Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers led by Northwestern University and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a new, first-of-its-kind sticker that enables clinicians to monitor the health of patients’ organs and deep tissues with a simple ultrasound device.

When attached to an organ, the soft, tiny sticker changes in shape in response to the body’s changing pH levels, which can serve as an early warning sign for post-surgery complications such as anastomotic leaks. Clinicians then can view these shape changes in real time through ultrasound imaging.

Currently, no existing methods can reliably and non-invasively detect anastomotic leaks—a life-threatening condition that occurs when gastrointestinal fluids escape the digestive system. By revealing the leakage of these fluids with high sensitivity and high specificity, the non-invasive sticker can enable earlier interventions than previously possible. Then, when the patient has fully recovered, the biocompatible, bioresorbable sticker simply dissolves away—bypassing the need for surgical extraction.

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health have discovered antibodies that attack a difficult-to-detect area of the influenza virus, shedding light on the relatively unexplored “dark side” of the neuraminidase (NA) protein head. The antibodies target a region of the NA protein that is common among many influenza viruses, including H3N2 subtype viruses, and could be a new target for countermeasures. The research, led by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Vaccine Research Center, part of NIH, was recently published in the journal Immunity.

Influenza, or flu, sickens millions of people across the globe each year and can lead to severe illness and death. While vaccination against influenza reduces the burden of the disease, updated vaccines are needed each season to provide protection against the many strains and subtypes of the rapidly evolving virus. Vaccines that provide protection against a broad range of influenza viruses could prevent outbreaks of new and reemerging flu viruses without the need for yearly vaccine reformulation or vaccinations.

A Michigan state senator introduced a bill that would require health insurance companies in the state to cover cutting-edge cancer treatments, even if they are not categorized as a “cancer drug.”

State Sen. Jeff Irwin (D-Mich.) announced his new bill in a video on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday. The legislation would build on an existing law that already says cancer drugs must be covered by health insurance companies.

Study shows #Glucagon is #Key for #Kidney #Health.

When researchers removed receptors for this hormone (best known for promoting blood sugar production in the liver) from mouse kidneys, the animals developed symptoms akin to chronic kidney disease…

Glucagon, a hormone best known for promoting blood sugar production in the liver, also appears to play a key role in maintaining kidney health. When UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers removed receptors for this hormone from mouse kidneys, the animals developed symptoms akin to chronic kidney disease (CKD).

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‎Health & Fitness · 2024

Transplanting Whole Human Eyes To Restore Vision In Patients Who Are Blind Or Visually Impaired — Dr. Calvin Roberts, MD — Program Manager, Transplantation of Human Eye Allografts (THEA), Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)

Dr. Calvin Roberts, M.D. is Program Manager at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) where manages for the Transplantation of Human Eye Allografts (THEA — https://arpa-h.gov/research-and-fundi…) program, which aims to transplant whole human eyes to restore vision in patients who are blind or visually impaired by reconnecting the nerves, muscles and blood vessels of whole donor eyes to the brain.

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The amount of digital data available is greater than ever before, including in health care, where doctors’ notes are routinely entered into electronic health record systems. Manually reviewing, analyzing, and sorting all these notes requires a vast amount of time and effort, which is exactly why computer scientists have developed artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to infer medical conditions, demographic traits, and other key information from this written text.

However, safety concerns limit the deployment of such models in practice. One key challenge is that the medical notes used to train and validate these models may differ greatly across hospitals, providers, and time. As a result, models trained at one hospital may not perform reliably when they’re deployed elsewhere.

Previous seminal works by Johns Hopkins University’s Suchi Saria—an associate professor of computer science at the Whiting School of Engineering—and researchers from other top institutions recognize these “dataset shifts” as a major concern in the safety of AI deployment.

Saint Louis University associate professor of health management and policy in the College for Public Health and Social Justice, SangNam Ahn, Ph.D., recently published a paper in Journal of Clinical Psychology that examines the relationship between childhood adversity, and psychiatric decline as well as adult adversity and psychiatric and cognitive decline.

His team discovered that just one instance of adversity in childhood can increase cases of mental illness later in life, and adverse events in adults can lead to a greater chance of both mental illness and cognitive decline later in life.

“Life is very complicated, very dynamic,” Ahn said. “I really wanted to highlight the importance of looking into the lasting health effect of adversity, not only childhood but also adulthood adversity on health outcomes, especially physical health and psychiatric and cognitive health. There have been other studies before, but this is one of the first that looks into these issues comprehensively.”

Auricular acupuncture, recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and offered as an integrative practice since 2006 by the SUS (Sistema Única de Saúde), Brazil’s national health service, is safe for patients with depression and effectively reduces symptoms of this mental health disorder, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) and the University of Southern Santa Catarina (UNISUL).

The results of the study are reported in an article published in the journal JAMA Network Open. They confirm the efficacy of auricular acupuncture as an alternative treatment for depression, a mood disorder for which rising numbers are seeking care from the SUS, judging from data provided by the Ministry of Health.

Depression is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, according to the WHO. In Brazil, the lifetime prevalence of depression is 15.5%, one of the highest globally, and depressive disorders account for 10.3% of years of life lost (YLL), a measure of premature mortality calculated by subtracting the age at death from the longest possible life expectancy for a person at that age.