Medical Bulletin 17/July/2023

Here are the top medical news for the day:

Gender, race, and socioeconomic status influence comorbidity in HIV-positive individuals who smoke.

High rates of smoking among people with HIV are associated with high rates of comorbid health problems – which are associated with characteristics including gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, according to a study in the July issue of The Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (JANAC).

To clarify the types of comorbidities among people with HIV who smoke, as well as the characteristics associated with that group, the researchers analyzed data from an ongoing follow-up study of people with HIV living in the Washington, DC area (the DC Cohort Longitudinal HIV Study). Of nearly 8,600 participants enrolled in the study, 50% were smokers.

Reference: Jessica L. Elf et al, Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care

Intense exercise helps delay Parkinson's disease progression.

Neuroscientists from the Faculty of Medicine of the Catholic University, Rome Campus, and the A. Gemelli IRCCS Polyclinic Foundation found that intensive exercise could slow the course of Parkinson's disease and described the biological mechanisms. The finding could pave the way for new non-drug approaches.

The main effect observed in response to daily sessions of treadmill training is a reduction in the spread of pathological alpha-synuclein aggregates, which in Parkinson's disease leads to the gradual and progressive dysfunction of neurons in specific brain areas (the substantia nigra pars compacta and the striatum – constituting the so-called nigrostriatal pathway), essential to motor control.

Reference: "Intensive exercise ameliorates motor and cognitive symptoms in experimental Parkinson's disease by restoring striatal synaptic plasticity", Science Advances

Antidepressant use history in men increases the likelihood of needing medication after having a child.

New fathers are over 30 times more likely to take antidepressants in the first year after having a child, if they have a recent history of the treatment, finds a new study by UCL researchers.

The research, published in JAMA Network Open, analyzed information from over 500,000 primary care electronic health records from the IQVIA Medical Research Database, from January 2007 to December 2016.

These included 90,736 men who had had a child in the previous year and 453,632 men who did not have a child. The team then examined how many men in each category had received an antidepressant prescription.

Reference: Association of recent fatherhood with antidepressant treatment initiation among men in the United Kingdom,, JAMA Network Open