A recent study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier, explores the nutrition perspectives and attitudes of Ghanaian pregnant adolescents and adolescent mothers. The study sheds light on significant challenges, including food insecurity, economic constraints, and cultural influences, that impact the dietary habits and health of young mothers and their infants. Researchers conducted a qualitative, community-based cross-sectional study in nine communities across three municipalities and two districts in Ghana's Central Region. Using focus group discussions, they gathered insights from 35 participants, including 13 pregnant adolescents and 22 adolescent mothers aged 12 to 19. The study utilized Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis framework to identify key themes shaping nutritional choices and challenges. Lead author Christiana Naa Astreh Nsiah-Asamoah, PhD, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana, explained, "The findings of this study offer insights for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers focused on maternal and child health, especially within socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. For professionals in healthcare and community support roles, the study highlights the importance of creating tailored nutrition education programs that address the specific needs and circumstances of pregnant adolescents and adolescent mothers." Five central themes emerged: health and well-being, infant nutrition, dietary habits, nutrition information sources, and social support. The findings revealed that adolescent mothers tend to diverge from recommended practices for infant and young child feeding. Economic limitations often led adolescent mothers to rely on less nutritious street foods, while many found exclusive breastfeeding for six months impractical, opting instead for complementary feeding. Limited access to nutrition education and inconsistent social support further compounded these challenges. The study highlights the importance of strengthening nutrition education programs, improving access to affordable healthy foods, and enhancing community-based support systems to empower young mothers in making informed dietary decisions. Dr. Pascale Allotey advocates for comprehensive maternal health policies, stressing the importance of women's voices in shaping effective healthcare solutions. News-Medical.Net provides this medical information service in accordance with these terms and conditions. Please note that medical information found on this website is designed to support, not to replace the relationship between patient and physician/doctor and the medical advice they may provide. Hi, I'm Azthena, you can trust me to find commercial scientific answers from News-Medical.net. Registered members can chat with Azthena, request quotations, download pdf's, brochures and subscribe to our related newsletter content. A few things you need to know before we start. Please check the box above to proceed. While we only use edited and approved content for Azthena answers, it may on occasions provide incorrect responses. Please confirm any data provided with the related suppliers or authors. Your questions, but not your email details will be shared with OpenAI and retained for 30 days in accordance with their privacy principles. Please do not ask questions that use sensitive or confidential information.

Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is at the forefront of a new approach to cancer treatment, called CAR T-cell therapy. The little known, but highly promising technology breakthrough makes it possible for your body to fight cancer, often without invasive surgery, offering patients new hope for the possibility of long-term remission. However, a new survey by Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center of 1,021 adults in the United States shows 65% are unfamiliar with the personalized cancer treatment option. Fourteen years after he was first diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma, 70-year-old Chris Vogelsang knew his cancer could return. Even though he underwent several rounds and types of treatments, including a stem cell transplant, his cancer returned twice. I was losing weight and had night sweats," said Vogelsang. "It turned out that I was 90 percent involved with lymphoma cells in my bone marrow, which is pretty significant. In 2022, his care team at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center presented CAR T-cell therapy as an option. "As is oftentimes the case with these sometimes very stubborn and refractory types of cancer, the options became increasingly limited," said Renier Brentjens, MD, PhD, Deputy Director and Chair of Medicine for the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. "CAR T-cell therapy is a massive paradigm change of how we view and think of cancers and how we treat those cancers." Marco Davila, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President and Associate Director for Translational Research at Roswell Park It contains 20 sterile rooms across two buildings, marking a transformative step for cancer research and treatment. "This facility helps to speed up the process, with fewer obstacles in terms of getting these cells produced and getting them into patients," said Dr. Davila. "Our goal is to reach a day soon where a patient with any type of cancer can have an investigational cell and gene therapy available directly." The results of CAR T-cell therapy so far have been highly promising, with more than half of lymphoma patients achieving remission, and in certain types of leukemia, the remission rate reaching an impressive 90 percent. Vogelsang's scans have not shown signs of cancer in his system since March 2023. CAR T-cell therapy has granted him valuable years to enjoy with his wife, Karen, and their growing family, which will soon include 10 grandchildren. "To have doctors and scientists who can develop therapies is beyond words. There are people who will walk into Roswell Park today and get a diagnosis. If they know CAR T-cell therapy is available for their cancer and they know that the results have been great, it offers them hope, along with their families and friends." As of now, CAR T-cell therapy is FDA-approved only for certain types of blood cancer, but scientists hope that it will one day treat solid tumor cancers as well. This survey was conducted online within the United States by Ipsos on the KnowledgePanel® from March 14 to 16, 2025, and surveyed 1,021 U.S. adults ages 18 and older. This poll is based on a nationally representative probability sample and has margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level, for results based on the entire sample of adults. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, please contact: [email protected]. Dr. Pascale Allotey advocates for comprehensive maternal health policies, stressing the importance of women's voices in shaping effective healthcare solutions. News-Medical.Net provides this medical information service in accordance with these terms and conditions. Please note that medical information found on this website is designed to support, not to replace the relationship between patient and physician/doctor and the medical advice they may provide. Hi, I'm Azthena, you can trust me to find commercial scientific answers from News-Medical.net. Registered members can chat with Azthena, request quotations, download pdf's, brochures and subscribe to our related newsletter content. A few things you need to know before we start. While we only use edited and approved content for Azthena answers, it may on occasions provide incorrect responses. Please confirm any data provided with the related suppliers or authors. Your questions, but not your email details will be shared with OpenAI and retained for 30 days in accordance with their privacy principles. Please do not ask questions that use sensitive or confidential information.

Research indicates an urgent need for updated vision screening policies and safer infrastructure to protect aging drivers. Older drivers with vision impairment are dramatically more likely to stop driving or avoid challenging road conditions—with severe cases four times more likely to give up driving altogether, a national University of Michigan study finds. Driving is essential for the mobility, independence and overall well-being of older adults. Based on objective vision testing and nationally representative data, the research highlights a critical gap in road safety policies, as America's aging population drives more miles than ever before. Among Americans aged 65 and older, 14% live with either distance vision impairment or contrast sensitivity issues. But the real shock comes in how these conditions reshape driving habits: More than 25% of older drivers with vision impairment stop driving within just one year—compared to only 12% of their peers with normal vision. As vision worsens, drivers self-regulate—first avoiding complex routes, then quitting altogether. But with driving so tied to independence, these decisions often come too late, after near-misses or accidents.” The study challenges long-standing assumptions about vision and driving safety. “This isn't about which test is better,” said Joshua Ehrlich, ISR research associate professor and associate professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences. “It's about recognizing that many older adults have multiple overlapping vision deficits. Relying solely on standard eye charts at the DMV is like only checking one symptom of a disease.” For families, the message is clear: Healthy vision is a key part of driving and subtle changes, like struggling with glare or missing exit signs, may indicate potential issues. “We're failing older drivers by using 20th-century tests for 21st-century longevity,” Xu said. “A person who can't see a street sign at dusk shouldn't have their license revoked—we should improve the visibility of street signs.” Researchers said this work makes a key contribution to the fields of transportation, vision and aging by addressing significant gaps in the existing literature with strong, nationally representative data. “Additionally, we incorporate multiple objective vision tests, including both distance visual acuity and contrast sensitivity, making this the first nationally representative study to examine how concurrent vision impairments influence driving cessation and avoidance, offering a more comprehensive perspective,” Xu said. The group is currently examining transportation alternatives for older adults with vision impairments, with initial data indicating that most lack access to usable transit options. “We need systems that don't make people choose between safety and survival.” Driving status, avoidance, and visual impairment among older adults in the United States. Dr. Pascale Allotey advocates for comprehensive maternal health policies, stressing the importance of women's voices in shaping effective healthcare solutions. News-Medical.Net provides this medical information service in accordance with these terms and conditions. Please note that medical information found on this website is designed to support, not to replace the relationship between patient and physician/doctor and the medical advice they may provide. Hi, I'm Azthena, you can trust me to find commercial scientific answers from News-Medical.net. Registered members can chat with Azthena, request quotations, download pdf's, brochures and subscribe to our related newsletter content. A few things you need to know before we start. While we only use edited and approved content for Azthena answers, it may on occasions provide incorrect responses. Please confirm any data provided with the related suppliers or authors. Please do not ask questions that use sensitive or confidential information.

The Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital's cardiology faculty practice has received the 2024 Human Experience Pinnacle of Excellence Award® from Press Ganey, one of the nation's leading patient experience organizations. The faculty practice is located at The Mount Sinai Hospital and has several physicians with top expertise in cardiovascular care. It is one of 10 heart centers across the country, and the only one in New York, to receive this prestigious award placing it on the leading edge of patient-centered care. This same faculty practice received the 2023 Human Experience Pinnacle of Excellence Award® from Press Ganey. The Pinnacle of Excellence Award recognizes top-performing health care organizations for achieving and maintaining consistently high levels of excellence in patient experience. Winners are identified based on performance for three full years of data, from April 2021 to March 2024, for patient experience, employee engagement, physician engagement, or clinical quality performance. "Mount Sinai raises the bar for cardiovascular care to redefine the health care experience," says Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH, MBA, FACC, FAHA, FESC, MSCAI, Director of Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital and the Dr. Valentin Fuster Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Press Ganey works with more than 41,000 health care facilities in its mission to reduce patient suffering and enhance caregiver resilience to improve the overall safety, quality, and experience of care. Dr. Pascale Allotey advocates for comprehensive maternal health policies, stressing the importance of women's voices in shaping effective healthcare solutions. News-Medical.Net provides this medical information service in accordance with these terms and conditions. Please note that medical information found on this website is designed to support, not to replace the relationship between patient and physician/doctor and the medical advice they may provide. Hi, I'm Azthena, you can trust me to find commercial scientific answers from News-Medical.net. Registered members can chat with Azthena, request quotations, download pdf's, brochures and subscribe to our related newsletter content. A few things you need to know before we start. Please check the box above to proceed. While we only use edited and approved content for Azthena answers, it may on occasions provide incorrect responses. Please confirm any data provided with the related suppliers or authors. Your questions, but not your email details will be shared with OpenAI and retained for 30 days in accordance with their privacy principles. Please do not ask questions that use sensitive or confidential information.

European research led by University College London (UCL), together with Amsterdam UMC and the University of Basel shows that a significant proportion of patients who suffer a stroke due to carotid artery narrowing can be treated with medication only. A risky carotid artery operation, currently still the standard treatment for many patients, may then no longer be necessary for this group of patients. In the Netherlands, about 2,000 people with carotid artery stenosis are operated on every year after they have had a stroke. 30 years ago, large studies showed that an operation, in which a narrowing in the carotid artery is removed, reduced the risk of a new stroke. As a result, this became the international standardised treatment. Since then, the medications these patients receive alongside their surgery – such as blood thinners, medication for cholesterol and high blood pressure – have improved significantly. Researchers, including Amsterdam UMC neurologist Paul Nederkoorn, investigated whether routine carotid artery operations are still necessary in all patients. An international research group of neurologists, vascular surgeons, and radiologists together designed the ECST study to answer this question. It is a lot nicer for the patient not to have to have surgery and it saves a lot of healthcare costs. We are now going to work closely with the vascular surgeons to see how we can best fit these results into the current protocols." All patients had a low or average chance of having another stroke within 2 years of their initial treatment. Patients with a high risk of another stroke were not included in this study, because it was uncertain beforehand whether medication alone could be equally effective for them. Two years after the start of their treatment, the patients were monitored for a number of outcomes. The groups were compared on the basis of how often new strokes had occurred, how many patients had had a heart attack and in how many cases patients had had a stroke unnoticed or where there was a high risk of a new stroke due to accumulations in the carotid artery. The two groups scored equally across all metrics, leading the researchers to conclude that the operation is not necessary for this specific patient group in addition to medication. Senior author, Emeritus Professor at UCL Martin Brown, said: "While further follow-up and additional trials are needed to confirm these findings, we recommend using the CAR score to identify patients with carotid narrowing who can be managed with optimised medical therapy alone. "This approach emphasises personal assessment and intensive treatment