Category: 8. Health

Uterine cancer rates in the United States are expected to climb significantly over the next 25 years, with Black women projected to face the highest burden, according to a new study.

Researchers found that while most cancer rates in the U.S. have declined, uterine cancer incidence increased by 0.7% annually between 2013 and 2022, and death rates rose by 1.6% each year from 2014 to 2023. Black women are already twice as likely to die from uterine cancer as women of other races and ethnicities. It’s a disparity expected to widen even further.

“Overall, uterine cancer is one of the few cancers where both incidence and mortality have been increasing, and prior studies have consistently shown significant racial disparities among Black and white women,” said lead author Dr. Jason D. Wright of Columbia University.

RELATED STORY | New study finds CT scans could be a major contributor to cancer in the US

Using a model based on U.S. population data, researchers projected mortality rates to nearly triple for Black women by 2050, rising from 14.1 to 27.9 per 100,000. In comparison, White women’s rates are expected to increase from 6.1 to 11.2 per 100,000.

Wright noted that factors such as obesity, lower hysterectomy rates, later diagnoses and more aggressive tumor types contribute to the disparity. The study suggests that if effective screening were developed, it could significantly reduce the disease burden.

As brain tumors grow, they must do one of two things: push against the brain or use finger-like extensions to invade and destroy surrounding tissue.

Previous research found tumors that push — or put mechanical force on the brain — cause more neurological dysfunction than tumors that destroy tissue. But what else can these different tactics of tumor growth tell us?

Now, the same team of researchers from the University of Notre Dame, Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, and Boston University has developed a technique for measuring a brain tumor’s mechanical force and a new model to estimate how much brain tissue a patient has lost. Published in Clinical Cancer Research, the study explains how these measurements may help inform patient care and be adopted into surgeons’ daily workflow.

“During brain tumor removal surgery, neurosurgeons take a slice of the tumor, put it on a slide and send it to a pathologist in real-time to confirm what type of tumor it is. Tumors that originally arise in the brain, like glioblastoma, are prescribed different treatments than tumors that metastasize to the brain from other organs like lung or breast, so these differences inform post-surgical care,” said Meenal Datta, assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at Notre Dame and co-lead author of the study.

“By adding a two-minute step to a surgeon’s procedure, we were able to distinguish between a glioblastoma tumor versus a metastatic tumor based on mechanical force alone.”

Datta and collaborators collected data from 30 patients’ preoperative MRIs and their craniotomies, which include exposing the brain and using Brainlab neuronavigation technology. This technology provides surgeons with real-time, 3D visualization during brain surgeries and is considered commonly available for neurological procedures. Neurosurgeons can use this technique to measure the bulge caused by brain swelling from the tumor’s mechanical forces before the tumor is resected.

Then this patient data was used to determine whether brain tissue was displaced by a tumor’s mechanical force or replaced by a tumor. The researchers found that when there is more mechanical force on the brain (displacement), the swelling will be more substantial. But when a tumor invades and destroys surrounding tissue (replacement), the swelling will be less significant.

The researchers created computational models based on a point system of measurements and biomechanical modeling that can be employed by doctors to measure a patient’s brain bulge, to determine the mechanical force that was being exerted by the tumor, and to determine the amount of brain tissue lost in each patient.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and various cancer research foundations, this study is among the first to show how mechanics can distinguish between tumor types.

“Knowing the mechanical force of a tumor can be useful to a clinician because it could inform patient strategies to alleviate symptoms. Sometimes patients receive steroids to reduce brain swelling, or antipsychotic agents to counter neurological effects of tumors,” said Datta, an affiliate of Notre Dame’s Harper Cancer Research Institute. Datta recently showed that even affordable and widely used blood pressure medications can counter these effects. “We’re hoping this measurement becomes even more relevant and that it can help predict outcomes of chemotherapy and immunotherapy.”

To get a better idea of what else mechanical force could indicate, the research team used animal modeling of three different brain tumors: breast cancer metastasis to the brain, glioblastoma and childhood ependymoma.

In the breast cancer metastasis tumor, researchers used a form of chemotherapy that is known to work in reducing metastasis brain tumor size. While waiting for the tumor to respond to the chemotherapy, the team found that a reduction in mechanical force changed before the tumor size was shown to change in imaging.

