout the life course, and the risk of dementia may already be established early in life. Body height has a strong genetic component and is at the same time influenced by environmental factors early in life. Body height is an expression of growth early in life and a taller body height could express that the body has had an optimal development. At the same time, a shorter body height could be an indicator of harmful exposures early in life. A few smaller studies have identified a link between body height and dementia. However, rather than being a risk factor of dementia in itself, body height is likely an indicator of harmful exposures early in life and hereby linked to dementia. Body growth could furthermore be linked to dementia as an indicator of brain and cognitive reserve. Thus, to understand the relationship between body height and dementia, large scale high-quality longitudinal studies exploring the impact of early environmental factors and genetics to explain the link between body height and dementia were needed prior to this study.
24 Feb Female Underrepresented-Minority Medical Students Report Highest Rates of Discrimination
Posted at 17:48h
in Author Interviews, Education, Gender Differences, JAMA, Race/Ethnic Diversity, Yale
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Katherine A. Hill, BA, BS
Yale School of Medicine
New Haven, Connecticut
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Previous studies have shown that mistreatment is a common and damaging experience for medical students. However, there is little research on whether the prevalence of medical student mistreatment varies by demographic factors such as student sex, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation.
24 Feb Hospitals That Received Awards for Quality Care More Likely to Be Penalized by CMS
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53210" align="alignleft" width="160"] Dr. Wadhera[/caption]
Rishi K. Wadhera, MD
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: In recent years, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has implemented nationally mandated value-based programs to incentivize hospitals to deliver higher quality care. The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), for example, has financially penalized hospitals over $2.5 billion to date for high 30-day readmission rates.
In addition, the Value-Based Purchasing Program (VBP) rewards or penalizes hospitals based on their performance on multiple domains of care. Both programs have focused on cardiovascular care. The evidence to date, however, suggests that these programs have not improved health outcomes, and there is growing concern that they may disproportionately penalize hospitals that care for sick and poor patients, rather than for poor quality care.
23 Feb Uncomplicated Appendicitis: Patient Satisfaction of Surgery vs Antibiotics
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53265" align="alignleft" width="200"] Dr. Salminen[/caption]
Paulina Salminen MD PhD
Chief and Professor of surgery
Turku University, Finland
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Appendectomy has been the standard treatment for uncomplicated acute appendicitis and currently one of the most commonly performed surgical procedures. We now know that there are two different forms of acute appendicitis: the more common milder uncomplicated acute appendicitis and the more severe complicated acute appendicitis. While the complicated form is primarily still treated surgically, in recent years evidence from randomised trials and meta-analyses show that antibiotics are a safe and efficient treatment of uncomplicated acute appendicitis also at long-term follow-up.
Quality of life (QOL) and patient satisfaction after antibiotic therapy or appendectomy for uncomplicated acute appendicitis have been studied previously in a pediatric population but not in an adult population. Our aim was to compare long-term quality of life and patient satisfaction after antibiotic therapy and appendectomy for the treatment of uncomplicated acute appendicitis in patients enrolled in the original APPAC trial.
22 Feb Prices for Drugs Commonly Used in Emergency Departments Rise Substantially
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Collin Tebo BA
Georgetown University School of Medicine
Washington, DC
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: The growing cost of pharmaceuticals is an issue of increasing concern in the United States where a large portion of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product is health care spending. During the past decade, visits to Emergency Departments (EDs) have increased considerably. Pharmaceutical drugs are utilized in the care of most patients who visit the ED therefore, rising drug prices are a concern for emergency medicine physicians, administrators, and patients throughout the US.
22 Feb Study Suggests Some Biologic Basis for Gender Identity
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53255" align="alignleft" width="177"] DR. LAWRENCE C. LAYMANCREDIT: PHIL JONES, SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
AUGUSTA UNIVERSITY[/caption] Lawrence C. Layman, M.D. Robert B. Greenblatt, M.D., Distinguished Chair in Endocrinology Professor & Chief Section of Reproductive Endocrinology, Infertility, & Genetics Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology Director, REI Fellowship Program Co-Director, MD/PhD Program Department of Neuroscience & Regenerative Medicine Department of Physiology Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: I have taken care of many transgender patients over the past 20 years. We think there is a biological basis for transgender identity rather than choice. Animal models suggest that exposure to estrogen or testosterone at a critical time during development will render an animal of either sex to behave as male with aggressive behavior and they will mount females. If this pathway is blocked, then the end result is more receptive, female sexual behavior. We thought that variants in genes involved in metabolizing these hormones in the brain could play some role in transgender identity. Because the cost of sequencing all genes was similar to the cost of looking for changes in just these genes, we performed whole exome sequencing (sequencing the protein coding regions of genes) on about 30 transgender patients.