of vascular risk factors, potentially sparing many patients from the discomfort and risks of carotid surgery or stenting. "Additionally, this method could lead to substantial cost savings for health services." Follow-up research should show which patients have such a high risk of another stroke that they still do need surgery in addition to the medication. In this way, every patient with a stroke due to carotid artery narrowing can receive a tailor-made risk-based treatment. That saves many patients a major operation and lowers healthcare costs. "At Amsterdam UMC, we are working together with the vascular surgeons and those low- and medium-risk patients are no longer operated on as standard," concludes Nederkoorn Optimised medical therapy alone versus optimised medical therapy plus revascularisation for asymptomatic or low-to-intermediate risk symptomatic carotid stenosis (ECST-2): 2-year interim results of a multicentre randomised trial. Dr. Pascale Allotey advocates for comprehensive maternal health policies, stressing the importance of women's voices in shaping effective healthcare solutions. News-Medical.Net provides this medical information service in accordance with these terms and conditions. Please note that medical information found on this website is designed to support, not to replace the relationship between patient and physician/doctor and the medical advice they may provide. Hi, I'm Azthena, you can trust me to find commercial scientific answers from News-Medical.net. Registered members can chat with Azthena, request quotations, download pdf's, brochures and subscribe to our related newsletter content. A few things you need to know before we start. Please check the box above to proceed. While we only use edited and approved content for Azthena answers, it may on occasions provide incorrect responses. Please confirm any data provided with the related suppliers or authors. Your questions, but not your email details will be shared with OpenAI and retained for 30 days in accordance with their privacy principles. Please do not ask questions that use sensitive or confidential information.

New research to be presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2025, Malaga, Spain, 11-14 May) and published in The Journal of Internal Medicine shows that, in survivors of breast cancer, having an unhealthy metabolic profile or so called 'metabolic syndrome' increases the risk of breast cancer recurrence by 69%, and subsequent breast cancer mortality by 83%. Chan School of Public Health, MA, USA, and colleagues. Metabolic syndrome was characterized according to the American Heart Association, which includes the presence of three out of five abnormal findings among the risk factors: high blood pressure, high triglycerides (blood fats), low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) or 'good' cholesterol, high fasting glucose (blood sugar), and central or abdominal obesity (a waist circumference of more than 35 inches for women). Data were obtained from observational studies and randomized controlled trials that used survival statistics and reported survival ratios to investigate how the presence of metabolic syndrome at the time of breast cancer diagnosis is associated with survival. Study data from 42,135 breast cancer survivors were pooled using statistical modelling to assess the relationship between an unhealthy metabolic profile and survival of breast cancer. The pooled estimates revealed that breast cancer survivors who had metabolic syndrome at the time of their breast cancer diagnosis experienced a 69% increased risk of recurrence and an 83% increased risk of breast cancer mortality compared to breast cancer survivors without metabolic syndrome. Breast cancer survivors with metabolic syndrome were found to be 57% more likely to experience a breast cancer-related event (recurrence, new cancer, or death) during follow-up than breast cancer survivors without metabolic syndrome. Interestingly, the authors looked into potential differences in the association according to geographical location of the included studies origin continent and found that the association between poorer outcomes among breast cancer survivors with metabolic syndrome was consistent across Europe, North America and Asia. Future research should focus on assessing how control of blood fats, reversing diabetes, and making healthy lifestyle choices could decrease the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in this population and ultimately enhance breast cancer survival." They add that the precise mechanisms through which metabolic syndrome heightens the risk of breast cancer and its recurrence remain unclear, but are believed to involve chronic inflammation and hormonal imbalances. They say: "One possible explanation posits that the excessive body fat associated with metabolic syndrome results in increased levels of circulating oestrogen, which may stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells. Chronic systemic inflammation, a hallmark of metabolic syndrome, may further contribute to tumour progression by promoting cancer cell survival and impairing immune surveillance. Although our study did not investigate the biological underpinnings of the observed associations, it is likely that multiple interacting mechanisms-primarily driven by obesity-induced molecular changes