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While the hot, dry summer may have offered a break to people with some environmental allergies, that reprieve could be over. Ragweed and mold are in the air this fall. “This summer was good news for people who are sensitive to mold and pollen as there were little of those allergens in the air, but now that we’re seeing more rain coming in after this drought, we’re experiencing a big ragweed and mold bloom in Houston,” said Dr. David Corry, a professor in the section of immunology, allergy and rheumatology at Baylor College of Medicine. It’s not always easy to distinguish fall allergies from seasonal viruses, Corry noted. Common allergy symptoms include sneezing, a runny nose, and itchy or watery eyes. A sore throat and malaise are more typical of a virus, like the flu or a cold. While the body may have an extreme reaction to sudden exposure to large amounts of pollen or mold, including aches and pains, this is temporary, Corry said. Tests for flu and cold can help identify what’s going on. Fall activities that may stir up allergies include hayrides at pumpkin patches, because the bales are made from grasses that many people are allergic to. Hayriders should also watch for signs of mold, such as black streaks or foul, damp odors. “Mold spores can take hold in your upper… read on > read on >

The ability to detect skin cancer using artificial intelligence (AI) software has rapidly improved. New research presented Wednesday at a medical conference in Berlin shows that this AI technology now has a 100% detection rate for melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer. In this study, researchers assessed more than 22,000 patients with suspected skin cancers over 2-1/2 years. Besides detecting all 59 cases of melanoma, the new software was 99.5% accurate in detecting all skin cancers, missing 1 of 190. It was 92.5% effective at identifying pre-cancerous lesions. “This study has demonstrated how AI is rapidly improving and learning, with the high accuracy directly attributable to improvements in AI training techniques and the quality of data used to train the AI,” lead author Dr. Kashini Andrew, specialist registrar at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust in the United Kingdom, said in a news release from the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology. “The latest version of the software has saved over 1,000 face-to-face consultations in the secondary care setting between April 2022 and January 2023, freeing up more time for patients that need urgent attention,” Andrew added. This is the third version of this AI software. The first was tested in 2021, detecting nearly 86% of melanomas, 84% of all skin cancers and 54% of pre-cancerous lesions at that time. Still, the researchers… read on > read on >

New research uncovers troubling trends for lung cancer in young and middle-aged women. Cancer incidence in young women is higher than it is in men, a continuing trend, and now that extends to women over age 50, reversing historical patterns. “These findings are very concerning,” said study lead author Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, senior vice president of surveillance and health equity science at the American Cancer Society. “We don’t know why lung cancer incidence rates among younger and middle-aged individuals are now higher in women than men, reversing the historical pattern,” Jemal noted in a cancer society news release. “Cigarette smoking prevalence, the major risk factor for lung cancer in the United States, is not higher in younger women than younger men, as are other established risk factors such as occupational exposures.” For the study, the researchers analyzed population-based data on lung and bronchus cancers diagnosed from 2000 to 2019 from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program. This program covers nearly 50% of the U.S. population. The investigators found declines in lung cancer incidence rates between 2000-2004 and 2015-2019 were greater in men than women, leading to higher incidence in women aged 35 to 54. In people aged 50 to 54, the rate per 100,000 person-years decreased by 44% in men compared to 20% in women. (Person years is a measurement… read on > read on >

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 >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Ragweed, Mold & More: Get Ready for Fall Allergies

Latest AI Has 100% Success Rate in Spotting Melanomas

When Lung Cancer Strikes the Young, Women Face Higher Risks Than Men

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