Health

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy have developed a set of novel, first-in-class drugs that inhibit hypoxia-inducible factors 1 and 2, a pair of transcription factors considered to be "master regulators" of cancer progression.

Imagine being able to assess how healthy the front of our eyes are not only in hospitals, but also in remote eye-screening camps, elderly-care facilities, pharmacies, or even train stations. That is the future a research team led by Professor Toru Nakazawa at the Graduate School of Medicine, Tohoku University is working toward with a newly developed portable AI-powered scanning slit-light device. This convenient device hopes to make ophthalmic care more accessible, so patients can be assessed any place and any time. The findings are published in Scientific Reports.

Debi Angell says the kits they make help women and girls who can not afford period products.

Krystal Kittle, assistant professor of community health education in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, has led a new study that sheds light on the community of bi+ (e.g., bisexual, pansexual, queer) dementia caregivers.

Assessing health literacy levels soon after hospital admission and adjusting discharge instructions accordingly helped reduce readmission rates for pediatric patients after heart surgery and improve caregiver satisfaction scores at a California children's hospital, according to a study published in Critical Care Nurse.

Researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have developed a first-in-class antibody that targets a protein overexpressed in many cancer types, allowing for the creation of a new radio-theranostic treatment that brings targeted radiation directly to tumor cells. The work is published in Theranostics.

In some non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs), changes to the RET gene (known as RET fusions) can drive tumor growth. In a phase 1/2 clinical study with a 42-month-long follow-up period, researchers from Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute recently evaluated the long-term efficacy and safety of the FDA-approved drug pralsetinib, which targets RET. Investigators found that treatment led to durable responses with manageable safety profiles in 281 patients with advanced or metastatic RET fusion-positive NSCLCs. Results are published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Working with "digital twins" of patients' hearts, doctors have improved cardiac ablation outcomes for patients with life-threatening arrhythmias. In the first clinical trials for cardiac digital twins technology, researchers at Johns Hopkins University created digital replicas of patients' hearts, then tested procedures on those twins before performing them on the real thing. Working with digital twins resulted in faster and significantly more accurate procedures that reduced recurrences of arrhythmias for patients, compared to traditional methods.

Oral Cancer Awareness Month is observed every April, and it highlights the urgent need for early detection. According to the American Cancer Society, oral and oropharyngeal cancers still claim about one life every hour in the U.S. This year, 59,600 Americans will be diagnosed with oral or oropharyngeal cancer. Many people are unaware of symptoms because early stages often cause no pain and may be inconspicuous. Most cases are diagnosed late, when treatment is harder and survival drops.

For adults with dermatomyositis, brepocitinib, an oral tyrosine kinase 2/Janus kinase 1 inhibitor, demonstrates significant benefits at a 30-mg dose compared with placebo, according to a study published online March 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine to coincide with the annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology, held from March 27 to 31 in Denver.

A new map of a brain circuit specific to chronic pain suggests a promising route to treatment for the roughly 60 million Americans living with persistent pain, according to a study published in Nature. The study showed that silencing the specific cells that drive this circuit eased chronic pain while preserving acute pain responses—in other words, the body's ability to signal danger.

A new tool designed to support people with dementia when being discharged from mental health hospitals has been co-designed and evaluated by researchers at The University of Manchester. The SAFER-Dem intervention shows promise as an effective, patient-centered approach to improving the discharge process, aligning care with best practice guidance while addressing the specific needs of people with dementia.

In collaboration with researchers in South Korea, a team from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) has discovered a promising therapeutic target in fat tissue that improves cellular function, reduces inflammation, and may protect against obesity-related diseases. The study was published in Nature Communications.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions took a closer look at how the gastrointestinal tissue repairs itself. They reveal in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences key players and their connections in the repair process and suggest the possibility that they also may contribute to the repair of other types of tissues.

Multiple regions of the brain engage in fast-moving conversations to understand language, UTHealth Houston researchers have discovered, dispelling a prior school of thought that only one region of the brain was responsible for language processing. The research, led by Nitin Tandon, MD, professor of neurosurgery at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston and director of the Texas Institute for Restorative Neurotechnologies at UTHealth Houston, was published in PLOS Biology.