Many people who use opioid medications long term do not produce enough testosterone or another important hormone, cortisol, according to a new study. «These hormone deficiencies can cause a wide variety of symptoms, such as infertility, extreme fatigue and malaise,» said study investigator Amir Zamanipoor Najafabadi, M.D./Ph.D. student at Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the…

Mistrust of health care providers, fueled by painful experiences with racism, makes African American men more likely to delay routine screenings and doctor’s appointments, with potentially serious implications for their overall health. «Medical mistrust is significantly contributing to delays in African American men utilizing the health care system,» says Dr. Wizdom Powell, the study’s lead…

New work reveals gaps in and opportunities for research to improve understanding of the effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in women. «We are making advances in understanding the effects of head injury on the brain, but many of these studies have been done in males,» said Patrick Bellgowan, Ph.D., program director at NINDS. «There…

White blood cells are part of many immune system responses in the human body. New research shows that a specific type of those cells may cause brain cancer tissues to die — but that’s not good news, according to researchers. They said that higher amounts of this tissue death have been associated with poor survival…

Several previous studies have demonstrated that moderate alcohol consumption is linked with less severe disease and better quality of life in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, but a new study suggests that this might not be because drinking alcohol is beneficial. In the 16,762-patient study, patients with a higher severity of disease were more likely to…

A team of surgeons developed a groundbreaking procedure based on a paramedian forehead flap, a century-old plastic surgery technique, to save the life of a patient who suffered complications following the removal of a cancerous tumor inside his skull. The patient had a quarter-sized hole in his skull base, which separates the brain from the…

The latest investigations into a promising new genetic test for glaucoma — the leading cause of blindness worldwide — has found it has the ability to identify 15 times more people at high risk of glaucoma than an existing genetic test. The study, just published in JAMA Ophthalmology, builds on a long-running international collaboration between…

A new study examined the neural mechanisms of higher order cognitive tasks of individuals with SCI. The article, «The neural mechanisms underlying processing speed deficits in individuals who have sustained a spinal cord injury: A pilot study» was published online on September 25, 2020 by Brain Topography. The authors are scientists with expertise in research…

The team looked in different regions of the brain, which are affected in Alzheimer’s disease before looking for common changes across these cortical regions. They identified 220 sites in the genome, including 84 new genes, which showed different levels of DNA methylation in the cortex in individuals with more severe Alzheimer’s disease, which weren’t seen…

Studies have shown that Aboriginal Australians living in remote areas of the country are disproportionately affected by dementia, with rates approximately double those of non-Indigenous people. A new study shows that Aboriginal Australians living in urban areas also have similar high rates of dementia. «Given that the majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples…