As Medicare Advantage plans enroll more and more patients with serious illness, it is not clear how well the plans take care of these patients, Mount Sinai researchers say in a Perspective piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Medicare Advantage, the privately operated alternative to traditional Medicare, has been growing in popularity among all populations, but fastest among Latino and Black older adults and those who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid, known as “dual-eligibles.” Learn more.

 

A study of more than 2,200 adults who attended U.S. high schools in the early 1960s found that those who attended higher-quality schools had better cognitive function 60 years later. Previous studies have found that the number of years spent in school correlates with cognition later in life, but few studies have examined the impact of educational quality. Learn more.

 

The Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell is proud to announce that Hugo Ortega, MD, assistant professor of Medicine at the Zucker School of Medicine and a graduate of the Class of 2018, is one of 18 recipients of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM)’s prestigious Health Equity Achieved Through Lifestyle Medicine (HEAL) Initiative Scholarship. Learn more.

 

The Mount Sinai Health System has announced the Growth in Operations, Administrations, and Leadership Society (GOALS), an initiative to increase the representation of Black men at the middle and upper levels of management by creating pathways for career advancement through networking, mentorship, and advancement opportunities. This initiative furthers Mount Sinai’s continuing commitment to growing a diverse workplace and providing equitable care for patients. Learn more.

 

A treatment combining two antibodies against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 strongly protected high-risk people with early COVID-19 symptoms from hospitalization and death in an international Phase 2/3 clinical trial conducted in the first half of 2021 and co-led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. The trial, described in a paper appearing online April 18 in Annals of Internal Medicine, enrolled more than 800 non-hospitalized patients with COVID-19 at high-risk of progression of the disease in the United States and five other countries. Learn more.

 

A study led by University at Buffalo researchers has confirmed that contrary to claims by anti-vaccine proponents, COVID-19 vaccines pose only trivial risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE), or blood clots. In addition, the study found that becoming infected with COVID-19 poses a significant risk of blood clots. The paper was published online Feb. 1 in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science. Learn more.

 

Acute radiation dermatitis (ARD)—characterized by red, sore, itchy or peeling skin—affects up to 95% of people undergoing radiation treatment for cancer. Severe cases can cause significant swelling and painful skin ulcers that can severely impair quality of life, yet little is known about why this condition occurs and no standardized treatments for preventing severe ARD have been widely adapted. Learn more.

 

The combination of an experimental mRNA vaccine with an immunotherapy reduced the likelihood of melanoma recurring or causing death by 44 percent when compared to immunotherapy alone, a new clinical trial shows. Led by researchers at NYU Langone Health and its Perlmutter Cancer Center, the randomized phase 2b trial involved men and women who had surgery to remove melanoma from lymph nodes or other organs and were at high risk of the disease returning in sites distant from the original cancer. Learn more.

 

Hypertension is an important risk factor for the development of heart disease, stroke and kidney disease that affects greater than 40 percent of the United States population. Nicholas Ferreri, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of pharmacology, has contributed much to the field of research on hypertension, including most recently a study selected as an Editor’s Pick in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension that uncovered a new area of investigation that could lead to novel treatment approaches. Learn more.

 

Helping your mother make pancakes when you were three…riding your bike without training wheels…your first romantic kiss: How do we retain vivid memories of long-ago events? As described in a paper published online today in Neuron, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have found the explanation. Learn more.

 

New research shows that commercially available smartphones and watches, like the Apple Watch, are able to capture key features of early, untreated Parkinson’s disease. These technologies could provide researchers with more objective and continuous ways to measure the disease and bring new treatments to market faster, particularly for patients in the early stages of the disease. Learn more.

 

Patients with HIV had similar treatment outcomes to patients without HIV when treated for mpox with an antiviral drug called tecovirimat, according to a study by a team of investigators from Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. The results of the study, published May 2 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, provide preliminary evidence of the safety and efficacy of the drug in those living with HIV. Read more in the articles published by Columbia and Weill Cornell.

 

Heart failure affects nearly 6.5 million adults in the United States, a number that is expected to continue to increase, with many ultimately requiring heart transplantation. A new study published in Transplantation by Aditya Gandhi, SOM Class of 2024, and researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston showcases that transplanting hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected hearts is a cost-effective strategy to combat the heart donor organ shortage in the United States. Learn more.

 

Helmets, which are proven to prevent skull fractures and head wounds, are no doubt critical for safety. However, there is much debate about the extent to which they are capable of mitigating the effects of concussions. The hard-shelled, heavily padded helmets used by many of today’s athletes, military personnel, and industrial workers have been adapted since early helmet models, which lacked inner padding. But do these design enhancements provide additional protection? Learn more.

 

Certain stem cells have a unique ability to move between growth compartments in hair follicles, but get stuck as people age and so lose their ability to mature and maintain hair color, a new study shows. Led by researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the new work focused on cells in the skin of mice and also found in humans called melanocyte stem cells, or McSCs. Hair color is controlled by whether nonfunctional but continually multiplying pools of McSCs within hair follicles get the signal to become mature cells that make the protein pigments responsible for color. Learn more.

 

A new Cochrane Review led by an Upstate Medical University professor has found that, compared with standard antibiotic treatment, stool transplantation can increase the number of people recovering from Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) infection, a condition which causes potentially life-threatening diarrhea. 77 percent of people who received a stool transplant did not experience reinfection within eight weeks, compared to 40 percent of those who received antibiotics alone. Learn more.

 

The first genome-wide significant study of the epigenetics of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) has yielded a trove of genetic mechanisms and pathways that are responsible for this disease, a leading cause of severe vision loss in older adults. AMD results from damage in the macula, which provides clear, straight-ahead vision and therefore is critical to the ability to read, drive and recognize faces. Learn more.

 

The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is currently reviewing two candidates for a vaccine to prevent respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in older adults. Researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) are helping lead the development of one of these – a vaccine developed by Pfizer that is detailed in a new study just released in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Of the four adult RSV vaccine contenders (two under FDA review and two with late phase clinical trials), URMC has been involved in studying three of them. Learn more.

 

Harold “Hal” Paz, MD, MS, has been appointed to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: Accelerating Treatments and Improving Quality of Life committee. As a member of the committee, Dr. Paz, Executive Vice President for Health Sciences at Stony Brook University and the Chief Executive Officer at Stony Brook University Medicine, will conduct a study to identify and recommend key actions for the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to undertake to make amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) a livable disease within a decade. Learn more.

 

Researchers at Stony Brook University have studied the science of aging for more than a decade, prompting advancements in the capabilities of brain imaging and pioneering socio-psychological approaches to care. Now, thanks to a $10 million investment from the Presidential Innovation and Excellence Fund, the university will open a Center for Healthy Aging (CHA) to further revolutionize senior care in Suffolk County and beyond. Learn more.