Tag: United States

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STAT+: A sweeping new AI to detect heart conditions is coming to OpenEvidence

Doctors using OpenEvidence will soon be able to upload an image of an electrocardiogram to get an algorithmic prediction of whether a patient has structural heart disease. 

Called EchoNext, the artificial intelligence model was developed by researchers at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University and is being commercialized by a spinout called Pathway Labs. The company this month received a sweeping Food and Drug Administration clearance for the technology that can sniff out six forms of structural heart disease — including conditions where blood doesn’t flow properly through the organ owing to blocked or leaky valves and where the chambers of the heart don’t pump blood as well as they should — from EKG. 

In addition to marketing it to hospitals, Pathway will take the novel step of licensing the technology to OpenEvidence, a medical evidence search engine that’s used by hundreds of thousands of clinicians.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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Breast and Cervical Cancer Stigma in Rwanda

Conditions: Breast Cancer; Cervical Cancer

Interventions: Behavioral: Behavioral: RISE Intervention; Behavioral: Behavioral: CHW Educational Intervention

Sponsors: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC) Boston, MA; American Association for Cancer Research; Breast Cancer Research Foundation

Not yet recruiting
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Gene Therapy Restores Brain Function and Behavior in Fragile X Syndrome

A University of California, Riverside-led research team has developed a gene therapy that restored production of a missing brain protein, corrected abnormalities in brain circuitry, and improved behavior in a mouse model of Fragile X syndrome (FXS). The study, published in the journal Molecular Therapy Nucleic Acids, tested an adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based therapy carrying a normal human version of the FMR1 gene to produce the Fragile X messenger ribonucleoprotein (FMRP) and found that early treatment normalized several measures of brain activity while improving social behavior, exploratory behavior, and cognitive flexibility.

“In a typical brain, FMRP acts like a brake or a volume control,” said senior author Iryna Ethell, PhD, a professor of biomedical sciences at the UC Riverside School of Medicine. “Without it, neural circuits become overactive and less efficient, which contributes to many of the developmental and behavioral challenges associated with FXS.”

FXS is the most common single-gene cause of autism spectrum disorder. According to the researchers, the disorder typically manifests from expansion of CGG repeats in the 5′ untranslated region of FMR1. The mutation causes methylation and silencing of the gene, leading to a major reduction or complete loss of FMRP, an RNA-binding protein that regulates numerous messenger RNAs involved in synapse formation, maturation, and function. Loss of the protein can lead to abnormal synaptic activity and increased cortical hyperexcitability.

FXS can produce sensory hypersensitivity, seizures, anxiety, intellectual disability, developmental delays, repetitive behaviors, and social communication difficulty. Current treatments for this syndrome don’t seek to cure it, rather they are aimed at managing the associated symptoms of anxiety, hyperactivity, irritability, aggression, depression, and seizures.

The therapy developed by the research team was designed to replace missing FMRP rather than repair the original mutation. To do this, the researchers used an AAV9 viral vector to deliver human FMR1 isoform 7, one of the most abundant forms of the protein found in the brain. The therapy was tested in newborn mice lacking FMRP via intracerebroventricular injections at either a low or high doses.

The work built on earlier research that explored the potential of AAV-mediated restoration of FMRP in rodent models. These prior studies used a range of viral serotypes, promoters, delivery routes, and FMRP isoforms and showed they could partially or completely correct specific biochemical, physiological, and behavioral abnormalities. The researchers noted that studies involving mouse and rat FMRP homologs had shown that restoring the protein could improve a range of Fragile X-related deficits.

The current study showed that high-dose treatment produced the strongest positive effects in the mouse models. Electroencephalography showed normalization of baseline gamma power, improvements in responses to sound, reduced background neural activity, and improved habituation to repeated auditory stimuli. The therapy also restored abnormal patterns of brain-wave coupling that have been associated with Fragile X-related dysfunction.

Behavioral testing showed that these improvements persisted into adulthood. Mice receiving the higher dose displayed normalized exploratory behavior, improved social preference, and better performance in probabilistic reversal learning, a measure of cognitive flexibility that requires adapting when previously rewarded behaviors stop producing rewards.

“Fragile X mice tend to persist with an old solution even after the rules change,” Ethell said. “After treatment, they became much better at adapting, performing similarly to mice with normal FMR1 function.”

The researchers noted that their work showed the importance of delivering at therapy for FXS early in its development. They said that widespread distribution of the potential new gene therapy throughout the brain was necessary to achieve a therapeutic benefit. There was a clear relationship between the proportion of neurons expressing the therapeutic gene and the degree of functional recovery, which indicated that restoring FMRP in a sufficient number of cortical cells is critical for correcting any behavioral deficits.

While a promising step, the investigators said that the work was a preclinical study and that future research will now focus on developing delivery methods that can of have broad distribution across the human brain. The team also believes their approach could have broader applications.

“Beyond FXS, the findings may provide a roadmap for treating other genetic neurodevelopmental disorders caused by the loss of a single critical protein,” Ethell said. “Our study shows it may be possible to restore function across complex brain networks by replacing a missing gene. That gives us reason to be optimistic about the future of genetic medicine.”

The post Gene Therapy Restores Brain Function and Behavior in Fragile X Syndrome appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.

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Three things to watch amid Anthropic’s latest feud with the government

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

For those of you enjoying your summer unaware of Anthropic’s latest feud with the US government, here’s a recap: In April the company said it had built an AI model called Mythos that was so good at working with code it could pose a global cybersecurity threat. Anthropic gave access to a small group of cybersecurity experts so they could see what they were up against. Then it released a modified version called Fable which it said was safer to the public on Tuesday, June 9. That Friday, the federal government told the company it was a threat to national security and placed export controls on the new release. Anthropic revoked access to both models hours later.

People worried about catastrophic effects of AI—broadly labeled “doomers”—have said for years that the technology poses a threat to humanity and published proposals for how the government should intervene in its development. The doomers just got their government intervention—not over a bioweapon or rogue AI, but in response to an AI model that’s basically just really good at coding. And the result so far looks less like a safety plan than like a superficial reaction.

There’s plenty to dissect about what happened in those few days that led to such drastic action from the government, and it’s notable that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was the one who told government officials that Fable would be dangerous (Amazon is both invested in Anthropic and building its own competing AI models). It’s also possible this will be a short-lived ban from the government that doesn’t survive legal scrutiny (it’s not clear that Anthropic’s offering access to Fable really counts as “exporting” it, for example). 

But there are ripple effects happening already. 

For one, this is making a whole lot of people not want to rely on American AI companies. TheFrench politician Bruno Retailleau described it as a “wake-up call” that should motivate Europe to build more AI. But any vision of turning Paris into Silicon Valley—touted by many other European leaders following the shutdown of Anthropic’s models—is complicated by one big thing: China. 

Open-source models from China are very capable and incredibly cheap, and they can be downloaded to run on anyone’s servers with no rules or guardrails. (This makes them attractive to companies that don’t want access turned off on the basis of a decision from the White House—but equally attractive to cybercriminals, the type that Anthropic hoped to fend off by building safety guardrails into its models.) 

It’s possible that companies, including those in the US and Europe, will decide that working with Chinese models is just easier, as the skyrocketing of shares in the Chinese startup Zhipu suggests. Playing this forward, is it possible the government’s next drastic decision will be to say that US companies using models from China pose a threat to national security? I wouldn’t write it off. 

Second, it’s possible that shutting off access to Anthropic’s models will leave the country morevulnerable to cybersecurity attacks, not less. Leading cybersecurity experts have said as much in an open letter to the government, writing that access to Anthropic’s models was helping researchers prepare defenses, and that the company’s models are no more dangerous than other leading models that are widely available. Such is the risk of applying the concept of nonproliferation to software—trying to control and restrict dangerous AI models in the manner of the uranium used for nuclear weapons. 

The third thing worth watching is how US lawmakers will react. Remember that following Anthropic’s last feud with the government over how the Pentagon could or could not use its models, a slate of new bills was introduced that would define the limits of military AI.

Right now, the biggest players shaping how AI gets used are the companies and the White House. There’s been much talk about more federal AI regulation, and polling suggests most Americans want it. Lawmakers are still figuring out whether to form rules on how kids use chatbots and are far from a clear answer on the extent to which the government should vet the safety of AI models. But with every drastic action from the White House, the pressure for regulations rises.

To state the obvious, predictions are hard when the administration’s attitudes toward AI  change with the wind. When President Trump took office, he threw out the restrictive rulebook for how to make AI safe and promised to get out of the way of tech companies. The White House has now called the most valuable AI startup a risk to national security once in the spring, and again in summer. What will fall bring?

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AbbVie to Acquire Apogee Therapeutics for $10.9B

SAN DIEGO — AbbVie has agreed to acquire Apogee Therapeutics for $10.9 billion, the companies said today, in a deal designed to bolster the buyer’s pipeline with an atopic dermatitis (AD) candidate set to advance to Phase III trials during the second half of this year, and being positioned as a potential challenger to a top-selling drug.

Apogee’s lead candidate zumilokibart, an IL-13 inhibitor also called APG777, is a long-acting treatment that according to the company holds “pipeline-in-a-product potential” because of the opportunity it has for treating a variety of immunology and inflammation (I&I) diseases for which the drug is under study.

“We continue to believe that Apogee’s zumilokibart is one of the more attractive assets in the I&I space, and its current valuation proves this out,” Edward Nash, a managing director and senior biotechnology analyst with Canaccord Genuity, wrote this morning in a research note. “The company, since its 2022 inception, has continued to deliver strong clinical results for zumilokibart in atopic dermatitis. The BIG [emphasis in original] differentiator for the drug is its potential to be dosed once every three or six months, which was just demonstrated in recently announced updates from the Phase II trial.”

Last month, Apogee announced positive 16-week data from Part B of its Phase II APEX trial (NCT06395948) assessing zumilokibart in moderate-to-severe AD. The trial met its primary and secondary endpoints with high statistical significance, as 65.9% of patients treated with mid-dose zumilokibart achieved EASI-75 (41.9% placebo adjusted).

Based on these results and subject to positive regulatory feedback, Apogee said it planned to move forward in its Phase III trials with the mid-dose, which achieved the best clinical activity of the three doses tested and was well-tolerated.

To support those Phase III trials and continued late phase development and potential commercialization of zumilokibart, Apogee last month entered into a strategic financing for up to $1.3 billion in flexible, non-dilutive total capital.

The capital includes up to $800 million of synthetic royalty funding and access of up to $500 million in senior corporate debt available by mutual consent of Blackstone and Apogee. Blackstone agreed to provide the synthetic royalty funding in exchange for low-to-mid single digit tiered royalties for 15 years on worldwide annual sales of zumilokibart. The royalties decrease with increasing sales, with zero royalties paid out on global annual sales exceeding $8 billion.

Third-largest deal, so far

The $10.9 billion Apogee acquisition is the new third largest biopharma merger-and-acquisition (M&A) deal announced so far this year, behind the €10.7 billion ($12.268 billion) cash buyout offer for Italian-based Recordati being pursued by CVC Capital Partners and Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, which aim to take the company private; and Sun Pharmaceutical Industries’ planned $11.75 billion purchase of Organon, the women’s health drug developer spun out of Merck & Co., in a deal expected to close in early 2027.

The previous third-largest M&A deal this year, now fourth-largest, is GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)’s planned $10.6 billion buyout of Nuvalent,  announced June 9 and expected to close in the third quarter.

For AbbVie, the deal for Apogee adds to its pipeline in I&I, a category the biopharma giant dominated when its multi-indication blockbuster Humira® (adalimumab) was the world’s best-selling drug, before it lost patent exclusivity in the European Union in 2018 and the U.S. in 2023—after which it slipped from the top of GEN’s annual A-Lists of Top 10 Best-Selling Drugs.

However, AbbVie has developed two successful I&I drugs in recent years, Skyrizi® (risankizumab)  and Rinvoq® (upadacitinib)—with Skyrizi ranking No. 6 on GEN’s latest best-selling drugs A-List, generating $17.562 billion in sales last year (up 49.9% from 2024) and $4.483 billion in Q1 2026, up 30.9% from Q1 2025.

“For more than two decades, AbbVie has led and shaped the field of immunology bringing the science, scale and expertise needed to address some of the most complex diseases,” Robert A. Michael, AbbVie’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “The acquisition of Apogee further builds on our existing leadership, strengthening our ability to deliver innovative medicines to patients who need better options while also creating significant long-term value for shareholders.”

Apogee investors signaled support for the buyout with a surge of stock buying that sent the company’s shares soaring 47% in early day trading from $90.38 to $132.65 as of 10:21 am ET. AbbVie shares rose 4.5% from $216.49 to $226.24.

Potential Dupixent® challenger

Apogee is positioning zumilokibart as a potential challenger to Dupixent® (dupilumab), the blockbuster drug for AD and other indications that is co-marketed by Sanofi, which records global net sales, and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

Dupixent ranked No. 5 among “Top 10 Best-Selling Drugs” as ranked by GEN in a recent A-List, with $18.124 billion (€15.714 billion) in 2025 sales, up 20.2% from the $15.077 billion (€13.072 billion) that the drug racked up in 2024. Dupixent carried that momentum into the first quarter of this year, garnering $4.9 billion (€4.2 billion) in sales as recorded by Sanofi, up 33% from a year earlier. 

However, Dupixent is set to lose key U.S. patent exclusivity in 2031, giving Apogee and other AD drug developers time, they hope, to bring new treatments to market that can successfully compete when Dupixent loses its IP protection.

In addition to AD, zumilokibart is also being developed to treat asthma and eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE). The EoE program is set to advance into mid-stage clinical study as Apogee plans to launch the Phase IIb ELEVATE trial in the second half of this year.

Apogee has generated positive Phase Ib data for zumilokibart in asthma, and is on course to advance that program into the Phase IIb ASPIRE trial, set to launch in the first half of 2027.

Two other programs, both of them combination therapies that include zumilokibart, round out Apogee’s pipeline. APG279, a combination of zumilokibart and APG990, an OX40L inhibitor, is an AD candidate now in a Phase I trial (NCT07027527) comparing the the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetic (PK) parameters of the combination vs. Dupixent in adults with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis (AD).

Apogee cites preclinical studies showing that APG279 has driven closer to JAK-like inhibition of Type 1, 2, and 3 signaling compared to approved or in-development biologics, with the potential for best-in-class dosing and better tolerability in AD and a variety of other I&I diseases.

One-two punch

Apogee reasons that its chances of treating AD are enhanced by a proverbial one-two punch combining deep and sustained inhibition of Type 2 inflammation through zumilokibart’s inhibition of IL-13 with broader inhibition of Type 1-3 inflammation through APG990’s inhibition of OX40L.

The other combination program, APG273, is a preclinical combination of zumilokibart with APG333, a TSLP (thymic stromal lymphopoietin) that is being developed to treat asthma and COPD. Apogee has said it plans to announce additional plans for clinical studies later this year.

“Apogee’s pipeline adds highly differentiated clinical-stage assets, further expanding our robust immunology portfolio in areas of significant patient need, including atopic dermatitis and asthma,” Michael added. With our deep scientific expertise and proven capabilities, we are uniquely positioned to rapidly advance these programs and continue to transform the standard of care in inflammatory diseases.”

