Body
DALLAS - Feb. 10, 2020 - Artificial intelligence may soon play a critical role in choosing which depression therapy is best for patients.
A national trial initiated by UT Southwestern in 2011 to better understand mood disorders has produced what scientists are calling the project's flagship finding: a computer that can accurately predict whether an antidepressant will work based on a patient's brain activity.
A new method of interpreting brain activity could be used in clinics to help determine the best treatment options for depression, according to a Stanford-led trial.
Stanford researchers and their collaborators used electroencephalography, a tool for monitoring electrical activity in the brain, and an algorithm to identify a brain-wave signature in individuals with depression who will most likely respond to sertraline, an antidepressant marketed as Zoloft.
A paper describing the work will be published Feb. 10 in Nature Biotechnology.
Working in close partnership with patients, scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Count Me In have identified new causes of a rare cancer of blood vessel walls called angiosarcoma. The research also points to possible therapeutic options for patients with this aggressive disease, who often have a poor prognosis.
A new Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) study finds that the proportion of high school students identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning (LGBQ) doubled from 2009 to 2017, while the LGBQ teen rate of attempted suicide went from five times the rate for their straight peers to nearly four times the rate. The study was published in the journal Pediatrics.
As the coronavirus outbreak expands, public health officials are trying to anticipate its trajectory and the rate at which it will travel. Now, scientists have created a new analysis able to predict the speed of epidemics in a network. By employing a simple approach commonly used to monitor how messages pass through communication networks, Moore and Rogers were able to theoretically predict contagion speeds in different networks, down to individual nodes. Their model also provides a way to assess each node's likelihood of being infected by a certain particular time in the epidemic.
In the decade-long absence of federal action, many states, counties and cities have increased minimum wages to help improve the lives of workers. While political debate over these efforts has long been contentious, scientific research on the health effects of raising the minimum wage is relatively new.
LOS ANGELES (Feb. 9, 2020) -- Patients with thyroid eye disease who used the minimally invasive insulin-like growth factor I blocking antibody, teprotumumab, experienced improvement in their symptoms, appearance and quality of life, according to a study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted by the department of surgery at Cedars-Sinai and at other medical centers nationwide.
New research indicates that a single dose of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is as effective as multiple doses for preventing preinvasive cervical disease, which can later develop into cervical cancer. The findings are published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society (ACS).
Review of evidence finds excessive smartphone, social media use may be linked to youth mental health
A new article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) reviews evidence that suggests an association between excessive smartphone and social media use and mental distress and suicidality among adolescents. The authors say this should be among the factors considered by clinicians and researchers who work in the field of youth mental health: http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.190434
Higher maternal blood pressure in pregnancy is associated with chemical modifications to placental genes, according to a study by researchers from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The changes involve DNA methylation, the binding of compounds known as methyl groups to DNA, which can alter a gene's activity.
Denver--February 10, 2020--In 2017, a group of lung cancer experts posed the question: "Can recent advances in tumor biology that have led to progress treating non-small cell lung cancer translate into improved outcomes for small cell lung cancer?"
According to the article "New Approaches to Small Cell Lung Cancer Therapy: From the Laboratory to the Clinic," published in the February issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, the answer is "yes."
Berlin, Germany, 10 February 2020: Eternygen GmbH, a privately owned, Berlin-based metabolic diseases company, today announced that it is presenting a poster at the 3rd Global NASH Congress held in London, UK from February 10 - 11, 2020 (ElAgroudy et al.). The presentation provides data from a preclinical study which demonstrates that inhibiting the plasma-membrane tricarboxylate transporter INDY (I'm Not Dead Yet/NaCT), encoded by the longevity gene mIndy/SLC13A5, using a small molecule, is able to reverse nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) in a diet induced NASH mouse model.
PHILADELPHIA - Among high-risk prostate cancer patients - those with high PSA and Gleason scores of 8 or more - many will develop a difficult-to-treat disease. Preliminary research suggests that two commonly prescribed medications, cholesterol-lowering statins and the diabetes therapy metformin may have anticancer effects. However, it is unclear which of these two medications - commonly prescribed together -- contributes the most and whether they can impact high-risk prostate cancer.
While sitting in the dentist's office, Hollings Cancer Center researcher Matthew Carpenter, Ph.D., of the Medical University of South Carolina, had a bright idea.
As he received his goody bag with dental hygiene products, he wondered why not conduct a study and have primary care providers do the same thing for their patients who use tobacco. The bags would contain educational material, free lozenges and tobacco cessation medications to encourage people to stop smoking.
A research group led by Professor NISHIMURA Noriyuki (Graduate School of Health Sciences, Kobe University) has developed a new method to monitor the residual disease after treatment in high-risk neuroblastoma patients. The method could be utilized to evaluate treatment response and facilitate early diagnosis of tumor relapse/regrowth.