UW–Madison researchers find no symptom worsening following mindfulness-based cognitive therapy 

University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds (CHM), along with UW–Madison Department of Educational Psychology and a multi-university team, have found no evidence that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) increased a risk of symptom worsening, in a meta-analysis published in JAMA Network Open. 

MBCT is a widely-adopted, evidence-based intervention, used to help people with recurring depression from relapsing. The program combines cognitive behavioral therapy with mindfulness practices like meditation. A seminal 2016 meta-analysis combining results from nine studies of MBCT supported it as a leading treatment for depression, which affects nearly 332 million people worldwide. The meta-analysis also played an important role in MBCT being adopted as a recommended treatment for depression relapse prevention. However, since that time, the safety of MBCT has been questioned, following limited studies that revealed patient-reported harm. Importantly, these studies did not include a control (a group that receives no treatment, in order to provide a basis of comparison in results). The lack of a control makes it difficult to account for symptom worsening directly related to MBCT. 

“Due to the pervasiveness of global depression, as well as the wide dissemination of MBCT across healthcare systems, it is crucial to investigate any possible risk factors. “The original meta-analysis has been very influential, so we hoped we might be able to collaborate with the original authors to investigate this follow-up question about symptom worsening that was not asked in the original study,” says Simon Goldberg, core faculty at the Center for Healthy Minds and Associate Professor at UW–Madison’s Department of Counseling Psychology. 

The team reevaluated the 2016 meta-analysis individual participant data (IDP) for symptom worsening following treatment, relative to control conditions. De-identified IDP were gathered from nine randomized controlled trials evaluating MBCT for the prevention of depression relapse in 1,258 adult patients. The data was analyzed to compare the odds of increased depressive symptoms post-treatment, compared with controls. Some studies in the meta-analysis included patients taking antidepressants in the control group. 

Results showed no evidence that MBCT increased odds of depressive symptom worsening relative to control conditions. In some secondary analyses, there was evidence that MBCT decreased risk of symptom worsening relative to other treatments, including antidepressants. Taken together, the results support the continued dissemination of MBCT as an evidence-based treatment for recurrent depression.

It is important to note that the included trials focused on individuals in partial or full remission from recurrent depression, so the results may not fully apply to those with acute depression or other clinical populations. “We hope that future randomized control trials will include a broader assessment of patient experiences, however, we are optimistic following these important findings that MBCT is both helpful and not harmful to the average patient,” Goldberg says. 

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.29946 

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Symptom Worsening in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

Article Publication Date

20-Aug-2026

 

The hidden high costs of ‘free-to-play’ videogames show players need better protection, scientists say

Frontiers

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by Markus Meschik and Mark Griffiths

Digital media, including videogames, are a central part of leisure activities for many adolescents and adults. For more than a decade, the industry has increasingly relied on highly profitable financing models in which games can be played free of charge (‘free-to-play’ games), while additional purchases are offered through so-called microtransactions. As the industry repeatedly emphasizes, these purchases are voluntary. 

However, the term ‘microtransaction’ can be misleading. Individual purchases of €100 or more can hardly be considered small, especially for children and adolescents. For the average player more frequent and smaller payments may be more common, but focusing on the average player may conceal an important problem. 

The average player can hide the real problem 

Similarities between free-to-play models and gambling are not limited to the well-researched and gambling-like mechanism of buying loot boxes, where players buy a randomized selection of virtual items, the contents of which are unknown at the time of purchase. Battle passes, virtual currencies, rotating shops, paid progression, personalized offers, and time-limited events can encourage repeated spending.  

Our study showed that spending on microtransactions is highly concentrated among a small minority of players. The highest-spending 10%, whom we simply called ‘heavy spenders’ — deliberately avoiding the gambling-derived term ‘whales’ — accounted for the majority of all money spent. The degree of inequality in spending, meaning that a small minority spent a lot of money while many players spent much less, was also remarkably similar to that found in gambling more generally. 

We also found that heavy spending was not limited to adolescents from affluent families, and the prevalence of problematic behaviors such as gaming disorder and gambling disorder appeared to be higher among heavy spenders. Like gambling, a substantial share of free-to-play games’ revenue may be generated by individuals who are more likely to experience addictive behavior.  

Gambling is subject to varying degrees of legal regulation because of the potential for harm. However, videogames are subject to much less stringent regulations. 

How could regulation help? 

Regulation should expand beyond gambling-like loot boxes alone. While political efforts are currently being made to regulate social media because of its potentially addictive features, videogames remain comparatively underregulated, aside from specific provisions within the Digital Services Act. Several European countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands have attempted to regulate individual mechanics, particularly loot boxes. Research suggests that these approaches have had limited success, but the current momentum surrounding the regulation of social media could also be used to address dark patterns in videogames — design features that manipulate or steer players towards choices that primarily benefit the game provider, including increased spending.  

