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Tag: University of California

  • US Santa Barbara selects ‘Crying in H Mart’ for 2026 common book program

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    Next year, booklovers at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) will be encouraged to read “Crying in H Mart,” a bestselling memoir about cultural identity and grief, the university announced this week.

    As the university’s community-reading initiative, UCSB Reads, which invites students and faculty to read the same book for discussions every year, has selected “Crying in H Mart” as the 2026 book.

    In “Crying in H Mart,” its author Michelle Zauner (also the frontwoman of the indie pop band Japanese Breakfast) explores grief and losing her Korean mother to terminal cancer. 

    Zauner, a biracial Korean American who grew up in Oregon, stayed connected to her roots through Korean food, especially after her mother’s death. In her New York Times bestselling memoir, Zauner processes her grief by embracing the Korean traditions with the backdrop of Korean grocery chain H Mart.

    Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast at The 16th Governors Awards held at The Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood on November 16, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)

    “In a series of personal essays, Zauner recounts growing up as one of a few Asian-Americans in her Oregon town and reconnecting with her Korean identity as a young adult,” UCSB Reads said in explaining its 2026 pick. “The book chronicles her coming of age and complex family dynamics, showing how she navigates the profound grief of a parent’s illness and death by embracing the traditions that define her.”

    UCSB Reads 2026 will launch in January, giving away free books to students. Then, readers can attend free and social events to explore the book together throughout the winter and spring quarters. 

    Instructors are also encouraged to incorporate the book into their courses, the university said.  Free copies of the book will be available for students through the university library as well.

    Zauner herself will speak at a free public event at the school in May 2026. 

    Published in 2021, “Crying in H Mart” was a critical and commercial hit as it spent 60 weeks on the New York Times hardcover non-fiction bestseller list and was named a top book by TIME and the Atlantic. 

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    Helen Jeong

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  • California study: Wildfire defensible space, home hardening double number of homes saved

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    Some of California’s most destructive wildfires have changed the way homeowners think about their own space.  

    Marin County residents Anita Brock and her husband Steve Kaplan are among them. They live on a steep hill in Larkspur, in a heavily wooded area with tight, windy roads. They’ve cleared space and shrubs around their homes and replaced potential fuel loads with gravel. 

    “As you can see, I mean this type of area here, if embers do land here, you know they’re not going to catch a light or any dead leaves or anything like that,” Brock said. 

    “We realized that we’re here and we’re not immune to those same dangers,” Kaplan said. 

    A new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, is providing some concrete data about the impacts of preparing one’s home to withstand a wildfire, particularly in the wildland-urban interface in California. 

    The first-of-its-kind study combined wildfire simulation tools with Cal Fire’s damage inspection data from five of the state’s most destructive fires before 2022. The models showed that home hardening, such as the use of fire-resistant materials on the roof, walls and decks, and increasing the amount of defensible space together can double the number of homes and other structures that survive a blaze. 

    All that mitigation work is the central focus of the study from the UC Berkeley Fire Research Lab. The study cited that between 2013 and 2018, California wildfires damaged or destroyed approximately 47,000 structures and killed 189 people.

    “All of the big fires we’ve had in California have really raised awareness about the risks involved,” said Brock. “We do everything that we can to mitigate the risks that are all around us.”

    The study concludes that simply clearing a 5-foot perimeter around homes, the subject of California’s controversial proposed Zone 0 regulations, can reduce structure loss by 17%.

    “It’s finally putting some quantitative data to show that the investments we’re making are actually going to have a payout,” said study co-author Michael Gollner.  

    The study also emphasizes the need for a community-wide mitigation strategy.  

    “We also see a really strong signal in what you do around the house, so that Zone Zero and that five feet was surprisingly a pretty strong signal, and it makes sense,” said Gollner. 

    For Brock and Kaplan, who had once lost their home insurance, part of this ongoing effort is to keep their coverage. 

    “All of the efforts to mitigate, I think or not mitigate, are going to be directly related to the future of being able to insure homes,” said Kaplan. 

    A few small steps by homeowners living in a California reality, and the threat of larger and more destructive wildfires. 

    “I do think that maintaining defensible space is one of the best ways that you can keep yourself and your family and your neighbors safe,” said Brock. “I absolutely believe it will make a difference.”

    The study found that the distance between buildings was the most influential factor in predicting loss. Exterior siding and year built were the next strongest predictors.

    Home hardening alone raised survival to 25%. Hardening and clearing defensible space closest to the home up to 5 feet improved survivability to 40%.

    Fire officials say there are grants and help available for cash-strapped homeowners to take advantage of through local FireSafe Councils and FireWise community groups. 

    Kenny Choi

    When Kenny Choi jumped into the backseat, he never thought he would be introducing his ride share driver to National Public Radio. The hour-long ride to the airport turned into a conversation that included politics, the economic divide, and the cultural differences between the East Coast and the West Coast.

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    Kenny Choi

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  • UCLA Faces $500M Federal Grant Suspension

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    A District Judge has prevented the Trump administration from cutting federal funding for cities and counties that limit cooperation with ICE

    UCLA campus (Photo via Getty Images)
    Credit: Photo via Getty Images

    Around $500 million in federal grants have been suspended from UCLA, halting research in cancer, heart disease, diabetes, strokes, PTSD and fighting antibiotic-resistant infections.

    In August, a federal judge ordered the restoration of 114 National Science Foundation grants. However, grants from the National Institutes of Health remain suspended. Researchers have since been struggling to maintain experiments and keep staff. Many researchers feel a sense of uncertainty as funding is up in the air.

    Physician scientist and chair of the Neurology Department at UCLA, Dr. S. Thomas Carmichael, told LAist his department lost about $23 million meant for staff salaries and experiments among other critical needs. He also claimed that the suspension of funding has disrupted several projects, many of which are aimed at treating Alzheimer’s, stroke and Parkinson’s patients.

    Researchers were also working on a new drug meant to assist with learning and memory function for those with stroke and dementia damage. Carmichael estimated that, if all went well, the drug was on a five-year timeline from discovery to clinical trials. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case.

    “We’re at the stage where, hey, this works,” Carmichael said. “It does something different in these diseases that we haven’t been able to do. So now we need to replicate it. And now we need to do a lot of the studies that show what dose can be given. Is there toxicity? Those kinds of things.”

    The Neurology Department will be able to cover salaries and minimal research efforts for the next three months using money meant for high-risk, high-reward projects that NIH funding may not cover. It is not clear what will occur after this three month period. Some researchers have been using personal funds, but this is also limited.

    It is possible that researchers could lose more than a year’s worth of experiments.

    Scroll to continue reading

    Not only would losing staff negatively affect lab research, but growing uncertainty and instability could also drive many out of the field. That, in turn, could disrupt industries such as pharmaceuticals and biotech, which depend on this research. Some even worry it could collapse entirely.

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    Elizabeth Ahern

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  • You can see the salary of police, professors and more in California. Here’s how

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    Sheriffs, mayors and professors with the University of California are among the workers in the state whose salaries you can view. And with the fall semester beginning and local elections coming this year and the following, you may be curious to know more details about the people serving you or your city.

    California law requires cities, counties and special districts to annually report compensation data to the California State Controller’s office, which also publishes payroll data for state departments, the University of California and California State University systems, according to the California State Controller’s Office. The office also requests compensation data voluntarily from superior courts, community college districts, K-12 school districts and more.

    The most recent batch of compensation data has been rolling out since June, beginning with self-reported payroll for cities and counties — a report that covers 746,358 positions, according to a news release.

    “This report is a vital tool in promoting fiscal transparency and accountability in local government,” Controller Malia M. Cohen said in a statement. “Californians deserve to know how public funds are being spent and who is being paid with their tax dollars.

