Chronic pain often leads practitioners to prescribe opioids, though prescribed opioids have created a nationwide crisis that reportedly killed more than 107,000 Americans from December 2020 through December 2021. Therefore, an urgent need exists to develop novel non-opioid and non-addicting therapies for managing chronic pain. To help develop these therapies, the National Institutes of Health recently awarded a five-year grant to Mahmoud Salama Ahmed, Ph.D., from the TTUHSC Jerry H. Hodge School of Pharmacy. 

A new study offers a framework to estimate the sample size required for microbiome association studies based on expected effect sizes and analysis methods. By utilizing two large datasets involving around 10,000 individuals, the researchers found that 500 individuals may be sufficient to detect associations targeting larger effect sizes or metabolic diseases closely related to lifestyle, while thousands of samples may be needed for smaller effect sizes or multifactorial complex diseases such as psychiatric and autoimmune conditions. This framework guides future studies in human microbiome research.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a detrimental impact on global health. The momentous effort of researchers around the globe resulted in not only the successful development of multiple vaccines but also a vast accumulation of COVID-19 patient-derived next-generation sequencing data. Despite the availability of efficacious vaccines, COVID-19 persists, and our knowledge of host transcriptomics is still vague.

A mathematical modeling study coordinated by UMC Utrecht has shown that sustained HIV remission (without rebound) or HIV eradication cure scenarios could consistently reduce new HIV infections among men who have sex with men (MSM) in the Netherlands as compared to a scenario without a cure. The investigators anticipate that introduction of either of these cure scenarios could contribute to ending the HIV epidemic among MSM in the Netherlands. In contrast, transient HIV remission with a risk of rebound could increase new infections if rebounds are not closely monitored, and could potentially undermine HIV control efforts.