Publisher Health

Experts have identified for the first time exactly how exercise can lower your risk of getting bowel cancer and slow the growth of tumours.
Scientists at Newcastle University have shown that physical activity causes the cancer-fighting protein, interleukin-6 (IL-6), to be released into the bloodstream which helps repair the DNA of damaged cells.
The findings, published in the International Journal of Cancer, sheds new light on the importance of moderate activity in the fight against the life-threatening illness and could help develop treatments in the future.
Repairing DNA
Dr Sam Orange, Lecturer in Exercise Physiology at Newcastle University, said: “Previous scientific evidence suggests that more exercise is better for reducing bowel cancer risk as the more physical activity people do, the lower their chances of getting it. Our findings support this idea.
“When exercise is repeated multiple times each week over an extended period, cancer-fighting substances — such as IL-6 — released into the bloodstream have the opportunity to interact with abnormal cells, repairing their DNA and reducing growth into cancer.”
In the small-scale study, which is a proof of principle, the team from Newcastle and York St John universities recruited 16 men aged 50-80, all of whom had lifestyle risk factors for bowel cancer, such as being overweight or obese and not physically active.

Many frequently observed real-world phenomena are nonlinear in nature. This means that their output does not change in a manner that is proportional to their input. These models have a degree of unpredictability, where it is unclear how the system will respond to any changes in its input. This is especially important in the case of dynamical systems, where the output of the model changes with time. For such systems, the time series data, or the measurements from the system over time, have to be analyzed to determine how the system changes or evolves with time.
Due to the commonality of the problem, many solutions have been proposed to analyze time-series data to gain an understanding of the system. One method of reconstructing the state of a system based on time series data is state space reconstruction, which can be used to reconstruct those states where the system remains stable or unchanged with time. Such states are known as “attractors.” However, the accuracy of the reconstructed attractors depends on the parameters used for reconstruction, and due to the finite nature of the data, such parameters are difficult to ascertain, resulting in inaccurate reconstructions.
Now, in a new study to be published on April 1, 2022, in Nonlinear Theory and Its Applications, IEICE, Professor Tohru Ikeguchi from Tokyo University of Science, his PhD student Mr. Kazuya Sawada from Tokyo University of Science, and Prof. Yutaka Shimada from Saitama University, Japan, have used the geometric structure of the attractor to estimate the reconstruction parameters.
“To reconstruct the state space using time-delay coordinate systems, two parameters, the dimension of the state space and the delay time, must be set appropriately, which is an important issue that is still being actively studied in this field. We discuss how to set these parameters optimally by focusing on the geometric structure of the attractor as one way to solve this problem,” explains Prof. Ikeguchi.
To obtain the optimal values of the parameters, the researchers used five three-dimensional nonlinear dynamical systems and maximized the similarity of the inter-point distance distributions between the reconstructed attractor and the original attractor. As a result, the parameters were obtained in a way that produced a reconstructed attractor which was geometrically as close as possible to the original.
While the method was able to generate the appropriate reconstruction parameters, the researchers did not factor in the noise that is normally encountered in real-world data, which can significantly affect the reconstruction. “Mathematically, this method has been proven to be a good one, but there are many considerations that need to be made before applying this method to real-world data analysis. This is because real-world data contains noise, and the length and accuracy of the observed data is finite,” explains Prof. Ikeguchi.
Despite this, the method resolves one of the limitations involved in determining the state of nonlinear dynamical systems that are encountered in various fields of science, economics, and engineering. “This research has yielded an important analysis technique in the current data science field, and we believe that it is important for handling a wide variety of data in the real world,” concludes Prof. Ikeguchi.
