An FDA-cleared artificial intelligence tool demonstrated frequent discordance with radiologist reports for lung nodule assessment on chest CT.
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BrainBaseline Assessment of Cognition and Everyday Functioning (“BRACE”-ing for the Future): Establishing iPad-Based Norms for Cognitive Function in the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study and Women’s Interagency HIV Study Combined Cohort Study
Background: Digital cognitive assessments are increasingly used in large-scale studies to assess brain health, offering scalable, standardized, and self-directed testing solutions. Cognitive function remains a concern for people with HIV despite antiretroviral therapy. The BRACE (BrainBaseline Assessment of Cognition and Everyday Functioning) is a validated tablet-based screener for cognition in people with HIV. Preliminary pilot norms were established in a small sample (n=144), but full regression-based normative data have not yet been developed. Consequently, HIV serostatus differences based on standardized BRACE scores and cognitive correlates have not been systematically examined. Objective: This study aims to develop regression-based normative data for BRACE performance in people without HIV who were demographically and behaviorally comparable to people with HIV within biological sex; to examine differences in cognitive performance by HIV status and biological sex; and to evaluate sociodemographic, behavioral, and clinical correlates of BRACE performance. Methods: A total of 2937 participants (1063 people without HIV [499 women] and 1874 people with HIV [1053 women]) in the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study/Women’s Interagency HIV Study Combined Cohort Study completed BRACE once between November 2020 and March 2025. BRACE includes the Trail Making Test (A and B), Stroop-Color, and visual spatial learning. Regression-based norms were derived from people without HIV using multiple demographic models (eg, age-only, age + education, and age + education + sex). The age + education model was selected for primary analyses because it provided the best balance of interpretability, parsimony, and generalizability while avoiding race-based corrections. HIV serostatus and sex differences were examined using ANOVA and tests, with effect sizes calculated using Cohen’s . Results: Cognitive performance was largely comparable between people with HIV and people without HIV across all BRACE outcome measures. Statistically significant differences were very small in magnitude (all effect sizes<0.11) and primarily observed among men on Stroop-Color. Across groups, older age and fewer years of education were associated with poorer raw BRACE performance, although these associations attenuated after demographic adjustment using T-scores. Most clinical and behavioral factors (eg, hypertension, smoking, and noncannabis substance use) were related to poorer raw scores but not standardized performance. However, diabetes and cannabis use remained independently associated with T-scores across multiple measures—diabetes with poorer scores and cannabis use with higher scores, an association that should be interpreted cautiously. HIV-specific clinical factors, such as nadir CD4 count and antiretroviral therapy duration, were linked primarily to raw scores. Conclusions: This study establishes the first regression-based normative data for BRACE, derived from a large, demographically diverse people without HIV, and demonstrates its applicability for evaluating cognitive function in people with HIV. Findings indicate minimal cognitive differences between people with HIV and people without HIV and highlight the influence of common sociodemographic and metabolic factors. These results support BRACE as a scalable, reliable, and self-administered digital tool for assessing cognitive health in diverse populations and underscore its potential for longitudinal monitoring and precision phenotyping in both research and clinical contexts.
<![CDATA[Real-world claims show opioids remain common in fibromyalgia despite guidance, highlighting safety concerns and interest in FDA-approved non-opioid option Tonmya.]]>
Negative Online Experiences Are Common but Often Go Unreported Among Youth With Mental Health and Neurodevelopmental Concern
New Child Mind Institute study finds more than one in four youth experienced a negative online experience in the past year, yet only one in five reported the incident through platform tools.
New York, NY — A new study from researchers at the Child Mind Institute finds that negative online experiences are common among children and adolescents with mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions, and that most incidents are not reported through platform reporting tools.
Published in JAACAP Open, the study examined negative online experiences among 1,009 youth ages 9 to 15 with a history of mental health or neurodevelopmental concerns, all of whom were current or previous participants in the Child Mind Institute’s Healthy Brain Network. More than one in four reported at least one negative online experience in the past year. Among those who had such an experience, nearly 69% reported multiple incidents, yet only 20% reported the incident through platform reporting tools.
The study defined “negative online experience” as any unwanted or uncomfortable experience while online, including cyberbullying, cyberstalking, doxxing, impersonation, sexual harassment, and related forms of digital harm. The research used a mixed-methods design, combining a quantitative survey with an in-depth qualitative follow-up involving a three-day moderated online bulletin board with a subset of participants.
“These findings point to a large and often hidden problem,” said Michael P. Milham, MD, PhD, Chief Science Officer at the Child Mind Institute and senior author of the study. “Many young people are encountering harmful or uncomfortable experiences online, but the systems designed to help them often do not receive a report. That creates a major gap for parents, educators, clinicians, and platforms trying to keep children safer online.”
The research team identified three major categories of barriers that prevent youth from reporting negative online experiences: reporting process barriers, such as not knowing how to make a report; reporting policy barriers, including uncertainty about what qualifies for reporting or how platform rules apply; and emotional barriers, such as embarrassment, fear, and worry about consequences.
The study also found that reporting decisions were often shaped by how young people interpreted the incident itself. In the qualitative follow-up, youth considered whether the harmful behavior seemed intentional, how malicious it appeared, and how severe or repeated the harassment was. When those cues were ambiguous, youth were less certain about whether reporting was appropriate.
“Reporting is not simply a matter of telling young people to speak up,” said Mirelle Kass, lead author of the study. “Youth are making complicated judgments about intent, severity, platform rules, and the possible consequences of disclosure. If we want young people to report harmful experiences, the tools and systems around them need to be clearer, safer, and easier to use.”
The findings suggest that online safety efforts should be tailored to the needs of youth who may already be managing mental health, developmental, or social challenges. Social aptitude, mental health symptoms, and parenting style were associated with youths’ likelihood of encountering negative online experiences and with the barriers they faced when deciding whether to report them.
Participants also expressed a clear desire for better tools and guidance. Most youth wanted platforms to provide more information about how to protect themselves online, how to use safety features such as blocking and reporting, and how to access support during and after the reporting process.
“Families, educators, clinicians, policymakers, and technology developers all have a role to play,” said Dr. Milham. “We need reporting systems that children can understand, policies that are transparent, and trusted adults who can respond without blame or overreaction. Safer digital spaces will require more than awareness. They will require systems designed around how young people actually experience online harm.”
The study underscores the importance of developmentally appropriate safety tools, clearer platform policies, and stronger support systems for youth navigating digital spaces. For children and adolescents with mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions, improving reporting pathways may be an important step toward reducing hidden online harms and building safer online environments.
This research was supported by funding from Google LLC’s User Safety team to the Child Mind Institute for work led by Michael P. Milham, MD, PhD.
About the Healthy Brain Network
The Healthy Brain Network is a community-centered research initiative from the Child Mind Institute that collects clinical, cognitive, behavioral, and neurobiological data from children and adolescents in the New York City area. Families who participate receive feedback and diagnostic consultation while contributing to open science research aimed at improving understanding of child and adolescent mental health.
About the Child Mind Institute
The Child Mind Institute is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming the lives of children and families struggling with mental health and learning disorders. Through cutting-edge research, evidence-based clinical care, and public education, the Child Mind Institute builds open science platforms and digital tools to accelerate discovery and improve youth mental health worldwide.
For press questions, contact cmiscience@ssmandl.com or mediaoffice@childmind.org.
The post Negative Online Experiences Are Common but Often Go Unreported Among Youth With Mental Health and Neurodevelopmental Concern appeared first on Child Mind Institute.