and chronic inflammation-underlie the link between metabolic syndrome and poor breast cancer outcomes." Dr. Pascale Allotey advocates for comprehensive maternal health policies, stressing the importance of women's voices in shaping effective healthcare solutions. News-Medical.Net provides this medical information service in accordance with these terms and conditions. Please note that medical information found on this website is designed to support, not to replace the relationship between patient and physician/doctor and the medical advice they may provide. Hi, I'm Azthena, you can trust me to find commercial scientific answers from News-Medical.net. Registered members can chat with Azthena, request quotations, download pdf's, brochures and subscribe to our related newsletter content. A few things you need to know before we start. While we only use edited and approved content for Azthena answers, it may on occasions provide incorrect responses. Please confirm any data provided with the related suppliers or authors. Your questions, but not your email details will be shared with OpenAI and retained for 30 days in accordance with their privacy principles. Please do not ask questions that use sensitive or confidential information.

UVA researcher Nathan Sheffield, PhD, has spent four years developing a new data standard to ensure that scientists are comparing apples to apples when doing genomic analysis. This type of analysis helps researchers understand the operating instructions for our cells and see how those instructions are carried out. The resulting insights help us understand the workings of both healthy cells and unhealthy ones, pointing us to new ways to treat and prevent disease. Genomics is a complex field that involves analyzing vast amounts of data. Reference sequences are essential tools in genomic research, often representing genetic information compiled from multiple individuals. Researchers rely on these sequences to identify gene variations driving genetic diseases and to understand how diseased cells behave differently than normal cells. Sheffield's new standard, called refget Sequence Collections, will streamline genomics research by letting scientists more quickly and efficiently identify reference sequences. This will help ensure that the results of a genomic analysis are right and repeatable. This, in turn, can accelerate medical breakthroughs and improve our understanding of the clinical relevance of genetic variation. If the students could identify each version of the text exactly, and also get detailed comparisons showing how they differ, that would make it much easier to communicate ideas and compare results. In the same way, refget Sequence Collections can tame the chaos of slightly different references, improving collaboration, sharing and reproducibility of research results based on genomic data." For scientists, trying to identify the exact reference sequence used for published results can be a major burden. It's time-consuming and involves guesswork – the type of toil you might assume could be done automatically but often is not. Sheffield's new tool addresses that problem, helping scientists eliminate drudge work while ensuring they are comparing their data to the same references. GA4GH is a not-for-profit that sets standards and develops policies to expand genomic data use within a human-rights framework. Sheffield's new tool takes the next step, assigning names to groups of reference sequences, such as all the DNA sequences that correspond to a whole reference genome. This will bring much-needed organization to genomic research while also addressing long-standing challenges that have slowed scientific breakthroughs, Sheffield says. Now automation will free scientists from the important but tedious grind of hunting up reference sequences, allowing them to focus their attention on advancing discoveries that will benefit human health. "I hope this standard helps solve some of the difficulty the scientific community has faced integrating genomic and epigenomic data," Sheffield said. "With a standardized, approved way to refer to references, we can accelerate the understanding we gain from integrating results across many experiments." Dr. Pascale Allotey advocates for comprehensive maternal health policies, stressing the importance of women's voices in shaping effective healthcare solutions. News-Medical.Net provides this medical information service in accordance with these terms and conditions. Please note that medical information found on this website is designed to support, not to replace the relationship between patient and physician/doctor and the medical advice they may provide. Hi, I'm Azthena, you can trust me to find commercial scientific answers from News-Medical.net. Registered members can chat with Azthena, request quotations, download pdf's, brochures and subscribe to our related newsletter content. A few things you need to know before we start. While we only use edited and approved content for Azthena answers, it may on occasions provide incorrect responses. Please confirm any data provided with the related suppliers or authors. Your questions, but not your email details will be shared with OpenAI and retained for 30 days in accordance with their privacy principles. Please do not ask questions that use sensitive or confidential information.

While ChatGPT-4 excels at multiple-choice medical exams, new research reveals its weaknesses in complex clinical decision-making, raising big questions about the future of AI-powered healthcare. Study: Assessing ChatGPT 4.0's Capabilities in the United Kingdom Medical Licensing Examination (UKMLA): A Robust Categorical Analysis. In a recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers evaluated ChatGPT-4's capabilities on the United Kingdom Medical Licensing Assessment (UKMLA), highlighting both strengths and limitations across question formats and clinical domains. Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to reshape healthcare and education. With the UKMLA soon becoming a standardized requirement for new doctors in the UK, determining whether AI models like ChatGPT-4 can meet clinical benchmarks is increasingly important. While AI shows promise, questions remain about its ability to replicate human reasoning, empathy, and contextual understanding in real-world care. Distractors tripped up AI logic: In 8 cases, ChatGPT answered correctly without multiple-choice options but failed when presented with plausible wrong answers, exposing vulnerabilities to exam-style trick questions. The questions spanned 24 clinical areas and were split across two 100-question papers. Nine image-based questions were excluded due to ChatGPT's inability to interpret images, which the authors note as a limitation. Each question was tested with and without multiple-choice options. Questions were further categorized by reasoning complexity (single-step vs. multi-step) and clinical focus (diagnosis, management, pharmacology, etc.). Responses were labeled as accurate, indeterminate, or incorrect. Pharmacology answers lacked certainty: Nearly 35% of drug-related responses were marked “indeterminate” without answer prompts, reflecting struggles to confidently apply dosing or treatment protocols. ChatGPT-4 demonstrated a broad knowledge base, especially in diagnostic tasks, and performed at or above the level expected of medical graduates in structured assessments. However, it struggled with contextual clinical reasoning, especially in open-ended or multi-step management scenarios. This suggests the model may support early-stage clinical assessments but lacks the nuance required for autonomous decision-making. Limitations include a lack of training on UK-specific clinical guidelines, which may have influenced performance on specific UKMLA questions. Furthermore, "hallucinations", fluent but incorrect outputs, pose a risk in clinical use. Ethical concerns include potential depersonalization of care and clinician deskilling due to overreliance on AI. However, accuracy drops significantly in open-ended and multi-step clinical reasoning, especially in management and pharmacology. While LLMs show promise for supporting education and early-stage clinical support, their current limitations underscore the need for cautious integration, further training on clinical datasets, and ethical safeguards. His academic journey has allowed him to delve deeper into understanding the intricate world of microorganisms. He has worked on diverse projects in microbiology, biopolymers, and drug delivery. His contributions to these areas have provided him with a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter and the ability to tackle complex research challenges. Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report: ChatGPT-4 passes UK medical licensing exam but falters in real-world clinical decision-making, study reveals. "ChatGPT-4 passes UK medical licensing exam but falters in real-world clinical decision-making, study reveals". "ChatGPT-4 passes UK medical licensing exam but falters in real-world clinical decision-making, study reveals". ChatGPT-4 passes UK medical licensing exam but falters in real-world clinical decision-making, study reveals. Dr. Pascale Allotey advocates for comprehensive maternal health policies, stressing the importance of women's voices in shaping effective healthcare solutions. News-Medical.Net provides this medical information service in accordance with these terms and conditions. Please note that medical information found on this website is designed to support, not to replace the relationship between patient and physician/doctor and the medical advice they may provide. Hi, I'm Azthena, you can trust me to find commercial scientific answers from News-Medical.net. To start a conversation, please log into your AZoProfile account first, or create a new account. Registered members can chat with Azthena, request quotations, download pdf's, brochures and subscribe to our related newsletter content. A few things you need to know before we start. Please check the box above to proceed. While we only use edited and approved content for Azthena answers, it may on occasions provide incorrect responses. Please confirm any data provided with the related suppliers or authors. We do not provide medical advice, if you search for medical information you must always consult a medical professional before acting on any information provided. Your questions, but not your email details will be shared with OpenAI and retained for 30 days in accordance with their privacy principles. Please do not ask questions that use sensitive or confidential information.

