Body

Nearly half a billion people on the planet have diabetes, but most of them aren't getting the kind of care that could make their lives healthier, longer and more productive, according to a new global study of data from people with the condition.

Many don't even know they have the condition.

CLEVELAND - Follow-up data from the landmark SPRINT study of the effect of high blood pressure on cardiovascular disease have confirmed that aggressive blood pressure management -- lowering systolic blood pressure to less than 120 mm Hg -- dramatically reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, and death from these diseases, as well as death from all causes, compared to lowering systolic blood pressure to less than 140 mm Hg. Systolic blood pressure (SBP) is the upper number in the blood pressure measurement, 140/90, for example.

Beijing, 19 May 2021: the journal Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications (CVIA) has just published a new issue, Volume 5 Issue 4.

This issue brings together important research from leading cardiologists in US and China in a combination of reviews, original research and case reports.

REVIEWS

Pei Huang, Yi Zhang, Yi Tang, Qinghua Fu, Zhaofen Zheng, Xiaoyan Yang and Yingli Yu

Progress in the Study of the Left Atrial Function Index in Cardiovascular Disease:

Simon Fraser University researchers have validated a faster, cheaper COVID-19 test that could kickstart the expansion of more widespread rapid testing. Study results have been published in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.

"This research offers a cheaper, faster alternative to the most reliable and sensitive test currently used worldwide, without sacrificing sensitivity and reproducibility," says molecular biology and biochemistry professor Peter Unrau, who led the team evaluating the COVID-19 test kit.

Type 2 diabetes patients who also have asthma are benefitting from a diabetes medication, typically given to help the pancreas produce more insulin, that also improves asthma symptoms and may reduce lung and airway inflammation.

These types of medication -- GLP-1 receptor agonists -- are a newer class of FDA-approved therapeutics that are generally used in addition to metformin for control of blood sugar or to induce weight loss in patients with obesity.

PHILADELPHIA--A five-year community outreach and engagement effort by the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania (ACC) to increase enrollment of Black patients into cancer clinical trials more than doubled the percentage of participants, improving access and treatment for a group with historically low representation in cancer research. The percentage of patients enrolled into a treatment clinical trial, for example, increased from 12 to 24 percent. A significant increase was also observed in non-therapeutic interventional and non-interventional trials.

Finnish researchers have been the first to determine the cause for the nonsyndromic early-onset hereditary canine hearing loss in Rottweilers. The gene defect was identified in a gene relevant to the sense of hearing. The study can also promote the understanding of mechanisms of hearing loss in human.

Hearing loss is the most common sensory impairment and a complex problem in humans, with varying causes, severity and age of onset. Deafness and hearing loss are fairly common also in dogs, but gene variants underlying the hereditary form of the disorder are so far poorly known.

Antiretroviral therapy, the common approach in the treatment of HIV, halts replication of the virus and has saved the lives of millions of people. However, for patients the drug cocktail becomes a lifetime necessity because they continue to harbor latent HIV in a small number of immune system cells. In the absence of treatment, HIV can again replicate and rebound into full blown AIDs.

A national study from researchers at Michigan Medicine found that nearly 3% of insured U.S. adults under 65 take medications that weaken their immune systems.

Young children who practice visual working memory and reasoning tasks improve their math skills more than children who focus on spatial rotation exercises, according to a large study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The findings support the notion that training spatial cognition can enhance academic performance and that when it comes to math, the type of training matters. The study is published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

BOSTON - Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers are presenting dozens of research studies at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). The studies will be presented during the virtual program on June 4-8, 2021. ASCO is the world's largest clinical cancer research meeting, attracting more than 30,000 oncology professionals from around the world.

May 20, 2021 - Women with a history of weight cycling - losing and regaining 10 pounds or more, even once - have increased rates of insomnia and other sleep problems, reports a study in The Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, official journal of the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- You might be older - or younger - than you think. A new study found that differences between a person's age in years and his or her biological age, as predicted by an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled EKG, can provide measurable insights into health and longevity.

The AI model accurately predicted the age of most subjects, with a mean age gap of 0.88 years between EKG age and actual age. However, a number of subjects had a gap that was much larger, either seemingly much older or much younger by EKG age.

Around the world and within the U.S., the percentage of people wearing masks during the Covid-19 pandemic has varied enormously. What explains this? A new study co-authored by an MIT faculty member finds that a public sense of "collectivism" clearly predicts mask usage, adding a cultural and psychological perspective to the issue.

The study uses a series of datasets about mask usage and public attitudes, along with well-established empirical indices of collectivism, to evaluate the impact of those cultural differences on this element of the pandemic response.

Within the next decade, the novel coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 could become little more than a nuisance, causing no more than common cold-like coughs and sniffles. That possible future is predicted by mathematical models that incorporate lessons learned from the current pandemic on how our body's immunity changes over time. Scientists at the University of Utah carried out the research, now published in the journal Viruses.