A particularly useful approach would be to introduce friction that interrupts the regularity and immediacy of purchases. In gambling research, event frequency — in this case, the frequency of microtransactions in games — is considered one of the strongest indicators of the addictive potential of a product. Similar principles should be considered when assessing monetization systems in digital games. 

Persistent addictive behavior and the associated spending is likely to be a problem that predominantly affects adults, and our study did not address this. Nevertheless, children and adolescents require greater protection. At present, responsibility for this protection is largely placed on parents and caregivers, who may struggle to help heavy spenders disengage, particularly when they are confronted with games that incorporate sophisticated design features intended to maximize player engagement and spending. Most young people use videogames competently and without experiencing serious problems, but a system should not be considered safe simply because many users experience no obvious harm. When a small minority of young players generates most of the revenue, that minority deserves particular protection.  

Numbers alone suggest the free-to-play economy is not really free. The monetization of videogame playing is of increasing concern and vulnerable players need protection from potentially exploitative practices. 

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Journal

Frontiers in Public Health

DOI

10.3389/fpubh.2026.1867460 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Heavy Spenders in Digital Games: Expenditure Disparities and Associations between In-game Microtransactions, Gaming Disorder and Gambling Disorder among Adolescents

Article Publication Date

21-Aug-2026

COI Statement

The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper except for MDG. MDG has received research funding from Norsk Tipping (the gambling operator owned by the Norwegian government). MDG has received funding for a number of research projects in the area of gambling education for young people, social responsibility in gambling and gambling treatment from Gamble Aware (formerly the Responsibility in Gambling Trust), a charitable body which funds its research program based on donations from the gambling industry. MDG undertakes consultancy for various gambling companies in the area of player protection and social responsibility in gambling.

 

Publication in science charts a path to democratized molecular innovation

Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology

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A robot positions "bloccs" for assembly via automated, iterative carbon-carbon bond formation.

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Credit: Molecule Maker Lab

A paper published today in the journal Science lays out a roadmap for broadening access to the process of discovering molecular tools that can benefit society, including medicines, materials, and a wide range of everyday consumer products. In parallel, the Molecule Maker Lab (MML) at the Beckman Institute, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, announced the formation of a global Task Force charged with prospectively developing safeguards to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of democratizing molecular innovation.

In “Bonding Carbons Iteratively,” author Martin D. Burke, the May and Ving Lee Professor for Chemical Innovation at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and founding Director of the Molecule Maker Lab (MML) at the Beckman Institute, describes a modular approach for making molecules called “blocc chemistry.” This method builds small molecules via iterative assembly of prefabricated building blocks, or “bloccs.” Unlike traditional chemical synthesis — which for nearly two centuries has relied on highly specialized, largely inaccessible human expertise — blocc chemistry allows carbon-carbon bonds, the backbone connections in nearly all organic molecules, to be assembled iteratively and automatically. This feature opens the door to robotic synthesis, AI-guided molecular discovery, and participation by nonspecialists, including students and citizen scientists.

“Blocc chemistry enables automation of organic synthesis, rapid generation of modular datasets for training AI models, and broadened access to molecular innovation,” said Burke. Early demonstrations of the approach have already contributed to AI-guided discovery of top-in-class organic laser emitters, durable organic solar cell materials, and other functional molecules.

Burke also emphasized that broadened accessibility needs to be coupled with shared responsibility. As he writes in the paper, “it is important to establish safeguards and best practices to ensure that small-molecule discovery is leveraged safely and responsibly,” pointing to biosecurity models such as the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science as a starting point for what governance of democratized molecular innovation could look like — including centralized monitoring of automated synthesis, algorithmic flagging of potentially dangerous compounds, and independent auditing of governance practices.

To translate that call into action, the MML is assembling an international Task Force of global thought leaders — spanning chemistry, artificial intelligence, medicine, industry, science education, students, and community members — to prospectively shape safeguards that can guide and govern this technology as it scales.

“We wanted to be way out in front of this,” said Burke. “Democratized molecular innovation is coming, and the world needs to get ready for it. The caliber of people already stepping forward to join this Task Force shows just how seriously the field is taking this responsibility.”

The Task Force is expected to convene its first discussions this month, with a consensus report anticipated in early 2027.

About the Molecule Maker Lab (MML)

The Molecule Maker Lab is working to make blocc chemistry accessible to anyone in the search for new molecules that benefit society. This opens meaningful possibilities — think medicines for unmet medical needs, technologies for sustainable energy, and progress on some of the world's most pressing challenges.

The Perspective, “Bonding Carbons Iteratively” by Martin D. Burke, publishes in Science on August 20, 2026 (DOI: 10.1126/science.aeg5569).

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.aeg5569 

Article Title

Bonding carbons iteratively

Article Publication Date

20-Aug-2026

Blocc chemistry [VIDEO] 

A robot positions "bloccs" for assembly via automated, iterative carbon-carbon bond formation.

A robot positions "bloccs" for assembly via automated, iterative carbon-carbon bond formation.

Blocc Chemistry Google Kaggle competition

Blocc Chemistry curriculum.

Credit

Molecule Maker Lab

 

Experimental synthetic mRNA platform may lead to faster, more effective therapeutics for infectious disease, cancer

Johns Hopkins Medicine

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image: 

A cell with in vitro transcribed mRNAs. The dots represent individual mRNAs. Red and cyan colors represent the RNA, while the green color represents antibodies detecting the translation signal. The scientists quantify the translation signal to measure translation dynamics. 

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Credit: Bin Wu

In a new study, scientists from Johns Hopkins Medicine report that an experimental mRNA-based platform has the potential to help deliver next-generation mRNA therapeutics, including vaccines fighting against infectious disease, cancer and autoimmune conditions, faster and more efficiently than the industry standard.  

In experiments with cells from people and mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) compared an experimental mRNA platform, N4-acetylcytidine (ac4C), against the industry standard mRNA platform, N1-Methylpseudouridine (m1Ψ), the chemical modification used in COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, which is being widely studied for delivering potential cancer and autoimmune disease vaccines.  

The study, funded and co-led by the NIH, was published July 1 in Nature.  

“Our results show that ac4C causes cells to produce more therapeutic proteins to fight disease than the industry standard mRNA platform,” says Bin Wu, Ph.D., associate professor of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “This may eventually lead to more efficient drugs that require smaller doses.” 

There are more than 170 known RNA modifications, but only a small subset of those have been studied for mRNA therapeutic purposes, Wu says. In experiments, the NIH scientists had previously demonstrated how ac4C, a naturally occurring modification, may enhance mRNA translation, thereby having the potential to speed up and build proteins. 

Wu says this research began when co-corresponding author Shalini Oberdoerffer, Ph.D., senior investigator in the Laboratory of Receptor Biology and Gene Expression at National Cancer Institute, gave a talk about ac4C at Johns Hopkins University in 2024. Wu, who uses biophysics to study mechanisms of mRNA modifications, proposed a research collaboration to better understand the behavior of individual RNA molecules. 

While m1Ψ is a safe and effective mechanism for drug delivery, the researchers say this study reveals how ribosomes that travel along single strands of mRNA containing m1Ψ may slow down and cause traffic jams, which in turn creates less protein that trigger an immune response, Wu says. 

In their experiments, the scientists used lipid nanoparticles to mimic how vaccines work, inserting the mRNA modifications, ac4C and the industry m1Ψ, into cultured human dendritic cells derived from monocytes, or white blood cells that support the immune system, and mouse liver cells.   

Comparing the two mRNA modifications, the scientists used an imaging technique developed by Wu’s lab, called single-molecule imaging of nascent peptides, using an advanced microscope to track individual mRNAs as they produced therapeutic proteins within the cells.  

“Our imaging revealed that ribosomes travel nearly twice as fast on the ac4C-modified mRNA, preventing the ribosomal traffic jam we may encounter with the industry standard mRNA platform,” Wu says. 

Further, Wu says, the imaging demonstrated that these irregularly translated ribosomes on the m1Ψ platform caused premature termination or frameshifting, making less or compromised proteins. In contrast, the ac4C platform resulted in smoother mRNA translation, preventing ribosomal roadblocks and producing more and better proteins that may boost therapeutic effects, Wu says. 

“We propose this ribosome collision as a model for why the industry standard may create less proteins,” Wu says. “In the future, this could help us investigate potential therapeutics that require smaller doses, but which create more protein and a better immune response.”  

In addition to Wu and Oberdoerffer, other scientists who contributed to this research include Blake W. Nelson, Leslie Watkins, Yining Zhu, Jingyao Ma and Hai-Quan Mao from Johns Hopkins Medicine; Sarah Schiffers, Maria Prigge, Shriya Krishna, Nishu Tyagi, Hamid Beiki and Ayush Raman from NCI; and Sudipto Das and Thorkell Andresson from Leidos Biomedical Research. 

Funding for this research was provided by the National Institutes of Health (R01GM138770, R35GM161776, RF1NS113820, T32GM007445, T32GM144272, P41EB028239 and U01AI155313). 

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Journal

Nature

 

US Tobacco companies flooded federal comment process that stalled menthol cigarette ban

Rutgers University

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When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed banning menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars in 2022, nearly 250,000 public comments flooded in – a record response that led the administration of President Joe Biden to delay a final decision.

But a Rutgers Health analysis shows that a minority came from concerned individuals inspired to speak out about the proposed ban in their own words.

The study in JAMA Network Open examined all 246,808 comments submitted to FDA dockets and found that 97% of comments on the menthol rule and 93% on the cigar rule were form letters. Roughly 46% of the menthol form letters contained content traceable to tobacco companies, including Reynolds American Inc.’s “Own It, Voice It” campaign and Altria Group Inc.’s “Voices for Consumer Choice” campaign. Two percent of all comments were unique.

“The sheer volume of comments was used as a reason to delay a public health policy that would have saved lives,” said Andrea Villanti, professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health, deputy director of the Rutgers Institute for Nicotine and Tobacco Studies and lead author of the study. “What wasn’t considered was how few of those submissions were unique or how much tobacco company influence had shaped both the volume and the content of the comments.”

The researchers downloaded the publicly available comments and used statistical software to identify recurring phrases, ultimately matching submissions to 17 distinct form-letter templates. After removing form letters and near-duplicates, they analyzed the remaining 3,342 unique menthol comments and 1,432 unique cigar comments.

Even among unique comments, 96% opposed the menthol ban, and 99% opposed the cigar ban. But the leading arguments were economic: loss of revenue and sales, fears of an illicit market and claims that education would work better than prohibition. Few unique comments (3-5%) addressed the health evidence behind the rules.

The study is part of an ongoing Rutgers project examining how disinformation shaped the debate over menthol and flavored tobacco policies, work that has traced industry arguments from their origins to their effects.

An earlier study in the project, led by Ollie Ganz, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health, analyzed direct-to-consumer emails that tobacco companies sent customers during the comment period. The emails urged recipients to “take action” and steered them to company-run websites that assembled personalized antiban letters from menus of prewritten arguments, then submitted them to the FDA.

Another study in the project, led by Olivia Wackowski, a professor at the School of Public Health, analyzed 122 news articles about the menthol rule and found that press coverage presented a more balanced picture: Seventy-five percent of articles cited the ban’s potential to reduce disease and save lives, while opposition arguments centered on concerns about increased policing in Black communities.

The policing argument invoked the 2014 death of Eric Garner, which came at the hands of New York police who were trying to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes. Villanti said this argument is designed to mislead the public because FDA product standards regulate what tobacco companies can manufacture and sell, not individual purchase or use of these products.

“Taken together, these findings show how the tobacco industry influence can shape policy debates in ways that obscure scientific evidence and distort perceptions of public opinion,” said Kymberle Sterling, an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and co-author of the new study. “As a result, Black communities and other populations disproportionately targeted by the marketing of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars continue to bear an unequal burden of tobacco-related harms when evidence-based protections are delayed, weakened, or withdrawn.”

Menthol cigarettes account for more than a third of the U.S. cigarette market and a majority of the cigarettes smoked by Black Americans, and researchers have estimated they caused 378,000 premature deaths in the United States between 1980 and 2018. Menthol anesthetizes the throat, making smoke easier to inhale for first-time smokers; studies show that the products are also more difficult to quit, especially for Black Americans.

The FDA sent final rules to the White House for review in 2023, but the Biden administration postponed action in April 2024, and the rules were withdrawn in January 2025.

“FDA’s rules on menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars are science-based policies designed to protect public health,” Villanti said. “One in five deaths in the U.S. is still attributable to tobacco smoking, and lack of action on these policies will have lasting impacts on the lives of American people and communities.”

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01MD018728. 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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Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.29962 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Public Comments and Federal Rulemaking for Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

Article Publication Date

20-Aug-2026

COI Statement

Dr Villanti reported receiving grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) during the conduct of the study. Ms Tomaino reported receiving grants from NIH during the conduct of the study. Ms Johnson reported receiving grants from the NIH during the conduct of the study. Dr Garmon reported receiving grants from NIH during the conduct of the study. Ms Altunbilek reported receiving grants from NIH during the conduct of the study. Dr Wackowski reported receiving grants from NIH during the conduct of the study. Dr Ganz reported receiving grants from NIH during the conduct of the study. Dr Allem reported receiving grants from NIH during the conduct of the study. Mr Schroth reported receiving grants from NIH during the conduct of the study. Dr Fryer reported receiving grants from NIH during the conduct of the study. Dr Sterling reported receiving grants from NIH during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported