Lifeboat Foundation

Visits with a 24/7, co-payment-free telemedicine program established by Penn Medicine for its employees were 23% less expensive than in-person visits for the same conditions, according to a new analysis published in the American Journal of Managed Care.

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that the per-visit costs for the telemedicine program, called Penn Medicine OnDemand, averaged $380 while in-person encounters in primary care offices, emergency departments, or urgent care clinics during the same timeframe cost $493 to conduct, a $113 difference per patient.

“The conditions most often handled by OnDemand are low acuity—non-urgent or semi-urgent issues like respiratory infections, sinus infections, and allergies—but incredibly common, so any kind of cost reduction can make a huge difference for controlling employee benefit costs,” said the study’s lead researcher, Krisda Chaiyachati, MD, an adjunct assistant professor of Medicine at Penn Medicine, who previously served as medical director of Penn Medicine OnDemand and now is the physician lead for Value-based Care and Innovation at Verily. “This research shows the clear financial benefits when hospitals and health systems offer telemedicine services directly to their own employees.”

Chemical signals from contracting muscles can influence the growth of brain networks, according to new research published in Neuroscience. The study highlights the importance of physical activity to mental health, and the findings could also help contribute to the development of more effective treatments for cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Previous studies had shown that exercise has significant benefits for cognitive health, even when initiated at late stages in life. Exercise has been associated with long-term changes in the hippocampus, a brain region crucial for learning and memory, including increased neurogenesis, synaptogenesis, and enlarged volume.

However, the specific mechanisms through which exercise produces these changes in the hippocampus were not well understood. By uncovering these mechanisms, the authors behind the new study aim to develop exercise-based treatments for cognitive pathologies that affect the hippocampus, such as Alzheimer’s disease, stress, depression, anxiety, and normal aging.

Almost as soon as there were super-resolution microscopes, scientists pointed them towards molecular motors called kinesins. These proteins, powered by the molecular fuel ATP, drive crucial processes including cell division, cell signalling and intracellular transport by shuttling cargo along protein highways called microtubules. Researchers have long wanted to understand how these motors work, but to visualize them, scientists have had to slow them down or isolate them in simplified, in vitro systems.

Now, in papers published concurrently in Science, two teams working independently have used a super-resolution tool called MINFLUX to study the motor in near-real time at physiologically relevant concentrations of ATP. The first paper, led by MINFLUX’s inventor, Stefan Hell, who has a joint appointment at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen and the MPI for Medical Research in Heidelberg, both in Germany, used a new instrument design to track the protein in 3D, revealing details about its motion¹. The second, led by biophysicist Jonas Ries at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, showed for the first time that MINFLUX is capable of tracking kinesin even amid the bustle of living cells².

“This technology requires a lot of different things to work, and it’s fun to see all of these things coming together,” says Michelle Digman, a biomedical engineer at the University of California, Irvine, who develops imaging strategies but was not involved in either study. “It seemed like a proof of concept to show that they’re able to track kinesin very precisely. And when you have the live cell system, that’s even more spectacular.”

Developer Enias Cailliau talks to his girlfriend Sacha on Telegram. She sends him voice memos, texts, and even the occasional selfie. But Sacha isn’t actually real, she’s an AI clone of Cailliau’s real-life girlfriend. Cailliau calls the bot GirlfriendGPT and has now shared his code online for anyone to create their own AI girlfriends too.

“I’d recommend couples to explore the tech as well,” said Sascha Ludwig, whose programmer partner is cloning them with AI.

Dr. Blanca Lizaola-Mayo, MD, a transplant hepatologist and the Medical Director of the Liver Transplant Center at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, is sounding the alarm on NASH or nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.

NASH occurs when a “fatty liver” or nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) leads to inflammation and liver cell damage called fibrosis. In its most severe form, it can be fatal.

Researchers have long known that brain tumors, specifically a type of tumor called a glioma, can affect a person’s cognitive and physical function.

Patients with glioblastoma, the most fatal type of brain tumor in adults, experience an especially drastic decline in quality of life. Glioblastomas are thought to impair normal brain functions by compressing and causing healthy tissue to swell, or competing with them for blood supply.

Continue reading “Brain Tumors Can Rewire The Brain, And We Just Found Out How” »

The Human Genome Project (HGP), the world’s largest collaborative biological project, was a 13-year effort led by the U.S. government with the goal of generating the first full sequence of the human genome. In 2003, HGP produced a genome sequence that accounted for more than 90% of the human genome and was considered as close to complete as was possible with the technologies of the time. HGP unlocked the door to a vast but unannotated collection of genes.

In the following decades, via experimental studies, researchers painstakingly curated reannotations in the form of biochemical reaction graphs. Though gene set enrichment analysis considers groups within these annotation graphs, it disregards group dependencies.

Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) are utilizing data from HGP and making advancements in biochemical reaction network analysis. Their work, published in the May 22, 2023 issue of Patterns, demonstrates their approach and may help predict the effects of rare or indistinct genetic variations and guide precision medicine (treatment that can use a patient’s own genes to help fight disease or guide specific therapy).

Dr. Moss and his son Ben discuss the most important cancer and general health-related topic of all, SUGAR, and the problems it has caused in their lives as well as for more than 50% of adults in the United States and other industrialized countries. They share their personal experiences and the science that clearly connects sugar to cancer, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes.

Program Notes:
For more information on cancer-fighting foods and supplements, please visit our website: https://www.themossreport.com.

Continue reading “Sugar, Metabolism & Cancer — How is metabolic syndrome linked to cancer?” »

I still think it is a threat globally and it based on many cases globally that still rise at an alarming rate.

Prevalence of a new subvariant of Omicron is increasing, but whether it will cause a big surge in infections or hospitalizations isn’t clear.