It Is A Pity That We Don ’t See More Balanced Views On Clinical Software Errors.
This appeared las week: Medical software blamed for fatal anticoagulant double-dosing error Hospital doctors relying on the Cerner system accidentally prescribed an additional dose of apixaban 11th March 2021 By Antony Scholefield A hospital software system has been blamed for a fatal anticoagulant double-dosing error after it displayed a prescribing icon so small that it could not be seen on a standard computer screen. In 2019, Ian Fraser was admitted to the Sunshine Hospital in Melbourne with an exacerbation of his congestive cardiac failure as well as community-acquired pneumonia. He had a comp...
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - March 17, 2021 Category: Information Technology Authors: Dr David G More MB PhD Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, March 15th 2021
In conclusion, PLG attenuates high calcium/phosphate-induced vascular calcification by upregulating P53/PTEN signaling in VSMCs.
Tsimane and Moseten Hunter-Gatherers Exhibit Minimal Levels of Atrial Fibrillation
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2021/03/tsimane-and-moseten-hunter-gatherers-exhibit-minimal-levels-of-atrial-fibrillation/
Epidemiological data for the Tsimane and Moseten populations in Bolivia shows that they suffer very little cardiovascular disease in later life, despite a presumably greater lifetime burden of infectious disease (and consequent inflammation) than is the case for people ...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 14, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Age-Associated B Cells Contribute to Autoimmunity and Chronic Inflammation
The immune system becomes disordered and dysfunctional with age in numerous different ways. The B cell component accumulates inflammatory and problematic cells that are known as age-associated B cells. Here, researchers show that these errant B cells produce antibodies that provoke autoimmunity. B cell aging is a problem with a solution demonstrated in animal models: just destroy all B cells. Mammals can get by without B cells for at least a short period of time, and the B cell population regenerates quite rapidly following clearance even in later life. The newly replaced B cells do not exhibit the problems of their destro...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 11, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, March 1st 2021
This study may have important implications for preventing cell senescence and aging-induced tendinopathy, as well as for the selection of novel therapeutic targets of chronic tendon diseases.
Our results showed that the treatment of bleomycin, a DNA damaging agent, induced rat patellar TSC (PTSC) cellular senescence. The senescence was characterized by an increase in the senescence-associated β-galactosidase activity, as well as senescence-associated changes in cell morphology. On the other hand, rapamycin could extend lifespan in multiple species, including yeast, fruit flies, and mice, by decelerating DNA damage ...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 28, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Selectively Targeting Atherosclerosis-Related Inflammatory Signaling
Chronic, unresolved inflammation is a feature of aging, and an important contributing cause of many age-related conditions. It is an inappropriate and damaging overactivation of the immune system, provoked by senescent cell signaling and various other forms of cell and tissue damage characteristic of aging. Why not just work to consistently suppress inflammation, then? The answer is that short-term inflammation is very important to health. It is needed in wound healing, destruction of potentially cancerous cells, and to fight off pathogens, and all of that remains true even in patients suffering from chronic inflammation t...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 22, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 15th 2021
This study assessed cancer risk associations for 3 recently developed methylation-based biomarkers of aging: PhenoAge, GrimAge, and predicted telomere length.
We observed relatively strong associations of age-adjusted PhenoAge with risk of colorectal, kidney, lung, mature B-cell, and urothelial cancers. Similar findings were obtained for age-adjusted GrimAge, but the association with lung cancer risk was much larger, after adjustment for smoking status, pack-years, starting age, time since quitting, and other cancer risk factors. Most associations appeared linear, larger than for the first-generation measures, and w...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 14, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
The Gut Macrobiome in Chronic Inflammation and Aging
In recent years, a great deal of attention has been devoted to the role of the gut microbiome in aging, as populations shift to include fewer helpful and more harmful microbes. In particular, the ability of the gut microbiome to influence the state of chronic inflammation in aging may be at least as important as lifestyle choices such as degree of exercise. Expanding this line of thinking, researchers here look at the macrobiome, small parasitic animals that dwell in the gut, and their role in age-related inflammation.
A new review looks at the growing evidence to suggest that losing our 'old friend' helminth para...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 9, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Harvard Health Ad Watch: Can an arthritis drug help you become a morning person?
Perhaps this is obvious, but drug ads are not intended to inform you about the best way to treat a condition you may have. Their primary purpose is to sell a product, as explained in an earlier blog on direct-to-consumer drug ads. And the newest drugs tend to be the most expensive, even though some aren’t much better than older drugs.
