Megan Brooks September 14, 2022 Standing office blood pressure (BP) readings, alone or in combination with seated BP readings, outperform seated BP readings for the initial diagnosis of hypertension, a new study suggests. Combining three standing and three seated BP measurements in the same visit may lead to a “quicker diagnosis and save people a trip back...
Month: <span>September 2022</span>
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Detecting seizures and interpreting EEGs, the direct algorithmic way
by Ullas A, Indian Institute of Science Approach to detect and classify epileptic seizures. Credit: Rathin K Joshi Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), in collaboration with AIIMS Rishikesh, have developed an algorithm that can help decode brain scans to identify the occurrence and type of epilepsy. Epilepsy is a neurological disease where...
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Drug trial shows promise for easing uterine fibroids
by Isabella Backman, Yale University A medical illustration depicting uterine fibroids. Credit: BruceBlaus/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA About three quarters of women will experience uterine fibroids before they reach the age of 50. With a range of often debilitating symptoms including excessive menstrual bleeding, they are the most common reason women undergo hysterectomies. And there is a lack...
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Liraglutide Best for Type 2 Diabetes After Metformin
The GLP-1 agonist liraglutide (Victoza, Novo Nordisk) was the overall winner compared with three other diverse agents for treating patients with type 2 diabetes already maintained on metformin. But while liraglutide performed better than insulin glargine, sitagliptin, and glimepiride, the randomized, multicenter study of 5047 patients fell short of being the last word. In part, that’s because the study was devoid of a...
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Promising approach to mitigate complications of leukemia treatment
by Molly Chiu, Baylor College of Medicine Chronic meyloid leukemia under a microscope. Credit: Baylor College of Medicine Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions have engineered immune cells to control two major life-threatening complications, namely graft-vs-host disease (GvHD) and cancer relapse, which typically emerge after treating leukemia with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell...
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Regularly exercising with weights linked to lower risk of death
by British Medical Journal Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Regularly exercising with weights is linked to a lower risk of death from any cause, with the exception of cancer, finds research carried out in older adults and published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Ensuring that a weekly exercise routine includes both weights and aerobic...
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Study probes function of Huntington’s disease protein in injured neurons
by University at Buffalo A montage of three images of single striatal neurons transfected with a disease-associated version of huntingtin, the protein that causes Huntington’s disease. Nuclei of untransfected neurons are seen in the background (blue). The neuron in the center (yellow) contains an abnormal intracellular accumulation of huntingtin called an inclusion body (orange). Credit:...
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Biosensor detects brain tumors with less than a drop of blood
by American Chemical Society Graphical abstract. Credit: ACS Nano (2022). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.2c04187 Despite significant advances, mortality from brain tumors remains high with five-year survival rates of 36%, according to the National Cancer Institute. More accurate diagnoses might improve the situation, but tissue biopsies are invasive and can miss important information about a tumor’s make-up. Imaging-based methods, meanwhile,...
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Diabetes: TXNIP involved in increased secretion of glucagon from pancreatic alpha cells
by Jeff Hansen, University of Alabama at Birmingham Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain In diabetes research over the past two decades, Anath Shalev, M.D., has shown that the protein TXNIP regulates survival and function of beta cells, the pancreatic cells that produce the hormone insulin to lower levels of glucose in the blood. Downregulation or inhibition...
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Advanced melanoma survival improves significantly when immunotherapy is given before targeted therapy
by Georgetown University Medical Center Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A clinical trial led by clinicians at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center showed a remarkable 20 percent advantage in the two-year overall survival rate for people with advanced melanoma who first received immunotherapy (72 percent survival rate) versus those who initially got targeted therapies (52 percent...