20 Feb Has Medicaid Expansion Affected Access to Timely Cancer Care?
Posted at 13:36h
in Author Interviews, Cancer Research, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, University of Pennsylvania
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
[caption id="attachment_53218" align="alignleft" width="180"] Dr. Takvorian[/caption]
Samuel Takvorian, MD, MS
Instructor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology
LDI Associate Professor
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: The Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansions have been associated with improved access to care, affordability, and for certain surgical and medical conditions, health outcomes. However, studies have also suggested unintended consequences such as lengthened wait times, and there is continued debate about the overall impact of the expansions.
19 Feb Psoriasis Patients Have Increased Risk of Some Cancer Types
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53222" align="alignleft" width="133"]
Dr. Dyrberg[/caption]
Nikolai Dyrberg Loft MD, Ph.D.-fellow
Department of Dermatology and Allergy
Gentofte Hospital
Hellerup
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Epidemiological studies examining the association between psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis and cancer have reported conflicting results. Some studies report an increased risk of cancer in individuals with psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis and others do not. Whether individuals with psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis have an increased risk of cancer is important as this might help guiding in clinical practice. In order to determine if there is an increased risk of cancer and the magnitude of this risk, a systematic review of the literature and meta-analysis is needed.
19 Feb Private Equity Firms Increasingly Target Specialty Medical Groups for Investment
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53189" align="alignleft" width="180"] Dr. Zhu[/caption]
Jane M. Zhu, MD, MPP, MSHP
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Division of General Internal Medicine
Oregon Health and Sciences University
Penn LDI Adjunct Senior Fellow
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: In recent years, private equity firms have been rapidly entering the health care sector, including by purchasing physician medical groups. There’s a lot of interest in this trend but very little empirical research to understand its scope, characteristics, and effects.
19 Feb Does Adding Genetic Risk to Clinical Score Improve Prediction of Coronary Artery Disease?
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53169" align="alignleft" width="149"] Dr. Tzoulaki[/caption]
Dr. Ioanna Tzoulaki
Imperial College
London
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Considerable progress has been made in identifying genetic variants that are associated with heart disease. We aimed to investigate whether genetic information can be used to assess the risk of individuals developing heart disease in the future and whether genetic tests can improve current risk assessment strategies which are based on easy to measure factors such as age, sex, smoking status, cholesterol levels, blood pressure and presence of type 2 diabetes.
19 Feb Which States Have Most Ultraviolet-Related Melanomas?
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_46733" align="alignleft" width="120"] Dr. Islami[/caption]
Farhad Islami, MD PhD
Scientific Director, Surveillance Research
American Cancer Society, Inc
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Many cases of cutaneous melanoma (melanoma) in the United States have been attributed to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, but there was little information on the state-by-state burden of melanoma due to UV exposure. We estimated numbers, proportions and age-standardized incidence rates of malignant melanomas attributable to UV radiation in each US state by calculating the difference between observed melanomas during 2011–2015 and expected cases based on rates in a population with theoretically minimum UV exposure.
As there is no population completely unexposed to UV radiation, the reference rates we used were historical melanoma incidence rates in Connecticut during 1942–1954, when the melanoma burden was low. For most adults, melanomas diagnosed in that period likely reflected UV exposure accumulated in the 1930s or earlier, when exposure was minimized by clothing style and limited recreational exposure.
We estimated that 338,701 melanoma cases (91.0% of total, 372,335) in the United States during 2011–2015 were attributable to UV exposure; 94.3% of all these UV-attributable cases (or 319,412 cases) occurred in non-Hispanic whites. UV-attributable melanoma incidence rates and cases were higher among males than females, but attributable rates and cases in ages <45 years were higher among females.
