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Late Diagnoses Lead to Alarming Rise in Gallbladder Cancer Cases in the US 

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United States: Recent research reveals that black Americans are currently experiencing a higher incidence of gallbladder cancer than before, while this cancer incidence has not significantly changed and, in some cases, even reduced for the rest of the American population. 

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Moreover, there is a growing number of cases among Black people where the disease is detected when the patients are in the late stage, as reported by the research presented at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) on Monday in Washington, D.C. 

Dr. Yazan Abboud, the lead researcher and an internal medicine resident at Rutgers University New Jersey Medical School, said, “Gallbladder cancer diagnosis at a late stage can be highly detrimental, and increasing a person’s risk of death and leading to more intensive and complex cancer treatment,” as US News reported. 

Late Diagnoses Lead to Alarming Rise in Gallbladder Cancer Cases in the US. Credit | Adobe Stock
Late Diagnoses Lead to Alarming Rise in Gallbladder Cancer Cases in the US. Credit | Adobe Stock

More about Gallbladder cancer 

The researchers pointed out that gallbladder cancer either has very few symptoms or none at all in its initial stages that might be indicative of the ailment. 

For this research, the scientists investigated the data of nearly 77,000 patients with gallbladder cancer in the United States, identified in 2001-2020, in the US Cancer Institute’s database, representing nearly 98 percent of the population of the USA. 

It was found that the gallbladder cancer incidence remained similar for the white population and reduced at an average rate of 0.6 percent. 

However, for gallbladder cancer, age-adjusted mortalities rose greater than 1 percent each year on average for Blacks. There was also a regular yearly increase in the number of cases of newly-detected, late-stage tumors by 3 percent on average. 

Abboud said, “This could be due to a lack of timely access to healthcare leading to delayed diagnosis,” as US News reported. 

Gallbladder cancer has been identified as one of the most destructive forms of cancer in the world, with the 5-year survival rate standing at only 19 percent, as the experts revealed. 

Regarding stages of the disease, nearly 43 percent of cancer cases in the current study were in the advanced stage, and this was more prevalent in Black patients, with about 44 percent of their cancers being at the advanced stage as compared to the White and Hispanic patients whose cancer was at the advanced stage 41 percent. 

Researchers said that some of the final signs include having abdominal pain or feeling bloated, losing weight without any change in the diet and having the skin and the whites of the eyes become yellow. 

Further research has to be conducted in the future on the causes for these disparities across racial groups, with hopes of narrowing down detection in its early stages, as Abboud noted. 

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Are Your Daily Habits Remodeling Your Brain? Find Out! 

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Are Your Daily Habits Remodeling Your Brain? Find Out! Credit | Adobe Stock

United States: As experts note, if one skips a workout or stays up late, his/her brain might still be paying for it even two weeks from now. 

The team of researchers from Aalto University and the University of Oulu in Finland have presented how our lifelong daily behaviors influence brain connectivity and how they remain remodeled throughout our lifespan, thus providing valuable grounds for understanding neural plasticity. 

More about the finding 

Researchers are now very specific that the ways our brains communicate also change, rather than staying the same over a long time, in response to recent experiences over a long extended time period. 

Moreover, they also rejected several principles of brain function stability and opened the consciousness of the influence of human daily habits on the neural network, studyfinds.org reported. 

The particular experimental design of this study was examined in one subject over the span of five months and reported in PLOS Biology. 

Are Your Daily Habits Remodeling Your Brain? Find Out! Credit | Adobe Stock

Are Your Daily Habits Remodeling Your Brain? Find Out! Credit | Adobe Stock

By acquiring a brain image every few days and integrating it with data donated by wearables and smartphones, the researchers were able to assess how such pre-mentioned variables as sleep quality, physical activity, mood, and even heart rate variability affect the connectivity of the brain. 

Further details of the analysis 

The participant, Ana Triana, was also the main researcher in the study and received thirty scans over fifteen weeks. 

Each scan involved four different tasks: simple attention task, working memory task, resting state, and then execution of watching the movie.  

This variation helped the researchers to trace how various types of brain activities changed along with everyday perceptions. 

At the same time, monitoring devices of her sleep/wake cycle, physical movements, and data about her heart and breathing rates were collected. 

The mobile application is used to capture the moods and events of each day. This integration of brain scans and actigraphy gave us an extremely high-resolution picture of how daily experience and brain activity were related, studyfinds.org reported. 

