New research from Tulane University may shed light on how parasite strain diversity can impact Chagas disease progression and severity.

The researchers were “surprised” such a small percentage of people consume such an outsized proportion of beef, study author Dr. Diego Rose, nutrition program director at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said in a news release.

“We focused on beef because of its impact on the environment, and because it’s high in saturated fat, which is not good for your health,” says Diego Rose, professor and nutrition program director at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and the study’s senior and corresponding author.

In a recent study, published in the journal Nutrients on August 30, researchers from Tulane University in Louisiana analyzed data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which tracked the meals of more than 10,000 adults over a 24-hour period.

The Jacksonville shooting comes about a month after a new study by Tulane University researchers in New Orleans found mass shootings disproportionately target Black people and occur more often in U.S. cities with high Black populations, suggesting structural racism may be at play.

To Wu-Min Deng, a fruit fly biologist at Tulane University, the finding suggests that people, too, may owe their healthy hearts to overstuffed cells. “A conserved mechanism may exist in human heart development,” he says.

Even before the Carnegie group reported the finding in 2013, Wu-Min Deng, a fruit fly biologist at Tulane University, reported the same phenomenon in wounded fruit fly ovaries.

“For so many years, we have focused on smoking, diet, physical activity, obesity, [high blood pressure], diabetes and high cholesterol—and we know those are important for the prevention of cardiovascular disease,” said lead author Jiang He, MD, PhD, chair in epidemiology at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, in the news release.

“Despite the dire state of maternal health in the Gulf South, few large-scale, national efforts include this region, and addressing the ongoing maternal health crisis is not possible without centering Black pregnancy,” said Co-Principal Investigator Emily Harville, PhD, perinatal epidemiologist at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

Dr. Shauna Levy, a specialist in obesity medicine and the Medical Director at the Tulane Bariatric Center in New Orleans, spoke with On the Record with Steve Scott.