Programs that bring pharmacists into Black-owned barbershops could dramatically improve hypertension control and reduce heart disease disparities among Black men at a relatively modest cost, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Learn more.

 

Black men most likely to benefit from advanced prostate cancer therapies are 11 percent less likely to get them than non-Black men. This happens despite apparent equal opportunities in obtaining healthcare services, a new study in American veterans shows. Published in the journal Cancer online June 29, the study showed that Black male veterans were slightly (5 percent) more likely to receive radiation or surgery for prostate cancer than non-Black men and that veterans of all races likely to benefit from such definitive therapy were also 40 percent more likely to get it compared to those who did not need it. Learn more.

 

New research shows that people in nursing homes with higher concentrations of Black and Latino residents were more than 50% more likely to be infected with COVID and twice as likely to die in the first months of the pandemic, compared to those in homes with predominantly white populations. Learn more.

 

New research by New York Medical College (NYMC) faculty and staff found that cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) occurs at a higher frequency in COVID-19 patients and that it predominantly affects patients who are young, male and otherwise healthy. Findings from the study, which examined case records of 13,500 patients with COVID-19 admitted to six New York metropolitan tertiary care centers in the first half of 2020, were recently published in the American Journal of Neuroradiology. Learn more.

 

A tool to evaluate potential transplant candidates that looks at tumor marker levels in the blood can help predict which liver cancer patients are most likely to have their disease remain under control after receiving a transplant, according to a new study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. The findings indicate that response to cancer therapy appears to predict whether liver transplant will cure the patient better than current radiology criteria alone. Learn more.

 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Oncology Center of Excellence has launched the inaugural National Black Family Cancer Awareness Week, which will take place from June 17 through June 23, 2021. Research has shown that cancer awareness can help lower cancer mortality rates and increase life expectancy for all racial and ethnic groups, including Black Americans. The Doctor’s Tablet spoke with Bruce Rapkin, Ph.D., associate director of catchment area research at the Albert Einstein Cancer Center, about the new initiative, why it’s needed, and what Einstein and Montefiore are doing to address health disparities in cancer care. Learn more.

 

The genetic changes that underlie an especially lethal type of prostate cancer have been revealed in a new study by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine. Learning more about what causes this type of cancer, called neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC), could lead to new approaches for treating it. Most early-stage prostate cancers require male hormones (androgens) like testosterone to grow. However, as they advance, they may evolve into castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), a type that can grow without hormones and is harder to treat. NEPC is one type of CRPC. 

 

Heart disease remains the country’s leading cause of death—responsible for 655,000 deaths each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). About 40,000 of those fatalities are classified as heart-attack deaths, occurring shortly after (within 30 days of) the attack. Many more heart-disease deaths, however, result from nonfatal heart attacks: Patients survive the attack, but the resulting heart-muscle damage eventually leads to heart failure—the progressive weakening of the heart’s pumping ability. The CDC estimates that heart failure contributes to more than 300,000 deaths each year. Learn more.

 

TThe COVID-19 pandemic brought forth many challenging end-of-life decisions, leading a pair of Upstate researchers to address how general physicians should discuss those options with patients with implantable cardiac defibrillators. Sarah E. Myers, MD, a 2021 graduate of Upstate, and former Upstate President Gregory L. Eastwood, MD, co-authored “Implantable Cardiac Defibrillator Deactivation During End-of-Life Care in the COVID-19 Pandemic,”which was published last month in the Journal of The American Board of Family Medicine. Learn more.

 

New findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD) provide researchers with a roadmap of brain activity that could be used to identify cognitive processing problems that could ultimately contribute to mental and physical health problems later in life. “This study pushes us closer to the point where we can identify and ultimately prevent mental health problems later in life by identifying risk early,” said John Foxe, Ph.D., director of the University of Rochester Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience and co-author of the study, which appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Learn more.

 

An electroencephalogram (EEG) study of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) identified a neural signal that may help explain the variation of how those with ASD perceive or understand the mental states of others (called “Theory of Mind”). Led by Matthew Lerner, PhD, of Stony Brook University, the study is published in Clinical Psychological Science. Learn more.

 

A year after University at Buffalo scientists demonstrated that it was possible to produce millions of mature human cells in a mouse embryo, they have published a detailed description of the method so that other laboratories can do it, too. The ability to produce millions of mature human cells in a living organism, called a chimera, which contains the cells of two species, is critical if the ultimate promise of stem cells to treat or cure human disease is to be realized. Learn more.