18 Feb Clarus Therapeutics Lauches JATENZO® – Oral Testosterone Replacement Therapy
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53201" align="alignleft" width="200"] Dr. Dudley[/caption]
Robert E. Dudley, Ph.D.
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President
Clarus Therapeutics
Dr. Dudley discusses the recent announcement that Clarus Therapeutics, Inc. has launched JATENZO® (testosterone undecanoate) capsules for the treatment of appropriate men with testosterone deficiency (hypogonadism):
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this announcement?
Response: JATENZO® is the first and only oral softgel testosterone undecanoate and the first oral testosterone product approved by the U.S. FDA in more than 60 years. JATENZO is indicated for testosterone replacement therapy in adult males for conditions associated with a deficiency or absence of endogenous testosterone.
The launch of JATENZO means that physicians and men living with testosterone deficiency due to genetic or structural abnormalities finally have a safe and effective oral testosterone replacement therapy. We are proud to commercially launch this unique oral formulation to healthcare providers and the appropriate patients who they treat. JATENZO is now available at pharmacies across the country.
18 Feb Prolonged Sitting Raises Cardiac Risk Factors in Post-Menopausal Women
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53194" align="alignleft" width="200"]
Dr. Sears[/caption]
Dorothy Sears Ph.D.
Professor of Nutrition
College of Health Solutions
Arizona State University
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Historically, heart disease among women has been understudied despite this being the number one cause of death in women. One in three women will die from heart disease. Older women are the fasting growing population in the US and after menopause experience a dramatic increase in risk for cardiometabolic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. For these reasons, it is critical to understand the impact of modifiable behaviors on this risk. Accumulating evidence shows that prolonged sitting is a highly prevalent behavior, associated with cardiometabolic and mortality risk, and greatest in older adults. Thus, overweight or obese postmenopausal women who partake in prolonged sitting time likely have highly compounded cardiometabolic risk.
17 Feb Hypertension Treatments with Chlorthalidone vs HCTZ: Cardiac and Safety Outcomes
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53185" align="alignleft" width="143"] Dr. Hripcsak[/caption]
George Hripcsak, MD, MS
Vivian Beaumont Allen Professor of Biomedical Informatics
Chair, Department of Biomedical Informatics
Columbia University
Director, Medical Informatics Services
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Diuretics are considered among the best drugs to treat hypertension, but there are no randomized studies to tell us which diuretic is best. Hydrochlorothiazide is the most frequently used diuretic for hypertension, but another drug, chlorthalidone, is gaining favor, with the most recent US hypertension guideline expressing a preference for it. Chlorthalidone is known to be longer acting and therefore perhaps more effective. Other (non-randomized) studies have been inconsistent, and some of them imply that chlorthalidone may be more effective. But other studies have shown that chlorthalidone may have more side effects.
14 Feb Brain Biomarkers May Lead to Clinical Tests for Hidden Hearing Loss
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53179" align="alignleft" width="144"] Dr. Parthasarathy[/caption]
Aravindakshan Parthasarathy, PhD
Researcher, Massachusetts Eye and Ear
Instructor in Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery
Harvard Medical School
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Would you briefly explain what is meant by Hidden Hearing Loss?
Response: Our ears were not designed for the society our brains created. The World Health Organization estimates that 1 billion young adults are at risk for hearing loss due to prolonged exposure to excessive environmental noise. Anatomical analysis of human ears has shown that half of the nerve fibers connecting the ear to the brain have degenerated by the time we reach 40 years of age. Many of us experience the first symptoms of hearing loss as a difficulty following conversations in crowded places such as restaurants.
Hidden hearing loss is an umbrella term used to describe such hearing difficulties experienced by people who show no abnormalities on any of the current tests of hearing used in the clinic. Approximately 10% of visitors to our hospital hearing clinic fit this profile, arriving with a primary complaint of poor hearing but being sent home with a clean bill of hearing health.
