Author: healthadmin

Learning to read written text fundamentally changes the pathways the human brain uses to process spoken language. A recent study shows that adults with formal literacy education recruit special regions on the right side of the brain to identify isolated sounds, a neurological response that is absent in people with limited reading education. This study was recently published in the journal cortex. Spoken language has been a universal human behavior for hundreds of thousands of years. Reading and writing are relatively recent cultural inventions. The brain was not specifically evolved to read, so it must reuse existing visual and linguistic…

People diagnosed with bipolar disorder often experience overlapping symptoms of borderline personality disorder, and new research reveals how deeply ingrained negative beliefs can fuel these symptoms. Shared psychological conflict is strongly associated with feelings of shame, a strong fear of abandonment, and a lack of self-control. The results were published in the Journal of Affective Disorders. Bipolar disorder is a mental illness characterized by extreme mood swings. Patients oscillate between high-energy manic or hypomanic states and deep depression. In addition to these mood changes, many patients experience unstable self-identity, troubled interpersonal relationships, and impulsive behavior. These additional challenges are hallmarks…

Chicago attracts thousands of people from the cancer world each year.Adam Feuerstein/STAT Adam Feuerstein is a senior writer and biotechnology columnist, reporting on the intersection of drug development, business, Wall Street, and biotechnology. He is co-host of the weekly biotech podcast The Readout Loud and author of the newsletter Adam’s Biotech Scorecard. Signal’s Adam can be reached at stataf.54.Matthew Harper discusses medical innovation, both its promise and its perils.Angus reports on basic research, clinical science and drug development that have the potential to change survival and quality of life for patients, as well as developments that impact the cancer community.…

Pesticides are widely used in agriculture, parks, and gardens to control insects, fungi, and weeds. According to the organization Beyond Pesticides, these chemicals often come with health concerns, many of which are linked to various forms of cancer and are still poorly understood.Not all pesticides are considered carcinogens, and some chemicals have insufficient research to determine whether they are safe. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), people are exposed to pesticides through water and food, but exposure levels are generally considered to be low, according to a report by the European Food Safety Authority.2026 paper American Association for Cancer…

Get the latest news in health technology, digital health and health AI with this weekly overview. News for the week from May 25th to May 29th. Tanner Health, Worki Partner Deploys AI Workforce Solutions Health workforce infrastructure company Worki on Thursday announced a partnership with Tanner Health to deploy its Career Amplifier solution, which provides AI-powered career guidance to frontline workers. Worki’s Career Amplifier uses AI-enabled intake to draft session preparation materials and generate follow-up plans that are reviewed and approved by counselors. According to Worki, the tool is also designed to “support the evolution of the workforce as AI…

JMIR Publications today released expert analysis of news and perspectives on the expansion of consumer wearable platforms into the clinical healthcare space. “The New Healthcare Gatekeeper: Introducing Wearables,” written by MedTech expert Blythe Karow, MBA, explains what it means for wearable technology companies to lead the initial conversations about patient health and the potential impact on patient trust, policy, and regulation. own the first conversation For decades, primary care physicians have served as the gateway to health care, organizing referrals, testing, and treatment, Karow writes. Currently, consumer wearable platforms are accumulating continuous physiological data such as sleep patterns, heart rate…

UBC researchers found that B.C.’s decision to provide universal, no-cost prescription contraceptives significantly reduced patient payments, with people in their 20s benefitting the most financially. Affordable contraceptives lead to higher rates of unintended pregnancies, with significant implications for health, education, and economic equality. Published in JAMA Health ForumThis study is the first to quantify the impact on costs for patients after British Columbia introduces free prescription contraceptives in April 2023. The highest payers benefit the most. Before this policy was introduced, the average monthly price for the pill was about $25, but upfront costs for IUDs ranged from $75 to…

Let’s think of the brain as a house. Homes are isolated from the environment and rely on a complex network of pipes, drains, and treatment systems that interact with the outside world to keep the home’s interior functioning. However, when this infrastructure breaks down, trash accumulates and the resulting damage can be difficult to recover from. Similarly, the brain is largely isolated from the rest of the body, hermetically sealed by barriers that carefully control what goes in and out. And, as one of the body’s most active organs, it constantly produces waste products as a byproduct of its work.…

New research highlights critical gaps. Most clinical research studies that use imaging techniques such as amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) scans do not take into account the radiation doses that participants have already received from previous medical procedures. As brain imaging techniques become more widely used in medical research, especially following the recent approval of new Alzheimer’s disease treatments by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, questions have arisen about how much radiation study participants accumulate over their lifetime medical scans. Although radiation exposure from PET imaging is generally considered acceptable when used for direct patient care, the risks are…

Using patient-derived heart tissue and stem cell-based models, a team of translational researchers demonstrated that targeting the genetic causes of the disease ameliorated cellular abnormalities and identified the biological pathways involved. The results of this study were published in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, part of the Nature portfolio. Common genetic causes of heart failure in the Netherlands PLN R14del is a pathogenic variant that originated in the Netherlands centuries ago in Friesland and is particularly common in the northern Netherlands. Although rare in the general population, it is one of the most common genetic causes of inherited cardiomyopathy in…