AbbVie has agreed to acquire all outstanding shares of Apogee for $135.11 per share cash, a 49.5% premium from the stock’s closing price on Friday.

The boards of AbbVie and Apogee have unanimously approved the transaction, which is expected to close in the third quarter subject to customary closing conditions, including Apogee shareholder approval and receipt of regulatory approvals.

“This transaction reflects the strength of Apogee’s vision, our team’s dedication and the significant progress we’ve made advancing zumilokibart and our differentiated pipeline,” stated Apogee CEO Michael Henderson, MD. “Since our founding, we’ve focused on developing transformative therapies for patients with inflammatory diseases while creating value for shareholders. This transaction delivers substantial shareholder value and positions our programs to reach their full potential.”

“We believe AbbVie can advance zumilokibart and our portfolio while expanding their impact for patients worldwide,”  Henderson added.

The post AbbVie to Acquire Apogee Therapeutics for $10.9B appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

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STAT+: FDA to launch pilot program to speed up early-stage clinical trials

WASHINGTON — Federal health officials announced a pilot program Monday to speed up early-stage clinical trials, which they say will reduce development timelines by six to 12 months, in hopes of encouraging U.S.-based trials and combating Chinese dominance in the field.

The pilot comes as the Food and Drug Administration, through the president’s 2027 fiscal budget, asks Congress to establish a permanent, faster process for the existing Investigational New Drug pathway. That proposal was championed by former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary before he resigned last month, though officials said on a Monday morning call that this program had been in the works since the start of the administration.

In a Fox News op-ed, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote that the U.S. is “losing ground” against China in clinical research and touted the actions as a way to reverse that trend.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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STAT+: Despite transplant referrals, most kidney patients don’t make the waitlist

Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here.

Good morning. Here’s a poem for the first Monday of (official) summer. As Alex Dimitrov writes, “Unfortunately / for me and you, we have / the rest of it to get to.” Let’s get to it. 

A looming threat to health disparities research in NIH grant proposal

Since the Trump administration announced its plan to overhaul the federal grantmaking process to give more power to political appointees, researchers have expressed alarm at the potential impact such a change could have on American science. And within the 412-page proposal, there’s one particular section that health disparities researchers say could disqualify their work from federal funding — a change that poses perhaps the biggest threat yet to the future of their field.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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STAT+: Pharmalittle: We’re reading about another FDA reversal, pharma’s M&A spree and much more

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to another working week. We hope the weekend respite — longer than usual thanks to a holiday on this side of the pond — was relaxing and invigorating. Now, though, that oh-too-familiar routine of meetings, deadlines, and the like has returned with a vengeance. You knew this would happen, yes? To cope, we are relying, as always, on a cuppa stimulation. Our choice today is English breakfast. Feel free to join us. Remember, no prescription is required. Meanwhile, here are a few items of interest. Best of luck accomplishing your goals and we hope you conquer the world. And, of course, do keep in touch …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will reconsider approving an experimental gene therapy for a deadly and rare childhood brain disorder that it rejected just four months ago, STAT tells us. The sudden turnaround is the latest in a series of apparent FDA reversals in the past two months, after leaders installed by the Trump administration resigned or were fired. Just last week, UniQure announced it was cleared to submit an application for a Huntington’s disease gene therapy that the agency had previously spurned and that former commissioner Marty Makary appeared to disparage on national television.

The U.S. launched a trade investigation into a German plan to lower its spending ​on pharmaceutical products, to see whether it is unreasonable or ‌discriminatory, Reuters notes. The probe by the U.S. Trade Representative comes under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and follows a move by the German Ministry of Health unveiled plans in April for a ​wide-ranging overhaul of the country’s statutory healthcare system to reduce a looming funding gap ‌by $23 billion. The plan, which would have introduced variable discounts on pharmaceuticals, is being replaced after the pharmaceutical industry expressed opposition to it.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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The Download: record-breaking subsea tunnels and flexible data centers

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Inside the world’s deepest and longest subsea road tunnel

—Niall Firth

I’m currently around 1,000 feet beneath the North Sea, in a dark, dank cave. It smells weird. And I’m increasingly aware of the pressure from millions of tons of seawater just above my head.

