EurekAlert! News by Subject: Medicine & Health - News by Subject: Medicine & Health

Medicine & Health

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 14-Aug-2025 22:11 ET (15-Aug-2025 02:11 GMT/UTC)

My robot therapist: The ethics of AI mental health chatbots for kids

University of Rochester Medical Center
Peer-Reviewed Publication

AI mental health apps may offer a cheap and accessible way to fill the gaps in the overstretched U.S. mental health care system, but ethics experts warn that we need to be thoughtful about how we use them, especially with children.

Journal: The Journal of Pediatrics

Social factors help explain worse cardiovascular health among adults in rural vs. urban communities

NIH/National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A research team funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) uncovered higher rates of heart disease and worse heart health affecting adults living in rural communities compared to urban areas and the factors that likely drive these differences.

Journal: JAMA Cardiology

UT Health San Antonio neurologists among first to treat patients with deep brain stimulation that adapts to patients’ symptoms

University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
Business Announcement

Neurologists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio are among the nation's first to use new technology to treat patients with movement disorders with deep brain stimulation that automatically adapts as symptoms change.

Study finds gap between heart disease outcomes in men and women has narrowed over past 20 years

Intermountain Healthcare
Reports and Proceedings

While the typical image of someone suffering a heart attack might be a man clutching his chest, heart disease is a major problem for women, too. A new study from heart researchers at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City shows that while rates of death and other cardiac-related events – like heart attack – are still high for women, the gap is narrowing when it comes to the rates of similar events in men.

Meeting: American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session

$2.7 million NIH grant to fund next generation of synthetic blood

Penn State
Grant and Award Announcement

Blood loss is the leading cause of death in trauma patients between the ages of 1 and 46 years, largely because they cannot access safe blood sources quickly enough. A possible solution? Freeze-dried synthetic blood. A multi-institutional team led by Dipanjan Pan, the Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Chair Professor in Nanomedicine at Penn State, recently received a five-year, $2.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to develop the next generation of synthetic blood.

Cardiovascular Health Among Rural and Urban US Adults— Healthcare, Lifestyle, and Social Factors

JAMA Network
Peer-Reviewed Publication

About The Study: This national cross-sectional study found substantial rural-urban disparities in cardiometabolic risk factors and cardiovascular diseases, which were largest among younger adults and almost entirely explained by social risk factors. These findings suggest that efforts to improve socioeconomic conditions in rural communities may be critical to address the rural-urban gap in cardiovascular health.

Journal: JAMA Cardiology

Deadly antibiotic-resistant ‘Superbug’ bacteria spreading in Malaysian hospital

University of Birmingham
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A virulent strain of antibiotic-resistant ‘superbug’ that causes severe disease has been found circulating in a Malaysian hospital - posing significant challenges to global public health.

Journal: Microbial Genomics