    “The newly published data includes 461 cities and 55 counties. The City of Hayward had the highest average city employee wage in California, followed by the cities of Atherton, Beverly Hills, San Francisco and Half Moon Bay.”

    • Hayward average city wage for 2024: $146,215

    • Atherton average city wage for 2024: $129,449

    • Beverly Hills average city wage for 2024: $127,264

    • San Francisco average city wage for 2024: $125,463

    • Half Moon Bay average city wage for 2024: $120,957

    Here’s a look at just one way you can find pay data on these California workers.

    Whose salaries can I find?

    The state controller publishes public employer compensation data at publicpay.ca.gov. Employee names are not searchable on the database.

    You can look up compensation data by department (police, health departments, parks and recreation and more) for a city, county or at the state level (think CalFire or California State Parks). You can also see how much elected officials earn in your city or county.

    Other compensation data for 2024 coming later this year includes for the University of California, community college districts and K-12 education, with the former two coming out in September and the latter dropping in December.

    Payroll data for special districts — public agencies that provide specific services to a community such as sanitation or providing water service, according to the Los Angeles County auditor-controller — is set to be released on Aug. 29.

    How do I look up how much my teacher, professor makes?

    Californians may not find payroll data for all K-12 school districts in the state. Still, payroll data for some of the biggest school districts in California can be found on the website, including Los Angeles Unified School District, Fresno Unified School District, San Bernardino City Unified School District and more.

    Meanwhile, compensation data for 2024 for the California State University schools and the chancellor’s office have been published on the website, and you can see college-specific pay data. The same goes for the University of California, although the most recent compensation data is set to be released in September.

    Among what you can view are the highest paid employees across universities.

    Other ways to see salaries in California

    You can also use ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage to search University of California employee pay, which covers UC’s career faculty, staff employees, part-time, temporary and student employees. The searchable database from the Office of the President does allow users to search by name or title.

    Cities may also post their payroll information online. For example, Los Angeles posts such information on controller.lacity.gov/data.

    The California State Assembly website and the California State Senate website publish salaries of lawmakers.

    Paris Barraza is a trending reporter covering California news at The Desert Sun. Reach her at pbarraza@gannett.com.

    This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: How much do these California workers make? Salary may be online

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  • More Americans With Diabetes Are Turning to Marijuana – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news

    More Americans With Diabetes Are Turning to Marijuana – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news

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    More Americans With Diabetes Are Turning to Marijuana – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news





























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    AggregatedNews

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  • Judge Orders California Grad Students To Pause Their Massive Strike

    Judge Orders California Grad Students To Pause Their Massive Strike

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    A state judge has ordered graduate student workers at the University of California to temporarily stop their strike at six campuses across the system, delivering a win to UC regents in their legal effort to force strikers back to work.

    Both the university system and the academic workers’ union, United Auto Workers Local 4811, said late Friday that the judge in Orange County had granted a temporary restraining order against the work stoppage. UC had argued that the strike would cause “irreparable harm” by disrupting classes and research as finals loom.

    The strike began last month in response to the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests at the Los Angeles and Irvine campuses, part of a wave of college demonstrations across the country against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The union accused the university system of authorizing brutal arrests and violating workers’ right to peaceful protest.

    After starting at UC Santa Cruz, the strike spread to five other campuses: UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego. It now appears to be the largest U.S. work stoppage of the year so far, involving up to 31,500 of the union’s 48,000 members.

    The injunction orders graduate student instructors and researchers temporarily back to work while the underlying case moves through a state labor board. The union has accused UC of committing various unfair labor practices stemming from its protest response.

    Academic workers protest at the University of California, Irvine, on Wednesday, June 5, 2024, in Orange County, California. When workers there recently walked off the job, they joined their counterparts at other campuses on strike in response to UC’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests.

    Zeng Hui/Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

    Melissa Matella, UC’s associate vice president for labor relations, said in a statement that the university system was “extremely grateful” for the judge’s order.

    “The strike would have caused irreversible setbacks to students’ academic achievements and may have stalled critical research projects in the final quarter,” Matella said.

    UC had asked the state labor board twice to seek an injunction and was rebuffed both times. It then took its case to Orange County Superior Court.

    Local 4811 cautioned that the judge did not rule the strike to be illegal, as the university system has argued. It also criticized UC regents for going outside of the labor board process in search of a “more favorable outcome” in state court, and vowed to defend the legality of the strike.

    The university system has said that the justifications for the strike are purely political and social — rather than work-related — and therefore the stoppage is against the law. But the grad students have maintained that the fight is about their rights as employees to protest without fear of arrest or retaliation.

    “UC academic workers are facing down an attack on our whole movement,” Rafael Jaime, the union’s president, said in a statement. “In the courtroom, the law is on our side and we’re prepared to keep defending our rights — and outside, 48,000 workers are ready for a long fight.”

    Veena Dubal, a law professor at UC Irvine, said on social media that it was “pretty darn brazen” of the university system to take its injunction request to court after the labor board had twice decline to pursue it.

    “UC’s actions are not unlike what Starbucks and Amazon are doing in the private sector: attempting to undermine the bodies governing labor law,” Dubal said.

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  • The Grad Student Strike In California Is Now The Biggest U.S. Strike Of The Year

    The Grad Student Strike In California Is Now The Biggest U.S. Strike Of The Year

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    A strike by graduate student workers has spread to six campuses across the University of California system, as administrators now turn to the courts in an effort to force the strikers back to work.

    The work stoppage appears to be the largest so far this year in the U.S, involving a majority of the 48,000 academic workers who are members of the United Auto Workers Local 4811. The union organized the strike last month in response to the university’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests and encampments stemming from Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

    The latest school to take part in the strike was UC Irvine, where grad students walked off the job on Wednesday morning, according to Local 4811. They were preceded by grad students at UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego, who joined the strike on Monday, and UC Davis, UCLA and UC Santa Cruz, who walked off in May.

    In total, the union has called on 31,500 members in the system to stop working, although exactly how many have hit the picket lines is unclear. Seventy-nine percent of members were in favor of authorizing the strike when a vote was held in mid-May, the union said. (Earlier this year, up to 29,000 faculty members at California State University went on a one-day strike in a contract dispute.)

    “It cuts to the core of what it means to be a worker at this university.”

    – Tanzil Chowdhury, graduate student researcher and union executive board member

    Tanzil Chowdhury, a graduate student instructor and executive board member of the union, said members across the UC system were “agitated” over the university’s handling of protests. Police made more than 200 arrests at UCLA after counterprotesters violently attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and dozens more later at UC Irvine. The university said it believed the encampments posed a public safety threat.

    “A huge number of our workers are extremely unhappy with the way that the university has been conducting itself,” said Chowdhury, a Ph.D. student in the materials science and engineering program at UC Berkeley. “People really understand the grave threat that the university is posing to us.”

    The university has twice sought to have a state labor relations board force the grad students back to work, arguing that the work stoppage was illegal and causing “irreparable harm.” Their requests that the board seek an injunction in court were denied both times.

    On Tuesday, the university took their fight to state court, filing a lawsuit in Orange County seeking a temporary restraining order to end the strike. The suit claims the work stoppage violates the no-strike clause in the union’s contract, and alleges some picketers have blocked entrances at schools and hospitals and barricades themselves in campus buildings.

    Member of United Auto Workers Local 4811 strike at UCLA last month. Police arrested more than 200 demonstrators at the campus after violent attacks by counterprotesters.

    Brian van der Brug via Getty Images

    Melissa Matella, the University of California’s associate vice president for labor relations, said in a statement that the strike “endangers life-saving research in hundreds of laboratories across the University and will also cause the University substantial monetary damages.”