I’m under the iconic fjords of Norway to visit what will soon become the world’s longest and deepest subsea road tunnel—an exceptional engineering feat that will carry drivers deep beneath the North Sea.

I’m here to understand how you make a 16.6-mile highway that sits 1,280 feet below the sea at its deepest point. And also—at a time when it can feel hard to get anything done—to reassure myself that ambitious engineering is still possible. That we can still make things. 

Step inside Norway’s Rogfast tunnel and see how engineers are making it happen.

This story is from the next edition of our magazine, which is all about engineering. Subscribe now to get a copy when it lands on Wednesday!

Want to get a data center online quickly? Give it some flex.

The AI boom is putting unprecedented pressure on the electric grid. But rather than rushing to build new power plants, companies could find part of the solution right under our noses—or, more precisely, in the transmission lines under our feet and above our heads.

If data centers can limit the power they draw during high-demand stretches, they won’t need to wait for big infrastructure upgrades or build their own off-grid generation.

The idea of flexibility isn’t entirely foreign to grid operators. But a new generation of software could make the process faster, smarter, and more precise for the AI era.

Find out how the challenge of powering AI could lead to a smarter, more flexible grid.

—Amos Zeeberg

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 SK Hynix has overtaken Samsung as South Korea’s most valuable company
It’s also now the world’s most valuable memory chipmaker. (Reuters $)
+  And one of the biggest beneficiaries of the global AI boom. (BBC)
+ AI’s need for memory chips is set to skyrocket device prices. (WSJ $)

2 Trump says he no longer views Anthropic as a national security threat
“Well, not now, but a week ago, maybe,” he told The Axios Show. (Axios)
+ He praised the response of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. (Reuters $)
+ Anthropic’s IPO outcome could depend on the midterms. (WSJ $)
+ A culture war tactic against Anthropic has backfired. (MIT Technology Review)

3 SpaceX has received the lowest possible ESG rating
Index provider MSCI gave the company a triple C. (Financial Times $)
+ Russia got the same score after invading Ukraine. (Business Times)
+ Elon Musk previously called ESG metrics the “Devil Incarnate.” (CNBC)

4 A Tesla on Autopilot allegedly crashed into a Texas home and killed a woman
The driver said his Tesla Model 3 was in self-driving mode. (NYT $)
+ Tesla’s AI trainers don’t trust its self-driving tech. (Reuters $)

5 Polymarket reportedly paid creators to post fake betting videos
Clips showed them winning big on bets they would have really lost. (WSJ $)
+ Polymarket bets on an Iran deal are fueling insider-trading fears. (Bloomberg $)

6 Physicists have proposed that black holes don’t exist
They may be something much stranger: “gravastars.” (404 Media)
+ This is the first ever photo of a black hole. (MIT Technology Review)

7 A daring space rescue mission is set to launch this week
A spacecraft will try to lift an observatory into a safer orbit. (Space)
+ We’re putting more stuff into space than ever. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Nothing’s next budget phone has been cancelled due to “RAMageddon”
The company said memory prices pushed costs too high. (The Verge $)
+ Buying a used phone makes more sense than ever. (Wired $)

9 A viral doomsday scenario aims to pierce Europe’s AI complacency
It envisions the US and China tearing Europe into pieces. (Guardian)

10 Scientists have invented a way to brew espresso with ultrasonic waves
No hot water required. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“Even before we start reaping the benefits of AI in our devices, we are already paying the bill.” 

—Francisco Jeronimo, an analyst at IDC, tells CNBC that consumers are covering the costs of the ongoing memory shortage.

