Posts in category: Uncategorized

Pickleball isn’t just fun and easy to play—it’s also potentially heart healthy. Playing pickleball helped a small group of adults aged 65 years and older reach their recommend weekly dose of moderate to vigorous physical activity, according to a pilot study by North Carolina State University researchers.

Our genetic code includes more than 15,000 specific sections that can be made into molecules called lincRNAs. Some of these sections can occur in coiled-up sections of our genome called TADs. LincRNAs derived from TADs appear to act as markers indicating the specific kind of tissue they are within.

Symptoms of anxiety and depression in the post-peak pandemic era could be costing Singapore 2.9% of its gross domestic product (GDP)—or nearly S$16 billion—suggests a study conducted by Duke-NUS Medical School and the Institute of Mental Health (IMH).

Japanese food is popular worldwide and has been registered as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. There is a scoring system called the 12-component modified Japanese Diet Index (mJDI12), which focuses on the intake of the Japanese diet pattern. It includes 12 foods and food groups: rice, miso soup, pickles, soy products, green and yellow vegetables, fruits, seafood, mushrooms, seaweed, green tea, coffee, and beef and pork. Scores range from 0 to 12, with higher scores indicating a diet that conforms to the Japanese food pattern.

Research led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center has sought a connection between the respiratory virus RSV in infants and asthma in 5-year-olds. The paper, “Respiratory syncytial virus infection during infancy and asthma during childhood in the U.S. (INSPIRE): a population-based, prospective birth cohort study,” is published in The Lancet. A Commentary by Marie-Noëlle Billard and Louis J Bont has been published in the same journal issue.

A new study by researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and others shows how bringing together coalitions of individuals from government, public health, health care, public education, and other arenas to address a public health issue can result in better policies, systems, and environments for change.

More than 45,000 Americans died by suicide in 2020, a 30% increase over 2000, making it the 12th leading cause of death in the U.S. Studies have shown that the social and environmental factors where people live, like exposure to violence and crime, access to quality health care, food insecurity, job opportunities, and air pollution, are connected to suicide rates.

Contrary to popular belief, firearm deaths in the U.S. are statistically more likely in small towns, not major cities, according to new research. Across the country, gun suicides are more common than gun homicides, and gun suicides are largely responsible for an increase in gun deaths over the past few decades, the study also finds.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have unraveled the processes that give astrocytes, the most abundant glial cell in the brain, their special bushy shape, which is fundamental for brain function. They report in the journal Nature that neuronal activity is necessary and sufficient for astrocytes to develop their complex shape, and interrupting this developmental process results in disrupted brain function.

The first-ever randomized clinical trial linked to registry data from the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) shows that for patients undergoing pancreatoduodenectomy, also known as the Whipple procedure, a change in antibiotics before the procedure reduces the rate of surgical site infections (SSIs). The findings were published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).