 

A 17-year quest to understand Langerhans-cell histiocytosis (LCH)—an inflammatory blood disease that mostly affects children and can result in dementia and death—has led researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and their colleagues in Texas to a transformational discovery and a potential new treatment. Their findings were published in May in Nature Medicine. The team, led by Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at Icahn Mount Sinai, and Carl E. Allen, MD, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics, Hematology-Oncology, at Baylor College of Medicine, found that individuals with LCH have a mutation that puts a subset of white blood cells into a state called senescence. Learn more.

 

Legend has it that Marie Antoinette’s hair turned gray overnight just before her beheading in 1791. Though the legend is inaccurate—hair that has already grown out of the follicle does not change color—a new study from researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons is the first to offer quantitative evidence linking psychological stress to graying hair in people. Learn more.

 

The link between prenatal exposure to ultrafine particles in air pollution and the development of asthma in preschool-age children has been established for the first time in the United States by a team of scientists led by Rosalind J. Wright, MD, MPH, Dean for Translational Biomedical Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Co-Director of the Mount Sinai Institute for Exposomic Research. Ultrafine particles—the tiniest of toxins released into the air from forest fires, tobacco smoke, automobile and manufacturing emissions, and other sources—are believed to be particularly dangerous to human health. Learn more.

 

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic, progressive disease that causes persistent lung infections and impacts the most basic physical processes. While recent breakthroughs have significantly extended the lifespan of patients with CF, the disease presents patients and their caregivers with significant, lifelong daily challenges. The primary purpose of cystic fibrosis clinics is to treat the physical disease, but providers are well aware of the mental toll it takes on patients and caregivers. Learn more.

 

The signaling molecule hydrogen sulfide (H2S) plays a critical role in antibiotic tolerance, the innate ability of bacteria to survive normally lethal levels of antibiotics, a new study finds. Published online June 11 in the journal Science, the study revolves around tolerance, wherein bacteria in general have evolved to use common defense systems to resist antibiotics. Tolerance differs from antibiotic resistance, where one species happens to acquire a genetic change that helps them resist treatment. Learn more.

 

Albany Med has announced the appointment of KMarie King, M.D., M.S., M.B.A., FACS as chair of the Department of Surgery and Chief of Surgery effective September 1, 2021. She is the first Black female chair of surgery at an academic health science center in the United States. A fellowship-trained hepatobiliary and pancreas surgeon, Dr. King is currently a professor of surgery at Morehouse School of Medicine and chief of surgery and medical director for surgical quality at Grady Memorial Hospital (GMH), a 960-bed hospital and Level 1 trauma center in Atlanta. She is recognized for her commitment to quality and is the surgeon champion for GMH’s National Surgical Quality Improvement Program. Learn more.

 

Time is of the essence when treating patients in cardiac arrest – a split second can mean the difference between life and death. A promising new study led by Muhammad Shoaib, an MD/PhD student from the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, will zero in on a potential therapy to improve survival rates for people immediately following cardiac arrest. This first-of-its-kind research will be fueled in part by a substantial $50,000 grant from the ZOLL Foundation, a nonprofit organization committed to supporting budding research investigators in the fields of resuscitation and acute critical care. Learn more.

 

The New York State International Training and Research Program (NYS-ITRP), directed by SUNY Downstate Distinguished Service Professor and Principal Investigator Jack DeHovitz, MD, MPH, has received a five-year $1.5 renewal award from the federal National Institutes of Health that will allow NYS-ITRP to expand research partnerships and training opportunities in Kazakhstan, the largest country in Central Asia. Despite gains in HIV prevention and treatment programs, Kazakhstan continues to experience higher rates of new HIV infection. Learn more.

 

In the United States, millions of adolescents report poor mental health, where 1 in 5 teenagers considers suicide. Reducing stigma and fostering peer support remains critical for positive mental health interventions and programs. Increasingly, digital mental health tools have emerged with great promise, leveraging social networks. Despite the potential, limited understanding of such comprehensive programs and their implementation exist. Learn more.

 

Heather L. Brumberg, M.D., M.P.H., FAAP, professor of pediatrics and of clinical public health at New York Medical College, was a co-lead author of a new policy statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Council on Environmental Health on the effects of ambient air pollution on children’s health and recommendations for lessening its impact. The policy statement, which was published in the June 2021 issue of Pediatrics, draws on considerably expanded research since AAP’s last statement in 2004. Learn more.