Medgadget, October 17, 2018  

GE Healthcare is unveiling its brand new Invenia Automated Breast Ultrasound (ABUS) 2.0 in the U.S. It is the only U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved "ultrasound supplemental breast screening technology," which allows for spotting of cancerous lesions within dense breast tissue, according to GE. 

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October 12, 2018, The Daily Telegraph  

Women could be spared the heartbreak of miscarriage thanks to artificial intelligence that can help to spot which pregnancies will fail. The breakthrough works with IVF treatment, using a super-computer to pick out "good" embryos — or "bad" ones, which could prevent a woman from giving birth or cause her to miscarry.

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October 10, 2018, News Medical 

The proportion of breast cancer patients who are eligible for breast conservation therapy, yet opt for mastectomy, is increasing, for reasons that include the desire to eliminate future screening and/or biopsy of the remaining breast tissue. A new study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has determined that having a mastectomy does not completely eliminate the need for further breast imaging studies.  

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October 9, 2018, HealthDay News  

More than 14 million additional 11- to 12-year-olds need to be vaccinated to reach the American Cancer Society goal of 80 percent of adolescents being up to date (UTD) with the human papillomavirus vaccination (HPVV) by their 13th birthday by 2026, according to a study published online in Cancer. 

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AAPA  

PA Week is here, and we have everything you need to celebrate. Print banners, promote the profession, participate in our Instagram photo contest, watch our PA Week Video contest submissions and vote for your favorite, and — most importantly, share your PA pride! 

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October 5, 2018, Infections Disease Advisor via Monthly Prescribing Reference  

The use of a moderate to low susceptibility antibiotic to treat a urinary tract infection (UTI) may result in a 1.74-fold increase in the odds of an emergency department readmission within 30 days for another UTI, according to a study presented at the IDWeek in San Francisco, Oct. 3-7.  

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October 5, 2018, Healio  

Most women who received an injection of brexanolone — a positive allosteric modulator of -aminobutyric-acid type A receptors — for postpartum depression had significant and clinically meaningful reductions of the condition at 60 hours vs. placebo, according to findings recently published in The Lancet. 

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October 3, 2018, HealthDay News  

For breast cancer survivors, treatment and age-related phenotypes and genotypes are associated with a longitudinal decrease in cognitive function, according to a study published online Oct. 3 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Jeanne S. Mandelblatt, M.D., M.P.H., from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and colleagues recruited 344 newly diagnosed non-metastatic breast cancer survivors matched with 347 cancer controls aged 60 years or older without dementia or neurological disease. Before systemic treatment/control enrollment and 12 and 24 months later, the researchers collected data including biospecimens, surveys, FACT-cog self-reported cognition, and neuropsychological tests measuring attention, processing speed, and executive function (APE) and learning and memory (LM).

The researchers found that treatment correlated with longitudinal cognition scores: Worse APE scores were seen for survivors receiving chemotherapy, while those initiating hormonal therapy had lower LM scores at 12 months compared with other groups. There was variation in the group-by-time differences based on APOEgenotypes; only ε4+ survivors on hormone therapy had short-term decreases in adjusted LM scores. The three-way interaction was not significant for APE, but scores were significantly lower for ε4+ survivors exposed to chemotherapy at 24 months compared with ε4+ controls (−0.40 versus 0.01). On all cognitive measures, increasing age correlated with lower baseline scores; frailty correlated with baseline APE and self-reported decline.

"These data could inform treatment decision-making and survivorship care planning," the authors write.

Several authors disclosed financial ties to the biopharmaceutical industry.

Abstract/Full Text (subscription or payment may be required)

Offered via the National AHEC Organization

Topic: "Since You Asked: Persuading Parents that HPV Vaccine is Safe and Effective in Practice"  Thursday, November 1, 2018 , 3-4 p.m. ET  Register Now! Description:

Dr. Kristin Oliver (Mount Sinai, New York) and Dr. Sharon Humiston (Children's Mercy, Missouri) will talk about practical approaches to persuading parents that HPV vaccine is safe and effective in a busy clinical setting. These two pediatricians will highlight tools to get your whole office team giving not just strong, but effective recommendations.

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October 3, 2018, News Medical  

The study was published on the 1st of October 2018 in the latest issue of the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

The team of researchers looked at these neurological conditions among the elderly to estimate the prevalence of the problem, explained senior author of the study Professor Arfan Ikram.

"We grouped these diseases together not only because they are common but also because there are indications that these often co-occur and might share some overlapping causes.”

Professor Arfan Ikram, Senior Author

He added that if the causes of these diseases overlap, prevention strategies and treatments could also overlap. Some of the proposed strategies, he noted, could cut down the risk of these neurological conditions by as much as 20-50%.

The researchers looked at over 12,000 healthy individuals over 45 years of age and followed them up between 1990 and 2016.

Over these 26 years, 5291 people died. Among all the participants, around 1500 presented developed dementia, 1285 had a stroke (65 percent of these were ischemic strokes) and 263 were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Among those with dementia, 80 percent developed Alzheimer’s disease.

When analyzing the incidences based on gender, the team noted that the chances of a woman aged over 45 years developing any of these conditions was around 48 percent while the chances of the men over 45 years of age getting one of these diseases was slightly lower, at around 36 percent.

Ikram explained that the gender difference was mainly because men tend to have a shorter lifespan.

He explained that one potential reason for the lesser incidence of these diseases in men was that they often die earlier and not because of any special protective effect of their gender.

He added that women lived longer and thus were twice as much likely to develop dementia and stroke.

Ikram suggested that the risk of each condition could be lowered by a healthy lifestyle with a balanced diet, regular exercise, and smoking.

These measures have been proven to reduce the risk of dementia and stroke, and may also reduce the risk of Parkinson’s disease.

The team explained that the study includes people of European ancestry only, who tend to have a longer lifespan. Other ethnicities and populations should also be studied, they suggest.