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In his Brooklyn studio, the El Salvador-born artist Guadalupe Maravilla got ready to activate “Disease Thrower #0,” the latest in his acclaimed series of sculptures that deploy the powers of vibrational sound as a form of healing.The writer, who is recovering from a rare cancer, took her place on an elevated woven straw platform, her stockinged feet facing a formidable metal gong. She relaxed into the artist’s ritual space — part sculpture, part shrine. It was draped with a mysterious material blackened with ash from healing ceremonies that Maravilla, who is a cancer survivor himself, performed for hundreds of fellow warriors last summer in Queens.The sounds built slowly, starting with low monk-like tones before morphing into mighty guttural roars that she could feel entering her body from behind her cheekbones. “We want to say ‘thank you’ to those body parts that have struggled,” the artist told me as I lay still on the platform. “Thank them for healing and persevering through difficult times.”If adversity is a teacher, Maravilla has studied with the master. At only 8 years old he fled the violence of the civil war in El Salvador alone and began a punishing 3,000 mile, 2½ month journey to the U.S.-Mexico border, passed from coyote to coyote before eventually crossing the border as an undocumented immigrant. Twenty-eight years later, while a graduate student at Hunter College, Maravilla was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. To reduce the residual pain from radiation and other procedures, he turned to Indigenous healing practices, some inherited from his Maya ancestors. Chief among them were “sound baths” that harness sonic vibrations from gongs, conch shells, tuning forks and other instruments to restore calm and balance and release toxins in the body.“Disease Thrower #0,” one of Guadalupe Maravilla’s sculptures in his solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.Guadalupe Maravilla and P·P·O·W; Stan Narten“Disease Thrower #0” (2022) is one of 10 works in “Guadalupe Maravilla: Tierra Blanca Joven,” a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum opening April 8 (through Sept. 18). The title refers to a fifth-century volcanic eruption that uprooted the Maya — a shorthand by the artist for three generations of displacement, including his own. The earliest, the cultural appropriation of artifacts, is represented by whistles, conch shells and other Maya objects he selected for display from the museum’s permanent collection. The most current example features the undocumented Central American teens who are in detention in upstate New York, captured in a video with the artist in which they collectively act out details of daily life in confinement.The artist’s pieces are also on view through Oct. 30 in “Guadalupe Maravilla: Luz y Fuerza” at the Museum of Modern Art — the Spanish title translates as “hope and strength.” Healing sound baths for visitors are offered there through June. An exhibition called “Sound Botánica” recently opened in Norway at the Henie Onstad Art Center.The notion of healing and rebirth permeates Maravilla’s work and the seemingly wacky array of items in his studio — a plastic mosquito, several toy snakes, a large metal fly, an anatomical model of human lungs, a bunch of dehydrated tortillas (the artist paints them) and a shelf full of bottled Florida water used for blessings, to name a few. A dried manta ray hangs heroically above the entrance — a nod to the sea creature that prevented him from drowning as a boy by leaping through the waves to reveal his location to his parents.Objects embedded in works like “Disease Thrower #0” — loofah sponges and a woven hammock offering respite for ancestors, for instance — are pages in a complex narrative in which past traumas, if properly treated, can lead to spiritual and creative renewal.Works from “Luz y Fuerza” at the Museum of Modern Art.David AlmeidaMaravilla’s otherworldly aesthetic, which also informs a series of Latin American devotional paintings known as retablos, is loosely inspired by Indigenous Maya culture, especially Honduran rock stelae and ruins of pyramids engulfed with vegetation that were his Salvadorean playgrounds as a child. “It was layer after layer after layer,” he recalled of those ancient forms. “The whole world was there.”Although frequently autobiographical, the artist’s stalactite-like sculptures and other works speak to the global themes of disease, war, migration and loss. “Migrating birds riding the back of a celestial serpent” (2021), a large wall piece at MoMA, for instance, incorporates a child’s stroller wheel and Crocs into a sinuous ribbon of wings and dried maguey leaves, a reference to children crossing the border.“Between the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, everyone is feeling psychologically battered and vulnerable and fearful,” said Eugenie Tsai, a senior curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum, where the exhibition is part of Mindscapes, an international cultural mental health initiative. “Guadalupe’s practice speaks to all those things.”His cancer diagnosis, which occurred on his 36th birthday, catalyzed a shift in his approach and prompted him to retrace the migratory route he traveled as a frightened boy. He now undertakes these pilgrimages regularly, picking up objects “with the right energy” for his sculptures along the way. Maravilla views his bout with cancer as a blessing. “I was always invested in learning about ancient ways of healing,” he said. “But before the illness I didn’t know how to do it.” At right in his studio in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is “When I Was 16 I Had The Opportunity To Go Back To El Salvador Retablo,” from 2022.Wayne Lawrence for The New York TimesHis birth name is Irvin Morazan. In 1980, his father fled El Salvador after seeing the beheaded body of his brother — the artist’s uncle — hanging from a tree, and identifying him by a shirt he had borrowed. Two years later young Irvin’s mother followed, leaving him with relatives.Several years later Irvin began his own perilous journey north. He carried a small notebook, often playing “tripa chuca” (“dirty guts”) en route, a Salvadorean children’s line drawing game for two he compares to “a fingerprint between two people.” It has since become a signature element in his exhibitions.In Tijuana, he spent two weeks in a hotel room taking care of dozens of even younger children before being woken up at 3 a.m. by a coyote reeking of alcohol. The man put him in the back of a pickup truck along with a fluffy white dog that lay on top of him to conceal him from border agents — much like the white cadejo, a folkloric character that protects travelers from harm. (Irvin gained his citizenship in 2006.)His birthday, Dec. 12, coincides with the auspicious Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, celebrating the mother of Jesus. His own mother, who died of cancer in 2007, revealed during her illness that she had wanted to name her baby son Guadalupe, but her husband vetoed the name in favor of a more masculine one. In 2016, to commemorate his second chance at life post-cancer, the artist changed his name, choosing Maravilla, which means “marvel” or “wonder” in Spanish, to honor the fake identity purchased by his undocumented father.Maravilla attributes the cancers and other illnesses in his family to the generational traumas of war, migration, family separation and the stresses of being undocumented. In 1987, his mother was deported to El Salvador for two years after an immigration raid at the New Jersey factory where she worked. It took a huge toll on her health, the artist said.Installation view, “Guadalupe Maravilla: Tierra Blanca Joven,” at the Brooklyn Museum. Center, “Disease Thrower #18,” 2021.Danny PerezNevertheless, he views his own cancer as a blessing, transforming his practice from more performative works to creating spiritually powerful sculptures designed to heal. “I was always invested in learning about ancient ways of healing,” Maravilla said. “But before the illness I didn’t know how to do it.” In his retablos — a collaboration with Daniel Vilchis, a fourth-generation Mexico City retablo painter — he expresses gratitude to the radiation machine that killed his tumor, to the gourds that nourished him, to the plant medicines that, with the help of a shaman, helped him identify that there was an issue in his gut.The name “Disease Thrower” is meant to evoke the ferocity and power of an Indigenous god (even though it technically is made from glue and fibers cooked in a microwave). Some of these thronelike sculptures refer to cancer with plastic anatomical models of breasts, colons and other body parts. Some are embedded with zodiacal crabs.Maravilla has largely focused his therapeutic sound baths on people recovering from cancer and the undocumented community, where large numbers of workers lost their jobs during the pandemic. “I have 35 years of experience ahead of them,” he said of crossing the border. “I know what can happen when trauma goes untreated.’’He is chagrined that healing has become a commodity and is committed to offering his practices for free.In “Planeta Abuelx” at Socrates Sculpture Park last summer, he created an outdoor sound bath environment anchored by two Gaudí-scaled metal sculptures crowned by a massive gong. The installation was encircled by a medicinal garden the artist had planted: He also hired a fire keeper to make sure that “whatever people were releasing” — more than 1,500 participated over four months — was consumed by flames. Reviewing for The New York Times, the critic Martha Schwendener wrote that “the project is one of the best Socrates has presented in recent years.”“I’m not going to heal anyone with a magic wand,” Maravilla, shown here at the Museum of Modern Art, said of his own approach. “I believe we are our own medicine.”Julieta CervantesThe artist’s goal is to create a permanent healing center in Brooklyn staffed by artists, sound therapists and other practitioners. “I’m not going to heal anyone with a magic wand,” he said of his approach. “I believe we are our own medicine.”On Saturdays at the height of the pandemic, he performed sound baths for undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers at The Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where the pastor, Juan Carlos Ruiz, had been undocumented his first eight years in the United States. At first, the rituals took place on the hard stone floors of the sanctuary.But when the event moved to the Fellowship Hall next door, with its wood-plank floors, the vibrations deepened and the floors became “a huge wooden bed,” the pastor said. Some members of the community had not slept well in months. “You could hear a chorus of snoring at the end of the session,” he said.Aristotoles Joseph Sanchez, a father of three, spent 19 months in a detention center in Georgia, an ordeal that has inspired three Maravilla retablos.Sanchez has been plagued by various physical ailments, including diabetes, and was a bit mystified at first by the presence of “a bohemian.” But as Maravilla shared his story and explained his purpose, Sanchez said he knew that good things were going to happen.He emerged more pain-free. “It’s the intention and the intensity,” he said. “You heal as long as you believe.”

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesAfter a Covid infection, there is an increased risk of developing a serious blood clot for the next six months, a study from Sweden suggests.The research found people with severe Covid, and those infected during the first wave, had the highest clot risk.This highlights the importance of being vaccinated against the virus, the researchers say.Blood clots can also occur after vaccination but the risk is far smaller, a major UK study found. People who have had Covid-19 are more likely to develop a blood clot – particularly patients who have needed hospital treatment. Scientists wanted to find out when that risk returns to normal levels.The researchers tracked the health of just over one million people who tested positive for Covid between February 2020 and May 2021 in Sweden, and compared them with four million people of the same age and sex who had not had a positive test.After a Covid infection, they found an increased risk of:blood clots in the leg, or deep vein thrombosis (DVT), for up to three monthsblood clots in the lungs, or pulmonary embolism, for up to six monthsinternal bleeding, such as a stroke, for up to two monthsWhen the researchers compared the risks of blood clots after Covid to the normal level of risk, they found that:four in every 10,000 Covid patients developed DVT compared with one in every 10,000 people who didn’t have Covidabout 17 in every 10,000 Covid patients had a blood clot in the lung compared with fewer than one in every 10,000 who did not have CovidThe study, published in the BMJ, said the raised risk of blood clots was higher in the first wave than later waves, probably because treatments improved during the pandemic and older patients were starting to be vaccinated by the second wave.’Good reason to have vaccine’The risk of a blood clot in the lung in people who were very seriously ill with Covid was 290 times greater than normal, and seven times higher than normal after mild Covid. But there was no raised risk of internal bleeding in mild cases.”For unvaccinated individuals, that’s a really good reason to get a vaccine – the risk is so much higher than the risk from vaccines,” says Anne-Marie Fors Connolly, principal study investigator from Umea University in Sweden.The researchers can’t prove that Covid caused the blood clots in this study but they have several theories on why it happens.It could be the direct effect of the virus on the layer of cells which line blood vessels, an exaggerated inflammatory response to the virus, or the body making blood clots at inappropriate times.Vaccines are very effective against severe Covid, but offer less protection against infection, particularly with the Omicron variant – meaning repeat infections with symptoms are common as countries work out how to live with Covid.Frederick K Ho, public health lecturer from the University of Glasgow, said this study “reminds us of the need to remain vigilant to the complications associated with even mild [Covid] infection, including thromboembolism”.The risk of blood clots goes up after vaccination, but “the magnitude of risk remains smaller and persists for a shorter period than that associated with infection”, he adds.More on this storyScientists find trigger for rare AstraZeneca clotsUK seeing rising number of Covid infectionsVaccine complications dwarfed by virus risks’Vaccine blood clot risk far smaller than Covid risks’Study links Covid to rare neurological illnessRelated Internet LinksBMJ study – Risks of deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and bleeding after Covid-19The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

A meeting of the committee underscored how many uncertainties lie ahead, including whether a vaccine that works better against variants can be ready by fall.WASHINGTON — Researchers trying to devise an updated coronavirus vaccine for use this fall would have to settle on a formula as early as June to meet that deadline, federal officials said on Wednesday, even though some clinical trials are just now getting underway.The assessment came during a daylong meeting of outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration, who convened to strategize about what the nation’s coronavirus vaccine policy should look like moving forward. The session underscored how deeply the road ahead is studded with uncertainties.Among the most basic questions debated: At what point would officials decide that the existing vaccines are not working well enough? And if better vaccines are deemed necessary, when might clinical trials provide answers about suitable replacements?The meeting captured a transition point for the Biden administration as it tries to fashion a vaccine strategy for the rest of this year. Some federal health officials are convinced that the existing vaccines need to be retooled to offer better protection than they do now. They hope to have a revised version by the fall, when they fear the virus could resurge in force.Doses of modified vaccine could cost the federal government about $5 billion to $12 billion, one senior federal official said. Congress has moved to slice the administration’s new Covid budget request roughly in half, which the official said might not leave enough to cover that cost.At the same time, vaccine manufacturers and federal researchers are scrambling to figure out what a revised vaccine should look like. A new study by the National Institutes of Health, for example, is analyzing how Moderna’s vaccine works if revised to target three different variants, alone or in combination. But it only just began recruiting volunteers, with results expected sometime this summer.Robert Johnson, the director of an infectious disease division within the Department of Health and Human Services, told the panel that even once regulators decide upon a reconfigured vaccine, manufacturers would need several months to produce doses.“If you’re not on your way to that clinical trial by the beginning of May, it is very difficult to have collectively across manufacturers enough product to meet that demand” by fall, he said. Dr. Peter Marks, who oversees vaccine regulation at the F.D.A., also described the time frame as highly compressed, saying regulators may need to settle on a new vaccine formula by May or June if they want to switch from the existing ones.The trials underway are too small to provide efficacy data of the type that led to the authorization of the existing vaccines. But they could produce enough data for federal health officials to determine whether a reconfigured vaccine will create a stronger or more lasting immune response — a metric used to infer efficacy.The panel of outside experts is grappling with what the U.S. coronavirus vaccine strategy should be for the rest of the year.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesExpert after expert at the meeting described how much guesswork is involved in that effort. No one knows which variant of the virus will dominate in the fall, when federal officials consider a new surge highly likely. There is some chance that before then, another variant like Omicron will emerge and redraw the coronavirus picture in a wholly unexpected way. “Not likely, but it’s there,” Dr. Marks said of that possibility.Trevor Bedford, a biostatistician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said the coronavirus had been mutating at several times the rate of the flu virus, for which vaccines are redesigned annually. While that pace may slow, the virus’s plasticity indicates it “is likely to keep on evolving,” he said.How exactly it will do that is anyone’s guess. “There’s no guarantee that every emergent variant is going to be the basis for the next variant,” warned Dr. Michael Nelson, an immunologist at the University of Virginia Medical School.Meanwhile, federal officials and their outside advisers continue to grapple with what the threshold is for determining that existing vaccines are not doing a good enough job. Dr. Marks said the committee’s consensus appeared to be that Covid vaccines should prevent severe disease, not necessarily infection or mild disease.The question was especially relevant because just last week, the F.D.A. authorized a second booster for Americans 50 and older, along with some others. But the C.D.C. director outright recommended those shots only for people 65 and older, and anyone 50 to 64 with serious underlying health conditions.Some immunologists and vaccine experts have said the F.D.A. lacked the necessary data to authorize second boosters, while other health officials have maintained that people should have the option of another shot.Dr. James E.K. Hildreth, the president of Meharry Medical College in Tennessee and a committee member, asked Dr. Marks why he did not solicit the panel’s advice before deciding whether to authorize a second booster.Dr. Marks said the F.D.A. did not consider offering a second booster to be “a major expansion or a major change.” Jerry Weir, another senior agency official, said the F.D.A. expected to ask the advisory panel to review any reconfiguration of the existing vaccines before moving forward with emergency authorization.Sharon Alroy-Preis, the director of public health services for Israel’s Health Ministry, told the panel that administering a second booster for those 60 and older earlier this year saved lives. The Israeli presentation seemed to back up the F.D.A.’s decision.But European Union regulators concluded on Wednesday that it was “too early” to administer second booster shots to the general population, but reasonable to offer them to people 80 and older.Dr. Amanda Cohn, a senior C.D.C. official, said her agency’s data showed that existing vaccines are more than 80 percent effective in preventing hospitalization in Americans without immune deficiencies — including older people and those with chronic medical conditions. She suggested that Covid treatments after infection may be more effective than additional shots of vaccine in protecting Americans against severe disease.Dr. Christopher Murray, a professor at the University of Washington whose institute has modeled the pandemic’s trends, predicted that antiviral treatments like the pills recently developed by Pfizer will cut mortality rates even if a new variant as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as Delta emerges.Dr. John Beigel, a clinical research director at the N.I.H., described his agency’s research comparing how well Moderna’s existing vaccine works against modified versions aimed at the known variants, both alone and in combination.In the first stage, researchers are hoping to rapidly enroll 600 volunteers who have already been vaccinated and received a booster. Some will be given the existing vaccine. Others will get experimental vaccines targeted to the Omicron variant alone as well as three other variations: Omicron plus the Beta variant, the Delta variant and the prototype virus that emerged first in the pandemic.In an interview on Tuesday, Dr. Beigel said the existing vaccines may still turn out to be the best. He said he hoped results from his trials may be ready by midsummer, although some federal officials are hoping for earlier.Deciding on the next step, he told the panel, “is going to be challenging.”

