Research led by investigators at Mass General Brigham suggests that the health benefits of more aggressive blood pressure control outweigh concerns about overtreating people with high blood pressure readings.

Ochsner Children’s performed the first robotic-assisted pediatric spine deformity surgery in Louisiana and the Gulf South, showcasing leadership in innovative pediatric orthopedic care. The procedure treated Scheuermann's kyphosis using the ExcelsiusGPS® robotic system, enhancing precision and safety. Robotic-assisted surgery improves accuracy and safety through advanced imaging and computer-guided implant placement. 

Understanding how fruit fly embryos assert metabolic independence from their mothers may help scientists better understand the earliest stages of human health and disease. Like humans, fruit fly embryos rely on nutrients provided by their mothers to fuel their development until they are ready to take over metabolic functions on their own. But exactly how this process plays out has remained unclear. Now, a new study by Van Andel Institute scientists provides an unprecedented look into the mechanics of this metabolic handoff. The findings offer the most detailed analysis to date of how metabolites and other biomolecules shift in the earliest stages of fruit fly development.

Reproductive timing matters when it comes to aging and age-related disease.  In a study now online at eLife¸ researchers determine that girls who begin menstruation before the age of 11 or women who give birth before the age of 21 have double the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart failure and obesity and quadruple the risk of developing severe metabolic disorders. The study also reveals that later puberty and childbirth are genetically associated with longer lifespan, lower frailty, slower epigenetic aging and reduced risk of age-related diseases, including type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

Innovative intervention delivered by trained community health workers – meaning nonclinical personnel with deep knowledge of the community – increased treatment utilization among participating families with children who have ADHD, according to a pilot study published in the Journal of Attention Disorders. This intervention for parents and caregivers, covering topics that range from education about ADHD to discussions of stigma and barriers to care, intends to reduce inequities in access to evidence-based treatment and boost family engagement in ADHD care.

When it comes to adopting artificial intelligence in high-stakes settings like hospitals and airplanes, good AI performance and a brief worker training on the technology is not sufficient to ensure systems will run smoothly and patients and passengers will be safe, a new study suggests. Instead, algorithms and the people who use them in the most safety-critical organizations must be evaluated simultaneously to get an accurate view of AI’s effects on human decision making, researchers say. The team also contends these evaluations should assess how people respond to good, mediocre and poor technology performance to put the AI-human interaction to a meaningful test – and to expose the level of risk linked to mistakes.