Despite guidelines, end-of-life care remains aggressive for ovarian cancer patients
People with ovarian cancer frequently receive aggressive end-of-life care despite industry guidelines that emphasize quality of life for those with advanced disease, according to a recent study.
In fact, by 2016, ICU stays and emergency department visits in the last month of life had become more common for people with ovarian cancer than they were in 2007, the earliest year from which researchers analyzed data.
The proportion of non-Hispanic Black people who turned to the emergency department for care was even higher double that of non-Hispanic whites. Black people were also nearly twice as likely to undergo intensive treatment, including life-extending measures such as resuscitation or the insertion of a feeding tube.
Kruppel-like factor 15 controls skeletal muscle fat uptake and utilization
Metabolic diseases, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, have risen to epidemic proportions in the U.S. and occur in about 30 percent of the population. Skeletal muscle plays a prominent role in controlling the body s glucose levels, which is important for the development of metabolic diseases like diabetes.
In a recent study, published in
The Journal of Clinical Investigation, University Hospitals (UH) Cleveland Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine researchers have found that skeletal muscle significantly affects how the body stores and metabolizes fat.
In the study, Mukesh K. Jain, MD, senior author, Chief Academic Officer at UH, and the Ellery Sedgwick Jr. Chair & Distinguished Scientist, and his team set out to investigate the role of a gene called Kruppel-like factor 15 (KLF15) in skeletal muscle. The team utilized a mouse model with KLF15 specifically deleted in musc
Study identifies major flaws in iBMEC-based models of the blood-brain barrier
A type of cell derived from human stem cells that has been widely used for brain research and drug development may have been leading researchers astray for years, according to a study from scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
The cell, known as an induced Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cell (iBMEC), was first described by other researchers in 2012, and has been used to model the special lining of capillaries in the brain that is called the blood-brain barrier.
Many brain diseases, including brain cancers as well as degenerative and genetic disorders, could be much more treatable if researchers could get drugs across this barrier. For that and other reasons, iBMEC-based models of the barrier have been embraced as an important standard tool in brain research.
Imaging technique can differentiate Alzheimer s disease from dementia with Lewy bodies
Scientists in Portugal and the United Kingdom were able to confirm that an imaging technique that traces neuronal dopaminergic deficiency in the brain is able to differentiate, in vivo, dementia with Lewy
This could have important implications for the specific management and treatment of these conditions.
American actor Robin Williams had a neurodegenerative brain disease called dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB): a distressing disease, with symptoms in common with Alzheimer s disease (AD) and Parkinson s disease (PD).
But unlike these two conditions, DLB also entails prominent mood and cognitive swings, sleep disorders, and vivid, sometimes terrifying, visual hallucinations.