Lifeboat Foundation

Review Article from The New England Journal of Medicine — Wearable Digital Health Technology for Epilepsy.

MIT ’s ultrasound sticker enables continuous monitoring of organ stiffness, revolutionizing the early detection of diseases such as liver and kidney failure.

MIT engineers have developed a small ultrasound sticker that can monitor the stiffness of organs deep inside the body. The sticker, about the size of a postage stamp, can be worn on the skin and is designed to pick up on signs of disease, such as liver and kidney failure and the progression of solid tumors.

In an open-access study published recently in Science Advances, the team reports that the sensor can send sound waves through the skin and into the body, where the waves reflect off internal organs and back out to the sticker. The pattern of the reflected waves can be read as a signature of organ rigidity, which the sticker can measure and track.

Can smartphones apps be used to monitor a user’s mental health? This is what a recently submitted study scheduled to be presented at the 2024 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems hopes to address as a collaborative team of researchers from Dartmouth College have developed a smartphone app known as MoodCapture capable of evaluating signs of depression from a user with the front-facing camera. This study holds the potential to help scientists, medical professionals, and patients better understand how to identify signs of depression so proper evaluation and treatment can be made.

For the study, the researchers enlisted 177 participants for a 90-day trial designed to use their front-facing camera to capture facial images throughout their daily lives and while the participants answered a survey question with, “I have felt, down, depressed, or hopeless.” All participants consented to the images being taken at random times, not only when they used the camera to unlock their phone. During the study period, the researchers obtained more than 125,000 images and even accounted for the surrounding environment in their final analysis. In the end, the researchers found that MoodCapture exhibited 75 percent accuracy when attempting to identify early signs of depression.

“This is the first time that natural ‘in-the-wild’ images have been used to predict depression,” said Dr. Andrew Campbell, who is a professor in the Computer Science Department at Dartmouth and a co-author on the study. “There’s been a movement for digital mental-health technology to ultimately come up with a tool that can predict mood in people diagnosed with major depression in a reliable and non-intrusive way.”

Do the impacts of deforestation go beyond the environment? What about human health, specifically the health of children? This is what a recent study published in Economics & Human Biology hopes to address as Dr. Gabriel Fuentes Cordoba, who is an associate professor of economics from Sophia University in Japan, investigated how deforestation in Cambodia effects the health of children around the time of their birth. This study holds the potential to help scientists, conservationists, and the public better understand the health effects of deforestation, specifically with the increasing effects of climate change around the world.

For the study, Dr. Fuentes Cordoba analyzed data obtained from the Cambodian Demographic Health Surveys and forest loss to ascertain the health impacts for pregnant women and children under five years of age who reside in areas of deforestation. In the end, Dr. Fuentes Cordoba discover alarming results that suggest deforestation exposure to women less than one year before pregnancy could lead to development of anemia, which is a precursor to malaria. This could result in significant health impacts on children being born, specifically reductions in birth weight, along with overall height and weight as they age.

“This research shows a negative impact of deforestation on child health,” Dr. Fuentes Cordoba said in a statement. “This negative impact may persist into adulthood and affect other aspects of wellbeing such as education acquisition and even wages. My findings indicate that future research should explore this aspect further.”

There’s some relief for people with food severe allergies. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports the drug Xolair allows people with allergies to tolerate higher doses of allergenic foods before developing a reaction after accidental exposure. Geoff Bennett discussed more with the study’s principal investigator, Dr. Robert Wood of the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Multiple brands of lubricant eye ointments are being recalled due to a risk of infection after federal inspectors found unsterile conditions at the Indian plant where the products were manufactured.

The recall by Brassica Pharma Pvt. in Thane, a city in the Indian state of Maharashtra, comes after a deadly outbreak last year of eye infections linked to artificial tears made by another Indian firm.

Sold nationwide by retailers including CVS Health and Walmart, the latest recall involves four products by brands Equate, CVS Health and AACE Pharmaceuticals, according to the notice posted Monday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

A new study suggests abdominal fat could impact brain health and cognition among people with a high risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers found that middle-aged males at risk for Alzheimer’s who had higher amounts of pancreatic fat had lower cognition and brain volumes.

Dr. John Swierk: “This is also the first study to explicitly look at inks sold in the United States and is probably the most comprehensive because it looks at the pigments, which nominally stay in the skin, and the carrier package, which is what the pigment is suspended in.”

Do the ingredients in tattoo inks match the labels on their respective bottles? This is what a recent study published in Analytical Chemistry hopes to address as a team of researchers from Binghamton University investigated the accuracy of ink ingredients and what’s labeled on their containers. This study holds the potential to help scientists, artists, and their customers better understand the health risks, to include allergic reactions and other risks, of using the wrong ink ingredients for tattoos.

For the study, the researchers examined ingredients from 54 inks emanating from nine common brands within the United States with the goal of ascertaining their exact chemical compositions compared to what was labeled on their respective bottles. In the end, the researchers identified that 45 of the 54 inks possessed a myriad of pigments and/or additives that were not properly labeled on the bottles that could pose health risks to customers receiving ink tattoos, including allergic skin reactions and other long-term health risks, including non-skin-related risks, such as cancer. Despite the alarming findings, the researchers could not ascertain which unlisted ingredients were intentionally or accidentally added to the inks.

Continue reading “Ink Alert: Discrepancies Found in Tattoo Ink Composition” »

Think big. Despite its research topic, this could well be the motto of the Graphene Flagship, which was launched in 2013: With an overall budget of one billion Euros, it was Europe’s largest research initiative to date, alongside the Human Brain Flagship, which was launched at the same time.

The same applies to the review article on the effects of graphene and related materials on health and the environment, which Empa researchers Peter Wick and Tina Bürki just published together with 30 international colleagues in the journal ACS Nano; they summarize the findings on the health and ecological risks of graphene materials, the reference list includes almost 500 original publications.

A wealth of knowledge—which also gives the all-clear. “We have investigated the potential acute effects of various graphene and graphene-like materials on the lungs, in the gastrointestinal tract and in the placenta—and no serious acute cell-damaging effects were observed in any of the studies,” says Wick, summarizing the results.