Online treatment could help thousands with chronic knee pain

Melbourne: Researchers at the University of Melbourne are calling on health insurers and government to support new remotely delivered treatment models – including Skype consultations – for people suffering chronic knee pain. They have developed an online treatment that has dramatically improved symptoms and functioning for people suffering knee osteoarthritis, the main cause of chronic knee pain. Research trial findings published today in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, suggest online delivery is the key to greatly improve patient access to effective non-drug treatments.

Can These Artificial Intelligence Apps Improve Mental Health?

Columbia: More than 20 percent of Americans will have symptoms of depression or anxiety this year, but only one in five of them will get adequate treatment. Increasingly, people are turning to smart phone apps for help. There’s only one problem: none of the thousands of mental health apps available have so far been adequately tested to see if they provide relief.

Depression Risk Grows With Use of More Social Media Sites

Pittsburgh: Compared with the total time spent on social media, use of multiple platforms is more strongly associated with depression and anxiety among young adults, the University of Pittsburgh Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health (CRMTH) found in a national survey.The analysis, published online and scheduled for the April print issue of the journal Computers in Human Behavior, showed that people who report using seven to 11 social media platforms had more than three times the risk of depression and anxiety than their peers who use zero to two platforms, even after adjusting for the total time spent on social media overall.

Internet Use in Class Tied to Lower Test Scores

Psychological Science: College students who surfed the internet in class had lower scores on the final exam than their peers who didn’t go online in class, according to findings forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Michigan State University researchers studied laptop use in an introductory psychology course and found that the average time students spent browsing the web for non-class-related purposes was 37 minutes. Students spent the most time on social media, reading email, shopping for items such as clothes, and watching videos. And their academic performance seemed to suffer as a result. Internet use was a significant predictor of students’ final exam score even when their intelligence and motivation were taken into account, said researcher Susan Ravizza, associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study.

Social media shots affect body image because we only show our best side

TheConversation: Many modern celebrities are known for being excessive sharers on social media. For instance, the Kardashians are notorious for posting daily glamorous and often lingerie clad images on Instagram that attract several million likes. But it’s not just images of attractive celebrities that flood social media. Friends, acquaintances and strangers post images of themselves too, often editing them to disguise face blemishes, make cheeks rosier or to make their nose look smaller. When people look at these attractive images on social media, research shows they often compare their own appearance to those images and think they’re less attractive than the images they see.

How to be a healthy user of social media

TheConversation: We can learn a lot about people through how they use social media. For example, Twitter language can be used to predict the risk of dying from heart disease. Analyses of Facebook updates show women tend to be warmer than men, but just as assertive, and people high in extraversion tend to express positive emotions, whereas those with neurotic tendencies are more likely to write about being lonely and depressed. Concerns exist about the negative effects social media can have on mental health, especially for young people.

Five traps to be aware of when reading success rates on IVF clinic websites

TheConversation: A recent review of in-vitro fertilisation treatment (IVF) clinics in Australia, conducted by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), identified some misleading ways they present people’s chances of a having a baby on their websites. Clinics provide IVF success rates in often confusing ways because there is no agreed format on how this information should be presented. Our recent audit, presented at a recent conference of the Fertility Society of Australia, reviewed the success rates published on the websites of IVF clinics in Australia and New Zealand. It identified some common traps in the way these figures are presented. Below are five things consumers should be aware of when visiting IVF clinic websites.

Online calculator to predict IVF success

Scimex: VF online calculator predicts individualised chances of couples having a baby  The tool is relevant for individual couples, clinicians, funders and policy makers  Writing in The BMJ today, researchers describe a new calculator that has been developed to estimate the individualised chances of couples having a baby, both before and after first IVF treatment, and over multiple cycles.  Available online, the calculator considers specific characteristics of couples and treatment information to predict cumulative chances over up to six IVF (in vitro fertilisation) or ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) cycles. 

Social networking by doctors may save patients' lives.

Ann Arbor: To get the best results for patients, it may pay for their doctors to heed the words of legendary University of Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler: the team, the team, the team. A new study finds that heart surgery patients’ chances of survival depends in part on the overall level of teamwork among all the physicians who cared for them across their surgery preparation, operation, hospitalization and recuperation. The finding was made by a team of researchers at the U-M Medical School, just a few miles away from the stadium where Schembechler once coached.

Wikipedia is already the world’s ‘Dr Google’ – it’s time for doctors and researchers to make it better

TheConversation: Health professionals have a duty to improve the accuracy of medical entries in Wikipedia, according to a letter published today in Lancet Global Health, because it’s the first port of call for people all over the world seeking medical information.
In our correspondence, a group of international colleagues and I call on medical journals to do more to help experts make Wikipedia more accurate, and for the medical community to make improving its content a top priority.