JAACAP Open: Negative Online Experiences and Reporting Rates in Youth With Mental Health Conditions
Recruitment and Participation of Black Home Health Care Patients in Speech-Based Cognitive Research: Mixed Methods Feasibility Study
Background: Older Black adults remain underrepresented in dementia research, particularly in studies using speech-based methods for early cognitive assessment. Understanding how to effectively recruit and engage this population in research involving audio-recorded interactions is critical to ensuring equitable inclusion and developing culturally responsive study designs. However, recruiting older Black adults into dementia research remains a significant challenge. Objective: This study assessed the feasibility of recruiting older Black home health care (HHC) patients into speech-based cognitive research and examined the factors influencing participation and participants’ data collection experiences. Methods: We conducted a convergent mixed methods feasibility study using a 4-component recruitment pipeline at a nonprofit HHC agency: (1) patient identification and study introduction, (2) in-home audio-recorded cognitive assessments, (3) follow-up calls, and (4) audio-recorded patient-clinician encounters. Both patients and their corresponding clinicians were included in this study. Eligible participants were Black adults aged 60 years and older receiving HHC services in New York City. Patient demographic and clinical characteristics were compared between those who consented and those who declined using bivariate analysis. Qualitative feedback was gathered through patient questionnaires and clinician semistructured interviews and was analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results: Of 246 patients contacted, 71 (28.9%) provided verbal consent and 60 (24.4%) completed cognitive assessments. Five patients were excluded due to health conditions or severe cognitive impairment, leaving 55 eligible participants. Among these participants, retention remained high across study components, including follow-up calls (48/55, 87.3%) and audio-recorded clinician visits (54/55, 98.2%). Patients who did not consent were more likely to have greater complex medical profiles, including higher pain interference (=.01), need for assistance with medication reading (=.04), and polypharmacy (≥5 medications; =.01), while no significant differences were observed for age, gender, or functional status. Qualitative findings demonstrated high acceptability and feasibility of audio recording. Patients reported strong motivation to participate, positive and engaging experiences, comfort with recording, and minimal disruption to care. Clinicians reported ease of integration into workflow, initial discomfort that diminished over time, minor technical challenges, and perceived benefits for communication and patient engagement. Conclusions: Recruiting Black older adults receiving HHC into speech-based dementia research was feasible and well accepted. Culturally tailored recruitment may enhance equitable participation and guide future research using audio-recorded speech for early cognitive detection.
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STAT+: As Ebola outbreak in Central Africa grows, the U.S. turns itself into a fortress
When Craig Spencer contracted Ebola while working in Guinea during the West African outbreak in 2014, he was already back in the United States when he first developed symptoms. He credits the treatment he got at New York’s Bellevue Hospital for his survival.
If Spencer, an emergency medicine physician and an associate professor in Brown University’s School of Public Health, were to contract Ebola in the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda — if he’d even had high-risk exposures to Ebola patients — he wouldn’t be allowed back into the U.S. for care or quarantine.
Administration officials confirmed Thursday that any Americans who contract Ebola will not be brought to the United States for treatment. Instead, they will be evacuated to as-yet-undetermined locations in Europe. An official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the State Department are working to identify tertiary care facilities that could take Americans needing care. One such case has already occurred.
Target for Aggressive Prostate Cancer Prevention Identified in Mice
Researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center have identified a gene that drives the development of neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC), an aggressive form of the disease. Their study showed that genetic or pharmacological inhibition of Sirtuin 1 prevents the growth of NEPC tumors in mice, laying the groundwork for future clinical studies aimed at developing new treatments for NEPC in humans.
Research lead Cory Abate-Shen, PhD, a professor at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, is co-senior author of the researchers’ published paper in Journal of Experimental Medicine, titled “A forward genetic screen identifies Sirtuin 1 as a driver of neuroendocrine prostate cancer,” in which the team noted, “We demonstrate that expression of Sirt1 promotes NEPC while its silencing or pharmacological inhibition suppresses the NEPC phenotype.”
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, and one in every six men will be affected by prostate cancer in their lifetime, the authors explained. Prostate cancer treatments have been focused on approaches to dampening androgen receptor (AR) signalling, and for men with recurrent or advanced prostate cancer the current standard of care is androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). However, it is well documented that ADT will eventually fail, leading to tumor recurrence and development of the ADT-insensitive aggressive prostate cancer variant, NEPC. “… while ADT initially leads to tumor regression, eventually tumors recur as castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), so called because of its continued reliance on AR even in the absence of androgens,” the team continued.
![Positively stained NEPC markers (top) are lost when Sirt1 is silenced (bottom). [© 2026 Nunes de Almeida et al. Originally published in <em>Journal of Experimental Medicine</em>. https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.20241484]](https://www.genengnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Low-Res_Nunes_de_Almeida_et_al_2-146x300.jpg)
The process through which ADT-responsive tumors transition towards NEPC tumors—a phenomenon known as lineage plasticity—remains unknown. “Elucidating the mechanisms governing this process may improve treatment by overcoming plasticity-associated drug resistance,” Abate-Shen added.