For the first time, MIT researchers have performed a large-scale, high-resolution study of the cells in breast milk, allowing them to track how these cells change over time in nursing mothers.
By analyzing human breast milk produced between three days and nearly two years after childbirth, the researchers were able to identify a variety of changes in gene expression in mammary gland cells. Some of these changes were linked to factors such as hormone levels, illness of the mother or baby, the mother starting birth control, and the baby starting daycare.
“We were able to take this really long view of lactation that other studies haven’t really done, and we showed that milk does change over the entire course of lactation, even after years of milk production,” says Brittany Goods, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor of engineering at Dartmouth College, and one of the senior authors of the study.
The researchers hope that their findings will lay the groundwork for more in-depth studies of how breast milk changes over time. Such studies could eventually yield new ways to boost mothers’ milk production or to improve the composition of infant formula.
Bonnie Berger, the Simons Professor of Mathematics at MIT and head of the Computation and Biology group at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), is a senior author of the study, as is Alex Shalek, an associate professor of chemistry at MIT and a member of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES); the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research; the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard; and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.
MIT graduate student Sarah Nyquist is the lead author of the paper, which appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The United States is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse every day, but those changes are not reflected in the makeup of clinical faculty and leadership of medical schools in this country, according to a special report in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) led by Sophia Kamran, MD, a radiation oncologist at Mass General Cancer Center. While this analysis found some positive trends, the overall picture suggests that U.S. academic medical programs must not only recruit more underrepresented clinical faculty candidates, but also find ways to support them throughout the academic pipeline to build diversity at leadership levels in medicine, says Kamran.
Kamran’s interest in diversity in medicine stems in part from her experience as a woman of Hispanic heritage who was the first person in her family to attend college, then medical school. “I didn’t have many mentors, teachers, or role models in clinical medicine from a similar background as mine to help guide me,” says Kamran. In the NEJM report, Kamran and several colleagues assess diversity trends among U.S. medical faculty over four decades. “We wanted to see where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we need to go,” says Kamran.
With her co-investigators, Kamran analyzed data compiled by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) for full-time faculty members in 18 clinical academic departments over the period from 1977 through 2019. The data represented clinical faculty, full professors, department chairs and deans. Faculty members were stratified according to sex as well as race and ethnicity. The study further stratified faculty members who were underrepresented in medicine (URM), which the AAMC defines as people who identify as Black, Hispanic, non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, or non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native.
As they examined trends over the 42-year period, some positive news emerged. “Female representation increased dramatically,” says Kamran. For example, female clinical faculty leapt from 14.8% in 1977 to 43.3% in 2019. The proportion of female deans rose from zero to 18.3%.
However, while the proportion of URMs in academic medicine also rose over the study period, those increases were far more modest. As a result, Black and Hispanic women and men still represent a small part of total clinical faculty. Perhaps most worrisome, AAMC data indicate that, in general, growth and representation of Black men in academic medicine has stagnated or decreased, particularly among clinical faculty and department chairs, a trend that began about a decade ago. “This is an area in desperate need of study, because we need to reverse these trends in order to address the lack the Black leadership at all levels of academic medicine,” says Kamran.
What’s more, some URMs barely registered in the databases. At all faculty levels, non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander and non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native accounted for less than 1%.
Importantly, the NEJM report compared AAMC’s numbers with U.S. Census data to yield a stark finding. The proportion of women in academic medicine today has risen sufficiently over the past four decades to more closely mirror that of the population of women in this country. However, while U.S Census data also show that the country is rapidly becoming more diverse, academic medicine is not keeping pace with population change: URM representation at all levels in academic medicine is further away from reflecting the U.S. population today than it was in 2000.
Kamran’s findings concur with an earlier study by a separate group that revealed similar disparities among U.S. medical students. “The U.S. population is going to continue getting more diverse as time goes on. We’re sounding the alarm because we are clearly falling behind,” says Kamran, noting the urgency for action: Studies indicate that patients often have better health outcomes when cared for by physicians of similar backgrounds who can identify with their life experiences.
Kamran is encouraged that institutions appear to be responding to these disparities, but says it’s not enough for medical schools to set diversity quotas. “We have to also focus on retention and development,” says Kamran. “We need evidence-based initiatives that create inclusive environments that can support cultural change.”
