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Here are the top medical news for the day:
BefA, a microbial protein may be an important clue to the biological basis for Type 1 diabetes
The body needs insulin to regulate blood sugar, but insulin is only made by a select type of cells in the pancreas called beta cells. And there's a narrow window of time during early childhood development when beta cells replicate and expand their population. In people with Type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks beta cells and depletes their population, limiting insulin production.
Almost a decade ago, UO graduate student Jennifer Hampton Hill made a fortuitous find: A protein made by gut bacteria that triggered insulin-producing cells to replicate. The protein was an important clue to the biological basis for Type 1 diabetes, an auto-immune disease in which the pancreas can't make insulin.
Hill has continued researching this protein, called BefA, as a postdoc at the University of Utah.
Reference:
Jennifer Hampton Hill et al,BefA, a microbiota secreted membrane disrupter, disseminates to the pancreas and increases beta-cell mass,Cell Metabolism,DOI:10.1016/j.cmet.2022.09.001
Symptoms, quality of life important to guide treatment for peripheral artery disease
Peripheral artery disease or PAD is the condition of developing narrowed or clogged arteries in the legs. For people who live with the condition, treatment decisions and criteria for success should be led by their symptoms and self-reported quality of life, according to a new AHA scientific statement "Advancing peripheral artery disease quality of care and outcomes through patient-reported health status assessment,"
The statement highlights how managing PAD based on a person's experience of symptoms can lead to more patient-centered care and outcomes, with a focus on high-value care, compared to relying on clinical measures like the speed of blood flow to the legs or artery diameter.
"The person living with peripheral artery disease is the authority on the impact it has on their daily life. Our treatment must be grounded in their lived experiences and go beyond the clinical measures of how well blood flows through the arteries," said Vice Chair and lead author of the statement writing group Kim G. Smolderen, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of medicine and psychiatry and co-director of the Vascular Medicine Outcomes Research (VAMOS) lab at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. "We have spent years developing and validating standardized instruments to capture people's experiences in a reliable and sensitive way. We are now at a point where we can start integrating this information into real-world care, through pilot programs that can develop quality benchmarks for different phenotypes of patients with PAD and the types of treatments they undergo, as seen from their perspective."
Reference:
Kim G. Smolderen et al,Advancing Peripheral Artery Disease Quality of Care and Outcomes Through PatientReported Health Status Assessment: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association,Circulation,10.1161/CIR.0000000000001105
Novel antibiotic cement to treat bone infections developed
This increasing struggle with antibiotic resistance has fused with a similarly increasing aging population, which now requires more orthopaedic procedures than ever. Common procedures such as knee and hip replacements can result in bacterial infection, such as Staphylococcal, which is currently treated with systemic antibiotics.
Each year, 700,000 people die due to antibiotic resistance. A growing global population unfortunately generates a growing resistance to established antibiotic treatments - a threat that has been met with insufficient funding and dwindling inspiration, as commercial incentives for developing new antibiotics have fallen.
A new study by investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, addresses this growing problem in antibiotic development using a novel, interdisciplinary approach to construct a robust, computer-program-generated library of antibiotics and to identify an effective antibiotic for targeted use in a bone cement matrix. This approach could potentially be used to treat bone infections, a common complication after surgical orthopaedic procedures. Their results are published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Reference:
Sengupta, S. and Jang, H. L., et al. "A potent antibiotic-loaded bone-cement implant against Staphylococcal bone infections" Journal DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-022-00950-x.
Two out of five adults smokers use menthol: Study
Menthol produces a cooling effect that makes it easier and more feasible to smoke. Due to this tobacco makers have been adding it to cigarettes for decades. It makes the sensation of smoking less harsh and more enjoyable, thereby encouraging even young people who don't smoke to start smoking regularly and become addicted.
Medical Dialogues had previously reported about a Dutch study that found that the 2020 European ban on menthol cigarettes made it more likely that menthol smokers would quit smoking. This is reflective of the positive public health impact of banning menthol cigarettes.
Menthol use has increased over the past decade among U.S. adults who smoke cigarettes, according to a study released by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and The City University of New York. An FDA ban on menthol would have a widespread public health impact as menthol use is much more common among adult smokers who are younger, from racial/ethnic minoritized groups and with mental health problems.
Reference:
Renee D. Goodwin et al,Two out of five adults who use cigarettes smoke menthol COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
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