Health news sharing is reflected in distributed reward-related brain activity

alkiviadis.1961 shared this article with you from Inoreader Health news sharing is reflected in distributed reward-related brain activity Via Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience - recent issues Abstract Neuroimaging has identified individ ual brain regions, but not yet whole-brain patterns, that correlate with the population impact of health messaging. We used neuroimaging to measure whole-brain responses to health news articles across two studies. Beyond activity in core reward value-related regions (ventral striatum, ventromedial prefrontal cortex), our approach leveraged whole-brain responses to each article, quantifying expression of a distributed pattern meta-analytically associated with reward valuation. The results indicated that expression of this whole-brain pattern was associated with population-level sharing of these articles beyond previously identified brain regions and self-report variables. Further, the efficacy of the meta-analytic pattern was not reducible to patterns within core reward value-related regions but rather depended on larger-scale patterns. Overall, this work shows that a reward-related pattern of whole-brain activity is related to health information sharing, advancing neuroscience model s of the mechanisms underlying the spread of health information through a population. View on the web Inoreader. Take back control of your news feed. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Evaluating association of vaccine response to low serum zinc and vitamin D levels in children of a birth cohort study in Dhaka.

alkiviadis.1961 shared this article with you from Inoreader Evaluating association of vaccine response to low serum zinc and vitamin D levels in children of a birth cohort study in Dhaka. Via Vaccine CONCLUSION: In the MAL-ED birth cohort, where children were followed for five years, serum zinc level had a positive impact on tetanus vaccine titers. PMID: 33121844 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Vaccine) View on the web Inoreader. Take back control of your news feed. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine primes mucosal immune responses to pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine booster in Papua New Guinean children.

alkiviadis.1961 shared this article with you from Inoreader Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine primes mucosal immune responses to pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine booster in Papua New Guinean children. Via Vaccine CONCLUSIONS: PCV may protect high-risk children against pneumococcal colonization and mucosal disease by inducing mucosal antibody responses and priming for mucosal immune memory that results in mucosal immune responses after booster PPV. Saliva can be a convenient alternative sample to serum to study PCV-induced systemic IgG responses. PMID: 33121845 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Vaccine) View on the web Inoreader. Take back control of your news feed. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Acute Hiatal Hernia with Incarcerated Proximal Half of Recent Sleeve Gastrectomy: Super Rare Complication

alkiviadis.1961 shared this article with you from Inoreader Acute Hiatal Hernia with Incarcerated Proximal Half of Recent Sleeve Gastrectomy: Super Rare Complication Via Latest Results for Obesity Surgery Abstract Background Vertical sleeve gastrectomy (VSG) has become the most commonly performed operation for the treatment of morbid obesity (JAMA. 312(9):959–61, 2014). Nevertheless, VSG is still associated with some early postoperative complications (JAMA. 312(9):959–61, 2014; Surg Obes Relat Dis. 9(5):816–29, 2013; Obes Surg. 27(8):1944–1951, 2017). Hiatal hernia is a complication that has been widely described in the literature, but not in the immediate postoperative course (Obes Surg. 17(7):962–9, 2007). We, herein, report a case of an acute postoperative hiatal hernia after sleeve gastrectomy. Methods A 29-year-old female (BMI 38.54 kg/m2) presented to our center and her options for metabolic surgery were discussed. Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) was the chosen procedure. Preoperative assessment includes a chest x-ray, and standard lab-work up was within a normal limit. Barium swallow did not show any evidence of hiatal hernia. She underwent a LSG. On POD 1, she was able to pass the bariatric clears trial and was discharged home. Three days after discharge, the patient was complaining of constant nausea and vomiting, and chest pain, and was diagnosed with acute hiatal hernia with the incarceration of the proximal sleeve. The patient was taken to the operating room. Results Postoperatively, the patient started on the usual bariatric clinical pathway which she tolerated well and was discharged on the POD 4. The operative time was 156 min. The estimated blood loss was 50 ml. Conclusions Our report highlights the need for more broad differential diagnosis in early post sleeve gastrectomy patients. Those who are presented with nausea and vomiting in the early postoperative period should be evaluated for possible post sleeve hiatal hernia with a potential risk of strangulation. View on the web Inoreader. Take back control of your news feed. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Cell therapy in Huntington's disease: taking stock of past studies to move the field forward

