A study published today by a University of Oklahoma researcher shows that financial incentives can make a big difference in helping smokers quit. The study found that when people with low socioeconomic staus are offered small financial incentives to stop smoking (in addition to receiving counseling and pharmacotherapy, primarily nicotine replacement therapy), they achieve higher quit rates, with some measures doubling the quit rates, when compared to study participants who received the same treatments without incentives. This finding is particularly important because adults with socioeconomic challanges are more likely to smoke, experience more difficulty quitting, and suffer from more tobacco-related health problems and deaths than the general population.

Type 2 diabetes in young people ages 10 to19 has more than doubled in the past 20 years, yet it remains difficult for physicians to predict who will be diagnosed and who will improve with treatment. A newly published study from the University of Oklahoma shows that measuring the circulating abundance of microRNAs – which affect insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas – is likely as effective as measuring the level of sugar in the blood for determining how a young person with the condition will fare.

Patients with diabetes face a host of potential health problems as they work to manage the chronic disease. Still, one concern that seems to weigh heavily is the risk of losing their sight through a condition known as diabetic retinopathy. Researchers at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences and Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center are studying a new, revolutionary treatment for diabetic retinopathy that could change the prognosis for these patients.

Both obesity and metabolic syndrome – a cluster of conditions like high blood pressure and high blood sugar – increase the risk of breast cancer, but in differing ways for different subtypes of the cancer. A University of Oklahoma researcher helped to lead a national study that produced those results, which may help physicians better care for patients at higher risk for breast cancer.

With a $1.2 million grant to the University of Oklahoma, an OU Health urologic oncologist is leading an innovative new clinical trial for the treatment of prostate cancer when the cancer is beginning to spread beyond the prostate. The trial, offered at OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center, will study the combination of two drugs, each of which is already used to treat prostate cancer but has not been evaluated together.