Body

March 30, 2021 - As cancer survival rates improve, more people are living with the aftereffects of cancer treatment. For some patients, these issues include chronic radiation-induced skin injury - which can lead to potentially severe cosmetic and functional problems.

CLEVELAND, Ohio (March 31, 2021)--Menopause typically signals the end of a woman's ability to become pregnant. However, in a small new study, a novel approach of administering platelet-rich plasma and gonadotropins near the ovarian follicles is showing promise in restoring ovarian function. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS).

WASHINGTON, DC - March 31, 2021 -- Nearly 20% of Americans, or more than 46 million adults, say they did not seek treatment for a health problem in the last year due to cost, and an equal number say that if they needed some form of healthcare today they would not be able to afford it, according to a new West Health-Gallup survey.

Cancer patients generally have a higher thrombotic risk than the population at large. This risk is influenced on the one hand by patient-specific factors and the cancer itself and, on the other, by the cancer treatment, that is to say surgery, radiotherapy, or specific chemotherapeutics, which can increase the risk.

Psoriasis is a chronic disease that causes patients to develop patches of dry, scaly, and itchy skin. It is an autoimmune disorder, which means that it arises from a person's immune system inappropriately targeting that person's own healthy body parts. It is a deeply unpleasant condition, and patients commonly take various medications so that they can live their lives more comfortably.

WASHINGTON, March 30, 2021 -- Emerging technologies can screen for cervical cancer better than Pap smears and, if widely used, could save lives both in developing nations and parts of countries, like the United States, where access to health care may be limited.

ARLINGTON, Va., March 30, 2021 — Doctors who oversee cancer clinics say that new patients are arriving for treatment with more advanced disease than before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new survey from the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center used machine learning techniques to detect mutational signatures in cancer patients. Their algorithm outperformed the current standard of analysis and revealed new mutational signatures associated with obesity, which is believed by cancer prevention experts to be becoming the most significant lifestyle factor contributing to cancer in the U.S. and most of the Western world.

DALLAS - March 30, 2021 - UT Southwestern researchers have identified factors that put patients with childhood-onset lupus at elevated risk for poor outcomes, such as end-stage renal disease or death, as they transition from pediatric to adult health care. The findings, published online in Seminars in Arthritis and Rheumatism, emphasize the precarious nature of this period and shine a spotlight on areas prime for intervention to help protect these vulnerable patients.

Researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center have developed a new framework for different factors influencing how a child's brain is "wired" to learn to read before kindergarten.

This may help pediatric providers identify risks when the brain is most responsive to experiences and interventions. This "eco-bio-developmental" model of emergent literacy, described in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, reinforces the potential of early screening, prevention, and intervention during pediatric clinic visits in early childhood.

Boston - For decades, the power of the placebo effect was thought to lie in patients' belief that they were -- or at least, could be -- receiving a pharmacologically active treatment. A new study by physician-researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) suggests that patients don't need to be deceived to receive benefit from treatment with placebo.

BOSTON - (March 25, 2021) - A mechanism has been identified that explains how physical exercise in pregnancy confers metabolic health benefits in offspring. According to researchers, the key lies with a protein called SOD3, vitamin D and adequate exercise, with the outcomes possibly forming the first steps to designing rational diet and exercise programs to use during pregnancy and particularly when mothers may also be overweight or obese.

Judges don't do court stenography. CEOs don't take minutes at meetings. So why do we expect doctors and other health care providers to spend hours recording notes -- something experts know contributes to burnout?

"Having them do so much clerical work doesn't make sense," said Lisa Merlo, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychiatry and director of wellness programs at the University of Florida College of Medicine. "In order to improve the health care experience for everyone, we need to help them focus more on the actual practice of medicine."

Preclinical research from VCU Massey Cancer Center published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the combination of two existing drugs can exploit the metabolic "hunger" of a particularly aggressive type of neuroblastoma to kill cancer cells without inflicting too much collateral damage to healthy tissue.

Neuroblastoma - a type of cancer that strikes the nervous system of very young children - is one of the deadliest pediatric cancers. And children whose neuroblastoma overexpresses the gene MYCN tend to have the worst prognosis.

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2021.0008, Zeyi Cheng, Miaomiao Qi, Chengyuan Zhang and Yanxia Mao from Sichuan University, Sichuan, China, Second Hospital of Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China and The Second Medical School of Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China consider myocardial fibrosis in the pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.