“In this model, we showed that mechanical force is a more sensitive readout of chemotherapy response than tumor size,” Datta said. “Mechanics are sort of disease-agnostic in that they can matter regardless of what tumor you are looking at.”

Datta hopes that doctors employ the patient models from the study to continue to grow the field’s understanding of how mechanical force can improve patient care management.

In addition to Datta, co-lead authors include Hadi T. Nia at Boston University, Ashwin S. Kumar at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Saeed Siri at Notre Dame. Other collaborators include Gino B. Ferraro, Sampurna Chatterjee, Jeffrey M. McHugh, Patrick R. Ng, Timothy R. West, Otto Rapalino, Bryan D. Choi, Brian V. Nahed, Lance L. Munn and Rakesh K. Jain, all at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Datta is also affiliated with Notre Dame’s Eck Institute for Global Health, the Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health, NDnano, the Warren Center for Drug Discovery, the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society and the Boler-Parseghian Center for Rare Diseases. She is also a concurrent faculty member in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and a faculty adviser for Notre Dame’s graduate programs in bioengineering and materials science and engineering.

Contact: Brandi Wampler, associate director of media relations, 574-631-2632, brandiwampler@nd.edu

 

An AI algorithm used with MRI data can predict which patients are at risk of sudden cardiac arrest, researchers have reported.

By analyzing heart imaging results, specifically cardiac MRI, electronic health records, and echocardiograms, the AI algorithm was able to “reveal previously hidden information about a patient’s heart health,” according to a statement released by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, at which a team led by Changxin Lai, PhD, conducted the study.

The findings could not only save lives but also avoid unnecessary medical interventions such as the implantation of defibrillators, said senior author Natalia Trayanova, PhD, in the university statement. The work was published on July 2 in Nature Cardiovascular Research.

“Currently, we have patients dying in the prime of their life because they aren’t protected and others who are putting up with defibrillators for the rest of their lives with no benefit,” Trayanova said. “We have the ability to predict with very high accuracy whether a patient is at high risk for sudden cardiac death or not.”

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is one of the most common inherited heart diseases, affecting one in every 200 to 500 individuals worldwide, and is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young people and athletes, Lai and colleagues noted. Many people with the condition live normal lives, but some are at increased risk for sudden cardiac death — and it’s difficult for doctors to identify these patients.

Clinical guidelines to find patients most at risk for fatal heart attacks have about a 50% chance of identifying the right ones — “not much better than throwing dice,” Trayanova said. In light of this statistic, the group developed a transformer-based, neural network model called Multimodal AI for ventricular Arrhythmia Risk Stratification (MAARS), using it in a development and validation cohort of 553 patients and another, external cohort of 284 patients. All patients were assessed via traditional clinical guidelines and MR imaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute in North Carolina.  

Li and colleagues found that MAARS “significantly outperformed” clinical guidelines across all demographics, showing 89% accuracy for predicting sudden cardiac death across all patients and 93% accuracy for people 40 to 60 years old, which is the population among hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients most at risk.

“MAARS has the potential to substantially improve clinical decision-making and healthcare delivery for patients with [hypertrophic cardiomyopathy], either directly through future integration with automated data extraction systems or indirectly by serving as a valuable proof of concept for the power of multimodal AI in enhancing personalized patient care,” the investigators wrote.

Going forward, the team plans to test the new model on more patients and expand the algorithm for use with other types of heart diseases, such as cardiac sarcoidosis and arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, it said.

The complete study can be found here.

What’s older than a blender, penicillin, and the U.S. moon landing? A Michigan woman celebrating her 114th birthday on July 4.

Bonita Gibson, a resident at Waltonwood Carriage Park just outside of Detroit, is believed to be the oldest living person in Michigan, according to a Waltonwood representative.

Gibson is part of a small population of supercentenarians in the United States, or someone who is at least 110 years old.

Other supercentenarians across the country include 114-year-old Naomi Whitehead of Pennsylvania, 114-year-old Mary Harris of Tennessee, and 113-year-old Winnie Felps of Texas, according to the Gerontology Research Group.

Gibson became the oldest known living person in Michigan after the death of 114-year-old Irene Dunham on May 1, 2022. The Gerontology Research Group validated her age the following year on May 4, 2023, two months shy of her 112th birthday.

More on longevity: I am 96 and the picture of longevity. These are my tips for living longer and better.

