Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

They said a device that stimulates the vagus nerve in the neck while simultaneously playing different sounds for several weeks helped eliminate the condition in a group of rats. A trial of the treatment in humans is set to start in Europe this year, said Dr. Navzer Engineer of MicroTransponder, a medical device company affiliated with The University of Texas at Dallas, whose study appears in the journal Nature. Tinnitus is sometimes brought on by hearing loss. It occurs as cells in the inner ear are damaged, often from a loud noise. Current drugs help mask tinnitus, but the condition is incurable. Engineer’s team thinks tinnitus may be caused when too many brain cells become tuned to a specific tone in the brain. So his team set out to train the brain to ignore the nerve signals that cause the ringing sound. To do this, they paired a device that sends electrical impulses to the vagus nerve in the neck with different sounds. Stimulating this nerve releases chemicals such as acetylcholine and norepinephrine that trigger changes in the brain. The University of Texas at Dallas team tested this approach in a series of experiments with rats, using an indirect but accepted method of testing hearing in animals. In one, they stimulated the vagus nerve while playing different sounds 300 times a day for 20 days to a group of eight rats with a form of tinnitus. The tones were close to the frequency of the ringing sound, and the hope was to trick some of the nerve cells into listening to the new tones rather than the ringing tone. When the team checked the nerve responses to different tones, the tinnitus had disappeared in rats exposed to the tones and nerve stimulation, but it persisted in a group of control animals. “Unlike previous treatments, we’re not masking the tinnitus. We are eliminating the source of the tinnitus,” Michael Kilgard of the University of Texas-Dallas, who worked on the study, said in a statement. MicroTransponder is developing a wireless medical device to stimulate the vagus nerve and hopes to test it in people later this year. Cyberonics Inc already sells vagus nerve stimulation devices for people with epilepsy and depression. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, part of the National Institutes of Health, funded a large part of the research.
Device treatment may silence ringing in the ears.

His wife beat a more formidable challenger. Molly Crosby, a 32-year-old mother of five, had been dealing with bouts of coughing and congestion all summer. Some preliminary exams in Green Bay showed a spot on her right lung. That led the Crosbys to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., for additional tests. A carcinoid endocrine tumor was found. The tumor isn’t as dangerous as other forms of cancer but was disconcerting for an otherwise healthy, nonsmoker. “We found out the day before we reported to camp,” Crosby said on Wednesday. “We were at Mayo the two or three days leading up to training camp, when they did all their scans and got the final prognosis.” Crosby flew back to Green Bay for the start of training camp. After a subpar 2018 season, Crosby had to beat out Sam Ficken. Crosby managed to keep his focus and retained the job for a 13th season. “I’ve trained a long time in compartmentalizing different situations,” Crosby said. “Whenever I was home, I was fully home. The organization was unbelievable through training camp, just giving me time to be with Molly and be with the family and help where I could throughout the day and evening. I just tried to be fully in on both things. I have felt a lot of freedom in this. “I love doing what I’m doing but the importance of taking care of family and being there for Molly and the kids, when I look back on it, it was a special camp. I was able to really fully immerse in both things. It was nerve-wracking, too. Day in and day out, it was coming in, having to work and compete at a high level, and then going home and flowing back into a normal routine. Then, we’d sit down at night and you’d remember that surgery was coming and Molly had cancer. Those things were heavy.” That surgery was at the end of the preseason, with part of Molly’s right lung removed. While she will go back to Mayo for a scan in mid-October, Crosby said the doctors are positive they got rid of the tumor and she will not require radiation or chemotherapy. Since 2009, the NFL has held its annual “Crucial Catch” campaign to raise money for the American Cancer Society. It was a campaign that had already hit home for Crosby. A grandmother died of breast cancer and a sister-in-law is in her third year battling ovarian cancer. Now with his wife’s diagnosis, the fight against cancer has grown more meaningful. “That’s what it’s about is early detection,” he said. “It’s getting routine checkups. Don’t take it for granted. The numbers, with our technology, are amazing with prevention but treating it if you catch it early enough. That’s one of the big things is pushing that. Let’s try to get earlier detection so we can fight this thing. “With Molly’s cancer, it’s always been really important to me but I’m going to continue to push the charge forward and make sure that everybody gets the care. We feel so fortunate with the care that we got. Hopefully, everybody gets the same care and the same prognosis that we got.” The Packers (3-1) will play at the Dallas Cowboys (3-1) on Sunday. Some of Crosby’s finest professional moments have happened at AT&T Stadium. In the 2010 season, the Packers won the Super Bowl in Arlington. A playoff game in the 2016 season against the Cowboys marked the highlight of his career. His 56-yard field goal with 1:33 to play gave the Packers a 31-28 lead. Dallas tied the score, but Crosby booted a 51-yarder on the final play for a 34-31 victory. “The two minutes in that game were the most exciting two minutes I think I’ve ever had in a game,” he said. “To be able to execute it twice in that situation was awesome.” ___ More AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL
Wife’s cancer diagnosis hits home for Packers’ Crosby.

The story notes that TMS equipment is expensive and requires specialized training. However, this story didn’t put a dollar figure on the cost of the machine as Reuters did. And neither this story nor its Reuters counterpart attempted to quantify the costs of treatment for patients and insurers. The story tells us that patients receiving TMS improved “16.3% immediately following treatment and by 22.6% two weeks later.” Fair enough. But it didn’t tell us whether that type of improvement represents a meaningful change in patients’ ability to function and care for themselves. Reuters, by contrast, cautioned that “it’s not clear what the amount of improvement they observed would mean for patients in their daily lives.” We were also confused by this story’s use of the word “neglect” without defining what the term means clinically. Better to leave it out entirely or give a complete explanation of the meaning, as Reuters did. Although TMS used for depression is associated with a low rate of adverse effects (mostly headache), we don’t know if other problems might emerge when using it on patients who’ve had a stroke. The story didn’t discuss the potential for adverse effects or mention whether any adverse effects were seen in this study. Any new treatment – however theoretically safe – may cause unexpected harms in such a clinically fragile population. That is one of the limitations of a study of such a small number of highly selected individuals. We would’ve appreciated some stronger cautions about the very small size of this study (only 20 patients) and the danger of drawing firm conclusions from such a tiny sample. Overall, however, we were impressed with the expert comments that generally sought to restrain expectations for the technology. Examples: The story didn’t exaggerate the challenges faced by individuals who’ve had a stroke, but it would have been helpful to know how many stroke sufferers experience the “neglect” symptoms discussed in the story. The Reuters piece helpfully explains that about half of stroke sufferers experience these symptoms. The story had excellent sourcing and included comments from four different experts. The story says that “neglect” symptoms after stroke are usually treated with cognitive and physical therapy, but that this is “often not enough to make a meaningful improvement.” Later, however, it quotes an expert who says that this kind of rehab alone “could and should be enough to treat this kind of stroke.” Well, which one is it? We’ll give the story credit for addressing this criterion, but wish there had been a bit more clarity on the effectiveness of standard rehab. The study is described as “preliminary” and the treatment is called “not ready for prime time.” We think readers get the idea that this treatment is not available for stroke rehabilitation outside of a research setting. The story quotes an expert who calls TMS “a very novel treatment” for stroke, which is accurate. However, the story could have given more details about TMS’s more established use as a treatment for depression. The story alludes to this use, but doesn’t convey that depression is what TMS was originally designed to treat and where it is most frequently employed. This story was not based solely or largely on a press release.

Magnet Therapy May Help Stroke Survivors Recover