Researchers at UCL have tested a new scoring system to measure the risk of stroke in patients with narrowed arteries due to atherosclerosis, which could prevent unnecessary surgeries and stents. Atherosclerosis can lead to serious health problems like strokes and heart attacks. Atherosclerosis is a very common condition that can affect anyone, particularly those over the age of 65, smokers and people with a high cholesterol, hypertension or family history of heart or circulatory diseases. It is estimated that atherosclerosis affecting the carotid artery causes up to 20% of strokes. Currently, many patients undergo surgery or stenting to prevent strokes resulting from atherosclerosis. However, these procedures also carry risks of causing strokes and other serious complications at the time of the intervention. In the new study, published in The Lancet Neurology and in collaboration with colleagues at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre and the University of Basel, researchers found that using the Carotid Artery Risk (CAR) scoring system can offer a safer alternative, by identifying patients who can be effectively treated with a combination of medications and lifestyle changes tailored to their individual risk factors (otherwise known as optimised medical therapy). Senior author, Emeritus Professor Martin Brown (UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology), said: "While further follow-up and additional trials are needed to confirm these findings, we recommend using the CAR score to identify patients with carotid narrowing who can be managed with optimised medical therapy alone. "This approach emphasises personal assessment and intensive treatment of vascular risk factors, potentially sparing many patients from the discomfort and risks of carotid surgery or stenting. "Additionally, this method could lead to substantial cost savings for health services." All patients involved in the trial were over the age of 18 and had a significant narrowing of their carotid arteries, which was picked up before it had caused symptoms or after it had caused a minor stroke. Those with symptoms were selected using their CAR score – which takes into account factors such as the percentage of narrowing in the carotid artery and medical history – to determine who had a low to intermediate risk of stroke over the next five years and could be included in the trial. The patients in the trial were then divided into two groups, with one group receiving optimised medical therapy alone, and the other group receiving both optimised medical therapy and additional carotid surgery or stenting. Optimized medical therapy included a low cholesterol diet, target-adjusted cholesterol-lowering medication, treatment to lower blood pressure, antithrombotic therapy (a treatment that helps prevent blood clots from forming or growing), and regular checks to adjust the medication as necessary. The patients were monitored through regular visits, telephone calls, and brain scans to detect strokes. The researchers found that, over the first two years, patients in the trial who were treated with optimised medical therapy alone had very low rates of recurrent strokes and heart attacks. Those who underwent additional surgery or stenting did not experience significant benefits, considering the associated risks of these procedures. Whilst medical therapy is the first line of treatment, many of those who have medical therapy then need surgery or stenting which can lead to complications including an increased risk of stroke, and other unpleasant side effects. The CAR risk score offers the opportunity to take away the downsides of surgery and stenting by using medical therapy alone as well as combining medical therapy with surgery. The Stroke Association is pleased to have funded this trial which indicates that some people with atherosclerosis could see the same benefits from medication and lifestyle changes that previously required surgery. The medical therapies used to reduce the risk of stroke from atherosclerosis work by treating risk factors for stroke, including high cholesterol and raised blood pressure, which we are putting at the heart of our recommendations for the Government's 10 Year Health Plan. Dr. Louise Flanagan, Head of Research at the Stroke Association Optimised medical therapy alone versus optimised medical therapy plus revascularisation for asymptomatic or low-to-intermediate risk symptomatic carotid stenosis (ECST-2): 2-year interim results of a multicentre randomised trial. Dr. Pascale Allotey advocates for comprehensive maternal health policies, stressing the importance of women's voices in shaping effective healthcare solutions. News-Medical.Net provides this medical information service in accordance with these terms and conditions. Please note that medical information found on this website is designed to support, not to replace the relationship between patient and physician/doctor and the medical advice they may provide. Hi, I'm Azthena, you can trust me to find commercial scientific answers from News-Medical.net. Registered members can chat with Azthena, request quotations, download pdf's, brochures and subscribe to our related newsletter content. A few things you need to know before we start. While we only use edited and approved content for Azthena answers, it may on occasions provide incorrect responses. Please confirm any data provided with the related suppliers or authors. Your questions, but not your email details will be shared with OpenAI and retained for 30 days in accordance with their privacy principles. Please do not ask questions that use sensitive or confidential information.