Michigan woman flew for the first time at 100 years old

Gibson drove until she was 99 years old, and took her first plane ride at the age of 100, flying to San Diego, a lifelong dream of hers, Waltonwood said.

Gibson told USA TODAY some of the keys to her living such a long life include:

• Eating potatoes (seemingly a nod to her late husband and the business he worked in)
• Healthy eating
• Staying positive and always smiling
• No smoking or drinking

Michigan woman survived multiple historical events, spent great deal of her life in Idaho

Gibson was born on July 4, 1911 in a northwestern Kansas city called Hoxie, according to the Gerontology Research Group. She grew up in rural Missouri, and lived through the Spanish Flu Pandemic. 

As a child, she survived the mumps, measles, and whooping cough, said a representative for Waltonwood Carriage Park. Most recently, she survived COVID-19 in 2020, making her one of the oldest known survivors of the disease, according to the research group.

Gibson married Kenneth Gibson, her high school sweetheart, in April 1930 in Oregon, Missouri; the pair married during the Great Depression. The couple lived on a farm at the time.

“We had chickens and a huge garden and all kinds of fruit trees,” Gibson told CBS Detroit in July 2023. “We had plenty to eat. We just didn’t have any money to spend.”

They eventually moved to Idaho, where her husband’s relative had a farm. The move is what introduced them to the potato industry.

“He said Kenny can help me in the field and you can be the cook,” Gibson told CBS Detroit. “I hadn’t cooked a thing in my life.”

After seven years of marriage, the pair had a son, Kenneth Richard, in January 1937. After that, the couple moved to Newdale, Idaho and later, Idaho Falls as her husband worked as a potato farmer. He later worked as a potato broker until he retired in 1977. He died in 2003.

After decades in Idaho, a move to Michigan

At the age of 102, she began living in a nursing home in Canton, Michigan, where her grandson lives. As her grandson was moving her to Michigan, Gibson had a request for him, Waltonwood Executive Director Angie Hanson told McKnight’s Senior Living. 

“She wanted to ride on the back of his Harley, but he wouldn’t let her,” Hanson said.

Gibson still speaks to her son, 88-year-old Kenneth Richard, every night. She also has three grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and 16 great-grandchildren.

Today, she loves reading and cards, watching “Price is Right” each day, and catching up with her friends at Waltonwood.

This year, she plans to celebrate her birthday by participating in the downtown Plymouth Fourth of July Parade. There will be a banner announcing her birthday, Waltonwood said.

As Gibson reflected on her life back in 2023, she recalled being married for over 70 years. She and Kenneth made it a point to enjoy themselves, having the most fun in the 1950s and 1960s, she told CBS Detroit.

“We would go dancing every Saturday with a group of friends,” she told the outlet.

When asked what helped to hold their marriage together, she tried to answer from the perspective of her high school sweetheart.

“I would’ve taken her back home several times, but we didn’t have any money, so we had to stay together,” she said.

Saleen Martin is a reporter on USA TODAY’s NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Email her at sdmartin@usatoday.com.

More than 70 percent of adults 50 and older say they experience pain in their joints from arthritis. And for many older adults, that pain occurs in the knees.

But a new study finds that a few simple tools can help tame these aches. When researchers combed through existing studies on nondrug treatments that provide the most relief for knee osteoarthritis, knee braces, water therapy (or water exercise) and traditional exercise came out on top.

For the study, published June 18 in PLOS One, researchers analyzed 139 randomized control trials spanning 9,644 people with knee osteoarthritis and evaluated 12 nondrug treatments, including laser therapies, ultrasound, water exercise, knee braces, traditional exercise and taping.

Knee braces were the most effective at lowering pain, improving function and easing stiffness, the researchers found. Hydrotherapy, or water exercise, relieved pain, while traditional workouts improved pain and physical function.

Finding ways to manage symptoms from a menu of options

David A. Wang, M.D., a sports medicine physician at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, says he isn’t surprised that knee braces, hydrotherapy and exercise were the top performers in the meta-analysis. They all put less pressure on the knee, which can ease pain and improve function, he explains. But just because these therapies ranked high in the research doesn’t mean they will work for everyone.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all for arthritis,” Wang says.

It’s important to note that there’s no cure for knee osteoarthritis other than a total knee replacement. For those looking to avoid or delay surgery, all you can do otherwise is manage symptoms, Wang says.

