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Men of all races and ethnic groups who have prostate cancer fare equally well when access to care is identical, a new study finds. The disparity in outcomes from prostate cancer between Black, Hispanic and white men disappears when treatment and care are the same, as it is in U.S. Veterans Health Administration (VA) hospitals. In fact, Black and Hispanic men, on average fared better than white men, researchers report. “Traditionally, the outcomes for Black and Hispanic patients, at least in non-equal access health care settings, have been poor,” said lead researcher Kelli Rasmussen, an epidemiologist at the University of Utah School of Medicine. “There’s a myriad of reasons, one of which we know is that prostate cancer often presents in Black patients at an earlier age,” she said. “They usually have poor survival outcomes.” But the VA is a unique situation where veterans receive the same care regardless of their income, Rasmussen said. “That means that these men don’t face some of the challenges that people who are not veterans often face with regard to health care, like inadequate insurance or poor access to care in the private sector,” she said. Rasmussen believes that if you look at other medical conditions, the disparity in outcomes between white and minority patients would also disappear. “These patient populations have a lot of disparities when it comes… read on > read on >

After a massive five-year effort, researchers have unveiled an “atlas” that gives an unprecedented look at the intricacies of the human brain. The atlas, which will be available to researchers everywhere, can be seen as similar to the atlases we all know: a book of maps. But this one catalogues human brain cells and their striking diversity and complexity. Going forward, the atlas will help other researchers “navigate” the brain, said Bing Ren, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who was part of the research effort. The atlas encompasses more than 3,000 types of brain cells, and gives insight into how they vary from one person to another, how they differ from non-human primates’ brain cells, how particular brain cell types are related to specific diseases, and more. The ultimate goal, Ren and other experts said, is to better understand the workings of the human brain — and what goes wrong in the range of neurological and psychiatric conditions that plague humans, from Alzheimer’s to depression to schizophrenia. The publication of the brain cell atlas, Ren said, “is just the beginning.” The work is detailed in a collection of 21 papers being published Oct. 13 in the journals Science, Science Advances and Science Translational Medicine. In all, the project involved hundreds of scientists from different countries, brought together under the U.S. National… read on > read on >

Severe inflammation very early in childhood might hamper the development of key brain cells, perhaps setting the stage for conditions such as autism or schizophrenia, new research suggests. The origins of many neurodevelopment disorders remain mysterious. But the new study of postmortem brain tissue from children who died between the ages 1 and 5 shows how inflammation affects brain cells. In their research, the team from the University of Maryland School of Medicine targeted a portion of the brain known as the cerebellum, using a cutting-edge technology called single nucleus RNA sequencing. “We looked at the cerebellum because it is one of the first brain regions to begin developing and one of the last to reach its maturity, but it remains understudied,” said study co-leader Seth Ament, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Maryland. The cerebellum is key to psychiatric research because it’s responsible for higher cognitive functions such as those employed in language, social interactions and the regulation of emotion. Prior studies have shown that infants with abnormalities in their cerebellum often develop neurodevelopment disorders. In animal research, exposing the brain to inflammation before birth also seems to raise the odds for those types of conditions. In their research, published Oct. 12 in Science Translational Medicine, Ament and co-lead author Margaret McCarthy noticed consistent genetic patterns in the cerebella of deceased… read on > read on >