Kids who watch porn won’t necessarily turn into sex offenders

TheConversation: Recent media campaigns have linked children watching online pornography to an increase in the number of school children committing sexual assault. One article linked school students sexually assaulting each other to the rise in online porn. But is there evidence children watching online porn is linked to an increase in sexual offending? We know the public is concerned about the potential harm to young people watching online pornography, with a Senate inquiry on the matter due to report towards the end of November 2016. We also know how easy it is for children to watch online porn, not only on the computers in their bedrooms but on their smartphones.

FDA takes action to protect consumers from potentially dangerous counterfeit medicines and devices sold online

FDA: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in partnership with international regulatory and law enforcement agencies, took action this week against more than 1,050 websites that illegally sell potentially dangerous, unapproved prescription medicines and medical devices to consumers. These actions include the issuance of regulatory warnings to the operators of offending websites and seizure of illegal medicines and medical devices worldwide. The action occurred as part of the Eighth Annual International Internet Week of Action (IIWA), a global cooperative effort, led by INTERPOL, to combat the unlawful sale and distribution of illegal and potentially counterfeit medical products on the Internet.

Study finds doctors’ fear of negative contributors on online rating sites is unwarranted

Maryland: Doctors have many concerns about online crowdsourced ratings which are intended to make patients better-informed consumers of health care, but this is a big one: They worry that complainers will be the most outspoken contributors to rating sites, skewing scores and resulting in a heckler's veto. A new study from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland finds that fear is unwarranted.

Watching "so cute" cats online videos lowers stress and makes you happy

TheConversation: Watching cute cat videos and looking at their online pictures may not be a waste of time. A new study has found doing so could boost energy levels and increase feelings of happiness. Published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior the study even suggests that watching internet cats could be used as a form of digital pet therapy or stress relief. Internet data shows two million cat videos were posted on YouTube as of 2014, totalling nearly 26 billion views. Celebrity cats – such as Grumpy Cat and and Lil BUB – have also sprung up on social media, garnering mass followings.

Interest in Learning About Skin Cancer Appears to Increase During Summer According To Google Searches

JAMA: Google searches for information on melanoma and skin cancer increased over the summer months during a five-year period, although the level of interest did not correlate with the melanoma mortality to incidence ratio, suggesting that increased search volumes may not be associated with early detection, according to a research letter published online by JAMA Dermatology. Researcher Kyle T. Amber, M.D., of MacNeal Hospital, Berwyn, Ill., and coauthors used Google Trends, a research tool which quantifies interest in topics at the population level by analyzing all search queries for a specific term, to extract data for each state from 2010 to 2014 for the terms “skin cancer” and “melanoma.” Search volume indexes (SVIs) are values based on total searches during a specified period per selected region.

Broadening the Reach of Mental Health Care Through Online Interventions

PsychologicalScience: Effective, evidence-based interventions have been developed to treat various mental disorders — but that doesn’t mean the treatments always reach the people who need them. Researcher Ricardo F. Muñoz of the University of California San Francisco and colleagues wanted to see if making treatments available online might be one way to bring mental health care to a much broader range of people. In a new study published in Clinical Psychological Science, Muñoz and colleagues present data from an online smoking cessation intervention that was offered in both English and Spanish. Participants were recruited through a Google campaign that targeted people looking for help quitting smoking.

Machine learning breakthrough could revolutionize medicine

Alberta: Computer system that creates personalized metabolic profiles could help doctors predict diseases like Alzheimer's, cancer and diabetes before they develop. A breakthrough in machine learning has also brought about a “game changer” for the science of metabolomics—and will hasten the development of diagnostic and predictive tests for Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes and numerous other conditions, leading to improved prevention and treatment. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

New online tool to predict genetic resistance to tuberculosis drugs

London: Finding out what drugs can be used to treat a patient with tuberculosis (TB) can be sped up by days or weeks, thanks to a new free online tool. The TB-Profiler tool, developed by a team of scientists led by Dr Taane Clark at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, analyses and interprets genome sequence data to predict resistance to 11 drugs used for the treatment of TB. This rapid tool only takes a few minutes and means that sequence data can now be used without delay. Importantly, it also removes dependence on specialised bioinformatics skills that are not readily available in clinical settings. Data on how the tool works is published in open access journal Genome Medicine.

Internet Acne Education with Automated Counseling Tested

JAMA: An Internet-based acne education program that included automated counseling was not better than a standard educational website in improving acne severity and quality of life in adolescents, according to an article published online by JAMA Dermatology. Acne vulgaris is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that is prevalent among adolescents. Patient education is an important part of managing acne along with medication. However, the effect of patient education on clinical outcomes is not well characterized in dermatology publications.

The dating jungle: how men and women see each other when online dating

TheConversation: In the world of online dating, nothing is as it seems. But that doesn’t stop many of us from leaping to the wrong conclusions about people. A recent paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association and reported on in the press suggested that when evaluating photographs from online dating profiles, men and women judge enhanced and un-enhanced photos somewhat differently.