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Gene therapy may restore vision to children and adults robbed of their sight by a rare inherited condition called Leber congenital amaurosis, researchers report. The illness is caused by mutations in the GUCY2D gene, which is critical to producing proteins that enable vision. People with this form of Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA1) typically lose their vision in early childhood. Just under 100,000 people are thought to be affected worldwide. However, a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say that a new gene therapy injected under the retinas of children and adults with LCA1 improved vision by 100 to 10,000 times. “Even though we previously predicted a large vision improvement potential in LCA1, we did not know how receptive patients’ [eye] photoreceptors would be to treatment after decades of blindness,” noted study co-lead author Artur Cideciyan, a research professor of ophthalmology at the university. “It is very satisfying to see a successful multi-center trial that shows gene therapy can be dramatically efficacious.” The findings were published Sept. 5 in The Lancet journal. A total of 15 LCA1 patients — 12 adults and three children — participated in the new trial. All had vision that was equal to or below 20/80, meaning that objects a normally sighted person could see at 80 feet could only be clear at 20 feet away for a person with… read on > read on >

Just 5.9% of American middle and high school students now vape, a big drop from the 7.7% who did so a year ago, new government data shows. Put another way, about 1.6 million youth now say they used e-cigarettes at least once over the past month, compared to 2.1 million in 2023. Among those who say they vape, 23.6% said they do it on a daily basis. It was high school kids who drove the change, according to the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), with middle schoolers still vaping at rates roughly similar to a year ago. Still, any reduction in vaping is welcome, said Brian King, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products. “The continued decline in e-cigarette use among our nation’s youth is a monumental public health win,” King said in an agency news release. Yolanda Richardson, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, agreed that the new numbers are encouraging, but warned that the vaping and tobacco industry isn’t through with the nation’s kids yet. “Youth e-cigarette use has fallen sharply, sparing many young people from the severe nicotine addiction and other health consequences that can result from e-cigarette use,” she said in a statement. “Despite this progress, youth e-cigarette use remains a serious public health problem in the United States, and the industry remains relentless in… read on > read on >

The maker of the ADHD drug Vyvanse has been given approval by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to make more of the medication as a shortage of the critical drugs continues. Following a request from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in July, the DEA said Thursday that Takeda Pharmaceuticals may now increase its production limit by 24%. “These adjustments are necessary to ensure that the United States has an adequate and uninterrupted supply of lisdexamfetamine [Vyvanse] to meet legitimate patient needs both domestically and globally,” the DEA said in a notice it posted on the approval. ADHD drugs have been in short supply for years. The FDA first warned of a shortage of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries’ Adderall medication in October 2022, as the company was plagued by manufacturing delays. That prompted a spike in demand and subsequent shortage of Takeda’s Vyvanse. Why was the DEA’s approval to boost production needed? Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine) is classified by the DEA as a schedule II controlled substance, which is applied to drugs considered to have a high likelihood of being abused, so additional prescribing safeguards are put in place. The production limit for lisdexamfetamine was increased by 13, 478 pounds (6,236 kilograms), which includes 3,434 pounds (1,558 kg) to address domestic demand and 10,313 pounds (4,678 kg) for foreign demand for finished dosage medications, according to the DEA. After Takeda lost exclusivity… read on > read on >

The stereotype of the slacker stoner might not be too far off the mark, a new study shows. People who use weed are prone to workplace absenteeism — and the more problematic the cannabis use, the more likely they are to skip work, results showed. “These findings underscore the importance of developing and implementing strategies to monitor, screen and intervene with individuals at risk for problematic cannabis use,” concluded the research team led by Dr. Kevin Yang, a psychiatric resident with the University of California, San Diego. “To address these issues, workplace prevention programs focusing on education, screening and access to treatment are imperative,” the team said in the paper, which was published recently in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. For the study, researchers analyzed data on nearly 46,500 people gathered in 2021 and 2022 as part of the National Survey on Drug Use. Nearly 16% of full-time employed adults in the survey said they’d used weed in the past month, and almost 7% appeared to have cannabis use disorder, researchers found. People were more likely to skip work if they’d used weed in the past moth, results showed. Those who used the drug once or twice were 57% more likely to skip work than non-users, while those who used 20 to 30 days were 83% more likely to shrug off their work responsibilities,… read on > read on >

Thinking about quitting smoking? There are three top ways to help you stop, a new review finds. According to the study, folks wanting to quit should turn to: Varenicline, a prescription nicotine-blocking drug sold under the brand names Chantix and Champix Cytisine, a plant-based compound sold as an over-the-counter supplement in Canada and Europe Nicotine e-cigarettes “Quitting smoking is difficult, and some people find it harder to quit than others, but tobacco is uniquely deadly among legal consumer products, so it’s important to seek help quitting,” said lead investigator Jonathan Livingstone-Banks, a lecturer and researcher in evidence-based health care with the University of Oxford in the U.K. “There’s a range of effective forms of support for smoking cessation, and cytisine, varenicline and e-cigarettes are all evidence-based ways to greatly increase people’s chances of successfully quitting smoking,” Livingstone-Banks added. These strategies work best when combined with counseling or other behavioral support, researchers said. “For behavioral support, evidence is strongest for counseling and for programs that reward people for stopping smoking,” said senior researcher Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, an assistant professor of health policy and management with the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences. Bupropion and nicotine replacement therapy are also effective, especially if nicotine patches are combined with fast-acting forms like gum, researchers said. The new study was published Sept. 4 in the… read on > read on >

Ketamine is becoming a popular depression drug, but doctors aren’t keeping in mind the danger it can pose to a pregnancy, a new study warns. Ketamine can be very harmful to a developing fetus and should not be used during pregnancy, researchers said. But only 20% of ketamine clinics require a pregnancy test at least once prior to or during treatment, according to results published recently in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Further, only 26% of clinics discuss the potential need for contraception with ketamine patients, and fewer than 15% specifically recommend or require contraception use during ketamine treatment, researchers found. That is concerning because more than 80% of clinics prescribe long-term maintenance ketamine, with nearly 70% saying patients receive care for more than six months. “These data suggest that a large population of patients could be pregnant, or could become pregnant, while receiving ketamine treatment,” said lead researcher Dr. Rachel Pacilio, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan. “Many patients do not know that they’re pregnant in the first weeks, and animal studies of ketamine are very concerning for potential harm to the fetus during this time,” Pacilio added in a university news release. Ketamine is administered to people with depression as an IV drip or through a nasal spray. It works differently from standard antidepressants, according to the Mayo Clinic,… read on > read on >

In news that should reassure folks glued to their cellphones all day, a new international review finds no link between cellphone use and brain cancer. Commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO), the review included 11 experts from 10 countries who sifted through decades of research — 5,000 studies published between 1994 and 2022 to be exact. The final analysis was just published in the journal Environmental International. What exactly were they looking for? They were trying to determine whether greater exposure to radio frequencies commonly used by wireless electronics, including cellphones, might up the chances of a brain cancer diagnosis. What did they find? In the 63 studies they honed in on, the risk of brain cancer did not increase, even with prolonged cellphone use (defined as 10 years or more), among those who spent a lot of time on their cellphones, or for people who made a lot of calls. They also saw no increased risks of leukemia or brain cancer in children exposed to radio or TV transmitters or cellphone towers. “These results are very reassuring,” lead study author Ken Karipidis told reporters, according to the Washington Post. While cellphone use has “skyrocketed, there has been no rise in the incidence of brain cancers,” he noted. Concerns about a potential link first emerged in 2011 when the International Agency for Research on Cancer,… read on > read on >

People who can cope with challenges as they grow older are more likely to live longer, a new study shows. Seniors with higher levels of mental resilience are 53% less likely to die within the next 10 years than those with the lowest levels, researchers found. Even with chronic health problems or an unhealthy lifestyle, people with high mental resilience remained 46% and 38% less likely to die within 10 years than those with the least fortitude. “Resilience is often discussed in terms of protective factors, allowing adults in normal environments to maintain relative stability even in the face of highly disruptive events,” wrote the research team led by Dr. Yiqiang Zhan, an associate professor of epidemiology with the Sun Yat-Sen University School of Public Health in China. “This study is unique in establishing a statistically significant association between psychological resilience and all-cause mortality in the older and retired population, even after accounting for confounding factors,” the researchers concluded in a university news release. Good coping skills can help offset long-term chronic illnesses or disabilities in older age, they added. However, it hasn’t been clear whether the ability to cope and adapt is associated with slower aging or a lower risk of death, researchers said. To examine this, they analyzed data from more than 10,500 participants in a U.S. health and retirement study involving people 50… read on > read on >

An experimental three-in-one blood pressure pill works better than layering on meds one at a time, a new clinical trial shows. After a month on the combo pill, 81% of patients had their blood pressure under control compared with 55% of patients receiving standard care, researchers report. “The triple pill still produced clinically meaningful reductions in blood pressure compared to standard care, even when standard care closely followed current guidelines and involved more clinic visits,” said lead investigator Dr. Dike Ojji, head of the Cardiovascular Research Unit at the University of Abuja in Nigeria. “In low-income countries, fewer than one in four treated people achieve blood pressure control, and in high-income settings it is only between 50% and 70%, so to see rates of over 80% in just one month is impressive,” Ojji added. The GMRx2 pill, which was developed by the pharmaceutical company George Medicines, contains the blood pressure meds telmisartan, amlodipine and indapamide. It’s taken once daily. The company is part of the George Institute for Global Health. Researchers compared people taking the combo pill to those receiving standard treatment for high blood pressure, which involves starting off with one drug and then adding on others. Systolic blood pressure was 31 points lower in the combo pill group after six months of treatment, compared to 26 points lower with standard care, results showed.… read on > read on >

Your cellphone might be harming your heart, a new study warns. People who regularly use a cellphone have a higher risk of heart disease, researchers found in a large-scale study. And the more time someone spends on their phone, the greater their risk for heart problems, researchers report. Risk of heart disease was about 21% higher in people who use their phone six hours or more a week, compared with 15% higher for those on the phone four to six hours and 13% for one to three hours, results show. “We found that compared with non-regular mobile phone users, regular mobile phone users had a significantly higher risk of incident cardiovascular diseases,” said researcher Dr. Ziliang Ye, with Southern Medical University in China. For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 444,000 participants in the long-term UK Biobank research project. The participants all reported the frequency of their cellphone use. Researchers defined regular mobile phone use as at least one call per week. The research team tracked the participants for about 12 years, looking to see if they’d been diagnosed with stroke, heart disease, heart rhythm problems or heart failure. It turned out that regular phone users did have a higher risk of heart problems, compared to non-users, and that more cellphone use increased that risk. Cellphone use can impact a person’s sleep patterns… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Gene Therapy Reverses a Rare Cause of Vision Loss

U.S. Youth Vaping Drops to Lowest Level in a Decade

Amid Shortages, U.S. Allows Expanded Production of ADHD Drug Vyvanse

Marijuana Use Raises Workers’ Absenteeism Rate: Study

The 3 Best Ways to Stop Smoking, Rated by Science

Ketamine Can Fight Depression, But Pregnant Women Face Risks

No Link Between Cellphone Use, Brain Cancer, Major Report Finds

Folks Who Cope, Adapt Do Well in Old Age: Study

3-in-1 Blood Pressure Pill Could Be Treatment Advance

Could Your Cellphone Be Harming Your Heart?