Novel cutpoints for diagnosing cardiac hypertrophy in adolescents and young adults

The three-decade-old international cutpoint for diagnosing children and adolescents with an enlarged heart misclassifies normal heart size as cardiac damage in adolescents, a paper published in the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology concludes. The study was conducted in collaboration between the University of Bristol in the U.K. and the University of Eastern Finland.

Early research finds hope in stem cell therapy for perianal fistulas in patients with Crohn’s disease

A dissolvable plug delivered stem cell therapy with few side effects in patients with single tract perianal fistulas, Mayo Clinic researchers discovered. Perianal fistulas are painful tunnels between the intestine and the skin that often do not go away with standard medical or surgical care. People with Crohn’s disease or other inflammatory bowel conditions are most at risk for this condition.

AI improving digestive cancer diagnosis, but data-sharing obstacles remain

Artificial intelligence is helping to deliver earlier and better diagnoses of digestive cancers, but many challenges remain to widespread clinical application, not least limited sharing of medical imaging data between hospitals, and lack of standardization of protocols for medical imaging for AI, a group of researchers has concluded after a comprehensive survey of recent applications of the technology to these most deadly of cancers.

‘You throw up, then you cough, then you feel better or die’: Children’s drawings during COVID

Detailed images of illness, death and canceled activities; these were some of the common themes of children’s drawings during the COVID-19 pandemic. A new study from Uppsala University, in which researchers studied 91 drawings made by children aged between four and six, shows that the pandemic affected the children significantly and that they had extensive knowledge about the disease.