Medical Bulletin 10/ April/ 2025 - Video

Here are the top medical news for the day:

Ban on Smoking in Public Housing Reduced Cardiovascular Hospitalizations: Study

A new study in Nicotine & Tobacco Research found that the 2018 U.S. ban on smoking in public housing led to a decrease in hospitalizations for cardiovascular problems.

Researchers here examined the impact of the smoke-free policy on hospitalization outcomes for heart attacks and strokes among adults over 50 by comparing hospitalization trends among New York City public housing residents to a matched-comparison population in New York City. The study included only adults aged over 50 because heart disease risk increases substantially as adults enter their 50s.

The investigation found modest declines in heart attacks incidence rates (from 1.7% of residents to 1.1%). It also found small differential declines in strokes (from 1.9% to 1.3%). Hospitalization rates for both heart attacks and strokes in older public housing occupants trended downwards from before to 54 months after the smoking ban.

“Housing remains a focal setting for interventions aimed to reduce adverse health events that may be associated with exposure to secondhand smoke,” said the paper’s lead author, Elle Anastasiou Pesante. “These results are promising, and going forward, we are eager to understand longer term impacts of smoke free policies on cardiovascular and other chronic conditions, particularly among older adults who reside in public housing settings.”

Reference: Elle Anastasiou, Lorna E Thorpe, Katarzyna Wyka, Brian Elbel, Donna Shelley, Sue Kaplan, Jonathan Burke, Byoungjun Kim, Jonathan Newman, Andrea R Titus, Evaluation of Federally Mandated Smoke-Free Housing Policy and Health Outcomes Among Adults Over the Age of 50 in Low-Income, Public Housing in New York City, 2015–2022, Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 2025;, ntaf046

Study Highlights Role of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Lowering Chronic Back Pain

A new study has found that eight weeks of either mindfulness or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) training led to meaningful improvements among adults with chronic low back pain that’s currently treated with opioids and had not responded to prior treatments. These behavioral therapies helped improve physical function and quality of life and reduce pain and opioid dose in a randomized clinical trial. The benefits persisted for up to 12 months. The findings were published today in JAMA Network Open.

The team enrolled 770 adults to participate in a randomized clinical trial conducted in three sites — Madison, Wisconsin; Boston, Massachusetts; and Salt Lake City, Utah. Participants, on average, experienced moderate-to-severe pain, functional limitations, compromised quality of life and numerous prior treatments for their chronic low-back pain and were treated with daily opioid medications for at least three months.

Participants were then assigned to either receive mindfulness-based therapy or CBT, which were conducted in therapist-led, two-hour group sessions for eight weeks. The mindfulness group learned to notice the sensations they experienced, giving them more control over how they related and respond to the pain and other symptoms. The CBT group learned coping skills and strategies to change their negative thought patterns. Participants were instructed to practice on their own for 30 minutes a day, six days a week during the 12-month study and to continue with their routine care. They were not instructed to reduce their opioid dosage. They reported on their pain level, ability to do daily activities, mental and physical health-related quality of life and daily opioid medication use at the start of the study and after three, six, nine and 12 months.

At the end of the study, participants in both groups reported significant and long-lasting benefits including reductions in pain and daily opioid dose. They also reported increased function and health-related quality of life through 12 months. Both mindfulness and CBT tools were shown that they could be effective and used safely over the long-term, the researchers said.

Reference: Zgierska AE, Edwards RR, Barrett B, et al. Mindfulness vs Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Chronic Low Back Pain Treated With Opioids: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(4):e253204. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.3204

UCL Researchers Develop AI Tool to Track Effectiveness of Multiple Sclerosis Treatment

A recent study highlights new artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can help interpret and assess how well treatments are working for patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). The findings are published in nature communications. The tool, called MindGlide, can extract key information from brain images (MRI scans) acquired during the care of MS patients, such as measuring damaged areas of the brain and highlighting subtle changes such as brain shrinkage and plaques.

MindGlide is a deep learning (AI) model, developed by UCL researchers, to assess MRI images of the brain and identify damage and changes caused by MS. In developing MindGlide scientists used an initial dataset of 4,247 brain MRI scans from 2,934 MS patients across 592 MRI scanners. During this process MindGlide trains itself to identify markers of the disease. This new study was carried to validate MindGlide, against three separate databases of 14,952 images from 1,001 patients.

Researchers tested the effectiveness of MindGlide on over 14,000 images from more than 1,000 patients with MS. MindGlide was able to successfully use AI to detect how different treatments affected disease progression in clinical trials and routine care, using images that could not previously be analysed and routine MRI scan images. The process took just five to 10 seconds per image.

MindGlide also performed better than two other AI tools when compared to expert clinical analysis. The results from the study show that it is possible to use MindGlide to accurately identify and measure important brain tissues and lesions even with limited MRI data and single types of scans that aren’t usually used for this purpose.

As well as performing better at detecting changes in the brain’s outer layer, MindGlide also performed well in deeper brain areas. The findings were valid and reliable both at one point in time and over longer periods.

Dr Arman Eshaghi (UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and UCL Hawkes Institute), the project’s principal investigator and lead of the MS-PINPOINT group, said: “We were not previously analysing the bulk of clinical brain images due to their lower quality. AI will unlock the untapped potential of the treasure trove of hospital information to provide unprecedented insights into MS progression and how treatments work and affect the brain.”

Reference: Goebl, P., Wingrove, J., Abdelmannan, O. et al. Enabling new insights from old scans by repurposing clinical MRI archives for multiple sclerosis research. Nat Commun 16, 3149 (2025).