USC researchers have found that persistent organic pollutants (POPs)—synthetic toxic chemicals often found in food sources and stored in body fat — are associated with long term higher blood pressure in adolescents who have undergone bariatric surgery.  The study suggested that POPs diminished the beneficial effect of bariatric surgery on improved blood pressure due to disruptions in lipid metabolism. The study included data from 57 adolescents from the Teen-Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery (Teen-LABS) consortium, who underwent bariatric surgery. Researchers measured the level of POPs stored in adipose tissue before surgery. After they assessed whether it affected blood pressure in the short term—at 6 months, and then five years after surgery. They found that POPs mixtures were linked to higher systolic blood pressure five years after bariatric surgery. The study also identified a plausible biological pathway explaining the relationship between POPs and changes in blood pressure.  The researchers’ analysis revealed that one particular pathway involved in the production of prostaglandin was key in influencing blood pressure changes in the long-term. These findings could eventually lead to treatments to reduce adverse health effects of exposure to these environmental chemicals on individuals with obesity, particularly for those pursuing weight-loss interventions such as bariatric surgery.

A trial of interoceptive exposure - a therapy that teaches patients how to tolerate stomach and body discomfort in order to reduce restrictive eating - improved functional deficits in a brain region (the anterior insula) that’s involved in the visceral disgust that epitomizes food avoidance  in adolescent females with low-weight eating disorders like anorexia nervosa.

Published in JAMA Network Open, a new study found that less than half of Medicaid plans cover all four of the FDA-approved medications, which include acamprosate, disulfiram, and oral and injectable naltrexone. While 90 percent of Medicaid MCPs cover at least one of the AUD medications, only 43 percent cover all four options. The majority of these plans covered naltrexone—84 percent covered the oral version and 73 percent covered the injectable version—while 63 percent of MCPs covered disulfiram and 55 percent covered acamprosate.

Thomas Jefferson University has initiated a phase 1 clinical trial for a Lassa virus (LASV) vaccine developed at Jefferson in collaboration with the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), at the Center of Vaccine Development and Global Health, UMB. Currently, there are no approved vaccines against the Lassa virus. The clinical study is a dose-ranging study that will assess the safety and immunogenicity of the candidate vaccine for both the rabies virus and LASV.