Trusted support improves mental health in LGBQ+ teens - News-Medical

Providing people with nutritious foods can improve the management of chronic metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension. However, most studies of "Food Is Medicine" programs have only looked at their short-term impacts - on the scale of weeks to months. A new study led by Mass General Brigham researchers shows that a longer duration Food Is Medicine program through the Mass General Brigham Revere Community Health Center's Food Pantry was associated with dose-dependent improvements in cardiometabolic health in adults. They found that patients who received weekly plant-based grocery packages for an average of 2.7 years showed dose-dependent reductions in diastolic blood pressure, body weight, and body mass index (BMI). Results are published in Preventing Chronic Disease. "Our results suggest that plant-based food interventions are promising and, in the future, should focus on longer duration for improving cardiovascular and metabolic health," said senior author Lauren Fiechtner, MD, MPH, Division Chief of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at Mass General Brigham for Children and Senior Health and Research Advisor at the Greater Boston Food Bank.

Bioengineer.org news storyFor millions of people living with HIV, antiretroviral therapy has transformed a once-fatal infection into a manageable chronic condition. Yet the very drugs that suppress the virus can carry quiet costs, and one of the most insidious is bone loss. Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, or TDF, has been a cornerstone of HIV treatment worldwide for two decades, prized for its potency, durability, and low cost. But a growing body of evidence has linked TDF exposure to measurable reductions in bone mineral density, raising an increasingly urgent clinical question: once bone has been lost on a TDF-based regimen, can it be recovered? A new prospective cohort study, published in BMC Infectious Diseases, offers some of the most detailed longitudinal evidence to date that the answer, for many patients, is yes. The research team enrolled 223 virologically suppressed men living with HIV who had low bone mineral density while taking TDF-based antiretroviral therapy.

The new treatment kills off a sub-group of fat cells. (Jian Fan/iStockphoto/Getty Images) Early clinical trials into a new fat reduction treatment have reported promising results, and the treatment takes a more unusual approach: Rather than shrinking fat cells, as most weight loss strategies do, it safely and naturally kills them off. The drug here is CBL-514, which is administered via injection. As well as proving effective at reducing subcutaneous fat (just below the skin), there's evidence it can also reduce visceral fat (stored deeper around the organs). According to the team behind the trials, CBL-514 and its unconventional strategy have the potential to reduce fat in key areas of the body – with further benefits that come with weight loss likely to follow. "We expect that patients will be pleased by the cosmetic effects, such as the flatter stomach that can come with subcutaneous fat loss," says endocrinologist Timothy Garvey, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who headed up the trial.