Curated News: JAMA

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A new study looks at cancer deaths in California due to tobacco, sounding the alarm regarding the tragic loss of life caused by tobacco addiction

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When patients undergo any type of surgery after having had COVID, their odds of significant postoperative problems diminish with elapsed time from COVID diagnosis.   Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center now report that this trend of decreasing risk persists longer than previously known, for as long as 13 months after surgery. Their report appeared Dec. 14 in JAMA Network Open.

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For decades, doctors and scientists have known that exercise is important for older adults — it can lower risk for cardiac issues, strengthen bones, improve mood and have other benefits. Likewise, mindfulness training reduces stress, and stress can be bad for the brain, so many have thought that exercise and/or mindfulness training might improve brain function.

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Frequent use of devices like smartphones and tablets to calm upset children ages 3-5 was associated with increased emotional dysregulation in kids, particularly in boys, according to a Michigan Medicine study in JAMA Pediatrics.

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While people with cancer have options to participate in cancer clinical trials (CCTs), it can be challenging when they encounter difficulties enrolling and remaining in the trial. Trial withdrawal, although every participant’s right, can thwart study goals and hamper advancing novel treatments.

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Investigators at Cedars-Sinai conduct more than 2,500 research projects annually, and many of these studies have resulted in new treatments or have opened the door to future innovations.

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Nearly half of Americans with Medicare now get their health insurance coverage through a private company that takes part in the federal government’s Medicare Advantage program.

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A new Northwestern Medicine study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that many of online platforms offering testosterone therapy are not providing care in concordance with the American Urological Association (AUA) and Endocrine Society (ES) guidelines for the safe and effective management of men on testosterone therapy.

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Long COVID patients can experience many of the same lingering negative effects on their physical, mental, and social well-being as those experienced by people who become ill with other, non-COVID illnesses.

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The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights provides a glimpse into recent basic, translational and clinical cancer research from MD Anderson experts.

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Findings from a Johns Hopkins Medicine research study published today in JAMA Network Open provide strong evidence that people who are pregnant and have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) can safely take the antiviral drug Paxlovid to reduce the possibility of severe disease.

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A brief roundup of news and story ideas from the experts at UCLA Health.

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Analysis showed that in 2019 more than 1.3 million women received cervical cancer screening-associated services, such as a Pap test, colposcopy and other cervical procedures, after age 65. While these services cost more than $83 million, the researchers concluded they were of “unclear clinical appropriateness.”

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Analysis shows steep increases in organ donations, transplantations during large motorcycle rallies. The increase in organ donations and transplantations appears to be driven by well-documented increases in crash-related deaths during large motorcycle rallies.

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Researchers found young people using benzodiazepines for common sleep conditions had an increased risk of overdose during the six months after starting treatment compared with other prescription sleep medications.

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Patients who take statins to lower high cholesterol levels often complain of muscle pains, which can lead them to stop taking the highly effective medication and put them at greater risk of heart attack or stroke.

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Youth suicide rate increased as county levels of mental health professional shortages increased, after adjusting for county demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, according to the first national study to assess this association. The association remained significant for youth suicides by firearms. Findings were published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

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A new study that harnesses a new form of data on hospital patients' housing status reveals vast differences in diagnoses between patients with and without housing issues who are admitted to hospitals. This includes a sharp divide in care for mental, behavioral and neurodevelopmental conditions.

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A new study led by researchers at the American Cancer Society and Clemson University shows residential racial and economic segregation was associated with cancer mortality at the county level in the United States.

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Adolescents who underwent sleeve gastrectomy, a type of weight-loss surgery that involves removing part of the stomach, were less likely to go the emergency room in the five years after their operations than those who had their stomachs divided into pouches through gastric bypass surgery, according to new research.