For their newly reported study the research team performed a Sleeping Beauty (SB) forwards genetic mutagenesis screen in mice looking for mutations that recurred across multiple independent prostate cancer tumors. They identified 75 candidate NEPC-promoting genes, the most promising of which was Sirtuin 1 (Sirt1). Sirt1 encodes an enzyme with a broad range of functions, including control of gene expression and metabolism.
The group first looked to a human prostate cancer cell line to characterize the role of Sirt1. In these cells, the induction of NEPC produced an increase in the expression of genes predicted to be activated by SIRT1 and a corresponding decrease in those predicted to be downregulated by this protein. Confirming these results, the group found that activation of Sirt1 in cells with low SIRT1 expression levels led to a robust increase in key NEPC markers.
Recapitulating their cell line data, the team found that silencing of Sirt1 profoundly reduced tumor growth in mice with NEPC, indicating that Sirt1 is indeed a promising target for NEPC treatment. They also treated the tumors with the FDA-approved SIRT1-inhibitor, Selisistat, which was originally developed for treatment of Huntington’s disease. Encouragingly, the researchers saw that Selisistat administration significantly reversed the NEPC phenotype. “Functional studies in human prostate cancer cell models and mouse organoid models using gain- and loss-of- function approaches in vitro and in vivo, as well as pharmacological inhibition, demonstrated that one of the top-ranked candidates, Sirt1, promotes NEPC,” they wrote in summary.
![Tumors surgically removed from Sirt1-silenced mice (bottom) are significantly smaller than tumors removed from mice with wild-type Sirt1 expression. [© 2026 Nunes de Almeida et al. Originally published in <em>Journal of Experimental Medicine</em>. https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.20241484]](https://www.genengnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Low-Res_Nunes_de_Almeida_et_al_1-300x275.jpg)
“Our findings demonstrate that SIRT1 plays a pivotal role in promoting NEPC, revealing a context-dependent function that extends beyond general tumor growth to the regulation of lineage plasticity and neuroendocrine differentiation,” says Abate-Shen, adding that “this highlights SIRT1 as an attractive and clinically actionable target for lethal prostate cancer that warrants further investigation in future clinical studies.”
In their paper the team concluded, “Overall, our study establishes a generalizable computational and experimental framework that integrates SB mutagenesis with phenotypic, genomic, and transcriptomic analyses to identify novel cancer drivers … Importantly, our data suggest that targeting SIRT1 may suppress or reverse progression toward NEPC.”
The post Target for Aggressive Prostate Cancer Prevention Identified in Mice appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
STAT+: Biotech veteran Jeremy Levin on why the industry’s future is secure, but American leadership is at risk
Biotech is producing scientific breakthroughs that once seemed impossible. But according to longtime industry executive Jeremy Levin, the institutions that support these advances, from regulators, to investors, and even public trust in science itself — are beginning to fracture.
Levin is the founder and chairman of Ovid Therapeutics and former CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals. In his new book, “Biotech in the Balance: Saving a Strategic Industry in an Age of Distrust,” he argues that political upheaval, weakening institutions, short-term investing, and more are putting the future of the industry at risk, even though the science itself continues to accelerate.
On this week’s episode of “The Readout Loud,” Levin advocates for federal changes that could incentivize biotech investment, and for pharmaceutical companies, in particular, to call out how regulatory upheaval is harming the drug industry. “When an institution such as this, which is critical, is shaken, the industry must stand firm. It must call out why this is a problem. … The titans are dead silent right now,” he said.
Below are highlights from his conversation with hosts Elaine Chen, Adam Feuerstein, and Allison DeAngelis.
This transcript of the interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Biotech exec Jeremy Levin on the industry’s strategic turning point
On this week’s episode of “The Readout LOUD,” we chat with longtime biotech executive Jeremy Levin about his new book, “Biotech in the Balance: Saving a Strategic Industry in an Age of Distrust.” That sounds alarmist, and it is in some respects, but as Levin explains, the book is also a roadmap to a brighter future for the biotech industry.
But first, we recap the week’s biotech news, including an Eli Lilly gene-editing treatment for high cholesterol, a new round of funding for a longevity startup, and a preview of the upcoming ASCO cancer research meeting.