alkiviadis.1961 shared this article with you from Inoreader Cell therapy in Huntington's disease: taking stock of past studies to move the field forward Via STEM CELLS An overview of the iterative process needed to address current biological and clinical challenges in order to improve reliability of future cell therapy trials in Huntington's disease. Abstract Huntington's disease (HD) is a rare inherited neurodegenerative disease that manifests mostly in adulthood with progressive cognitive, behavioral and motor dysfunction. Neuronal loss occurs predominantly in the striatum but also extends to other brain regions, notably the cortex. Most patients die around twenty years after motor onset, although there is variability in the rate of progression and some phenotypic heterogeneity. The most advanced experimental therapies currently are huntingtin‐lowering strategies, some of which are in Stage 3 clinical trials. However, even if these approaches are successful, it is unlikely that they will be applicable to all patients or will completely halt continued loss of neural cells in all cases. On the other hand, cellular therapies have the potential to restore atrophied tissues and may therefore provide an important complementary therapeutic avenue. Pilot studies of fetal cell grafts in the 2000s reported the most dramatic clinical improvem ents yet achieved for this disease, but subsequent studies have so far failed to identify methodology to reliably reproduce these results. Moving forward, a major challenge will be to generate suitable donor cells from (non‐fetal) cell sources, but in parallel there are a host of procedural and trial design issues that will be important for improving reliability of transplants and so urgently need attention. Here we consider findings that have emerged from clinical transplant studies in HD to date, in particular new findings emerging from the recent multi‐site MIG‐HD study, and consider how this data may be used to inform future cell therapy trials. © AlphaMed Press 2020 Significance Statement Cell therapy is the only approach currently focused on structural and functional restoration in Huntington's disease. The lack of benefit shown in the largest fetal cell transplant trial to date, the Multicenter Intracerebral Transplant in Huntington's Disease (MIG‐HD), cautions against uncontrolled cell therapy treatments. However, MIG‐HD resulted in new procedures which significantly improved patient safety and enlightened upcoming cell transplant protocols. Stem cells should dramatically change the landscape by permitting better control of the quantity and homogeneity of the donor cell product. Here, we propose ways to improve future trials, thereby increasing their chance for success. View on the web Inoreader. Take back control of your news feed. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Fine-tuning the impairment argument against abortion

alkiviadis.1961 shared this article with you from Inoreader Fine-tuning the impairment argument against abortion Via Journal of Medical Ethics blog By Bruce Blackshaw and Perry Hendricks Why is it immoral to deliberately give a fetus fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)? In our paper Strengthening the Impairment Argument Against Abortion, we provided one possible answer: it is wrong because it deprives the fetus of a future of value. In other words, the future of an unimpaired fetus is more valuable than its future after being impaired by FAS. Using this explanation, we tried to strengthen Perry Hendricks' impairment argument, which purports to derive the immorality of abortion from the immorality of non-lethally impairing a fetus (e.g. by giving it FAS). Basically, Hendricks argues that since it is immoral to non-lethally impair a fetus, it is also immoral to lethally impair a fetus, since that's more severe. Some critics objected to Hendricks' argument by claiming that there are important differences between abortion and non-lethally impairing a fetus. For example, abortion can achieve valuable goods that non-lethal impairment can't, such as avoiding a burdensome pregnancy. By explaining the wrongness of non-lethal impairment by deprivation of a future of value, we tried to solve this problem. The idea was this: since the reason non-lethally impairing a fetus is immoral (i.e. it deprives the fetus of a future of value) is also present in cases of abortion (i.e. aborting a fetus deprives it (even more) of a future of value), there are no important differences. In other words, since the reason for the wrongness of non-lethal impairment is also present in cases of lethal impairment, it is sufficient to show that abortion is immoral. No other facts are relevant. Unfortunately, things weren't as simple as we'd hoped: Dustin Crummett and Alex Gillham raised distinct, serious objections to our argument. The project of this essay is to answer their criticisms by fine-tuning the principles we made use of. Crummett showed that if a lethal impairment was justified (for example, because it saved lives), then a principle our argument relies on is false. However, we show that the principle in question can be easily amended to circumvent this problem. Gillham criticized our use of the deprivation of a future of value to explain the wrongness of non-lethal impairment. He argued that this explanation fails because there are some cases in which a fetus doesn't have a future of which it can be deprived. He also claims that if we explain the wrongness of non-lethal impairment in terms of a deprivation of a future of value, our argument doesn't add anything significant to the abortion debate: it will ultimately reduce to Don Marquis' well-known argument against abortion. On Gillham's first point, we show that there are very few cases in which his criticism is relevant: in the vast majority of abortions, the fetus has a future of value. And so, his criticism is inconsequential. And secondly, we show that our argument does not reduce to Marquis' argument. In fact, it can succeed even if Marquis' argument fails. Additionally, we use a future of value merely as a possible explanation of the wrongness of non-lethal impairment. This alone is sufficient to show that our argument doesn't reduce to his. We are grateful to our critics for pointing out these difficulties our argument faces and forcing us to revise our views. The result, we believe, is a more robust argument for the immorality of abortion. Our only regret is that we had not discovered these issues sooner!   Paper title: Fine-Tuning the Impairment Argument Author(s): Bruce P. Blackshaw*, Perry Hendricks** Affiliations: * University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. ** Purdue University. Competing interests: None     The post Fine-tuning the impairment argument against abortion appeared first on Journal of Medical Ethics blog. View on the web Inoreader. Take back control of your news feed. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Why ‘gestaticide’ is morally equivalent to infanticide