The study revealed two distinct patterns of brain response: A brief wave, which lasts for a period of up to seven days, and a long-term wave, which can go up to fifteen days. 

Results of the study

One of the interesting outcomes was a strong connection between heart rate variability – which is a measure of the heart’s adaptability – and brain connectivity while resting. 

It shows that activities that affect our body’s relaxation response, like stress management ways, can shape our brain wiring even when we’re not actively concentrating on a task. 

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US Obesity Crisis: 40% of Americans Now Obese – What’s Going On? 

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US Obesity Crisis: 40% of Americans Now Obese - What's Going On? Credit | USA TODAY

United States: Obesity remains a huge problem for Americans as far as their health is concerned. New data received by the governments indicate severe obesity, a condition that involves storing far too much fat in the body, has risen to a great extent in the last decade. 

More about the study 

About 40 percent of the population in the US is obese, according to a 2021-2023 survey of about 6,000 people. 

Overall, 9 percent of those polled said they were suffering from severe obesity, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

Moreover, women were nearly two times as likely as men to report severe obesity. 

The general obesity rate looked to have decreased in comparison to what was observed in the 2017-2020 survey. However, it was not considered as a statistically significant change. 

US Obesity Crisis: 40% of Americans Now Obese - What's Going On? Credit | USA TODAY

US Obesity Crisis: 40% of Americans Now Obese – What’s Going On? Credit | USA TODAY

That is, the numbers are small enough that there exists a probability that the rates did not fall at all. 

What more are the experts stating? 

Dr. Samuel Emmerich conducted the latest study for CDC as a public health officer. He said it is still early to determine its impact on the disease, including new obesity treatments, which include weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound. 

What they found is that the combined obesity estimate of the United States in the last decade has not considerably altered.  

According to Emmerich, “We simply can’t see down to that detailed level to prescription medication use and compare that to changes in obesity prevalence.”  

The prevalence of severe obesity increased from nearly eight percent in the study between 2013 and 2014 to nearly 10 percent in the most recent study. 

Prior to that, obesity rates had risen rapidly in the US since the 1990s, according to US federal research. 

Obesity and severe obesity are expressed in terms of BMI, which is calculated with the help of height and weight. The above BMI indicates that a person is obese, as per the Food and Drugs Administration. 

Super obesity is defined as the condition when the person’s BMI is 40 or more. 

Solveig Cunningham is a professor of global health at Emory University who is interested in obesity. 

“Seeing increases in severe obesity is even more alarming because that’s the level of obesity that’s most highly associated with some of the highest levels of cardiovascular disease and diabetes and lower quality of life,” Cunningham added. 

Cunningham also added that it is not apparent why severe obesity rates were higher among women. 

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Is Fluoride in Water Really Safe? Study Raises Serious Health Concerns

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United States: Recent reports about potential health risks and whether fluoride benefits are as big as once believed have prompted scrutiny of a public health practice – adding fluoride to water supplies. 

This is because, as with some questions, the safety of the practice and new data raise questions about the value of fluoride. 

More about the news 

Adding fluoride to tap water produces only a slight benefit in reducing tooth decay in children’s baby teeth, a new report from the Cochrane Collaboration, an independent group reviewing scientific research, finds. 

It is found that adding fluoride to tap water is a slight benefit, leading to slightly fewer cavities in children’s baby teeth, CNN Health reported. 

More about the finding 

Research done before 1975 had large benefits; children living in areas with fluoride added to their water averaged about one fewer primary teeth affected by decay than those of children living in areas without water fluoridation. 

Those findings don’t apply to more current populations with increased access to other sources of fluoride and lower levels of dental disease at baseline. 

Since the 1970s, fluoride-containing toothpaste has been widely available and is more often used. 

According to the new report published this week, fluoride in water was tied to a difference in decay of only about a quarter of a tooth, on average, in more recent studies. 

The federal judge, last month had asked the US Environmental Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water in response to concerns that fluoride may affect young children’s intellectual development, CNN Health reported. 

In light of concerns about fluoride’s possible effect on young children’s intellectual development, a federal judge last month ordered that the EPA further regulate fluoride in drinking water. 

Some foods and groundwater have fluoride, a mineral. It can help protect tooth enamel, which can erode with acids produced by plaque, bacteria, sugar, and other acids found in your mouth. 

The USA began adding fluoride to public water systems in 1945. 

Now, almost three-quarters of the US population, about two hundred and nine million people, are served by drinking water systems that have been fluoridated, according to data from the CDC. 

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