    The university argues the strike is about purely political and social issues, as opposed to workplace grievances, and therefore is against the law.

    But when the union filed unfair labor practice charges last month, it said its demands were tied directly to the workplace — such as the right to opt out of military-funded research, and a request that the university “disclose and divest” any funds tied to Israel’s war effort.

    Striking over alleged unfair labor practices — as opposed to pay and benefits — can bolster a union’s case that it isn’t violating a no-strike agreement.

    Chowdhury argued that the university undermined the right to peaceful protest when it called in police on campuses, effectively changing work policy without bargaining with the union. The union said during the police response some protesters suffered burns, bone fractures and, in one case, a subarachnoid hemorrhage.

    “It’s traumatic stuff. I was speaking to someone there [at UCLA] who was worried the next day she’d be writing an obituary for a colleague,” Chowdhury said. “It cuts to the core of what it means to be a worker at this university.”

    “The university has twice sought to have a state labor relations board force the grad students back to work, arguing that the work stoppage was illegal and causing ‘irreparable harm.’”

    Local 4811 has modeled its work stoppage on the UAW’s strike last year against Ford, General Motors and Jeep parent company Stellantis, which began small and gradually grew to encompass more worksites.

    The graduate student workers are not doing any grading or instructional work while on strike, with undergraduate exams looming this month. The university said most campuses have their finals in early June to mid-June. Meanwhile, four campuses remain to be called to strike: UC Berkeley, UC Merced, UC San Francisco and UC Riverside.

    The two sides have met in mediation at the urging of the state labor board. But barring a court order to return to work, it appears unlikely the strike will end until the union and the university can hash out an agreement regarding protests and campus policies.

    The university said in court filings that the strike had forced it to shut down an unknown number of seminars and laboratory sessions at several campuses — and that the unpredictable nature of the strike has made it difficult to plan around it.

    “UAW members often do not inform campus administrators that they are striking and canceling classes,” Matella said in a declaration in Orange County Superior Court. “They just do it, again increasing the uncertainty and adding to the chaos.”

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  • University Of California Tries To Force Striking Graduate Students Back To Work

    University Of California Tries To Force Striking Graduate Students Back To Work

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    Academic workers have walked off the job to protest the crackdown on campus demonstrations. The university claims the work stoppage is illegal.

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  • UC Riverside Becomes First UC Campus To Reach Deal With Pro-Palestine Protestors

    UC Riverside Becomes First UC Campus To Reach Deal With Pro-Palestine Protestors

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    Dear HuffPost Reader

    Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.

    The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. Would you consider becoming a regular HuffPost contributor?

    Dear HuffPost Reader

    Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.

    The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. If circumstances have changed since you last contributed, we hope you’ll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.

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  • Andrej Stojakovic explains decision to leave Stanford, chooses Cal over Kentucky & North Carolina

    Andrej Stojakovic explains decision to leave Stanford, chooses Cal over Kentucky & North Carolina

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    CARMICHAEL, Calif. (KTXL) – Sacramento native Andrej Stojakovic, who was a McDonald’s All-American at Jesuit High School in Carmichael, talks to FOX40’s Sean Cunningham about his decision to leave Stanford after one season to transfer to play at Cal, why he chose the Golden Bears over the Kentucky Wildcats and North Carolina Tar Heels, reflects on his freshman season with the Cardinal, and discusses the improvements he hopes to make in his upcoming sophomore season.

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    Sean Cunningham

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  • Bernadette Boden-Albala to be honored for contributions in addressing stroke inequities

    Bernadette Boden-Albala to be honored for contributions in addressing stroke inequities

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    Newswise — Irvine, Calif., Jan. 30, 2024 — Bernadette Boden-Albala, M.P.H., Dr.P.H., director of the University of California, Irvine Program in Public Health and founding dean of the planned School of Population and Public Health, has been selected to receive the prestigious Edgar J. Kenton III Lecture Award from the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association, just prior to its annual International Stroke Conference. She is being recognized for her lifetime achievement of contributions to investigation, management, mentorship and community service in the field of stroke inequities or related disciplines.

    “It’s a great honor to be acknowledged by the American Heart Association’s leadership at such an important event,” Boden-Albala said. “Stroke exhibits significant racial and ethnic inequalities, encompassing differences in incidence, prevalence, treatment and outcomes. This award and lecture provide me with a valuable platform to highlight the crucial role of community-based research, particularly in addressing stroke disparities among diverse communities.”

    An internationally renowned expert in the social epidemiology of stroke and cardiovascular disease, Boden-Albala has authored or co-authored 170 publications that have become a blueprint for community-based stroke and heart disease prevention. Her robust research portfolio spans more than 25 years, with a focus on the roles of sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, social support, social networks and stress. Her work has significantly contributed to the understanding of inequalities and patterns of disparity across the U.S. and globally.

    The American Heart Association will host its 2024 International Stroke Conference on Feb. 7 to 9 at the Phoenix Convention Center. Boden-Albala will present her lecture Feb. 6 at a pre-conference symposium called Health Equity and Actionable Disparities in Stroke: Understanding and Problem Solving. Held at the same site, HEADS-UP is recognized internationally as the premier meeting dedicated to the science and treatment of cerebrovascular disease and brain health. This annual gathering brings together a vast network of professionals to gain insights into the physiological processes associated with stroke, explore more effective therapies for brain health and stroke recovery, and collectively strive to reduce the burden of stroke worldwide.

    About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.

    Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at https://news.uci.edu/media-resources.

    NOTE TO EDITORS: PHOTO AVAILABLE AT
    https://news.uci.edu/2024/01/30/bernadette-boden-albala-to-be-honored-for-contributions-in-addressing-stroke-inequities/



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  • About 22 high school age adolescents died each week from overdoses in 2022, driven by fentanyl-laced prescription pills

    About 22 high school age adolescents died each week from overdoses in 2022, driven by fentanyl-laced prescription pills

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    BYLINE: Enrique Rivero

    EMBARGOED FOR USE UNTIL:

    7:30 A.M. (ET) ON JANUARY 6, 2024

     

    About 22 high school age adolescents died each week from overdoses in 2022, driven by fentanyl-laced prescription pills

    Newswise — An average of 22 adolescents 14 to 18 years of age died in the U.S. each week in 2022 from drug overdoses, raising the death rate for this group to 5.2 per 100,000– driven by fentanyl in counterfeit pills, new research finds.

    Adolescent overdoses had more than doubled among this group between 2019 and 2020, and have since intensified to such an extent that the death count equals a high school classroom each week, and is now the third largest cause of pediatric deaths behind firearm-related injuries and motor vehicle collisions. 

    The increase is, however, not due to more illicit drug use – which has in fact fallen over the years; for example, excluding cannabis, the rate of any illicit drug use among just 12th graders had fallen from about 21% to 8% in the 20 years since 2002. Instead, the increase is the result of drugs becoming deadlier due to fentanyl, which is increasingly found in counterfeit oxycodone, benzodiazepines and other prescription pills that fall into the hands of adolescents.

    But educators, physicians, and mental health practitioners can be instrumental in helping to stem this tide through pointed questions and guidance about drug use and the dangers that counterfeit pills present, the researchers write in a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine. In addition, policymakers can focus on “hotspot” counties, most in western states, with particularly high overdose deaths.

    “Teenagers are likely to be unaware of just how high-risk experimenting with pills has become, given the recent rise in counterfeit tablets” said study co-author Joseph Friedman, a researcher at UCLA. “It’s often impossible to tell the difference with the naked eye between a real prescription medication obtained from a doctor and a counterfeit version with a potentially deadly dose of fentanyl. It’s urgent that teenagers be given accurate information about the real risks, and strategies to keep themselves and their friends safe.” 

