12/02/2023

Epigenetics

From the article: " A recent study reports a unique and powerful approach for finding neighborhood factors marking risks of early death and disease.4 Measurement of racial segregation using spatial clustering methods and separating that from economic deprivation (and education) aid in clarifying the sources of health concerns. The study uses methylation patterns which can be remodeled by many factors such as smoking, physical activity, diet, infection, and stressors from the childhood environment (eg, lack of loving adult support, malnutrition), adverse living conditions (eg, noise pollution, particulate matter air pollution), and poor interactions with others (eg, emotional or physical abuse). "

Diabetes

From the article: " Prediabetes affects approximately 1 in 3 US adults and about 720 million individuals worldwide. People with prediabetes often have no symptoms, so most people with prediabetes do not know they have it. Risk Factors for Prediabetes include: Being older than 45 years; Being overweight or obese; Being physically active less than 3 times a week; Eating an unhealthy diet; Having a parent or sibling with type 2 diabetes; Having a history of diabetes during pregnancy (gestational diabetes) or giving birth to an infant weighing more than 9 pounds; Having polycystic ovary syndrome."

Artificial intelligence

From the paper: "With the goal of quick deployment of tools for rapid response to rare diseases, we present the medical multimodal large language model (Med-MLLM) framework. We evaluate the effectiveness of Med-MLLM using the COVID-19 pandemic “in replay”, showing that Med-MLLM is able to accomplish accurate COVID-19 decision-support tasks with limited labelled data. In contrast, existing efforts usually require thousands, or even more, labelled data to achieve similar performance. "

Mendelian randomization

From the abstract: "Whether obesity is a cause or consequence of low physical activity levels and more sedentary time has not yet been fully elucidated. Better instrumental variables and a more thorough consideration of potential confounding variables that may influence the causal inference between physical activity and obesity are needed. This MR study highlights the beneficial effect of education on improved health and suggest that a more physically active lifestyle leads to lower BMI, while sedentary behavior is a consequence of higher BMI."