The results of numerous high-impact phase 3 clinical trials that could affect kidney-related medical care will be presented in-person at ASN Kidney Week 2024 October 23–27.

Drawing on evidence involving about 25 million population worldwide, an international research team led by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry demonstrates that long-term exposure to ambient PM_2.5 significantly increases the risk of asthma, affecting both children and adults. The researchers find that approximately 30 percent of new asthma cases worldwide were linked to fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) exposure, highlighting the dramatic threat air pollution poses to public health.

Viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHF) such as Marburg virus disease have been in the news recently, with more than 60 cases of Marburg confirmed in Rwanda. Although there are currently no cases of Marburg in the United States, and the risk of infection in the U.S. remains low, Mass General Brigham experts have collaborated with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Region 1 Regional Emerging Special Pathogens Treatment Center (RESPTC) at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) to support frontline healthcare facilities in ensuring that patients who are being evaluated for VHF receive critical laboratory testing.  As part of their work, the team developed a toolkit available for use in facilities across the U.S. A paper detailing the new toolkit is published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. 

Climate change-related extreme weather, such as massive flooding and prolonged drought, often result in dangerous outbreaks of diarrheal diseases particularly in less developed countries, where diarrheal diseases is the third leading cause of death among young children. Now a study out Oct. 22, 2024, in Environmental Research Letters by an international team of investigators led by senior author from University of Maryland’s School of Public Health (UMD SPH) Amir Sapkota, offers a way to predict the risk of such deadly outbreaks using AI modeling, giving public health systems weeks or even months to prepare and to save lives. 

A new study by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, in collaboration with researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Brown School of Public Health, examined a large sample of privately insured patients with obesity and found that use of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) as anti-obesity medications more than doubled from 2022 to 2023.