TOP MEDICAL NEWS 30/JULY/2022

An advanced form of cardiac MRI, developed by academics at UCL in collaboration with the Royal Free Hospital, has for the first-time enabled clinicians to measure the effectiveness of chemotherapy in patients with the life-limiting condition ' of  of stiff heart syndrome.

Researchers say the breakthrough, published in the European Heart Journal, means doctors will now be able to better guide treatment strategies and, by doing so, improve patients' prognoses.

Assessing the condition has been difficult, as while clinicians can detect the presence of amyloid in the heart, there has been no safe test to measure the amount.

Ref:

Ana Martinez-Naharro et. al, 'Cardiac magnetic resonance in light-chain amyloidosis to guide treatment',28 July 2022, DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehac363

2. Discovery of the sophisticated mechanism that bacteria use to resist antibiotics

Researchers have discovered a significant and previously unknown mechanism that many bacteria use to resist antibiotics.

Using a combination of computation and physical observation in the laboratory, the researchers have unraveled a sophisticated process that some commonly occurring bacteria use to save themselves from the rifamycin class of antibiotics, which occur naturally and are also manufactured to treat infectious diseases.

Rifamycins work by binding to RNA polymerase, a protein essential for bacterial life.

Ref:

Gerry Wright et. al, HelR is a helicase-like protein that protects RNA polymerase from rifamycin antibiotics, Molecular Cell, 28-Jul-2022, DOI: 10.1016/j.molcel.2022.06.019

3. Coming wave of opioid overdoses

Over the past 21 years of opioid overdose deaths—from prescription drugs to heroin to synthetic and semisynthetic opioids such as fentanyl—geography has played a role in where opioid-involved overdose deaths have occurred, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.

But the coming wave will not discriminate between rural and urban areas, the study findings suggest. Every type of county—from the most rural to the most urban—is predicted to see dramatic increases in deaths from opioid-involved overdoses, the study's author said.

Ref:

Lori Post et. al, Geographic Trends in Opioid Overdoses in the U.S. From 1999 to 2020, JAMA Network Open, 28-Jul-2022, 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.23631

4. Mindfulness program which boosts pain regulation

Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison's Center for Healthy Minds has isolated the changes in pain-related brain activity that follow mindfulness training — pointing a way toward more targeted and precise pain treatment.

The study, published July 27 in The American Journal of Psychiatry, identified pathways in the brain specific to pain regulation on which activity is altered by the center's eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course.

These changes were not seen in participants who took a similar course without the mindfulness instruction — important new evidence that the brain changes are due to the mindfulness training itself, according to Joseph Wielgosz

Ref:

JOSEPH WIELGOSZ et. al,()American Journal of Psychiatry, 28-Jul-2022