health
Caring for the caregivers after transplant patients come home
Jessica Rinaldi/Boston Globe
"Caregiver" doesn't begin to cover the roles that someone plays when their loved one has received a life-changing organ transplant. "Nurse," "case manager," and "financial planner" start to encompass some of the responsibilities assumed by family members who lack support through the long process of recovering and adjusting to the complexities of managing post-transplant health. There are checkups, medications, and medical equipment to manage, from IV drips to dressing changes to vital signs monitoring.
"Transplantation is not the end story. You don't stop what you do as caregiver or care partners the day after a transplant," said Ira Copperman, whose wife, Glenda (above), received a double organ transplant in 1999. "It is a lifelong journey." Advocates, doctors, and patients are trying to change a framework for support that now ends one year post-transplant, adding training and counseling and turning to the Family Medical Leave Act for financial assistance. STAT's Annalisa Merelli has more.
mental health
How online racial bias may be connected to adolescents' suicidal thinking
With suicide rates rising among Black adolescents over the past 20 years, researchers have been looking into possible causes. A new study in JAMA Psychiatry asked whether there was a connection between online racial discrimination and suicidal thinking. The researchers point out that cyberbullying has already been linked to increased suicidal ideation, and Black adolescents have an average of five racially discriminatory experiences daily, most online.
After analyzing data from the first wave of the National Survey of Critical Digital Literacy, the researchers concluded there was a connection, but contrary to their expectations, it was indirect. Offline racial discrimination has been directly associated with suicidal thinking, but among the 525 Black adolescents in the new study, there was a link between individual online racial discrimination and PTSD symptoms, and then between PTSD symptoms and suicidal ideation. Still, they urge online platforms to "create safer spaces for Black adolescents by proactively monitoring and reducing hate speech."
global health
Smartphone tool shows promise for detecting TB
Tuberculosis has been on the wane for years, but in 2021 cases started mounting again, making it the second-most common cause of death from an infectious disease. Diagnosing someone with TB as opposed to other respiratory illnesses such as asthma, pneumonia, or Covid can be challenging, especially where molecular tests on cultures of saliva and mucus are not accessible. Now researchers writing in Science Advances report on their success with a tool that uses smartphone recordings to detect coughs specific to TB.
The audio framework, called TBscreen, was trained in Nairobi, Kenya, on 33,000 natural coughs and 1,200 forced coughs and tested on 149 patients who had pulmonary TB and 46 patients with other respiratory conditions. The test's sensitivity was about 70% when used on recordings from a Google Pixel 2 smartphone (the best performer). The scientists hope their tool can become a point-of-care cough-based TB screen.
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