Lifeboat Foundation

“These findings suggest that primary care may be exerting a protective effect on postoperative morbidity and mortality,” wrote Sanford E. Roberts, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and co-authors in JAMA Surgery.

Of note, Black patients with PCP exposure had similar adjusted odds of in-hospital mortality relative to patients with no PCP exposure (OR 1.09, 95% CI 0.75−1.57), while white patients with PCP exposure had a 21% decreased risk of in-hospital mortality compared with the same group (OR 0.79, 95% CI 0.70−0.90).

However, at 30, 60, 90, and 180 days post-surgery, both Black and white patients who had visited a PCP had significantly lower adjusted odds of mortality compared with those who had not seen a PCP, with no significant differences in the interactions between race and PCP exposure for mortality.

A single-cell genomics analysis of humans, chimpanzees and rhesus macaques reveals the molecular features that drive cellular and regulatory complexity of human brain evolution.

This is true. I’ve been missing photography and books. Too much YouTube even can give you a bit of depression and anxiety. I’m a YouTube addict I’ll admit.

Reducing social media usage by as little as 15 minutes per day can increase health and well-being, claims a new study published in the Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science. The findings indicate that a 15-minute reduction in social media usage has positive consequences for one’s social life, vitality, and health.

Research has shown that excessive social media use can lead to a range of negative outcomes, including increased feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and depression. Social media use has also been linked to poor sleep quality, decreased physical activity, and decreased face-to-face social interaction. These negative outcomes are particularly concerning given that young adults are among the heaviest social media users, with many spending several hours daily on social media platforms.

Continue reading “New study finds small reductions in social media use are linked to improvements in health and well-being” »

Using artificial intelligence (AI) to combine data from full-body x-ray images and associated genomic data from more than 30,000 UK Biobank participants, a study by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and New York Genome Center has helped to illuminate the genetic basis of human skeletal proportions, from shoulder width to leg length.

The findings also provide new insights into the evolution of the human skeletal form and its role in musculoskeletal disease, providing a window into our evolutionary past, and potentially allowing doctors to one day better predict patients’ risks of developing conditions such as back pain or arthritis in later life. The study also demonstrates the utility of using population-scale imaging data from biobanks to understand both disease-related and normal physical variation among humans.

“Our research is a powerful demonstration of the impact of AI in medicine, particularly when it comes to analyzing and quantifying imaging data, as well as integrating this information with health records and genetics rapidly and at large scale,” said Vagheesh Narasimhan, PhD, an assistant professor of integrative biology as well as statistics and data science, who led the multidisciplinary team of researchers, to provide the genetic map of skeletal proportions.

Autophagy biology has emerged as a ray of hope in addressing age-related diseases such as neurodegenerative disorders. Substantial effort in academia has been directed at advancing our understanding of the field and paving the way for ground-breaking therapies. But with genuine challenges in harnessing the power of autophagy and in developing effective therapies in this disease area, how close are we to really finding the first autophagy boosting drugs…?

The devastating impact of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common form of Motor Neurone Disease (MND), cannot be overstated. According to the WHO, neurological diseases affect over a billion people globally and are the leading cause of disability and the second leading cause of death worldwide [1, 2]. Incidence is increasing too, predominantly driven by population growth and aging. And, with no prospect of a cure, people who develop these conditions face a bleak future.

Justifiably, this disease area has been the subject of intensive research for many years and there have been some breakthroughs along the way, possibly offering hope for the development of new therapies. However, translating scientific breakthroughs into viable drugs for patients has been enormously challenging.

Acute respiratory infection is caused by a wide range of pathogens, and an etiologic diagnosis is established in only about one third of cases. As a result, broad-spectrum antibiotics are often unnecessarily prescribed and continued. The BioFire FilmArray^® Pneumonia Panel (BioFire PN) is a commercial multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay directed against 33 targets, including viruses, bacteria, and antibiotic resistance genes. In critically ill patients, BioFire PN results have shown a high level of agreement with culture results when tracheal aspirates (TA) or bronchoalveolar lavage fluid were sampled.

Now, in a comparative study, 298 samples (286 expectorated sputum and 12 from TA) deemed of good or moderate quality were obtained from hospitalized adult patients with acute respiratory or cardiopulmonary illness. BioFire PN detected a total of 1.23 bacterial pathogens per sample. Hemophilus influenzae was detected most often (33.0%), followed by Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus (20.5% for both), gram-negative bacilli (18.5%), and Moraxella catarrhalis (12.4%). Standard bacterial culture detected only 0.48 organisms per sample (compared with BioFire PN; P90%. Viral pathogens were detected in 51% of samples. Based on adjudication, the specificity of BioFire PN was only 45.0%. This was attributed to the greater number of potential pathogens identified compared with standard culture.

The North Carolina plant produces drugs that are injected or go through an IV.

The plant makes drugs for anesthesia, medicines that treat infections, and drugs needed for surgeries. The latter are used in surgeries or intensive care units for patients who are placed on ventilators, said Mike Ganio, who studies drug shortages at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

The Pfizer site does not make or store the company’s COVID-19 vaccine or treatments Comirnaty and Paxlovid.

Amazon.com Inc. will require some corporate employees to relocate as part of a mandate requiring workers to be in the office three days a week, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest source of strain between the tech giant and its workforce following layoffs that began last year.

Top players in the development of artificial intelligence, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, have agreed to new safeguards for the fast-moving technology, Joe Biden announced on Friday.

Among the guidelines brokered by the Biden administration are watermarks for AI content to make it easier to identify and third-party testing of the technology that will try to spot dangerous flaws.