The brain is a complex organ, and a new study — believed to be the largest ever on the brain’s genetics — identifies more than 4,000 genetic variants linked to brain structure. The research, involving some 36,000 brain scans, was led by a team at the University of Cambridge in England. Brains are quite varied in terms of overall volume, how the brain is folded and how thick the folds are, according to the researchers. The new work shows that how the brain develops is partly genetic, said study co-author Dr. Varun Warrier, who is with the university’s Autism Research Center. “Our findings can be used to understand how changes in the shape and size of the brain can lead to neurological and psychiatric conditions, potentially leading to better treatment and support for those who need it,” Warrier said in a university news release. For the study, researchers accessed MRI scans from more than 32,000 adults from the UK Biobank cohort and over 4,000 children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study in the United States. The investigators measured multiple properties of the outermost layer of the brain, called the cortex. This included measuring the area and volume of the cortex and how it is folded. “One question that has interested us for a while is if the same genes that are linked to…  read on >  read on >

Teens’ desire to start smoking, and later to keep smoking, may be linked to differences in gray matter in their brains, a new study reveals. Researchers found that reduced gray matter in the left frontal lobe was found in kids who started smoking by age 14. This area is involved in decision-making and rule-breaking. Once they started smoking, they also had reduced gray matter in the right frontal lobe, a region associated with seeking pleasure. “Smoking is perhaps the most common addictive behavior in the world, and a leading cause of adult mortality,” said co-senior author Trevor Robbins, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the U.K.’s Cambridge University. “The initiation of a smoking habit is most likely to occur during adolescence. Any way of detecting an increased chance of this, so we can target interventions, could help save millions of lives.” Gray matter is brain tissue that processes information and contains all of the brain’s neurons. Growth of gray matter peaks before adolescence. The evidence that these teens had low gray matter volume in the left side of the prefrontal cortex may be an “inheritable biomarker” for nicotine addiction, the study authors suggested. The loss of gray matter in the right prefrontal cortex appeared to speed up only after someone started smoking. “In our study, reduced gray matter in the left prefrontal cortex…  read on >  read on >

Sometimes patients with pancreatic cancer are prescribed the benzodiazepine lorazepam (Ativan) for anxiety, but that may be harming their health. A new study found this treatment was linked to worse outcomes, with shorter survival times and faster disease progression. Alternatively, those who took alprazolam (Xanax) had a significantly longer progression-free survival than patients who did not. “When we study response to therapy, we think of treatments like chemotherapy or immunotherapy, but patients are also given a lot of medicines for anxiety and pain,” explained senior study author Michael Feigin, an associate professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, in New York. “We wanted to understand the impact of some of these palliative care drugs on the tumor.” Benzodiazepines relieve anxiety, insomnia and seizures by suppressing the central nervous system. Cancer patients are often prescribed these drugs to help deal with issues stemming from their disease or treatment. To study the impact of that, the researchers first evaluated how many patients take benzodiazepines during cancer treatment. Among patients treated at Roswell Park for prostate, pancreatic, ovarian, kidney, head and neck, endometrial, colon, breast or brain cancer, as well as melanoma, nearly 31% received benzodiazepines. About 41% of patients with pancreatic cancer received the drugs, the highest rate seen in the study. After adjusting for other factors, benzodiazepine use was associated with a…  read on >  read on >

Death rates skyrocket during extreme weather events among the most vulnerable Americans, especially those from minority groups. A study looking at hurricanes over more than three decades showed that their impacts varied and were driven by differences in social, economic and demographic factors such as race. “Really, we wanted to understand what the comparative impact was over time and space in various areas of the United States,” said first author Robbie Parks, assistant professor of environmental health services at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. Parks said there was no consistent way to count these hurricane deaths throughout the United States. So researchers designed a model enabling them to estimate deaths by storm, by county and by state. For the study, the researchers looked at excess-death data for 1988 through 2019, and found that 94% of hurricane-related deaths happened in socially vulnerable counties. Excess deaths represent the difference between the number of deaths that occur in the storm’s immediate aftermath versus the usual number of deaths. Orleans Parish, La., had the single largest number of excess deaths, at 719, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. That was followed by Harris County, Texas, at 309, after Hurricane Rita in 2005. Other counties with the high numbers of excess deaths in the wake of storms included Broward County, Fla., after Hurricane Matthew in…  read on >  read on >

Research into a possible link between childhood health problems and natural gas wells in western Pennsylvania is wrapping up with some answers. Children who lived near these wells were more likely to develop rare lymphoma, the research found. In addition, residents of all ages near the wells had increased risk of severe asthma reactions, the Associated Press reported. The AP reported that researchers said their look at preterm births and birth weights among families living near gas wells yielded mixed results similar to those in other studies. There is a possibility that gas production might reduce birth weights by less than an ounce on average. Raina Rippel, former director of the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, called the findings the “tip of the toxic iceberg.” “We are only just beginning to understand what is out there,” she told the AP, warning that there is “a lot more cancer waiting in the wings.” The researchers found that children who lived within 1 mile of a well had five to seven times the risk for lymphoma compared to children who lived at least 5 miles from a well. That equates to 60 to 84 children per million with lymphoma for kids living near wells, compared to 12 per million for those living farther away, the AP reported. The association with severe asthma was found for times when…  read on >  read on >