    The researchers found that adolescent overdoses were occurring at double the national average in Arizona, Colorado and Washington State between 2020 and 2022. They identified 19 hotspot counties – that is, those with at least 20 overdose deaths and death rates higher than the national average, with Maricopa County in Arizona and Los Angeles County having the most fatal overdoses at 117 and 111, respectively, during this period. 

    The other 17 counties are Orange County, California (61 deaths), Cook County, Illinois (56), San Bernardino County, California (54), King County, Washington (52), Riverside County, California (41), San Diego County, California (36), Tarrant County, Texas (35), Clark County, Nevada (31), Kern County, California (30), Pima County, Arizona (29), Adams County, Colorado (25), Denver County, Colorado (24), Jackson County, Missouri (24), Santa Clara County, California (24), Bernalillo County, New Mexico (23), Davidson County, Tennessee (21), and Marion County, Indiana (21). 

    In addition, American Indian and Alaska Native adolescents had 1.82 times the overdose rates of whites between 2020 and 2022. And adolescents are overall likelier to use the pill form of the drug rather than powder, which was previously the main fentanyl source. For instance, while 0.3% of high school seniors in 2022 reported using heroin, which comes in powder form, 5% reported nonmedical use of prescription pills the same year.

    The researchers provide the following recommendations to combat these trends:

    • Pediatricians, other primary care physicians, and mental health practitioners should ask their adolescent patients if they or their peers were approached either in person or via social media about buying pills, or if they have used them without prescriptions
    • Educators, along with parents, can discuss with adolescents the dangers associated with counterfeit pills; these efforts should be especially prioritized in hotspot locations
    • Clinicians, educators and parents can highlight the Safety First curriculum that emphasizes abstinence from drugs and provides information about risk reduction for those who do experiment with drugs, such as where to find and how to use the overdose-reversal agent naloxone
    • Finally, naloxone should be available in schools, which should also adopt “no-questions-asked” pill-disposal programs as well as provide anonymous mechanisms such messaging services that students can use to ask about counterfeit pills and substance use without risk of punishment or embarrassment.

    “Fentanyl has rapidly become a leading cause of death in American teens,” said Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent medicine at Mass General for Children and senior author on the paper. “Policymakers, clinicians, families and communities need to partner together to address this worsening public health threat.”

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    University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences

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  • There's No Heightened Cardiovascular Danger with Cannabis Use, Study Indicates | High Times

    There's No Heightened Cardiovascular Danger with Cannabis Use, Study Indicates | High Times

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    According to a study published in the journal Heart Rhythm, middle-aged adults who have a history of using cannabis are not at an elevated risk of experiencing atrial fibrillation (AFib), aka an irregular heartbeat, NORML reports. The relationship between cannabis and heart disease is currently under close scrutiny and attention. 

    This longitudinal study was conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. The team looked at the connection between cannabis use and AFib in a very large sample size, a group of over 150,000 individuals aged between 40 and 69. This group of people was made up of people who didn’t use cannabis, occasional users, and frequent cannabis users. They monitored participants over six years. The findings reveal no significant evidence suggesting that people who used cannabis had a bigger chance of developing atrial fibrillation compared to non-users.

    “Among a large, prospective cohort, we were unable to find evidence that occasional cannabis use [defined as more than 100 times] was associated with a higher risk of incident AF,” the study writes. “To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal cohort study to assess such recreational use and the first to report an absence of a relationship between cannabis use and risk of AF.”

    AFib is a heart rhythm disorder identifiable by a rapid and irregular beat of the heart’s upper chambers, aka the atria. This arrhythmia can cause disruptive, settling, and potential dangerous symptoms like heart palpitations, shortness of breath, fatigue, dizziness, or chest pain. Some people may not experience any symptoms at all. AFib is dangerous because it increases the risk of blood clots forming in the heart. These can then develop into strokes. Over time, AFib may also weaken the heart, which could result in heart failure. Before you panic and have an anxiety attack that you mistake for AFib, know that it needs to be diagnosed by a doctor and is done so using electrocardiograms (ECGs). The treatment for AFib is focused on controlling the heart rate to return to a normal heart rhythm using medications or medical interventions, in addition to lifestyle changes. 

    As NORML reports, in October, research findings suggested that middle-aged folks who use weed don’t have a higher risk of atherosclerosis, aka which is the hardening of the arteries, compared to those who have never used cannabis. This conclusion was backed up by a meta-analysis published in May, concludeding, “Cannabis use insignificantly predicts all major cardiovascular adverse events,” referring to conditions like myocardial infarction and stroke. However, at times, the data is conflicting. A contrasting report from September of 2024 in the journal Addiction highlighted that adults involved in problematic cannabis use do have a heightened risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes. 

    As High Times reported, the research analyzed medical data from nearly 60,000 adults in Alberta, Canada. It specifically looked at diagnostic codes for “cannabis use disorder,” keep in mind, this is a publication with a focus on addiction. As High Times reported, they define cannabis use disorder as an inability to cease cannabis use despite negative consequences. 

    They compared these with codes for various cardiovascular issues, including heart attacks, heart failure, and strokes, occurring between January 1, 2012, and December 31, 2019.

    The study’s findings were a bit alarming: “Canadian adults with cannabis use disorder appear to have an approximately 60% higher risk of experiencing incident adverse cardiovascular disease events than those without cannabis use disorder,” it reported. “Importantly, this evidence suggests that cannabis use may place a healthier population at increased risk of major cardiovascular events. As a result, our study points to the importance of educating our patients about the potential risks associated with cannabis use and cannabis use disorder,” reads the study. 

    It additionally revealed that people diagnosed with cannabis use disorder who were otherwise deemed ‘healthy’ (having no co-occurring mental health disorders, doctor visits in the past six months, prescribed meds, or no other medical conditions) were at a greater risk for these cardiovascular events.

    But, to end on a more reassuring note, know that this too has conflicting evidence. Research published in August of 2023 in the American Journal of Cardiology indicates that middle-aged adults using cannabis are not at an increased risk of heart attack. The study, which compared people who used cannabis with non-cannabis users, found that individuals who consumed it monthly over the past year did not face a heightened risk of heart attack.  

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    Sophie Saint Thomas

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  • UC Irvine researchers discover a mechanism that controls the identity of stem cells

    UC Irvine researchers discover a mechanism that controls the identity of stem cells

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    Newswise — Irvine, Calif., Dec. 7, 2023 — University of California, Irvine, researchers discovered a mechanism that controls the identity of stem cells. When this mechanism fails, embryonic stem cells revert back in time and become totipotent. When a cell becomes totipotent, this rare change enables the cells the ability to differentiate into hundreds of cell types, and then go on to form every part of our body. This contrasts with pluripotent stem cells which can divide into various cell types but are unable to become an entire organism solely on their own.

    The study, Nuclear RNS catabolism controls endogenous retroviruses, gene expression asymmetry, and dedifferentiation, was published Dec. 7, 2023, in Molecular Cell.

    “In a dish of embryonic stem cells, the majority of stem cells are pluripotent. However, one out of 1,000 cells are different from the rest, and are totipotent,” said Ivan Marazzi, PhD, director of the at UCI School of Medicine. “Totipotent cells are the only cells that have unlimited potential and can give rise to all parts of our body. We discovered the mechanism that allows this change from pluripotent to totipotent.”

    The ability to change the identity of stem cells allows researchers to delve into the fundamental aspect of development, specifically what happens when two cells meet and give rise to an embryo. Moreover, many disorders like cancer and neurodegenerative disease are characterized by cells “going back in time,” a process called cellular dedifferentiation.

