Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Biomarkers / 11.12.2024

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Alberto J. Espay, MD, MSc, FAAN Professor of Neurology Director and Endowed Chair Gardner Family Center for Parkinson's disease and Movement Disorders University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings Response:  Because aducanumab, lecanemab, and donanemab were only in a minority of anti-amyloid treatments showing a benefit, I was interested in finding out what makes them special. It turns out that they not only clean the brain from amyloid, like other monoclonal anti-Aβ antibodies, but they also increase Aβ42 in the spinal fluid, which is a measure of the normal protein in the brain. Everyone with Alzheimer’s has low Aβ42 levels because this protein clumps into amyloid plaques. I tested the hypothesis that increasing Aβ42 could explain the cognitive outcomes at least as well as decreasing amyloid, and that’s exactly what we found. This suggests that restoring the normal protein levels, Aβ42, may explain why some anti-amyloid treatments (presumably those that increased those levels the most) come with benefits. (more…)
Electronic Records / 11.12.2024

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Prof. Adam J. Rose Shuli Brammli-Greenberg and Adam J. Rose share senior authorship. Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Beit-Horon, Jerusalem, 9093500, Israel MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Would you briefly explain what is meant by the Elixhauser Comorbidity Model? Response: Patients admitted to the hospital can have very different levels of illness severity. In addition, different hospitals may admit different numbers of very sick patients. Therefore, comparing two hospitals regarding something like length of stay or in-hospital mortality is not valid unless one adjusts for the illness burden of the population of patients at each hospital. Risk adjustment is the name for the process of building a model to predict the risk of each patient for a particular outcome, such as mortality or readmission, based on what is known about them and their illness burden. By summing all the risks of patients at a hospital, one gets an aggregate sense of the illness burden at the hospital, and different hospitals can be compared. The Elixhauser Comorbidity Model is a widely-used risk adjustment model which performs well in the sense that it is very predictive of outcomes like mortality. It also has the advantage of being calculated from diagnosis codes, which are widely available data for hospitalized patients. (more…)
Author Interviews, Kidney Disease / 30.05.2024

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Silvi Shah, MD,MS,FASN,FACP Associate Professor Internal Medicine | College of Medicine University of Cincinnati College of Medicine MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: AKI  (Acute Kidney Injury) is a major contributor to end-stage kidney disease (ESKD). About a third of patients with ESKD recover kidney function due to AKI. The study looked at the health outcomes of 22,922 patients from the U.S. Renal Data System from 2005 to 2014 to construct a clinical scoring system to predict kidney recovery within 90 days and 12 months after the start of dialysis for kidney failure patients due to acute kidney injury (AKI) (more…)
Author Interviews, Neurological Disorders, Parkinson's / 24.04.2023

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Alberto J. Espay, MD, MSc, FAAN Professor of Neurology Director and Endowed Chair Gardner Family Center for Parkinson's disease and Movement Disorders University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: This study was meant to address the gap that current oral levodopa formulations do not suffice to lessen motor fluctuations in people with Parkinson’s disease. IPX203 is a unique extended-release formulation of levodopa. (more…)
Author Interviews, Environmental Risks, Toxin Research / 01.05.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Hong-Sheng Wang PhD Department of Pharmacology and Systems Physiology University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What is the significance of tritan? Response: Bisphenol A (BPA) is used widely in the manufacturing of consumer plastic goods. Researchers and the general public increasingly recognize the potentially harmful effect of BPA. These days BPA-based polycarbonate plastic water bottles have all but disappeared in most US stores, replaced by various BPA-free bottles including Tritan bottles. Tritan is a plastic that is not based on BPA or BPA analogues. In earlier studies, we unexpectedly found transient release of BPA from some Tritan bottles. Similar results have been reported in a past study. We wanted to figure out why the BPA release from Tritan bottles, and how consumers can best clean their bottles. (more…)