Many people manage their symptoms by treating their knee pain with medications, such as over-the-counter anti-inflammatories. But the study’s authors note that anti-inflammatory drugs are linked to gastrointestinal and cardiovascular issues in older adults.

Topical treatments and corticosteroid injections can also help, says Tom Kernozek, a professor and chair of physical therapy at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. And working with a physical therapist can improve your knee strength and lead you to tools, such as braces or shoe inserts, that may bring relief.

Another pivotal intervention: weight loss. A study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology found that for older adults with knee osteoarthritis, losing 1 pound of weight removed 4 pounds of pressure from the knees. 

“Weight loss is a very important part of osteoarthrosis management,” Wang says. Along with exercise, it gives the “most bang for our buck.” Of course, it can take time to shed pounds, just as it can take time to get stronger from exercise, he adds.

Researchers at McMaster University, Cleveland Clinic and Case Comprehensive Cancer Center have uncovered how a protein long associated with Alzheimer’s disease helps lung cancer spread to the brain – a discovery that offers hope that existing Alzheimer’s drugs could be repurposed in preventing cancer’s spread.

The study, published in Science Translational Medicine on July 2, 2025, details how the protein (BACE1) is instrumental in the development of brain metastases – tumours that spread to the brain from cancers originating elsewhere in the body – in people with lung cancer. These tumours occur in up to 40 per cent of patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

“We’ve always associated BACE1 with Alzheimer’s disease, so to find it playing a major role in lung cancer brain metastases is an important discovery,” says senior author Sheila Singh, director of McMaster’s Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research and professor with the Department of Surgery. “It’s a reminder that cancer can hijack biological pathways in ways we don’t yet fully understand.”

To make the discovery, researchers used a cutting-edge gene activation technique known as a genome-wide in vivo CRISPR activation screen. The technique allowed researchers to systematically activate thousands of genes one by one in lung cancer cells and put the modified cells into mice. When BACE1 was switched on, the cancer cells were far more likely to invade the brain.

BACE1 has long been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. In people with Alzheimer’s, BACE1 cuts a protein called APP, triggering the formation of sticky plaques in the brain.

Currently, there are limited therapies available once cancer has spread to the brain. However, researchers say the discovery of BACE1 does offer hope as a drug developed for Alzheimer’s could be repurposed.

The therapy uses a drug called Verubecestat that blocks BACE1 activity. Researchers found that mice given Verubecestat had fewer and smaller tumours, and also lived longer. The drug had shown promise in Alzheimer’s patients but a Phase 3 clinical trial was discontinued in 2018 after a committee determined it was unlikely that positive benefit/risk could be established.

“The discovery of BACE1 opens the door to repurposing existing treatments like Verubecestat to potentially prevent or slow the spread of lung cancer to the brain, where treatment options are currently very limited,” Singh says.

The team say more research is needed to better understand the effectiveness of the therapy in preventing the spread of lung cancer to the brain.

“This study highlights how interdisciplinary partnerships can lead to breakthroughs in understanding and treating devastating diseases like brain metastases,” said Shideng Bao, a researcher in Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Cancer Biology, a corresponding author on the paper. “By identifying BACE1 as a key player in the spread of lung cancer to the brain, we’ve uncovered a promising new avenue for therapeutic intervention that could ultimately improve outcomes for patients.”

The Sheila Singh Lab collaborated with Cleveland Clinic and Case Comprehensive Cancer Center on the research. Singh and her colleagues are world leaders in brain cancer research, previously discovering a pathway used by cancer cells to infiltrate the brain, as well as new therapeutic approaches.

The study was supported by funding from the Boris Family Fund for Brain Metastasis Research, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Institute of Health Research, the Cancer Research UK Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and Lerner Research Institute, and a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship.

 —

Interested in covering this research?

• Senior author Sheila Singh, director of McMaster’s Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research and professor with the Department of Surgery, can be reached directly at [email protected].

For any other information, contact Adam Ward, media relations officer with McMaster University’s Faculty of Health Sciences at [email protected].

New findings published Wednesday by the National Cancer Institute link tiny, toxic air pollutants to changes in lung cancer tumors at the genomic level in people who have never smoked. 

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S., and the American Cancer Society reports that more people die of lung cancer every year than of colon, breast and prostate cancers combined. Non-smokers account for 10 to 25 percent of all lung cancer cases globally, but research on its causes in patients who have never smoked is less well established than for their tobacco-using counterparts, said the new study’s senior author, Maria Teresa Landi. 

