Robert Kennedy Jr. should not be confirmed to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, over 75 Nobel laureates urged Monday. In a letter published by the New York Times, the esteemed scientists took issue with Kennedy’s lack of experience and controversial stands. “In addition to his lack of credentials or relevant experience in medicine, science, public health or administration, Mr. Kennedy has been an opponent of many health-protecting and lifesaving vaccines, such as those that prevent measles and polio; a critic of the well-established positive effects of fluoridation of drinking water; a promoter of conspiracy theories about remarkably successful treatments for AIDS and other diseases; and a belligerent critic of respected agencies [especially the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health],” the letter stated. “The leader of DHHS [Department of Health and Human Services] should continue to nurture and improve — not threaten — these important and highly respected institutions and their employees,” the letter added. “In view of his record, placing Mr. Kennedy in charge of DHHS would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences, in both the public and commercial sectors.” While the group of Nobel laureates avoids politics whenever possible, the potential confirmation of Kennedy was a threat they could not ignore, Dr.…  read on >  read on >

Some people develop epilepsy after surviving a stroke, as the injury they’ve sustained causes scarring and disorganized electrical activity in their brains. But one type of blood pressure medication seems to help stroke survivors avoid post-stroke epilepsy (PSE), according to a first-of-its-kind study presented Friday at the annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society in Los Angeles. Patients taking angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) drugs appear to be much less likely to develop PSE than those on other blood pressure medications, results showed. ARB drugs work by decreasing the effects of angiotensin, a protein that causes blood vessels to narrow, researchers explained in background notes. Blocking this protein might decrease inflammation and improve blood flow in the brain, reducing the risk of seizures, researchers theorized. “Our study uniquely focused on how effective different blood pressure medications are at preventing PSE in the real world,” said co-lead researcher Dr. Giacomo Evangelista, a resident in neurology at the Epilepsy Center at G. d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara in Italy. “Understanding which antihypertensive medications help prevent complications such as PSE can lead to better patient outcomes,” Evangelista added in a meeting news release. For the study, researchers recruited 528 patients with high blood pressure who’d suffered a stroke. None of the patients had epilepsy at the time of their stroke. All of the participants had been taking some type of blood…  read on >  read on >

People who have a condition putting them at high risk for a bone marrow cancer may be able to ward off the malignancy with a high-fiber diet, new research shows. The study focuses on patients with what’s known as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS). It’s a bone marrow abnormality that’s often a precursor to multiple myeloma, one of the most common forms of blood cancer. The small study — just 20 MGUS patients — found that a change of diet that boosts fiber intake may slow or prevent the onset of multiple myeloma. That makes sense, the research team said, since prior studies have suggested that poorer, meat-rich diets put folks at higher risk for the cancer. The new findings “support how we as physicians can empower patients, especially those with precancerous conditions, with knowledge on reducing their cancer risk through dietary changes,” said study lead author Dr. Urvi Shah. She’s a myeloma specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Her team presented its findings Saturday in San Diego at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). The new study involved patients with MGUS who were also overweight or obese. As the researchers noted, obesity is also a risk factor hiking the odds that MGUS will progress to full-blown cancer. For 12 weeks, participants switched to a plant-based…  read on >  read on >

Taking even high doses of supplementary vitamin D won’t lower an older person’s odds for type 2 diabetes, new research confirms. Vitamin D supplements may have other benefits, but in otherwise healthy folks with sufficient levels of the nutrient, “our findings do not suggest benefits of long-term moderate- or high-dose vitamin D3 supplementation” in warding off type 2 diabetes, the team of Finnish researchers concluded. They published their findings Dec. 2 in the journal Diabetologia. The new research followed on data from other studies that had suggested that people with especially low levels of vitamin D might face a higher risk for diabetes. That was true for people who were already prediabetic, especially. So could a relatively high dose of vitamin D supplements help lower type 2 diabetes rates among people without prediabetes — those at no special risk for the blood sugar disease? To find out, researchers led by Jirki Vyrtanen, from the University of Eastern Finland, randomly assigned nearly 2,300 people aged 60 or older to receive either placebo pills or 40 or 80 micrograms of vitamin D3 supplements per day, for five years.  At the end of the five years, “105 participants developed type 2 diabetes: 38 in the placebo group, 31 in the group receiving 40 micrograms of vitamin D3 per day, and 36 in the group receiving 80 micrograms of vitamin…  read on >  read on >

Men with heart risk factors tend to lose their brain health more quickly than women with similar heart risks, a new study finds. These men face brain decline as early as their mid-50s, while women are most susceptible from their mid-60s onward, researchers report in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. “These results suggest that mitigating cardiovascular risk is an important therapeutic target in the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease, and indicate that this should be addressed aggressively a decade earlier in males than in females,” concluded the research team led by senior researcher Paul Edison, a professor of neuroscience with the Imperial College London. Heart disease risk factors like type 2 diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and smoking have previously been associated with a higher risk of dementia, researchers said in background notes. However, it’s not been clear when these heart health factors begin to take their toll on brain health, and whether there’s any differences between men and women, researchers noted. For the study, researchers analyzed data on nearly 34,500 participants in the UK Biobank, an ongoing large-scale research project.  Imaging scans helped track changes in the participants’ brains over time, and researchers calculated their heart disease risk using their recorded health data. Results showed that heart risk factors, obesity and high levels of belly fat caused a gradual loss of brain volume…  read on >  read on >

A wearable patch the size of a postage stamp that can monitor blood pressure continuously could soon help people manage their hypertension. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, who developed the wearable ultrasound patch report Nov. 20 in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering that it has worked well in tests with more than 100 patients. Maintaining a normal blood pressure — 120/80 — helps prevent many illnesses, from heart disease and stroke to kidney problems, dementia and vision loss, so many patients with high blood pressure use a cuff-and-meter device to track their levels. “Traditional blood pressure measurements with a cuff, which are limited to providing one-time blood pressure values, can miss critical patterns,” said study co-author Sai Zhou, who recently received his doctorate degree from the University of California, San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering.  “Our wearable patch offers continuous stream of blood pressure waveform data, allowing it to reveal detailed trends in blood pressure fluctuations,” he added in a university news release. The soft, stretchy patch adheres to the skin and is worn on the forearm. An array of tiny transducers inside it send and receive ultrasound waves that track changes in the diameter of blood vessels. These changes are then converted into blood pressure values. Developers said the patch produces results comparable not only to those of a standard blood…  read on >  read on >

In a move guaranteed to alarm many, President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vocal opponent of vaccines and other tenets of mainstream health care, to head the massive U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The department encompasses numerous key agencies, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, Medicaid and Medicare. Trump’s nomination, which came Thursday, shifts the 70-year-old Kennedy from a fringe character railing against many long-accepted medical practices to one of the most powerful people in the federal government, charged with overseeing Americans’ health care and safety. In a statement, Trump, who has already said he’d let Kennedy “go wild on health,” reinforced his would-be appointee’s image as a maverick. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the nomination. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!” It’s been a dramatic arc for Kennedy, whose namesake father was assassinated in 1968 in the midst of a campaign to become the Democratic Presidential nominee that year. Kennedy Jr. was himself a Democrat until he campaigned in this year’s presidential campaign as…  read on >  read on >