How the urban environment affects the diet of its citizens

In the high-impact journal Appetite the UPV/EHU’s Nursing and Health Promotion research group has published a study using photovoice methodology and which qualitatively compares citizens’ perceptions about the food environment in three Bilbao neighbourhoods with different socioeconomic levels. The participants in the project, residents in the said neighbourhoods, analysed and explained how the neighbourhoods can affect their diet.
Read More

Hospital admission and neurological consultations associated with improved TIA care quality

Admission to the hospital and being seen by a neurologist are factors associated with better quality care for people with a transient ischemic attack (TIA), also known as mini-stroke, according to new research led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Regenstrief Institute, Purdue University, and Indiana University. The study looked at patients treated in the U.S. Veterans Health Administration (VHA).
Read More

A call to confront mistrust in the US health care system

“For those who have faced exploitation and discrimination at the hands of physicians, the medical profession, and medical institutions, trust is a tall order and, in many cases, would be naïve,” writes Laura Specker Sullivan in “Trust, Risk, and Race in American Medicine.” Specker Sullivan calls on medical providers to take action, writing that caring and competence are not always enough to earn patient trust. People in advantageous positions must work to gain knowledge of those who are more marginalized, the author writes, particularly in the context of American medicine, where many African American patients have experienced unjust treatment.
Read More

Researchers analyze influenza epidemiologic supervision and children cases in Catalonia

The viral infections of the upper respiratory tract are an important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and, among them, influenza is one of the most important ones, with severe cases ranging from three and five million cases, and between 290,000 and 650,000 deaths per year. This is why a proper supervision of the disease is crucial. Two studies led by the UB analyzed several aspects involved in the detection of the disease: the utility of the definition of the illness considering clinical manifestation and complementarity of supervision systems based on severe ambulatory cases that require hospitalization in Catalonia. Moreover, they also studied the features of the cases that were detected in Catalonia among children and teenagers who are under 18 years old.
Read More

Releasing brakes: Potential new methods for Duchenne muscular dystrophy therapies

Researchers identified a group of small molecules that may open the door to developing new therapies for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), an as-yet-uncured disease that results in devastating muscle weakening and loss. The molecules tested by the team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania eased repression of a specific gene, utrophin, in mouse muscle cells, allowing the body to produce more utrophin protein, which can be subbed in for dystrophin, a protein whose absence causes DMD. These findings by were published this month in Scientific Reports.
Read More