Health and medicine

— Longer initial seizure tied to higher odds of remission Prolonged seizures during the first session of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) were associated with a greater likelihood of remission for patients with major depressive disorder, according to a large cohort study. In an adjusted analysis, individuals with an initial seizure duration of at least 30 seconds had twice the odds of achieving remission compared to those whose seizures lasted less than 20 seconds, a team led by Axel

— Numerous veterans report severe health issues, many tied to radiation exposure Renowned comedian and activist Jon Stewart is urging the Biden administration to address an oversight in the expansive PACT Act, a veterans assistance bill, which neglected to cover American soldiers who were among the first responders post-9/11, and later fell ill after being stationed at a base heavily contaminated with radiation. In the months following the September 11 attacks, U.S. special operations forces

— Lack of Institutional Support and Knowledge rank as Key Factors A recent systematic review of 283 studies has determined that a lack of institutional backing remains the top reason clinicians hesitate to intervene in addiction cases, as highlighted by the findings. In their analysis, Wilson Compton, MD, MPE, deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and his colleagues reported in JAMA Network Open that 81.2% of the reviewed articles cited the institutional environment as

— Potential for durable responses with alternative antigen-targeted therapy A promising new treatment targeting a different antigen has shown success among patients with large B-cell lymphoma who previously relapsed after receiving CD19-directed CAR T-cell therapy (CAR19), according to findings from a phase I dose-finding study. In the study, 38 patients who had not responded to CAR19 achieved a 68% overall response rate and a 53% complete response rate following treatment with autologous

Gene therapy applied to both ears in children with DFNB9 shows enhanced outcomes, including improved sound localization and hearing in noisy settings KEY POINTS BOSTON (June 5, 2024) — A breakthrough gene therapy targeting a genetic form of deafness has demonstrated restored hearing function in five children treated in both ears. These children exhibited significant improvements in speech recognition and could now discern the location of sounds. This bilateral gene therapy—administered to the