    “Factors that control this ’reversion’ from stem cell to totipotent cell are mutated in humans with cancer and neurodegenerative disease,” said Marazzi, professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry at UCI School of Medicine.” We think there is a special susceptibility of brain and cancer cells to be vulnerable to this mechanism, which could help us in the future as we treat patients with these conditions.”

    The study was funded by the NIH and UCI.

     

    UCI School of Medicine:

    Each year, the UCI School of Medicine educates more than 400 medical students and nearly 150 PhD and MS students. More than 700 residents and fellows are trained at the UCI Medical Center and affiliated institutions. Multiple MD, PhD and MS degrees are offered. Students are encouraged to pursue an expansive range of interests and options. For medical students, there are numerous concurrent dual degree programs, including an MD/MBA, MD/MPH, or an MD/MS degree through one of three mission-based programs: the Health Education to Advance Leaders in Integrative Medicine (HEAL-IM), the Program in Medical Education for Leadership Education to Advance Diversity-African, Black and Caribbean (PRIME LEAD-ABC), and the Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community (PRIME-LC). The UCI School of Medicine is accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Accreditation and ranks among the top 50 nationwide for research. For more information, visit medschool.uci.edu.

     

    CITATION:

    Nuclear RNA catabolism controls endogenous retroviruses, gene expression asymmetry, and dedifferentiation.

    Torre D, Fstkchyan YS, Ho JSY, Cheon Y, Patel RS, Degrace EJ, Mzoughi S, Schwarz M, Mohammed K, Seo JS, Romero-Bueno R, Demircioglu D, Hasson D, Tang W, Mahajani SU, Campisi L, Zheng S, Song WS, Wang YC, Shah H, Francoeur N, Soto J, Salfati Z, Weirauch MT, Warburton P, Beaumont K, Smith ML, Mulder L, Villalta SA, Kessenbrock K, Jang C, Lee D, De Rubeis S, Cobos I, Tam O, Hammell MG, Seldin M, Shi Y, Basu U, Sebastiano V, Byun M, Sebra R, Rosenberg BR, Benner C, Guccione E, Marazzi I.Mol Cell. 2023 Nov 14:S1097-2765(23)00903-6. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2023.10.036. Online ahead of print.PMID: 37995687

     

     

    Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Author has no conflict of interest to disclose.

    DOI: doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2023.10.036.

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    University of California, Irvine

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  • Taste guides our eating pace from the first bite

    Taste guides our eating pace from the first bite

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    Newswise — When you eagerly dig into a long-awaited dinner, signals from your stomach to your brain keep you from eating so much you’ll regret it – or so it’s been thought. That theory had never really been directly tested until a team of scientists at UC San Francisco recently took up the question.  
     
    The picture, it turns out, is a little different. 
     
    The team, led by Zachary Knight, PhD, a UCSF professor of physiology in the Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, discovered that it’s our sense of taste that pulls us back from the brink of food inhalation on a hungry day. Stimulated by the perception of flavor, a set of neurons – a type of brain cell – leaps to attention almost immediately to curtail our food intake.  
     
    “We’ve uncovered a logic the brainstem uses to control how fast and how much we eat, using two different kinds of signals, one coming from the mouth, and one coming much later from the gut,” said Knight, who is also an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “This discovery gives us a new framework to understand how we control our eating.” 
     
    The study, which appears Nov. 22, 2023 in Nature, could help reveal exactly how weight-loss drugs like Ozempic work, and how to make them more effective. 
     
    New views into the brainstem 
     
    Pavlov proposed over a century ago that the sight, smell and taste of food are important for regulating digestion. More recent studies in the 1970s and 1980s have also suggested that the taste of food may restrain how fast we eat, but it’s been impossible to study the relevant brain activity during eating because the brain cells that control this process are located deep in the brainstem, making them hard to access or record in an animal that’s awake. 
     
    Over the years, the idea had been forgotten, Knight said.  
     
    New techniques developed by lead author Truong Ly, PhD, a graduate student in Knight’s lab, allowed for the first-ever imaging and recording of a brainstem structure critical for feeling full, called the nucleus of the solitary tract, or NTS, in an awake, active mouse. He used those techniques to look at two types of neurons that have been known for decades to have a role in food intake. 
     
    The team found that when they put food directly into the mouse’s stomach, brain cells called PRLH (for prolactin-releasing hormone) were activated by nutrient signals sent from the GI tract, in line with traditional thinking and the results of prior studies. 
     
    However, when they allowed the mice to eat the food as they normally would, those signals from the gut didn’t show up. Instead, the PRLH brain cells switched to a new activity pattern that was entirely controlled by signals from the mouth.  
     
    “It was a total surprise that these cells were activated by the perception of taste,” said Ly. “It shows that there are other components of the appetite-control system that we should be thinking about.” 
     
    While it may seem counterintuitive for our brains to slow eating when we’re hungry, the brain is actually using the taste of food in two different ways at the same time. One part is saying, “This tastes good, eat more,” and another part is watching how fast you’re eating and saying, “Slow down or you’re going to be sick.” 
     
    “The balance between those is how fast you eat,” said Knight. 
     
    The activity of the PRLH neurons seems to affect how palatable the mice found the food, Ly said. That meshes with our human experience that food is less appetizing once you’ve had your fill of it.  
     
    Brain cells that inspire weight-loss drugs 
     
    The PRLH-neuron-induced slowdown also makes sense in terms of timing. The taste of food triggers these neurons to switch their activity in seconds, from keeping tabs on the gut to responding to signals from the mouth.  
     
    Meanwhile, it takes many minutes for a different group of brain cells, called CGC neurons, to begin responding to signals from the stomach and intestines. These cells act over much slower time scales – tens of minutes – and can hold back hunger for a much longer period of time. 
     
    “Together, these two sets of neurons create a feed-forward, feed-back loop,” said Knight. “One is using taste to slow things down and anticipate what’s coming. The other is using a gut signal to say, ‘This is how much I really ate. Ok, I’m full now!’”  
     
    The CGC brain cells’ response to stretch signals from the gut is to release GLP-1, the hormone mimicked by Ozempic, Wegovy and other new weight-loss drugs.  
     
    These drugs act on the same region of the brainstem that Ly’s technology has finally allowed researchers to study. “Now we have a way of teasing apart what’s happening in the brain that makes these drugs work,” he said.  
     
    A deeper understanding of how signals from different parts of the body control appetite would open doors to designing weight-loss regimens designed for the individual ways people eat by optimizing how the signals from the two sets of brain cells interact, the researchers said. 
     
    The team plans to investigate those interactions, seeking to better understand how taste signals from food interact with feedback from the gut to suppress our appetite during a meal. 

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    University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)

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  • Antibody-drug conjugate helps patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer live longer, delaying disease progression

    Antibody-drug conjugate helps patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer live longer, delaying disease progression

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    BYLINE: Denise Heady

    Newswise — Treatment with datopotamab deruxtecan (Dato-DXd), a novel Trop-2 directed antibody-drug conjugate, was found to significantly improve progression-free survival in patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer, an improvement that was primarily driven by patients with non-squamous tumors.

    These results from the TROPION-Lung01 Phase III trial, which compared the standard of care in second-line docetaxel, a type of chemotherapy, with Dato-DXd, an antibody drug conjugate, in patients with pretreated metastatic non-small cell lung cancer, were presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology 2023 Congress by Dr. Aaron Lisberg, assistant professor of medicine and thoracic medical oncologist at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

    Lisberg and the team found that patients treated with Dato-DXd experienced a 25% reduction in the risk of disease progression or death compared to patients treated with docetaxel.