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The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights provides a glimpse into recent basic, translational and clinical cancer research from MD Anderson experts. Current advances include a promising targeted therapy combination for patients with relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a link between the gut microbiome and therapy-related neutropenic fever, a novel therapeutic target for immunotherapy-related colitis, a telementoring model for training providers on cervical cancer prevention in limited-resource areas, a new understanding of the prognostic value of RUNX1 mutations in AML, and insights into the effects of opioid use on the pain sensitivity pathway.

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A new study led by researchers at the American Cancer Society shows overall sales of nicotine pouches increased during 2019-2022. The data also showed sales of 8mg nicotine concentration level (highest available) products rose more rapidly than those with different concentration levels.

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Research finds low-certainty evidence that programs such as emergency rent assistance, legal assistance with waitlist priority for public housing, long-term rent subsidies and homeownership assistance lead to positive health outcomes.

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The percentage of working-age people with medical debts so overdue that a collection agency has gotten involved, and the size of those debts, were both much higher in those who had suffered a traumatic injury serious enough to require a hospital stay in the last two years, compared with others like them.

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One of every 10 patients with appendiceal cancer carries a germline genetic variant associated with cancer predisposition, according to a study in JAMA Oncology that is the first to show inherited risk factors for this rare cancer.

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Readily available electronic health record (EHR) data can be used to reliably identify readmission risk for children of all ages while they are still in the hospital, according to a study from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago published in the journal JAMA Network Open. The newly developed and validated tool will be key in efforts to reduce hospitalizations within 30 days of discharge, which also should help free up scarce pediatric hospital beds.

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A new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study found when patients are treated in the Emergency Department by non-physician practitioners (physicians assistants and nurse practitioners), there were 5.3% more imaging studies performed than if patients were seen only by physicians. This JAMA Network Open study was based on a nationally representative sample of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries with 16,922,274 ED visits between 2005 and 2020.

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Pregnant people who received one of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines had 10-fold higher antibody concentrations than those who were naturally infected with SARS-CoV-2, a finding that was also observed in their babies, according to a new study by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania. The study, published today in JAMA Network Open, also found that vaccine timing played an important role in maximizing the transfer of antibodies, with antibodies detected as early as 15 days after the first vaccine dose and increasing for several weeks after.

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A guided mindfulness-based stress reduction program was as effective as use of the gold-standard drug -- the common antidepressant drug escitalopram -- for patients with anxiety disorders, according to results of a first-of-its-kind, randomized clinical trial led by researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center.

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Biases in heart disease and metabolic disorder—also known as cardiometabolic—studies are putting the lives of midlife Black and Hispanic women in jeopardy.

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Text messages sent automatically from patients’ primary care office after hospitalization were tied to decreased odds of needing further emergency care

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As hospitals, clinics and health systems seek to overcome the wave of burnout and departures among their clinical staff, they might want to adopt an approach that they’ve used over the past decade in clinical care: choosing wisely.

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The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights provides a glimpse into recent basic, translational and clinical cancer research from MD Anderson experts.

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Adult cancer survivors, particularly those diagnosed within five years and/or have a history of chemotherapy, have an increased risk for bone fractures, specifically pelvic and vertebral fractures, compared to older adults without cancer, according to a new large study by researchers at the American Cancer Society.

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Patients with cancer and a weakened immune system who are treated with immunotherapies tend to fare far worse from COVID-19 than those who haven't received such therapies in the three months before their COVID diagnosis, show findings in a new study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Researchers found worse outcomes in both the disease itself as well as the fierce immune response that sometimes accompanies it.

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Vaginal progesterone, a hormone treatment considered the standard of care for preventing preterm birth in at-risk pregnant women, may not be effective, according to UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers.

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Pregnant teens in the U.S. have long been known to face increased health risks and pregnancy complications, but a new study for the first time finds that girls ages 13 or younger who get pregnant face even greater risks. These very young girls are significantly more likely to experience preterm birth, cesarean delivery, and admission to the intensive care unit (ICU) compared to older pregnant teens.