So the ads you see for medications are usually not promoting the latest and greatest as much as they are promoting the newest and most expensive. And these ads vary widely in how much accurate, useful information is included and what information is left out. A recent ad for Xeljanz (tofacit...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - February 2, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert H. Shmerling, MD Tags: Arthritis Health Healthy Aging Source Type: blogs
Are early detection and treatment always best?
Throughout my medical career, I’ve heard statements like these:
Early detection offers the best chance of cure.
If you wait for symptoms, you’ve waited too long.
Knowledge is power, and the sooner you have the information, the better.
Over time, I’ve realized they are often untrue. Many health conditions go away on their own. In such cases, early testing may amount to wasted effort, time, and medical cost. Some testing is invasive and has a significant risk of complications. And minor abnormalities may lead to more testing. There’s also the anxiety of waiting for results, or learning you have an abnormality of unce...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - January 28, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert H. Shmerling, MD Tags: Back Pain Heart Health Managing your health care Prevention Screening Tests and procedures Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 21st 2020
In this study, we have found that administration of a specific Sgk1 inhibitor significantly reduces the dysregulated form of tau protein that is a pathological hallmark of AD, restores prefrontal cortical synaptic function, and mitigates memory deficits in an AD model. These results have identified Sgk1 as a potential key target for therapeutic intervention of AD, which may have specific and precise effects."
Targeting histone K4 trimethylation for treatment of cognitive and synaptic deficits in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease
Epigenetic aberration is implicated in aging and neurodegeneration. Using p...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 20, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Circular RNAs as a Potential Basis for Biomarkers of Aging
The presence and function of circular RNAs in cells is comparatively poorly understood. The expression levels of at least some circular RNAs appear to change with age. This suggests that, even without a full understanding of function, it might be possible to use this data as the basis for a biomarker of aging. It is already the case that other biomarkers of aging have been constructed from weighted combinations of age-related changes in the broader transcriptome of RNA expression. These join aging clocks built from epigenetic and proteomic data, all of which exhibit changes that are characteristic of age.
The common...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 16, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 7th 2020
In this study, except for the reduction in body weight, the aging characteristics related to epidermal and muscle tissue in mice were significantly ameliorated in the CR group compared with the control group. Additional studies have indicated that not stem cells themselves but the stem cell microenvironment is the key factor mediating stem cell activation, proliferation and differentiation.
Mitochondrial dysfunction is an important factor leading to age-related muscular atrophy. Considering the dependence of skeletal muscle on ATP, loss of mitochondrial function, which can lead to a decrease in strength and enduranc...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 6, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Towards Control Over the Dynamic Equilibrium of Bone Tissue Maintenance
Bone loses mass and strength with age, leading to the condition called osteoporosis. The extracellular matrix of bone is dynamically remodeled throughout life, built up osteoblast cells and broken down by osteoclast cells. Osteoporosis is the result of a growing imbalance in cell activity and cell creation that favors osteoclasts. There are many contributing causes, and some uncertainty of which of these causes are more or less important. The chronic inflammation that accompanies aging does appear to be important, particularly that connected to the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) of senescent cells.
...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 2, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 30th 2020
We examined specific aspects of metabolism in male PolG+/mut mice at 6 and 12 months of age under three dietary conditions: normal chow (NC) feeding, high-fat feeding (HFD), and 24-hr starvation. We performed mitochondrial proteomics and assessed dynamics and quality control signaling in muscle and liver to determine whether mitochondria respond to mtDNA point mutations by altering morphology and turnover. In the current study, we observed that the accumulation of mtDNA point mutations failed to disrupt metabolic homeostasis and insulin action in male mice, but with aging, metabolic health was likely preserved by counterme...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 29, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A woman in her 40s with acute chest pain
Case written by Neha Ray MD, Brandon Fetterolf MD, and Pendell Meyers MDA woman in her 40s with a history of rheumatoid arthritis, anemia, and thrombocytopenia presented to the ED with acute onset chest pain starting around 5am on the morning of presentation. It woke her from sleep. The chest pain was midsternal, severe, sharp, and constant. On the previous night she had had a mild version of the same pain that she thought was heartburn (esophageal reflux). She reported some radiation to the left arm. She also reports 3 episodes of non-bloody vomiting over the course of the morning. She had a recent admission fo...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - November 29, 2020 Category: Cardiology Authors: Pendell Source Type: blogs