    “While there was an overall reduction of disease progression, the data clearly indicates that this benefit was primarily driven by patients with non-squamous tumors,” Lisberg said.

    More than 75% of enrolled patients had non-squamous tumors, noted Lisberg. And in that group alone, the therapy reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 37%, while patients with squamous tumors did not appear to derive a therapeutic benefit from Dato-DXd on trial.

    In addition, a trend in favor of Dato-DXd was observed in the interim overall survival analysis. In those assessments of how long a patient will live after receiving a therapy for their cancer, the improvement was most pronounced in the non-squamous population with a reduction in the risk of death of 23% with Dato-DXd.

    The improvements in progression-free and overall survival observed in the Dato-DXd treated patients were accompanied by significant tumor shrinkage with Dato-DXd (26.4%) vs docetaxel (12.8%), a difference that was more pronounced in patients with non-squamous tumors (31.2% vs 12.8%).

    The overall safety profile of Dato-DXd was superior to docetaxel as fewer patients had high grade drug related toxicities with Dato-DXd (25%) compared to docetaxel (41%). Common side effects of Dato-DXd included mild to moderate mouth sores and nausea. There were also fewer severe side effects leading to dose reduction or treatment discontinuation in Dato-DXd treated patients compared to those treated with docetaxel.

    “Dato-DXd is the first antibody-drug conjugate in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer to demonstrate a statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival over the standard of care chemotherapy drug docetaxel, while evidencing a more favorable safety profile due to its unique ability to selectively delivers a potent chemotherapy directly into tumor cells,” said Lisberg.

    These findings are encouraging, noted Lisberg, since the current standard of care second-line chemotherapy docetaxel is associated with modest benefit and substantial toxicity and suggest that Dato-DXd has the potential to be new therapy for patients with previously treated non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer.

    TROPION-LUNG01 Study Design

    Researchers on the global TROPION-LUNG01 trial compared the effectiveness and tolerability of Dato-DXd vs docetaxel by randomizing 604 patients to receive either Dato-DXd (299 patients) or docetaxel (305) patients. Patients both with and without genetic driver mutations such as EGFR were enrolled and must have received multiple therapies for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer prior to enrollment. No minimum level of TROP-2 expression on the tumor surface was required for enrollment, as TROP-2 expression has not been found to correlate with Dato-DXd effectiveness, to date.

    UCLA Leadership in Dato-DXd Development

    UCLA’s thoracic medical oncology team has been at the forefront of Dato-DXd’s global development punctuated by Lisberg’s ESMO 2023 TROPION-LUNG01 Presidential Symposium. Critical support has been provided by the Hematology/Oncology Clinical Research Unit, as well as Lisberg’s UCLA thoracic medical oncology colleagues Dr. Edward Garon, Dr. Jonathan Goldman, and Dr. Amy Cummings, who identified the potential of Dato-DXd early on in development and prioritized Dato-DXd for their heavily pretreated non-small cell lung cancer patients. These patients had a paucity of effective treatment options at the time of Dato-DXd trial enrollment and their participation was essential to the success of the TROPION-LUNG01 study, with many experiencing a prolonged improvement in their lives, as result of Dato-DXd. The TRIO-US network also made significant contributions to the TROPION-LUNG01 study under the direction of Lisberg.

    UCLA and TRIO-US Network at Forefront of Future Dato-DXd Lung Cancer Trials

    This antibody-drug conjugate is now being evaluated as potential first-line therapy for patients with newly diagnosed metastatic non-small cell lung cancer on the TROPION-LUNG07/08 studies (NCT05555732/NCT05215340), both of which were recently opened at UCLA clinics throughout Southern California. In addition, the TRIO-US network is participating in the TROPION-LUNG07 trial, as it did for TROPION-LUNG01. These trials hold the promise to improve clinical outcomes for patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer by providing Dato-DXd to an even larger number of patients with non-squamous tumors.

    Datopotamab deruxtecan is a specifically engineered TROP2-directed DXd antibody drug conjugate being jointly developed by AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo.

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    University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences

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  • UCI researchers announce publication of an open-label clinical trial suggesting that N-acetylglucosamine restores neurological function in Multiple Sclerosis patients.

    UCI researchers announce publication of an open-label clinical trial suggesting that N-acetylglucosamine restores neurological function in Multiple Sclerosis patients.

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    Newswise — Irvine, CA – Sept. 11, 2023 – UCI researchers have found that a simple sugar, N-acetylglucosamine, reduces multiple inflammation and neurodegeneration markers in people who suffer from multiple sclerosis (MS). In addition, they also found this dietary supplement improved neurological function in 30% of patients.

    According to the World Health Organization, MS affects more than 1.8 million people, and while there are treatments to prevent relapses and improve quality of life, there is no cure.

    The study, N-acetylglucosamine inhibits inflammation and neurodegeneration markers in multiple sclerosis: a mechanistic trial, was published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation. Michael Demetriou, MD, PhD, Chief of the Division of Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology at UCI, is the lead investigator of the study. Michael Y. Sy, MD, PhD, Director of the Neuroimmunology Fellowship at UCI School of Medicine, is the first author, and Barbara Newton, MD, Project Scientist at UCI, is the second author.

    A major issue with current therapies in MS is the inability to treat chronic-active neuroinflammation in the brain and the associated failure to repair the loss of myelin that covers and protects axons, the electrical wires of the brain. Over time, this leads to permanent nerve cell damage and slow progressive loss of neurological function in patients.

    “Our previous studies in mice and humans implicated N-acetylglucosamine in suppressing brain inflammation, promoting the re-growth of the myelin sheath and slowing brain degeneration,” said Michael Demetriou, MD, PhD, Professor of Neurology and Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at the UCI School of Medicine.

    The new paper reports on the first clinical trial of N-acetylglucosamine in MS patients to directly investigate these potential activities. The trial was developed and performed exclusively in the Demetriou Lab at the UCI School of Medicine and UCI’s Institute of Clinical and Translational Science.

    Researchers found that N-acetylglucosamine was safe and reduced multiple inflammation and neurodegeneration markers in MS patients despite the patients already being on the FDA approved immunomodulatory therapy Glatiramer Acetate, known to impact these pathways outside the brain.  

    “We also observed a sustained reduction in neurological disability in 30% of the patients, an activity which has not been observed with current FDA approved therapies,” said Michael Y. Sy, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Neurology, UCI School of Medicine. “They at best slow progression, not improve function.”

    The data suggest that N-acetylglucosamine reduced untreated chronic-active neuroinflammation and/or promoted myelin repair.  However, the researchers stress that the trial was unblinded and therefore future blinded studies and additional parameters are essential to validate N-acetylglucosamine’s potential to improve residual chronic-active brain inflammation, myelin repair, neurodegeneration and neurological function in MS.

    “Future studies demonstrating that N-acetylglucosamine can restore neurological function in MS patients would be a gamechanger and provide something that no other current therapy can do,” said Dr. Demetriou, MD, PhD.

     

    UCI School of Medicine:

    Each year, the UCI School of Medicine educates more than 400 medical students and nearly 150 PhD and MS students. More than 700 residents and fellows are trained at the UCI Medical Center and affiliated institutions. Multiple MD, PhD and MS degrees are offered. Students are encouraged to pursue an expansive range of interests and options. For medical students, there are numerous concurrent dual degree programs, including an MD/MBA, MD/MPH, or an MD/MS degree through one of three mission-based programs: the Health Education to Advance Leaders in Integrative Medicine (HEAL-IM), the Program in Medical Education for Leadership Education to Advance Diversity-African, Black and Caribbean (PRIME LEAD-ABC), and the Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community (PRIME-LC). The UCI School of Medicine is accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Accreditation and ranks among the top 50 nationwide for research. For more information, visit medschool.uci.edu.

