Health and Medicine
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Professor Megan Lancaster | How Genetics Could Predict Dangerous Heart Rhythms Early
Every heartbeat depends on a precise electrical handshake inside the heart muscle, resetting itself thousands of times a day without a second thought. In a condition called Long QT syndrome, that reset takes slightly too long, leaving the heart vulnerable to a dangerous rhythm disturbance that can strike without warning. For decades, doctors only recognised the condition after something went badly wrong: a fainting spell, a seizure, or a cardiac arrest. Genetic research led by Assistant Professor Megan Lancaster at The Ohio State University is helping to change that, catching risk before a crisis ever happens.
Dr Yvonne Böttcher | How Different Types of Fat Shape Health and Disease
Our bodies store fat in different places. Subcutaneous fat sits just under the skin – this is the fat you can pinch. Visceral fat, by contrast, lies deeper in the abdomen and wraps around internal organs. Doctors have long observed that visceral fat is more strongly associated with conditions such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Research led by Yvonne Böttcher at the University of Oslo in Norway reveals a surprisingly complex picture that could help explain why some types of body fat are more strongly linked to disease.
Dr David Bonda | How Children are Helping Scientists Understand the Brain from the Inside
When a child’s epilepsy doesn’t respond to medication, doctors sometimes need to place tiny electrodes deep inside the brain to pinpoint exactly where seizures begin. It’s a routine part of preparing some children for surgery to cure their seizures. But according to a new paper led by David Bonda and colleagues at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, those same electrodes could be doing something else too: teaching us how the developing brain actually works.
Guy Hutton – Sue Coates | The Case for One Shared Sanitation Assessment Framework
Imagine trying to fix a leaky pipe without knowing where the leak is, or even what the pipe looks like. That’s roughly the challenge facing governments and investors trying to improve sanitation services across the world’s poorer countries. Billions of people still lack access to safe toilets, and the money needed to change that is falling badly short. A new review by Guy Hutton and Sue Coates sets out, for the first time, just how many tools exist to help diagnose the problem, and why so few of them are working as well as they could.
DECIPHER: How Individuals with Rare Genetic Disorders Can Help Build a Global Knowledgebase
Attempts at disease diagnosis are often hindered by a frustratingly thin trail of evidence: a single patient, a single unusual variant, and no easy way to know whether anyone else in the world has seen the same thing. DECIPHER, a free platform hosted at EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute, exists to help expert clinicians and researchers alleviate this problem. First launched in 2004, DECIPHER brings together genomic variants and clinical symptoms from rare disease patients worldwide.
Professor Candis M Morello – Professor Jan D Hirsch | Training the Next Generation of Pharmacists for a Changing Healthcare World
The pharmacy profession has undergone significant transformation. Pharmacists perform many disease management activities including screening and treating high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol. There are over 100 pharmacy career pathways for pharmacists. As pharmacists take on more direct patient care responsibilities – beyond the traditional roles of compounding and dispensing – the need for skilled clinicians, educators and researchers within the field has never been greater. A pioneering team at the University of California San Diego’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, led by Professors Candis Morello and Jan Hirsch, has worked to meet that need head-on.
Dr Alessia Manganaro | How a Common Blood Pressure Drug Might Protect Against Trauma
A single traumatic event can leave the brain primed to react far more strongly to future stress, and this phenomenon underlies conditions such as PTSD. A new mouse study, led by Alessia Manganaro at Columbia University, suggests a common heart medication given around the time of that first trauma might stop this priming from taking hold.
Dr Camilo Sanz | How Access to Assisted Dying Can Improve Life for Seriously Ill Patients
When anthropologist Camilo Sanz’s father was diagnosed with incurable Multiple Myeloma at 79, a form of blood cancer, his doctors offered a stark choice: continue aggressive chemotherapy or face the possibility of painful decline. He chose neither path exactly. Instead, he withdrew from treatment and secured access to euthanasia, legal in Colombia since 1997. Eleven years later, he is still alive. This surprising outcome became the starting point for Sanz’s study, published in Medical Anthropology Quarterly. He asked why simply knowing euthanasia was available seemed to change how his father lived, long before any procedure took place.
Samantha Rennie – Kristene Cheung | Recognising the Overlooked Caregivers of Children with Prenatal Alcohol Exposure
Families raising children with prenatal alcohol exposure are incredibly diverse. A child might live with a birth parent, a foster parent, an adoptive family, aunties or uncles, or a grandparent. Yet a landmark new study suggests that the research meant to support these families has been telling only part of the story. Led by Samantha Rennie and Kristene Cheung at the University of Manitoba, the study set out to map exactly who is – and who isn’t – represented in the scientific literature on caregivers of children with prenatal alcohol exposure.
Professor Helen Lavretsky | Building a Resilient Brain: What New Research Reveals About Aging Well
Aging well isn’t just about the body; it’s about the brain, too. A major new review led by Professor Helen Lavretsky of UCLA argues that ‘brain health’ deserves the same attention we give heart health, and that building resilience may be one of our best tools for preventing depression, anxiety and dementia in later life. Lavretsky and her co-authors describe brain health as a dynamic balance between the brain’s biology and a person’s cognitive and emotional life.
Dr. Steve Nordeen | A Plant-Inspired Breakthrough for Menopause Relief
Menopause can bring a range of symptoms, including vaginal pain, decreased sexual arousal and recurrent vaginal and urinary tract infections. While estrogen therapies can be very effective at relieving these problems, many people worry about the risks of steroid hormones circulating throughout the body. This has led scientists to search for treatments that work locally where they are needed, without broader side effects. Recent research is pointing to an unexpected source of inspiration: naturally occurring plant compounds.
Jon Palmer | Tracheostomy Ventilation in MND: Insights from Patients, Families and Clinicians
Motor neurone disease (MND), also known as ALS, causes progressive muscle weakness that eventually affects breathing. When wanting help to support their breathing the majority of people with MND in the UK use non-invasive ventilation. A small number consider a tracheostomy for longer-term ventilation support. Tracheostomy ventilation – or TV – involves placing a tube through the neck into the windpipe to support breathing by a ventilator.
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