Treating shoulder pain with steroid shots or removal of cartilage buildup yields the same result as no treatment at all, a Norwegian research team reports. They said their findings call into question treatment guidelines for calcific tendinopathy, a painful condition in the shoulder’s rotator cuff tendons. Researchers said the common invasive procedure, known as ultrasound-guided lavage, appears to be useless. “The study findings should lead to a critical reconsideration of treatment guidelines for this condition, specifically for the use of ultrasound-guided lavage and cortisone injections,” said lead researcher Dr. Stefan Moosmayer, a consultant orthopedic surgeon at Martina Hansens Hospital in Gjettum, Norway. Calcific tendinopathy is a common shoulder condition marked by calcium buildup. But the study, published Oct. 11 in the journal BMJ, calls into question whether calcium buildup is the true cause of the joint pain. “We over-focus on the calcification itself,” Moosmayer said. “There may be other mechanisms which we have not fully understood.” Calcification has long been assumed to be the source of the pain, and treatments aim to remove it. A widely used method is ultrasound-guided lavage, in which saline is injected into the calcium deposits to help dissolve them. “Benefits from ultrasound-guided lavage or from a steroid injection, however, are no better than from placebo treatment,” Moosmayer said. For the study, 218 patients suffering from shoulder pain were randomly assigned… read on > read on >

Adult acne can significantly change how women are perceived in social settings, a new study finds. And where the acne is located on the face changes the onlooker’s perception. Researchers tracked eye movements of 245 study participants looking at pictures of women with clear skin or acne on different parts of their faces. Faces with acne were perceived as significantly less attractive, less trustworthy, less successful, less confident, less happy and less dominant. Acne that was primarily located in the U-zone, which is around the jawline, mouth and chin, received the lowest scores for attractiveness and was considered the most visually disturbing. “This study concerns simple questions: Who is more burdened by the disease? Which lesions need to go first? Whom should I treat more aggressively?” said lead author Dr. Marek Jankowski, an assistant professor of dermatology at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. “What they’re really trying to get at is where on the face acne is going to have the most impact on how someone perceives the acne, either self-perception or another person looking at the face,” added Dr. Christopher Bunick, an associate professor of dermatology at Yale School of Medicine. “The implication they’re trying to make is that, if someone has more kind of mid-facial acne then maybe that’s a little bit closer to the healthy skin and a little less… read on > read on >

A new guideline from four leading medical organizations should help doctors determine if someone is brain dead. “Until now, there have been two separate guidelines for determining brain death, one for adults and one for children,” said author Dr. Matthew Kirschen, a critical care physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “This update integrates guidance for adults and children into a single guideline, providing clinicians with a comprehensive and practical way to evaluate someone who has sustained a catastrophic brain injury to determine if they meet the criteria for brain death,” Kirschen said in a news release from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). The guidance was jointly crafted by the AAN, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Child Neurology Society (CNS) and the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM). With brain death, there is a complete and permanent stopping of brain function after a catastrophic brain injury. “Brain death means that clinicians cannot observe or elicit any clinical signs of brain function,” said author Dr. David Greer, of Boston University School of Medicine. “Brain death is different from comatose and vegetative states. People do not recover from brain death. Brain death is legal death.” The guidelines offer professionals a standardized procedure for evaluating people for any clinical functioning of their brain and brainstem. Current policies vary among U.S. hospitals and around the world,… read on > read on >

Most folks know that certain antidepressants have to be taken for a few weeks before people start seeing improvement, and now a new study sheds light on that delay. Scientists have discovered this is because of physical changes in the brain that unfold over those first few weeks of using selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and lead to greater brain plasticity. SSRIs include a range of common antidepressants such as Paxil, Prozac, Celexa, Lexapro and Zoloft. “The delay in therapeutic action of antidepressants has been a puzzle to psychiatrists ever since they were first discerned over 50 years ago. So, these new data in humans that use cutting-edge brain imaging to demonstrate an increase in brain connections developing over the period that the depression lifts are very exciting,” said David Nutt from Imperial College London, who was not involved in the research. “Also, they provide more evidence [that] enhancing serotonin function in the brain can have enduring health benefits.” The researchers studied this in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in a group of healthy volunteers. The researchers gave 17 volunteers a 20-milligram (mg) daily dose of the SSRI escitalopram (Lexapro). Another 15 volunteers received a placebo. About three to five weeks in, the volunteers’ brains were scanned using a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner. The scans made it possible to see the amount of synaptic… read on > read on >

