A new study published in Arthritis Care & Research has identified 10 readily available clinical factors that may predict which patients will persistently use high doses of opioids in the year following knee replacement surgery. In the study of 142,089 Medicare patients with osteoarthritis who underwent total knee replacement surgery and had no history of…
How do the normal pains of everyday life, such as headaches and backaches, influence our ability to think? Recent studies suggest that healthy individuals in pain also show deficits in working memory, or the cognitive process of holding and manipulating information over short periods of time. Prior research suggests that pain-related impairments in working memory…
Previous studies have linked sleep deprivation and frailty with depression. A new study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society that examined their combined effect suggests that short sleep intensifies the impacts of frailty on depressive symptoms. Among 5,026 community-dwelling older adults in China, participants who were frail at the start of the…
The UC Davis MIND Institute and the National Fragile X Foundation are working to encourage and accelerate research about the genetic condition with a new registry. The International Fragile X Premutation Registry is welcoming participants worldwide who are interested in taking part in research studies. “The registry was created to facilitate and encourage fragile X…
During the lockdown in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain, pregnant women had higher symptoms of depression and anxiety. The finding comes from a study published in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica, which also revealed that women with higher body mass index and lower social support were most affected. A total of…
One of the most important ways to stop the spread of COVID-19 is for people who have tested positive, or have symptoms, to isolate themselves from the other people they live with. But a new University of Michigan poll suggests that nearly one in five older adults don’t have the ability to do this –…
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Muscle wasting, or the loss of muscle tissue, is a common problem for people with cancer, but the precise mechanisms have long eluded doctors and scientists. Now, a new study led by Penn State researchers gives new clues to how muscle wasting happens on a cellular level. Using a mouse model…
When most people hear “food contamination,” they think of bacteria present on unwashed fruits or vegetables, or undercooked meat. However, there are other ways for harmful contaminants to be present in food products. Angelia Seyfferth, a member of the Soil Science Society of America, investigates food contamination coming from the soil where the plants grow.…
Like weeds sprouting from cracks in the pavement, cancer often forms in sites of tissue damage. That damage could be an infection, a physical wound, or some type of inflammation. Common examples include stomach cancer caused by H. pylori infection, Barrett’s esophagus caused by acid reflux, and even smoking-induced lung cancer. Exactly how tissue damage…
Dogs have been faithful human companions ever since their domestication thousands of years ago. With various improvements in veterinary medicine in the past decades, their life expectancy has increased. However, an unfortunate side effect of this longevity, much like in humans, has been an increase in the occurrence of chronic and degenerative conditions. In humans,…