Does exposure to air pollution during early gestation increase our risk of heart disease? The answer appears to be yes—both for humans and for some of our closest animal companions—according to several studies led by Mary Regina Boland, PhD.

Pregnant women take some medications whose effects on the fetus are largely unknown. The authors sought to design a machine-learning method that uses big data housed in clinical records, coupled with information on the chemical properties of the drug, to determine if these "Category C" drugs were likely to be harmful or safe to the fetus.

Each year in the U.S., bipolar disorder affects about six million adults, and about 16 million adults experience at least one major depressive episode,  according to the National Institute of Mental Health. This study is the largest to date that examined motor-activity patterns in people who represent the full range of mood-disorder subgroups--(Bipolar I (BPI), Bipolar II (BPII) and major depression (MDD)--in a non-clinical population sample. Its findings are thus are more likely to apply to the general community and to offer usable clues about biomarkers for mood disorders.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is known to be an effective treatment for patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But can we actually see these effects in the brain? This team sought to find out.

The trend-in-trend design looks at changes in the frequency of an outcome as it relates to changes in an exposure, such as a new drug, across subgroups. This design has advantages over randomized clinical trials, because such trials are usually too small to identify rare adverse effects and are performed in a highly restricted group of patients—one that does not reflect the group that will actually take a drug once it is approved.

The Bayesian nonparametric approach can yield a more complete, more accurate measure of how effective a health intervention—an incentive to adopt a new exercise regimen, for example—truly is.

The products of different scanners and imaging sites vary, meaning that structural MRI studies can have biases and can lack reproducibility. The investigators proposed a method that can help solve that problem.