America’s emergency rooms are being flooded by children suffering from psychiatric emergencies like anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts or attempts, a new joint report from three leading medical associations warns. This surge in pediatric mental health emergencies has overwhelmed ERs in the United States, says the joint paper from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and Emergency Nurses Association (ENA). Unfortunately, the kids coming to the ER are less likely to receive the ongoing mental health care they truly need, said lead author Dr. Mohsen Saidinejad, director of pediatric emergency medicine at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. “The ER has become a de facto referral center for all of these problems, and there’s too many of them for the emergency department to manage,” said Saidinejad, a member of the AAP and ACEP committees on pediatric emergency medicine. “That is not who we are as ER physicians. We are not mental health professionals. We cannot provide definitive care. “We can screen, we can identify those at harm risk, but that’s about it, so the ER is really not the most appropriate place to manage these cases,” Saidinejad said. “And I think we are becoming that because there isn’t any other place for these kids to be sent.” The joint policy statement and technical report were published Aug. 16 in…  read on >  read on >

What researchers call ‘social factors’ are largely responsible for Black Americans having a greater risk of death from heart disease than whites, according to a new study. Among the social factors that contribute to this racial disparity are unemployment, low income, lack of regular access to health care and lack of a partner, Tulane University researchers said. “For so many years we have focused on smoking, diet, physical activity, obesity, [high blood pressure], diabetes and high cholesterol — and we know those are important” for preventing heart disease, said lead author Dr. Jiang He, chair in epidemiology at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans. He added he was surprised that the Black-white difference in heart-disease death rates owes mainly to social factors. Black Americans are 54% more likely to die of heart disease than white Americans, the study found. This is true even with a substantial overall reduction in heart disease deaths nationwide. The study used health data from more than 50,000 U.S. adults. The researchers examined links between heart-related deaths and clinical risk factors like obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure as well as lifestyle factors, including smoking, unhealthy diet, lack of exercise and too little or too much sleep. Researchers also considered social risk factors, such as unemployment, low income, food insecurity, limited education, lack of private…  read on >  read on >

“She’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers,” Taylor Swift laments to her popular crush in the song “You Belong With Me.” The lyrics of longing to fit in at school reflect an old trope re-confirmed by a new study that compared teens in the United States and Lithuania: Kids seen by their peers as less athletic or less attractive have a harder time than their seemingly picture-perfect classmates. “A long time ago, maybe 60 years ago, there was a really famous study done by sociologist James S. Coleman who found that, much to the chagrin of grown-ups, the most popular, the most important students in high schools were the athletic boys and the attractive girls,” said Brett Laursen, a professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University and senior author of the new study. “And over the years there have been some correlations that find that children who are not attractive and children who are not athletic struggle a bit. They still have social difficulties and emotional problems,” he added. The new study examines why being outside the so-called “in crowd” at school can lead to adjustment problems. For the study, 300 girls and 280 boys attending public middle schools in the United States and Lithuania self-reported alcohol misuse three times during an academic year. Athleticism, attractiveness, unpopularity and peer rejection were also assessed through…  read on >  read on >

Men who have a rare cancer of the penis may have a new treatment option, according to researchers who found promise in immunotherapy. This new study focused on cancer that was locally advanced or had spread (metastasized). The investigators found that immune checkpoint inhibitors offered promising benefits for some patients with advanced penile squamous cell carcinoma. “These findings provide encouraging evidence that immune checkpoint inhibitors can be effective in treating a subset of patients with penile squamous cell carcinoma,” said study co-author Dr. Amin Nassar, a member of Yale Cancer Center in New Haven, Conn., and clinical fellow at Yale School of Medicine. “We believe that further translational studies and biomarker-based research are essential to identify patients most likely to benefit from this therapy and improve the outcomes for individuals with penile cancer,” he explained in a Yale news release. For the study, the researchers focused on 92 patients who had this rare cancer between 2015 and 2022. The most common immunotherapy drugs administered were pembrolizumab, nivolumab and cemiplimab. Some patients were treated with a combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab. About 13% of all patients and 35% of men with metastases limited to lymph nodes, responded to the drugs. The average overall survival rate was 9.8 months, according to the report. Twenty-nine percent of patients had adverse reactions to treatment. “The study highlights the importance…  read on >  read on >

While vast quantities of peels from the aloe vera plant are thrown out every year as agricultural waste, this natural ingredient has potential to be a powerful insecticide, new research suggests. “It’s likely that millions of tons of aloe peels are disposed of globally every year,” said principal investigator Debasish Bandyopadhyay, from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “We wanted to find a way to add value and make them useful.” The plant’s rinds can naturally ward off bugs because of several bioactive compounds found in extracts from the peels. The researchers will present their results this week at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society, held online and in San Francisco. Bandyopadhyay noticed when he was visiting a local aloe vera production center, that insects left the aloe leaves alone, even as they attacked the leaves of other plants. He asked the CEO of the company if he could take the rinds back to his lab. While some home gardeners have begun to use aloe gel as an ingredient in natural pesticides, these recipes don’t always include the peels. Currently, aloe peels are typically used to create biomass to improve soil quality at aloe farms. However, this rotting agricultural waste can release methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change. Conversely, recycling the peels to develop a…  read on >  read on >