13 Feb Larotrectinib – VITRAKVI® – in Patients with TRK Fusion Gastrointestinal Cancer
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53162" align="alignleft" width="140"] Dr. Hong[/caption]
Dr. David S. Hong MD
Deputy Chair
Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics
Division of Cancer MedicineThe University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, TX
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
- A rare genomic alteration called a neurotrophic receptor tyrosine kinase (NTRK) gene fusion is a primary oncogenic driver that causes TRK fusion cancer, which has been found in a variety of common tumor types, including GI cancers such as colon, cholangiocarcinoma, pancreatic, and appendiceal cancers. In patients with gastrointestinal (GI) cancer, including pancreatic cancer and colorectal cancer, NTRK gene fusions are estimated to have a frequency of ~0.3%.
- Larotrectinib is an oral and highly selective TRK inhibitor used for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with solid tumors that have an NTRK gene fusion. Under the brand name Vitrakvi®, it is the first and only approved TRK inhibitor exclusively designed to treat tumors with an NTRK gene fusion with approval in the US in 2018 and other worldwide markets in 2019.
- At ASCO GI 2020, we presented results of a new analysis of the efficacy and safety of larotrectinib specifically in patients with TRK fusion with gastrointestinal cancers, which is an often underdiagnosed patient group. The subset included 14 adult patients with GI tumor types with NTRK gene fusions, including colon, cholangiocarcinoma, pancreas, appendix and hepatic; of the eight patients with colon cancer, seven were microsite instability (MSI)-high.
- In this subset of patients, the overall response rate (ORR) was 43%. Additionally, median overall survival was 33.4 months at 19 months of follow-up (range 2.8–36.5), median progression-free free survival (PFS) was 5.3 months (range 2.2-9.0) and median time to response was 1.8 months (range 1.7-2.1). In colon cancer patients, the ORR was 50% and the median PFS ranged from 1.5+ to 16.7+ months.
13 Feb Factors Linked To Repeat ER Visits for Opioid Addiction
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53157" align="alignleft" width="200"] Casey Balio[/caption]
Casey P. Balio, BA
Department of Health Policy and Management
Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health
Indianapolis, IN
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: There are numerous studies that estimate the prevalence of various opioid-related outcomes including emergency department (ED) encounters, hospitalizations, and overdoses as well as risk factors for these. However, there is limited evidence about repeated opioid-related encounters.
This study uses health information exchange (HIE) data for four hospital systems in the state of Indiana from 2012-2017 to identify individual, prescription, encounter, and community characteristics that may be associated with having repeat opioid-related encounters.
13 Feb Don’t Rely on Smartphone Apps To Diagnose Skin Cancer
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_53101" align="alignleft" width="200"] Prof. Deeks[/caption]
Professor Jon Deeks PhD, CStat
Institute of Applied Health Research
Professor of Biostatistics
College of Medical and Dental Sciences
University of Birmingham, UK
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Skin cancer is one of the most common cancers in the world, and the incidence is increasing. In 2003, the World Health Organization estimated that between two and three million skin cancers occur globally each year, 80% of which are basal cell carcinoma, 16% cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, and 4% melanoma. The potential for melanoma to metastasise to other parts of the body means that it is responsible for up to 75% of skin cancer deaths. Five year survival can be as high as 91-95% for melanoma if it is identified early, which makes early detection and treatment key to improving survival.
Early detection of melanoma is reliant on people with new or changing moles seeking early advice from medical professionals. Skin cancer smartphone applications (“apps”) provide a technological approach to assist people with suspicious lesions to decide whether they should seek further medical attention. Of increasing interest are smartphone apps that use inbuilt algorithms (or “artificial intelligence”) that catalogue and classify images of lesions into high or low risk for skin cancer (usually melanoma).
Apps with inbuilt algorithms that make a medical claim are now classified as medical devices that require regulatory approval. These apps could be harmful if recommendations are erroneous, particularly if false reassurance leads to delays in people obtaining medical assessment. CE (Conformit Europenne) marking has been applied to allow distribution of two algorithm based apps in Europe (SkinScan and SkinVision), one of which is also available in Australia and New Zealand. However, no apps currently have United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to allow their distribution in the US and Canada.
We have completed a systematic review of studies that examine the accuracy of all apps that use inbuilt algorithms to identify skin cancer in users of smartphones. We report on the scope, findings, and validity of the evidence.