Culture
Increasing chronic pain patients' opioid prescription doses does not seem to improve pain, according to a Veterans Affairs study. Researchers from the Central Arkansas and Minneapolis VA health care systems and three universities looked at prescribing data of more than 50,000 VA patients taking opioids. They found that patients who had their opioid dosage increased did not have meaningful improvements in pain, compared with patients who continued to take the same dose.
HOUSTON - (Feb. 5, 2020) - Some people facing the loss of a loved one try to maintain their composure, but it's healthier to ditch the stiff upper lip and freely express your emotions, according to a new study from Rice University.
"Emotion Regulation and Immune Functioning During Grief: Testing the Role of Expressive Suppression and Cognitive Reappraisal in Inflammation Among Recently Bereaved Spouses" examined 99 people who had recently lost a spouse.
Elk have antlers. Rams have horns. In the animal kingdom, males develop specialized weapons for competition when winning a fight is critical. Humans do too, according to new research from the University of Utah. Males' upper bodies are built for more powerful punches than females', says the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, suggesting that fighting may have long been a part of our evolutionary history.
WASHINGTON (Feb. 5, 2020) - An online survey of nearly 500 veterans with Gulf War illness (GWI) suggests a high burden of disease almost three decades after the conflict.
GWI affects 25% to 30% of the 693,826 military personnel who were deployed to the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War. The diagnosis of GWI - according to the standard "Kansas" criteria - includes a combination of fatigue, sleep, cognitive, pain, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and skin problems, among others.
Germline variants are present in every single cell of our body. By contrast, somatic mutations occur in individual body cells during an organism's lifetime and only affect the tissue that is derived from that cell. They can be driven by external factors like UV light or tobacco smoking. "The main finding of our study is that a person's genetic background can influence the changes we see in the genome of their cancer cells," says Sebastian Waszak; a postdoctoral fellow in the Korbel group at the time the research began.
A clock-like mutational process
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and EMBL-EBI have carried out the largest analysis across cancer types of the newly discovered mutational phenomenon chromothripsis. This study is the largest of its kind to date, containing whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data from over 2600 tumours spanning 38 different types of cancer.
Chromothripsis
The discovery of genetic drivers of cancer can have critical implications for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients, yet genome analysis has focused primarily on only 1-2% of the whole genome - the part that contains the code for making proteins. What about the rest? Does it also play a role in driving the disease?
As part of the Pan-Cancer project, scientists have analysed whole-genome sequencing data. To do this, the scientists had to develop new statistical methods suitable for analysing the non-coding genome.
How can human cells pack 3-meter-long DNA into their tiny nuclei and unpack it only where and when it is needed? This fascinating process is far from being completely understood.
With water scarcity intensifying, wastewater treatment and reuse are gaining popularity. But some methods for killing microbes in wastewater create disinfection byproducts (DBPs) that could be harmful to human health. Now researchers have found that ozone treatment and subsequent chlorination can convert trace amounts of some pharmaceuticals in wastewater into DBPs called halonitromethanes. They report their results in Environmental Science & Technology.
Research Highlights:
Heart-healthy lifestyle habits are always recommended whether blood pressure or cholesterol medications are prescribed or not, yet many patients let healthy habits slip after starting the prescription drugs.
In a Finnish study, people who started blood pressure or cholesterol medications were more likely to gain weight and exercise less compared to those who didn't take these medications.
Researchers at ETH Zurich and ETH spin-off Inositec have developed a new substance to prevent vascular calcification, which affects many patients suffering from chronic kidney disease. As their metabolism is impaired, calcium salts may deposit in soft tissues, such as blood vessels or even the heart valves, causing them to stiffen. This often leads to severe, potentially fatal cardiovascular diseases. However, before patients can benefit from the substance further research and tests must be carried out.
Higher levels of mercury in the blood were linked with a higher prevalence of non-melanoma skin cancer, the most common human malignancy, in a study published in the British Journal of Dermatology.
Self-perception of aging--or attitudes toward one's aging experience--may affect older individuals' risk of dying early after being diagnosed with cancer, according to results from a study published in Cancer Medicine.
New research published in Health Economics indicates that after US states passed medical marijuana laws, workers' compensation claims declined.
The results indicate that medical marijuana may allow workers to better manage symptoms associated with workplace injuries and illnesses and, in turn, reduce the need for workers' compensation. The reductions in workers' compensation claims after states passed medical marijuana laws were very modest, however.
Mindfulness meditation with a focus on nonjudgment of emotions may help perfectionists recover from stress, according to a study published in Psychophysiology.
The study used high frequency heart rate variability to measure recovery from stress during mindfulness meditation sessions in 120 university students who scored high on a screening tool for perfectionism--the need to be or appear perfect.