One More Thing

Bill Kirwa drives for Wasili, an Uber-style ridesharing company

BRIAN OTIENO


How mobile money supercharged Kenya’s sports betting addiction

As the lorry he’d flagged down lurched through Kenya’s western highlands, Bill Kirwa’s Infinix smartphone dinged with a notification. The bet of 3,500 shillings he’d placed with mobile money—then worth approximately $35—had just turned into nearly $8,500.

Kirwa, now 26, put the windfall to good use, purchasing a car that enabled him to drive for Wasili, an Uber-style ride-hailing service. But he continued gambling, and over time, his losses mounted. In just a few years, he’s effectively erased his big win.  

Kirwa’s experience is hardly unique. Across Africa, the rapid spread of smartphones and mobile money has fueled an explosion in online gambling. But nowhere is the craze as acute as it is in Kenya. Find out why.

—Jonathan W. Rosen

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ A clever Bengal cat has seemingly learned to understand English—and talk back.
+ This list of the 100 greatest bird names lovingly captures the quirks of avian taxonomy.
+ Darth Vader’s weird chestplate transforms into a cassette player in these reworked Star Wars clips.
+ Trace the history and evolution of heavy metal music through the interactive genres and playlists of Map of Metal.

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Birth Characteristics Highlight Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer Risk

U.S. researchers have identified several life factors identifiable at birth that impact on a person’s risk of being diagnosed with colorectal cancer (CRC) at a younger age.

Being a man or having Hispanic ethnicity were potential risk factors for colorectal cancer before the age of 50 years, according to the study in Cancer. Among women, being heavier at birth or having an older father also increased this risk.

Conversely, men and women with a foreign-born mother had a significantly decreased risk of having colorectal cancer at this younger age.

“Evaluating demographic, birth, and parental characteristics is important in understanding what’s causing the rising incidence of early-onset colorectal cancer,” said lead author Sunny Siddique, PhD, MPH, from the Yale School of Public Health.

“Our findings warrant future studies aimed to understand the mechanisms through which factors such as male sex, Hispanic ethnicity, birthweight, maternal birthplace, and paternal age may influence risk of early onset colorectal cancer.”

Colorectal cancer is the second most common cancer in the U.S and, while rates have declined among people 50 years of age in the past few decades, they have steadily increased in younger people.

Compared with colorectal cancer that occurs in later years, early-onset disease presents at an advanced stage, both because of its aggressiveness and delays in diagnosis. It is typically found in the rectum and distal colon, a location associated with Western diets.

Siddique and team compared the characteristics of 1221 people diagnosed with colorectal cancer before age 50 with 61,050 matched individuals without cancer, all living in California.

Multivariable analysis revealed that men had a 34% higher risk of early-onset colorectal cancer compared with women. Hispanic ethnicity was also linked with a 43% higher risk compared with being White.

Among women, every half-kilo increase in birthweight was associated with a 10% increase in early-onset disease, while having a father aged 35 years or older was linked with a 56% increase in risk.

Overall, having a mother born outside the U.S. was associated with a 15% lower risk of early-onset colorectal cancer.

Siddique and co-workers note that more than 60% of foreign-born mothers in their study were born in Mexico and they point to other research suggesting that first-generation, foreign-born Hispanic women tend to have healthier diet and less obesity during pregnancy than their U.S.-born counterparts.

The team speculates that the paternal-age finding may relate to increases in rate of de novo mutations among children born to older fathers.

Referring to the raised Hispanic risk, the researchers note that this ethnic group continues to experience barriers to accessing screening and care, including language and cultural competency, income, and a lack of health insurance.

“Per recent recommendations by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to initiate CRC screening among average-risk individuals aged 45 years or older, it is important to note that people younger than age 45 years are not eligible for routine screening,” they pointed out.

“Yet, our finding of Hispanic ethnicity being a risk factor for CRC is particularly relevant to this group of young individuals who are experiencing a high incidence of CRC.”

The post Birth Characteristics Highlight Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer Risk appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.