     

    Conflict of Interest Disclosures:

    MS and MD are named as inventors on a patent application that describes GlcNAc as a biomarker for progressive multiple sclerosis. MD is named as an inventor on a patent for use of GlcNAc in multiple sclerosis.

    DOI: 10.1186/s12974-023-02893-9

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    University of California, Irvine

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  • Overdose deaths from fentanyl laced stimulants have risen 50-fold since 2010

    Overdose deaths from fentanyl laced stimulants have risen 50-fold since 2010

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    EMBARGOED FOR USE UNTIL:

    12:01 a.m. (EDT) on Sept. 14, 2023

     

    Newswise — Overdose deaths from fentanyl laced stimulants have risen 50-fold since 2010

     

    The trend marks the fourth wave in the US overdose crisis, which began with prescription opioid deaths in the early 2000s and has since continued with other drugs

    New UCLA-led research has found that the proportion of US overdose deaths involving both fentanyl and stimulants has increased more than 50-fold since 2010, from 0.6% (235 deaths) in 2010 to 32.3% (34,429 deaths) in 2021. 

    By 2021, stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine had become the most common drug class found in fentanyl-involved overdoses in every US state.  This rise in fentanyl/stimulant fatalities constitutes the ‘fourth wave’ in the US’s long-running opioid overdose crisis –the death toll of which continues to rise precipitously. 

    “We’re now seeing that the use of fentanyl together with stimulants is rapidly becoming the dominant force in the US overdose crisis,” said lead author Joseph Friedman, an addition researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Fentanyl has ushered in a polysubstance overdose crisis, meaning that people are mixing fentanyl with other drugs, like stimulants, but also countless other synthetic substances. This poses many health risks and new challenges for healthcare providers. We have data and medical expertise about treating opioid use disorders, but comparatively little experience with the combination of opioids and stimulants together, or opioids mixed with other drugs. This makes it hard to stabilize people medically who are withdrawing from polysubstance use.”

    The findings will be published in the peer-reviewed journal Addiction.

    The analysis illustrates how the US opioid crisis began with an increase in deaths from prescription opioids (wave 1) in the early 2000s and heroin (wave 2) in 2010.  Around 2013, an increase in fentanyl overdoses signalled the third wave.  The fourth wave – fentanyl overdoses with stimulants – began in 2015 and continues to grow.

    Further complicating matters is that people consuming multiple substances may also be at increased risk of overdose, and many substances being mixed with fentanyl are not responsive to naloxone, the antidote to an opioid overdose.  

    The authors also found that fentanyl/stimulant overdose deaths disproportionately affect racial/ethnic minority communities in the US, including Black and African American people and Native American people. For instance, in 2021, the prevalence of stimulant involvement in fentanyl overdose deaths was 73% among 65 to 74-year-old Non-Hispanic Black or African American women living in the western US and 69% among 55 to 65-year-old Black or African American men living in the same area.  The rate among the general US population in 2021 was 49%.

    There are also geographical patterns to fentanyl/stimulant use.  In the northeast US, fentanyl tends to be combined with cocaine; in the southern and western US, it appears most commonly with methamphetamine. 

    “We suspect this pattern reflects the rising availability of, and preference for, low-cost, high-purity methamphetamine throughout the US, and the fact that the Northeast has a well-entrenched pattern of illicit cocaine use that has so far resisted the complete takeover by methamphetamine seen elsewhere in the country,” Friedman said.

    The study was funded by the UCLA Medical Scientist Training Program (National Institute of General Medical Sciences training grant GM008042) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health (K01DA050771). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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    University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences

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  • Study could help explain why certain brain tumors don’t respond well to immunotherapy

    Study could help explain why certain brain tumors don’t respond well to immunotherapy

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    BYLINE: Denise Heady

    Newswise — A study led by researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center sheds new light on why tumors that have spread to the brain from other parts of the body respond to immunotherapy while glioblastoma, an aggressive cancer that originates in the brain, does not.

    In people with tumors that originated in other parts of the body but spread to the brain, treatment with a type of immunotherapy called immune checkpoint blockade appears to elicit a significant increase in both active and exhausted T cells — signs that the T cells have been triggered to fight the cancer. The reason the same thing doesn’t occur in people with glioblastoma is that anti-tumor immune responses are best initiated in draining lymph nodes outside of the brain, and that process does not occur very effectively in glioblastoma cases.

    To date, immunotherapy has not been effective in treating glioblastoma, but it has been shown to slow or even eradicate other types of cancer, such as melanoma, which frequently metastasizes to the brain.

    The new research, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, could help improve the effectiveness of immunotherapy for people with brain tumors and it could suggest new paths in the effort to help develop more effective therapies.

    “If we’re going to try to develop new therapies for solid tumors, like glioblastoma, which are not typically responsive, we need to understand the tumor types that are responsive, and learn the mechanisms by which that happens,” said the study’s senior author, Robert Prins, a professor of molecular and medical pharmacology and of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

    The researchers studied the immune cells obtained from nine people with metastatic brain tumors who had been treated with immune checkpoint blockade — which works by harnessing the body’s immune system to destroy cancer cells — and compared their observations with immune cells taken from 19 patients with brain metastases that not been treated with immunotherapy.

    They used a technique called single-cell RNA sequencing to examine the genetic material in both sets of samples, and then compared the data to previously published analyses of 25 recurrent glioblastoma tumors to better understand the effect the immunotherapy had on T cells.

    “We really were trying to figure out which immune cells are changing in the more responsive tumors in order to better explain the higher response rate to the treatment,” said the study’s co-first author, Lu Sun, a project scientist in the Geffen School of Medicine’s neurosurgery department. “No study has comprehensively examined the differential effect of immune checkpoint blockade treatment on these two types of brain tumors before.”

    In the tumors that had spread to the brain, the researchers saw that the T cells had specific characteristics associated with fighting tumors entering the brain, most likely due to a more effective priming step that occurs outside of the brain.

    Before traveling to the brain, T cells are first activated in the lymph nodes. During this process, a type of immune cells called dendritic cells share information about the tumor to T cells so they can better attack the tumor. This priming process, however, doesn’t work very effectively when doctors attempt to use immune checkpoint blockade for treating glioblastoma.

    The researchers also found that a specific subgroup of those exhausted T cells was associated with longer overall survival in people whose cancer had metastasized to the brain.

    “We found quite a significant difference between the two types of brain tumors and how they respond to immunotherapies,” said study author Dr. Won Kim, surgical director of UCLA Health’s brain metastasis program and a member of the Jonsson Cancer Center. “There was a tremendous number of T cell lymphocytes that were found within brain metastases following immunotherapy, and while the number of T cell lymphocytes also increased in glioblastoma patients, it wasn’t anywhere near the same extent.”

    Prins, who is also a researcher at the Jonsson Cancer Center, said that finding “suggests that enhancing the activation and presentation of T cells by dendritic cells could be a potential treatment strategy.”

    In future studies, the researchers plan to analyze data from a larger, more uniform group of people who were diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to the brain.

    The study’s other co-first author is Jenny Kienzler, who was a UCLA fellow in neurosurgery when the research was conducted. Other UCLA authors are Jeremy Reynoso, Alexander Lee, Eileen Shiuan, Shanpeng Li, Jiyoon Kim, Lizhong Ding, Amber Monteleone, Geoffrey Owens, Dr. Richard Everson, David Nathanson, Dr. Timothy Cloughesy, Gang Li, Dr. Linda Liau and Willy Hugo.

