Brain scans can provide early warning of who will develop chronic pain following a whiplash injury, a new study finds. Higher levels of “cross talk” between two specific brain regions within one to three days of the injury increases the risk that pain will last long-term, researchers found. The more the hippocampus (the brain’s memory center) talked to the cortex (involved in long-term memory), the more likely a person was to develop chronic pain, results showed. In addition, the higher a person’s anxiety was immediately after a whiplash accident, the more precisely doctors could predict the chronic pain they would feel a year later. These results highlight the role that memory plays in a person’s pain perception, said lead researcher Paulo Branco, an assistant professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “While we commonly think of pain as relating only to an injury, it is the brain that actually makes up the pain experience,” Branco said in a Northwestern news release. “The brain makes the decision about whether a movement should be painful or not, and we think this may rely on previous experiences stored in memory.” For the study, researchers gathered data on more than 200 whiplash patients, of whom 177 had MRI scans performed on their brains within three days of their injury. The data was collected…  read on >  read on >

Add Alzheimer’s disease to the list of conditions that might benefit from the revolutionary diabetes drug Ozempic, a new study says. People with type 2 diabetes taking semaglutide appeared to have a significantly lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s compared to patients taking seven other diabetes drugs, researchers reported Oct. 24 in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia. The results jibe with other studies that have found semaglutide might protect against dementia, said lead researcher Rong Xu, a biomedical informatics professor with Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, in Cleveland. “This new study provides real-world evidence for its impact on Alzheimer’s disease, even though preclinical research has suggested that semaglutide may protect against neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation,” Xu said in a Case Western news release. Semaglutide is a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) drug, and is the active agent in Ozempic and its weight-loss cousin, Wegovy. These medications mimic the GLP-1 hormone, which helps control insulin and blood sugar levels, decreases appetite and slows digestion of food. For the study, researchers analyzed three years of health records for nearly 1 million U.S. patients with type 2 diabetes. They found that patients prescribed semaglutide had a significantly lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease, compared to those taking seven other diabetes meds. However, they warned that more research is needed to confirm this potential benefit. “Our results indicate that further research into semaglutide’s…  read on >  read on >

If you’re in your 40s or 50s and have trouble getting and staying asleep, that’s not a good sign for brain health as you age, new research suggests. “Our study, which used brain scans to determine participants’ brain age, suggests that poor sleep is linked to nearly three years of additional brain aging as early as middle age,” said study lead author Clémence Cavaillès, of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The research was funded by the National Institute on Aging and was published Oct. 23 in the journal Neurology. The UCSF team focused on 589 people who averaged about 40 years of age at the beginning of the study. Everyone filled out questionnaires on their sleep patterns at age 40 and then again at about age 45. Questions included, “Do you usually have trouble falling asleep?” “Do you usually wake up several times at night?” and “Do you usually wake up far too early?” Survey replies led the researchers to draw up 6 poor sleep characteristics: short sleep duration bad sleep quality difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep early morning awakening daytime sleepiness At about age 55, everyone underwent brain scans to gauge how well their brains were aging. After adjusting for potential confounding factors such as age, sex, high blood pressure and diabetes, Cavaillès’ team found that folks with four or more…  read on >  read on >

Light therapy could be a useful treatment for the most common form of age-related macular degeneration, a new study says. The therapy, called photobiomodulation or “red light” therapy, can reduce the risk of vision loss and slow progression of the “dry” form of macular degeneration, researchers reported recently at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, in Chicago. “It’s the first and only noninvasive treatment that appears to be helpful in improving vision and decreasing progression of dry AMD,” said lead investigator Dr. David Boyer, with the Retina-Vitreous Associates Medical Group in Los Angeles. About 8 out of 10 people with macular degeneration have the “dry” form of the disease. They slowly lose central vision as the macula — a small but important area in the center of the retina — becomes thinner and accumulates tiny clumps of protein called drusen. There are effective drugs available for people with “wet” AMD, in which leaking blood vessels damage the macula, Boyer said. But people with dry AMD have few options to protect their eyesight, aside from changes to their diet and lifestyle, he said. Photobiomodulation uses different wavelengths of light to improve function in the cells of the retina, keeping them healthier for longer. It’s a technique already used in eye diseases like diabetic retinopathy, researchers said. For this study, researchers recruited 100 patients…  read on >  read on >

The skin condition eczema appears to be linked to a serious condition that can end in leg amputation, a new study finds. People with eczema are at significantly higher risk of developing peripheral vascular disease, researchers reported recently in the journal Clinical and Experimental Dermatology. Peripheral vascular disease occurs in 11% of patients with eczema, also known as atopic dermatitis, but only 6% of those without the skin disease, researchers found. “This study deepens our understanding of the relationship between atopic dermatitis and cardiovascular diseases,” said senior researcher Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, an assistant professor of dermatology with the Yale School of Medicine.  In peripheral vascular disease, the blood vessels in a person’s legs become narrow. People begin feeling pain in their legs, and wounds develop that won’t heal on pressure points like the heels or ankles. Eventually the limb can turn gangrenous, and amputation is required. For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 260,000 American adults gathered by a National Institutes of Health program. Results show that eczema patients are 23% more likely to develop peripheral vascular disease, even after adjusting for other risk factors, researchers said. It’s not clear why eczema would increase the risk of narrowed arteries, researchers said. Eczema is associated with allergies, and might be caused by the body’s immune system. “The underpinnings of the relationship between peripheral vascular…  read on >  read on >

The repeated fasting required for multiple surgeries in a row can slow a patient’s recovery and increase the risk of death, a new study warns. Surgical patients are asked to not eat after midnight prior to their procedure, to reduce the risk that they’ll throw up during general anesthesia and deep sedation. But folks having multiple surgeries during the same hospital stay are more likely to suffer malnutrition as a result of all this fasting, researchers found. “Our research determined that repeated fasting in hospitalized patients having multiple orthopedic surgeries over days or weeks increases the risk for protein-calorie malnutrition, leading to longer hospital stays, slower recovery and higher health care costs,” said lead researcher Ivie Izekor, a fourth-year medical student at Texas A&M College of Medicine. For the study, researchers analyzed data on nearly 28.5 million patients who had any type of orthopedic surgery in a hospital between 2016 and 2019. Of those patients, more than 1.8 million were diagnosed with malnutrition after admission. Patients diagnosed with malnutrition had gone through more surgeries during their hospital stay — an average of 2.3 surgeries per stay, compared with nearly 1.6 for those who didn’t become malnourished. Malnourished patients were 15% more likely to die, and their risk of death increased with more surgeries, researchers found. Malnourished patients typically died from infection, complications from poor wound…  read on >  read on >