“We wanted to design a study to try to define the causes of lung cancer in never smokers so that we could potentially provide some suggestions for the improvement of prevention, early detection, therapy, etc,” Landi said. 

In their study, published in the journal Nature, Landi and colleagues from the National Institutes of Health’s NCI and the University of California San Diego analyzed the lung tumors of 871 nonsmokers from 28 locations across four continents. They found that the tumors of patients in highly polluted areas had many more genetic mutations than those in areas with cleaner air, and exhibited a diversity of mutations, including patterns typically found in smokers. 

The paper is part of a larger project Landi is leading on lung cancer in nonsmokers, called the Sherlock-Lung study. 

Air pollution is a serious public health hazard growing more dire as climate change brings increased wildfires, drought and extreme heat. The American Lung Association found earlier this year that nearly half of the country is living with dangerous levels of pollution, a drastic rise from last year’s figures. Air pollution is linked to a variety of health harms and was already considered the second leading cause of lung cancer.

The paper adds to well-established links between particulate air pollution and the disease, particularly in epidemiological research, which deals with patterns of disease at the population level. Wednesday’s study takes a different approach, building on genomic research and zooming in on the tumor level. 

George Thurston, a professor of medicine and population health at New York University, has been a leading scholar on the impacts of air pollution on human health for decades. 

The new NIH study, which he was not involved in, could play an important role in determining exactly which kinds of particulate matter impact human health, and how, he said. 

“It’s environmental detective work,” Thurston said. “These kinds of tools will help us understand better the results we’re getting from epidemiology.”

Notably, the study found a stronger increase in mutations due to air pollution than from exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke. The authors noted that this gap may have been exacerbated by the unreliability of survey data from patients, who self-report their exposure to secondhand smoke with varying accuracy. 

“I feel like I’m in the Matrix, and I’m the only one that took the red pill.” I know what’s going on, and everybody else is walking around thinking, ‘This stuff isn’t bad for your health.’”

— George Thurston, New York University School of Medicine

Thurston pointed out that although secondhand smoke is also a serious health concern, air pollution from fossil fuels is much more ubiquitous.  

“We are engulfed in fossil-fuel-burning pollution every single day of our lives, all day long, night and day,” he said. 

Sometimes, he tracks the air pollution on his commute to work using a portable air monitor to dismaying results, and wonders why more people around him don’t seem equally alarmed.

“I feel like I’m in the Matrix, and I’m the only one that took the red pill,” he said, referring to the sci-fi movie. “I know what’s going on, and everybody else is walking around thinking, ‘This stuff isn’t bad for your health.’”

The NIH study looked specifically at patients of European and East Asian descent—mostly in Europe, North America and Asia. Landi said future studies aim to expand focus to include participants from Latin America, Africa and Australia. 

The paper found some geographic differences in mutations, like the strong presence of a particular gene mutation found almost exclusively in subjects in Taiwan and associated with exposure to aristolochic acid, a plant-based substance used in some forms of traditional medicine. The substance has previously been linked to bladder, liver and kidney cancers, but the authors believe theirs is the first evidence linking it to lung cancer.

The study adds to recent research on environmental and climate impacts on lung health. A paper published in Nature in March found that global warming may be contributing to dehydration and inflammation in human airways that could exacerbate lung diseases, and suggested that most Americans will face increased risk of airway inflammation by the second half of this century.

Meanwhile, the federal government is gutting funding for research—including at the NIH—studying the impacts of climate change on health and the disparate effects of pollution along social markers like race and gender.

The NIH study also comes out just one day after the U.S. Senate voted to pass a reconciliation bill that would axe incentives to cut emissions, provide subsidies for health-harming fossil fuels like coal and simultaneously eliminate health care for millions of lower-income Americans through about $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act marketplaces. Advocates raising the alarm on the health ramifications of air pollution point to dire consequences as a result of these moves.

Continued fossil fuel combustion leads to more air pollution, while also spawning weather that exacerbates the problem, resulting in greater health care costs, more illness and more deaths. 

“Many elements of this bill will make Americans sicker, but the bill will also make it more expensive, if not impossible, for millions of Americans to get health care,” wrote Moms Clean Air Force’s federal policy director, Melody Reis, in a statement.