News by Subject Medicine & Health

A new study by researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health is the first to compile the estimated per-case costs of 6 childhood health conditions linked to air pollution -- estimates that can be incorporated into benefits assessments of air pollution regulations and climate change mitigation policies. Results appear in the journal Environmental Research.

Among women, lower hydration levels were associated with lower scores on a task designed to measure motor speed, sustained attention, and working memory. They did not find the same result for men.

In spite of the widespread recommendation for regular physical activity as a strategy to manage migraine, for some patients, exercise can instead trigger migraine attacks. Here, Samantha et al found that anxiety sensitivity mediates intentional avoidance of both moderate and vigorous physical activity.

Researchers at The Ohio State University analyzed claims from more than 22 million enrollees in private insurance plans and found that out-of-pocket costs for non-emergency out-of-network hospital care nearly doubled in five years.

The Endocrine Society and Avalere Health introduced the first-ever quality measures to help healthcare providers assess how well they identify and care for older adults at greater risk of hypoglycemia -- low blood sugar that can be a dangerous complication of diabetes treatment.

Caution is advised in interpreting the findings of the recent JAMA Internal Medicine publication1 on radioactive iodine treatment for hyperthyroid patients and cancer mortality. The paper's conclusion that 'in RAI-treated patients with hyperthyroidism, greater organabsorbed doses appeared to be modestly positively associated with risk of death from solid cancer, including breast cancer', has raised concerns among patients and clinicians.

Researchers at the USC have been enlisting the help of artificial intelligence to help mitigate the risk of suicide. Phebe Vayanos, an associate director at USC's Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society (CAIS), and her team have been working over the last couple of years to design an algorithm capable of identifying who in a given real-life social group would be the best persons to be trained as 'gatekeepers' capable of identifying warning signs of suicide and how to respond.