A new research paper was published in Aging (Aging-US) Volume 17, Issue 3, on March 12, 2025, titled "DNA methylation entropy is a biomarker for aging." Researchers Jonathan Chan, Liudmilla Rubbi, and Matteo Pellegrini from the University of California, Los Angeles, led a study that discovered a new way to measure changes in DNA that can help predict a person's age. The team compared this new measurement, called methylation entropy, to existing methods and found it performed just as well-or even better. These findings support the idea that changes in our epigenetic information are closely linked to aging and could offer new tools for studying age-related diseases. The study focused on DNA methylation, a process where chemical marks are added to DNA and help control which genes are turned on or off. Scientists have traditionally measured average methylation levels to estimate biological age using "epigenetic clocks." The researchers used buccal swabs (cells from inside the cheek) from 100 individuals between ages 7 and 84 and applied targeted bisulfite sequencing techniques to measure methylation entropy across 3,000 regions of the genome. Entropy in this context reflects how disordered or varied the methylation patterns are at certain sites on the DNA. The researchers discovered that as people age, the entropy of methylation at many locations changes in a reproducible way. These shifts are not always tied to how much methylation is happening, which suggests entropy provides new information beyond what traditional methods can offer. To test how well this new metric could predict age, the team used both statistical and machine learning models. They found that methylation entropy predicted age as accurately as traditional methods, and the best results came from combining entropy with other measurements like average methylation and a method called CHALM. These combined models were able to estimate age with an average error of just five years. "[…] methylation entropy is measuring different properties of a locus compared to mean methylation and CHALM, and that loci can become both more or less disordered with age, independently of whether the methylation is increasing or decreasing with age." This research supports the growing theory that aging is partly caused by a gradual loss of epigenetic information-the biological "instructions" that help keep our cells working properly. This insight also connects with recent studies suggesting that restoring this lost information might reverse some signs of aging. While more research is needed to study methylation entropy in other tissues, this work points to a more precise and powerful way to measure biological aging, which could influence the future of aging-related treatments and therapies. DNA methylation entropy is a biomarker for aging. Dr. Pascale Allotey advocates for comprehensive maternal health policies, stressing the importance of women's voices in shaping effective healthcare solutions. News-Medical.Net provides this medical information service in accordance with these terms and conditions. Please note that medical information found on this website is designed to support, not to replace the relationship between patient and physician/doctor and the medical advice they may provide. Hi, I'm Azthena, you can trust me to find commercial scientific answers from News-Medical.net. Registered members can chat with Azthena, request quotations, download pdf's, brochures and subscribe to our related newsletter content. A few things you need to know before we start. While we only use edited and approved content for Azthena answers, it may on occasions provide incorrect responses. Please confirm any data provided with the related suppliers or authors. Your questions, but not your email details will be shared with OpenAI and retained for 30 days in accordance with their privacy principles. Please do not ask questions that use sensitive or confidential information.