    The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health Specialized Programs of Research Excellence in Brain Cancer, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health National Center for Advancing Translational Science, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Brain Tumor Funder’s Collaborative and Cancer Research Institute.

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    University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences

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  • UCI-OC Poll finds homelessness, affordable housing top resident concerns

    UCI-OC Poll finds homelessness, affordable housing top resident concerns

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    Newswise — Irvine, Calif., Aug. 18, 2023 — More than 100 policymakers, community leaders and researchers met on campus Thursday to craft solutions for Orange County’s top concerns: homelessness and the lack of affordable housing in the county.

    University of California, Irvine’s School of Social Ecology and United to End Homelessness, an Orange County United Way initiative, hosted the event to discuss the results of the 2023 UCI-OC Poll and respondents’ views about Orange County’s homelessness and housing issues. 

    The discussion presented an opportunity for leaders and decision-makers to learn the details of the poll findings from the research team and collaborate and shape the priorities of United to End Homelessness.

    “One thing that jumped out to me was that 85 percent of respondents said they would support their taxes being increased in order to provide funding to reduce homelessness – and this had majority support from all political parties. What is inspiring to me is that people in our community are willing to pitch in to help others,” said Sue Parks, president and CEO of Orange County United Way. 

    In the 1980s and ’90s, the school sponsored the Orange County Annual Survey under the direction of then UCI professor Mark Baldassare. Baldassare left to become the president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California, and the poll transitioned to the California Poll. 

    Today, more than two decades later, “Orange County has grown so substantially that it is now one of the six most populous counties in the country,” said Jon Gould, dean of the School of Social Ecology. “If it were a city, it would be the third largest in the nation. Also, Orange County is one of the few truly purple counties in America – a place where the left and right not only live side-by-side but must find a way to collaborate to get things done. As the county has grown, its leaders need reliable methods to track and analyze residents’ concerns, views, and priorities on a variety of pressing issues so that we are not forced to rely on anecdotal understandings or the feedback from the handful of residents who show up for city council meetings. As Orange County’s hometown research university, we are dedicated to meeting this need and to helping to bring together business leaders with elected officials and community members to discuss workable responses to these problems.” 

    Such dedication extends beyond homelessness.

    “Whether the issues concern housing, education, business climate, sustainability, transportation, crime or many other challenges,” Gould added, “area leaders will be better equipped to navigate the local environment and respond if they have reliable, timely data on the attitudes, priorities and opinions of O.C. residents and a neutral place and convener to consider them.”

    That’s why the school launched the UCI-OC Poll.

    Faculty members in the school, including Alejandra Reyes, Nicholas Marantz and Jae Hong Kim, helped to construct the survey, which was then conducted in the field by Ken Goldstein, senior vice president for survey research and institutional policy at the American Association of Universities.

    In total, 818 adults across Orange County were surveyed about views on the most pressing social, economic, and political issues facing the region. Released this week, the poll’s primary conclusion is that Orange County residents seek action to address homelessness and affordable housing and are supportive of many policy responses.

    According to the poll, seven in 10 residents (71 percent) described homelessness as a “very serious” problem, and 69 percent had similar views regarding the county’s lack of affordable housing. Framing these numbers through a personal lens, a majority (55 percent) of respondents stated they know someone who is or has been homeless.

    In addition, more than half (52 percent) of respondents who are renters have worried in the past year about being able to pay their rent and the threat of eviction, while one-fifth of homeowners (20 percent) have worried in the last year about being able to pay their mortgage and the risk of foreclosure. 

    “This survey demonstrates the personal impact of homelessness on Orange County residents and the groundswell of support behind finding tangible and dignified housing solutions,” said Becks Heyhoe, executive director of United to End Homelessness. “To see that a majority of respondents have personally known someone who is or has experienced homelessness reinforces why respondents are supporting a variety of solutions and are ready to take action.”

    A majority (85 percent) of respondents across varying demographics and geographic locations in the county expressed support for a bond measure/tax increase to reduce homelessness, along with other approaches including increased mental health services (88 percent), additional shelter resources (78 percent), and long-term housing for those experiencing homelessness (76 percent) among other solutions.

    For some who responded to the poll, the high rate of local concern over affordable housing is no surprise. 

    “I don’t have data in front of me, but if you look at economic models from around the country, of major metro areas (like Orange County), you’ll see that housing expenses as a percentage of people’s income is probably at an all-time high,” John Kosecoff, a former hedge fund manager who lives in Laguna Woods, told the Orange County Register. “So, no, the idea that people are particularly concerned about this, right now, doesn’t shock me. We’re at the precipice of this becoming a disaster.”

    Kosecoff added that for a growing number of retirees who don’t own a home, and who don’t have growing income, the lack of affordable housing is a physical and emotional threat.

    “People want their dignity. So, even if it means they’re skipping meals, they’ll do what they can to maintain what the world perceives as a middle-class life,” he said. “But I think we’re close to seeing that become impossible for a lot of people.” 

    Jennifer Friend, CEO of Project Hope Alliance, who attended Thursday’s discussion, said it got her and fellow participants thinking about creative solutions.

    “We talked about how we can simultaneously invest in the prevention of tomorrow’s adults experiencing homelessness while building housing for our current unhoused community members,” said the UCI Social Ecology alumna who was homeless when she was a child. “The data shows that our community is ready to start investing in K-12 students experiencing homelessness today so that they won’t become adults experiencing homelessness tomorrow.”

    Other participants discussed focusing on particular populations.

    “Whether it’s veterans, or families or transitional-aged youth, focusing on a specific group could be an effective strategy for solving homelessness,” said Christy Cornwall of Providence Mission Hospital. “I’m a firm believer in prevention and somehow connecting with the institutions that people naturally experience could be pathways to receiving support before they become homeless, like through an eviction diversion program through the courts or connecting with our utility companies so people can receive support.”

    And, she added, there is a “need to turn the narrative,” such as through a public awareness approach.

    Using the survey data as a prompt for the collaborative session, the outcomes and ideas generated at the event will help inform United to End Homelessness’ immediate and long-term priorities within its primary programs and beyond, including: 

    “This poll demonstrates the power of bringing people together to solve local challenges like homelessness and housing issues while reinforcing the vision behind establishing United to End Homelessness five years ago,” Heyhoe said. “Although progress has been made, we now have data demonstrating the commitment and will of residents to get involved and support solutions for the collective well-being of Orange County. We look forward to collaborating with our partners to address these needs and solve them together.” 

    At the program’s conclusion, Robert Morse, who has been an advocate for the homeless for about 18 years, said he is hopeful events like Thursday’s can help lead to a solution. Sporting a sizable white beard and a pin-filled ballcap with the words “Santa Bob” across the front, Morse mentioned that he knows homelessness firsthand, having spent 10 years on the street before finding housing and later joining several homeless-related boards and committees. 

    However, the At-Large Seat Representative for Older Adults on the Orange County Commission to End Homelessness’ Continuum of Care Board cautioned solutions for those in need of housing “will happen slowly. That’s because locating housing is a problem for everyone in Orange County, not just the homeless.”

    Gould remarked during his introduction that this first iteration of the UCI-OC Poll will be followed by more addressing various issues facing the region.

    “The next topic of the poll will be on the supposed brain drain in Orange County,” the dean revealed to the crowd, “and we would look forward to partnering with several of you and your organizations on that question.” 

    About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.

    Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at https://news.uci.edu/media-resources.

    NOTE TO EDITORS, PHOTO AVAILABLE AT
    https://news.uci.edu/2023/08/18/uci-oc-poll-finds-homelessness-affordable-housing-top-resident-concerns/

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    University of California, Irvine

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