Kamran is also an assistant professor of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School.
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Using a pulse oximeter to measure oxygen levels is no better than just regularly asking patients with COVID-19 if they are short of breath, according to new research at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. Pulse oximeters have often been applied because of concerns that patients might not notice their blood oxygen levels sliding dangerously. But people in Penn Medicine’s COVID Watch program — which uses automated text messages to keep tabs on patients recovering at home — had the same outcomes whether they used oxygen-measuring devices or not. Findings from this work were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“Compared to remotely monitoring shortness of breath with simple automated check-ins, we showed that the addition of pulse oximetry did not save more lives or keep more people out of the hospital,” said the study’s co-lead author, Anna Morgan, MD, medical director of the COVID Watch program and an assistant professor of General Internal Medicine. “And having a pulse oximeter didn’t even make patients feel less anxious.”
COVID Watch launched at Penn Medicine in March 2020 to remotely monitor patients with COVID-19 who were well enough to stay home to recover. Twice a day for two weeks, text messages were automatically sent to these patients asking how they felt and if they were having difficulty breathing, a condition formally known as dyspnea. If patients indicated more difficulty breathing, they would be called by a nurse who would direct the patient to the ER, arrange an urgent telemedicine appointment, or suggest continued monitoring at home. More than 28,500 patients have been enrolled in the program since it came online.
“The program made it easy to identify the sickest patients who needed the hospital, and keep the others at home safely,” said David Asch, MD, executive director of the Center for Health Care Innovation and a professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health Policy. “The program was associated with a 68 percent reduction in mortality, saving a life approximately every three days during peak enrollment early in the pandemic.”
But the question remained whether the program would be even better if it was based on the actual oxygen content of the blood rather than just whether patients felt short of breath.
“Early in the pandemic, there was a prevalent theory that oxygen levels in the blood dropped before a COVID-19 patient became symptomatic and short of breath,” said study co-lead author Kathleen Lee, MD, an adjunct assistant professor of Emergency Medicine. “Detecting this earlier with a home pulse oximeter might provide an opportunity to get patients who are on the cusp of deteriorating to the hospital faster and initiate time-sensitive therapies to improve outcomes.”
Using pulse oximeters was so intuitively appealing that the process got adopted even before this trial, the first randomized trial to test whether it actually worked.

Phthalates are commonly used to make products — including artificial leather, footwear, plastic food packaging, and personal care products — more flexible or stable. In particular, di-isononyl phthalate is incorporated in vinyl clothing and construction materials. However, scientists do not completely understand if or how it harms the human body. To do so, researchers looked at the effect of DiNP on the colonic environment in a new study.
DiNP is used as a replacement for di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, another chemical that is commonly added to plastics to make them flexible. “The problem is that although we know DEHP is associated with female reproductive problems, we don’t know if DiNP harms us,” said Karen Chiu, a graduate student in the Flaws group.
To understand whether DiNP is harmful, the team used different DiNP doses to test how it affects the colon walls, the immune system, and colonic microorganisms. “We looked at a dose that occupational workers might encounter (20 µg/kg), and another higher dose (200 µg/kg) that infants are exposed to,” Chiu said. “Surprisingly, infants are exposed to higher levels [of DiNP] because they crawl on carpets and mouth their toys, which contain these phthalates.”
The researchers used female mice that were either dosed with corn oil as a control or different doses of DiNP. After ten days, the mice were euthanized and their colon and its contents were examined. Although the chemical did not affect the length or weight of the colon, it did change the tissue structure by causing inflammation. “In the DiNP treatments, we also saw tissue damage which was caused by an infiltration of immune cells,” Chiu said. Normal colon sections have intestinal folds and thick muscle layers. However, the colon of mice that were exposed to 20 µg/kg DiNP or 200 µg/kg DiNP had no folds and abnormal muscle layers of varying thickness.
Although it is unclear why immune cells enter the region, the researchers confirmed their observations by also measuring the chemicals that are released by these cells. “We measured different markers that are associated with inflammation, such as soluble intercellular adhesion molecules and tumor necrosis factors, and saw that they were different from the controls,” Chiu said. “Since they all have different roles, it is unclear why some inflammatory markers increased and others decreased.”
Besides studying the colonic tissues, the researchers used 16S rRNA gene sequencing to identify the bacteria in the colon contents. Out of all the genera present in the gut, two — Lachnoclostrium and Blautia — differed in the DiNP-treated mice compared to the control. While Lachnoclostrium was present in the 200 µg/kg-treated mice and absent in the control and 20 µg/kg group, Blautia was present in the latter two but absent in the 200 µg/kg group.
“These classifications are still relatively high level, and you need to look at the species or strains to determine the function of these identified microbes,” Chiu said. “It’s like reporting to your friend that you have a pair of Nike shoes, but what type of Nike is it? There are Nikes made for running, cross-training, basketball, or soccer. Once you know the specific Nike, you can determine its function.”
Interestingly, the researchers were also able to identify three microbes that were capable of growing on DiNP: Desulfitobacterium hafniense, Paenibacillus barengoltzii, and Proteus mirabilis. Proteus mirabilis is usually found in individuals with urinary tract infections. “The next step is to find the enzymes that break down DiNP and see whether they can alter the hormone levels in mice. The results would give us further insights into how DiNP affects the colon,” Chiu said.
“We also want to look at what long-term exposure to DiNP can do because people are chronically exposed to it and in this study we only looked at short-term exposure,” said Jodi Flaws (EIRH co-leader/MME), a professor of comparative biosciences. “Since we know DiNP is a reproductive toxicant, we are also interested in looking at whether the changes in the gut are causing reproductive problems.”
The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Division of Nutritional Sciences, the Environmental Toxicology Scholar Award, and the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

A new study suggests that people with epilepsy associated with head injuries, especially the type not well controlled by medication, are more likely to have other health conditions like depression,post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), back pain and headache that may result in them reporting a lower quality of life. The research is published in the April 6, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Other conditions included chronic conditions like high blood pressure, sleep disorders, and behavioral health conditions like anxiety.
“Our study suggests that people with epilepsy associated with traumatic brain injuries have complex health states that frequently include other conditions that are also associated with both traumatic brain injury and epilepsy and that may result in a greater chance of having both poor quality of life and lower life expectancy,” said study author Mary Jo Pugh, PhD, of the VA Salt Lake City, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. “We believe a deeper understanding of the factors affecting quality of life in people with post-traumatic epilepsy may help us identify those at the greatest risk and then identify effective treatments.”
The study looked at 529 military veterans with epilepsy who had an average age of 41. They were divided into four groups: 249 with epilepsy that was neither drug resistant nor associated with head injury that served as a control group, 124 with drug resistant epilepsy not associated with a head injury, 86 with epilepsy associated with a brain injury, and 70 with drug resistant epilepsy associated with a brain injury.
Each person responded to three different quality of life assessments to evaluate everything from mood and energy level to worrying about future seizures. From these assessments, researchers used six quality of life measures to examine different types of impact. They also identified the number of 17 additional conditions like depression, PTSD, headache, anxiety and chronic diseases diagnosed for each participant.
Researchers also looked at the association between types of epilepsy and drug resistance. After adjusting for factors like age, sex and number of additional conditions each person had, researchers found 45% of the people with epilepsy associated with head injuries also had drug resistant epilepsy, compared to 33%, of those with epilepsy not associated with head injuries.
When looking at quality of life scores, those with drug resistant epilepsy associated with a head injury reported the lowest scores across all six measures, even after adjusting for the number of additional conditions. One of the measures rating quality of life for people with brain injuries has a maximum score of 100, indicating best possible quality of life. On average, participants in the control group scored 35.5, compared to 21.2 for those who had drug resistant epilepsy associated with a head injury. Increasing numbers of conditions also had a compounding effect on life expectancy.
“Our results suggest more research into the mechanisms behind drug resistant epilepsy is needed, because we know that drug resistance can dramatically lower quality of life, whether through worrying about future seizures or the injuries that result from seizures,” Pugh said. “Those with drug resistant epilepsy associated with head injury should be the focus of future studies examining not only quality of life but also the impact of life expectancy. This will allow us to potentially find ways to help them live longer, more satisfying lives.”
The study does not prove that people with drug resistant epilepsy associated with head injury will have poorer quality of life. It only shows an association.
A limitation of the study is that it only included veterans and the results may not apply to the general population.
The study was supported by the U.S. Department of Defense.
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Materials provided by American Academy of Neurology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.