alkiviadis.1961 shared this article with you from Inoreader Why 'gestaticide' is morally equivalent to infanticide Via Journal of Medical Ethics blog By Daniel Rodger, Nicholas Colgrove, Bruce P. Blackshaw Artificial womb technology may one day permit a fetus to be surgically removed from its mother's body and placed into an artificial environment, mimicking life in utero. Following Elizabeth Chloe Romanis, let's call the subjects living inside artificial wombs 'gestatelings.' An important question that arises is how should gestatelings be treated? Debates over this question are already underway, and we have been actively involved in them. For example, Colgrove argues that gestatelings should generally be treated like newborns. This, he argues, is because they are newborns (see articles here and here, as well as blogs here and here). Romanis and Elselijn Kingma disagree (see here and here, respectively). While the question of whether or not gestatelings are newborns is an important one, this paper builds upon the views listed here without declaring any one in particular the winner. Specifically, we center our essay around answering two questions: When (if ever) is it permissible to kill the gestateling (an act Rodger terms, 'gestaticide'), and When (if ever) is it permissible to let the gestateling die (e.g., by withdrawing life-sustaining care)? We argue that (1) gestaticide is as hard to justify (morally speaking) as standard cases of infanticide and (2) letting gestatelings die will be justifiable only under the same conditions in which it is permissible to remove life-sustaining treatment from newborns in the NICU or nursery. In other words, we show that gestaticide is as impermissible as infanticide and that it is permissible to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from gestatelings only when continued treatment is futile, death is imminent and unavoidable, and/or treatment itself is overly burdensome. Importantly, these claims hold whether Colgrove is right (when claiming that gestatelings are newborns) or Romanis and Kingma are right (when denying that claim). Defending these claims is critical, because as artificial womb technology becomes available, we believe it is inevitable that people will defend the permissibility of gestaticide. Already Räsänen, for example, has defended the right of (genetic) parents to commit gestaticide (though Blackshaw and Rodger; Kaczor and others have provided responses). Our project serves as a preventive measure against gestaticide and against letting gestatelings die for arbitrary reasons. Gestatelings, like newborns, must not be killed for economic reasons, or because biological parents change their mind about raising a child, and so on. Put differently, legal authorities and healthcare professionals have good reason to protect the lives of gestatelings as they would protect the lives of newborns in the NICU. Our case places the burden of proof on those who would argue that gestaticide should be permissible.   Paper title:  Gestaticide: Killing the Subject of the Artificial Womb Author(s): Daniel Rodger, Nicholas Colgrove, Bruce P. Blackshaw Affiliations: London South Bank University. Wake Forest University. University of Birmingham. Competing interests: None The post Why 'gestaticide' is morally equivalent to infanticide appeared first on Journal of Medical Ethics blog. View on the web Inoreader. Take back control of your news feed. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.