Raging wildfires, droughts, floods and record-breaking heat brought on by climate change are taking a toll on kids’ already fragile mental health. This is the main message from a new report by the American Psychological Association and the climate advocacy organization ecoAmerica. These effects may start before kids are born and worsen with age, and are on top of other known stressors such as COVID-19, war and gun violence. What’s more, certain groups of children are even more hard-hit by the mental health effects of climate change due to poverty, racism, disability and other factors. Climate change affects mental health directly and indirectly, said report co-author Christie Manning, of Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn. She’s an associate professor of environmental studies. Wildfires release fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, into the air, driving pollution, and exposure to air pollutants and high temperatures during pregnancy may increase the chances of having kids with learning issues and some mental health conditions, Manning said. “Living through and surviving a flood or wildfire impacts children and can cause long-lasting anxiety, and when parents are dealing with stress and trauma, it has repercussions for children,” she noted. Many families have been forced to leave their homes and pets due to fires or floods. Kids may have been injured during the evacuation, lost a loved one or witnessed the destruction of… read on > read on >

Renting a home, rather than owning it outright, may speed up the body’s aging process, a new study suggests. Researchers found that when compared with people who owned their home outright (no mortgage), those who rented showed signs of faster “biological aging” — which meant their body cells and tissues were a bit “older.” On average, the impact was equivalent to just a small fraction of a year of aging. Even so, the study found, that was greater than the effects of being unemployed or being a former smoker. In addition, the link was specifically seen among people who rented privately — not those in public housing. While that might seem puzzling, the researchers said it makes sense: At least in the United Kingdom, where the study was conducted, “social” housing is often better maintained, more affordable and more stable than private rentals. “We believe that the typically poorer physical conditions in privately rented housing is likely one factor,” said lead researcher Amy Clair, of the University of Adelaide, in Australia, and the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. Beyond that, she said, private renters face more insecurities around their housing. And based on past research, Clair added, that kind of stress could speed biological aging. Biological aging is determined by certain physiological markers of the rate at which the body’s cells and tissues… read on > read on >

A medication already approved for excessive daytime sleepiness may help ease attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms in adults who aren’t getting relief from available treatments, according to a small pilot study. Solriamfetol is a nonstimulant drug that is approved for sleepiness caused by narcolepsy (sudden sleep attacks) and obstructive sleep apnea (marked by breathing lapses during sleep). “The pilot study is very promising, but more research is needed before this medication can be recommended or approved for adults with ADHD,” said study author Dr. Craig Surman. He is the director of the clinical and research program for adult ADHD at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, in Boston. For the study, 60 adults with ADHD took 75 or 150 milligrams of solriamfetol or a placebo for six weeks. They were interviewed about ADHD symptoms throughout the study and filled out self-reports. By the end of the study, more folks taking solriamfetol showed improvements in ADHD symptoms than those who took the placebo. The drug’s makers, Jazz Pharmaceuticals and Axsome Therapeutics, funded the study. In the United States, as many as 10 million adults have ADHD. They may have difficulty paying attention, impulsiveness and trouble with executive functions such as analyzing, organizing and planning — problems that can hinder success at school, work or in personal relationships, according to Children… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

When Health Care Access Is Equal, Race Gap in Prostate Cancer Survival Vanishes

Human ‘Brain Cell Atlas’ Brings New Insight Into Brain Health, Illness

New Clues to How Inflammation in Young Children’s Brains Might Spur Autism

Treatment for Common Rotator Cuff Ailment May Be Useless

Women With Acne Bear Another Burden: Stigma

Medical Groups Issue Consensus Definition of Brain Death

Some Antidepressants Take Weeks to Kick In, and Scientists May Now Know Why

Climate Change Will Harm Children’s Mental Health: Report

Renters May Age Faster Than Homeowners, Study Finds

Narcolepsy Drug Might Be New Treatment Option for ADHD