University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers studying monkeys have shown that one infection with Zika virus protects against future infection, though pregnancy may drastically prolong the time the virus stays in the body.
The rapid development of a safe and effective vaccine to prevent the Zika virus (ZIKV) is a global priority, as infection in pregnant women has been shown to lead to fetal microcephaly and other major birth defects. The World Health Organization declared the Zika virus epidemic a global public health emergency on February 1, 2016.
Volanesorsen, an experimental lipid-lowering medication, improved insulin sensitivity and glucose control by significantly decreasing patients’ overall hemoglobin A1c – the standard clinical measurement of blood glucose levels for diabetics – in a new study reported by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The results are published online this month in Diabetes Care.
Policy makers’ and public health officials’ proper reactions could hold down the total costs to U.S. GDP of an influenza outbreak. Otherwise, costs could be nearly double previous estimates.
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine experts and colleagues in the United States and Africa have received an $11 million, five-year NIH grant to understand why some people living with HIV in Africa avoid becoming infected with the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB) despite exposure to high-TB-risk circumstances.
Doctors and scientists at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City printed and used a 3D kidney to help save a patient's organ during a complicated tumor-removal procedural.
AMGA today recommended that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) increase possible pathways to participate in Medicare as an advanced Alternative Payment Model (APM) in written comments on the proposed rule implementing the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). In addition, AMGA addressed many other issues, including the restrictions on qualifying as an advanced APM, risk adjustment and resource use measurement under the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), and the importance of considering outcomes when determining value in health care.
The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia have been awarded over $5 million to serve as a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Prevention Epicenter site to help develop and test innovative approaches to preventing superbugs and improving patient safety.
The 2009 swine H1N1 flu pandemic — responsible for more than 17,000 deaths worldwide — originated in pigs from a very small region in central Mexico, a research team headed by investigators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is reporting.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that an old drug once mostly used to treat amebiasis — a disease caused by a parasite — and induce vomiting in cases of poisoning appears to also halt replication of cytomegalovirus (CMV), a herpesvirus that can cause serious disease in immunocompromised individuals, including those with HIV or organ transplant recipients.
High workload, rigid rules, and conflicting pressures from their employers are all leading to community pharmacy staff deviating from standard procedures at times to ensure patients receive the tailored care they require, a new study from The University of Manchester has found.
If the United States responds to Zika the way it did to Ebola—and early indications are that in many ways it is—the country can expect missteps brought about by a lack of health care coordination and a lot of political finger pointing, according to an analysis by the University of Michigan.
A team of scientists has uncovered the global, evolving, and historic make-up of Plasmodium vivax, one of the five species of malaria that infect humans. The research, which links the spread of the parasite back to colonial seafaring, among other phenomena, underscores the challenges health experts face in controlling the parasite.
It’s no secret that social environments can play a role in the development as well as recovery from substance-abuse problems. A new study, designed to uncover how individual relationships respond to substance use and social influences, has found that the links between substance use and social connections are bidirectional and strong.
Before your family heads to Mexico, Asia or beyond, do a little planning ahead of time to keep everyone healthy during their journey. Dr. Nava Yeganeh, an assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases and director of the Pediatric International Travel and Adoption Clinic at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA, explains three important strategies.
The minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) in the U.S. regulates the age at which individuals can legally purchase and possess alcohol in public. An MLDA of 21 has been linked to a number of benefits, including a lower risk for alcoholism in adulthood. However, no studies have examined linkages between exposure to MLDAs during young adulthood and mortality later in life. This study examined if young adults – college and non-college students – exposed to a permissive MLDA (younger than 21) had a higher risk of death from alcohol-related chronic diseases compared to those exposed to an MLDA of 21.
A group of Western Illinois University student and faculty researchers are spending the summer conducting surveillance of tick-borne diseases and mosquito-borne arboviruses in regional counties.
The American Mosquito Control Association’s annual National Mosquito Control Awareness Week aims to educate about the significance of mosquitoes and the importance of eliminating them. Amy Lawhorne, vice president and brand leader at Mosquito Squad, the largest and most experienced home and commercial mosquito control firm in the country, is putting mosquitoes on notice.
The Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System Regional Association (GCOOS-RA) has been awarded $1.8 million a year for the next five years to support data collection and distribution in the Gulf of Mexico.
Saint Louis University's vaccine center has been tapped by the National Institutes of Health to conduct a human clinical trial of a vaccine to prevent the Zika virus, which can cause devastating birth defects in babies.
Math, biology and nanotechnology are becoming strange, yet effective bed-fellows in the fight against cancer treatment resistance. Researchers at the University of Waterloo and Harvard Medical School have engineered a revolutionary new approach to cancer treatment that pits a lethal combination of drugs together into a single nanoparticle.
The neurodegeneration that occurs in Parkinson's disease is a result of stress on the endoplasmic reticulum in the cell rather than failure of the mitochondria as previously thought, according to a study in fruit flies. It was found that the death of neurons associated with the disease was prevented when chemicals that block the effects of endoplasmic reticulum stress were used.
RTI International will serve as the data coordinating center for a multi-country study to evaluate the magnitude of health risks that Zika virus infection poses to pregnant women and their developing fetuses and infants. The study is led by the National Institutes of Health and Fundacao Oswaldo Cruz-Fiocruz.
Certain viruses, such as influenza, could survive on children’s toys long enough to result in exposures, placing children at risk for getting infectious diseases, according to researchers at Georgia State University.
Depression in African Americans, according to Sirry Alang, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at Lehigh University, is expressed in ways that are inconsistent with symptoms of depression laid out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). The DSM-V is the primary source of diagnostic information, relied upon by not only clinicians and researchers, but also psychiatric drug regulation agencies, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, the legal system, and policy makers.
Since gun law reform and the Firearms Buyback program 20 years ago, Australia has seen an accelerating decline in intentional firearm deaths and an absence of fatal mass shootings, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports today in a landmark study.
Many West Nile encephalitis survivors suffer long-term neurological problems such as memory loss. New research from Washington University School of Medicine shows that the patients’ own immune systems may have destroyed parts of their neurons, and that intervening in the immune response may help.
American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) President James A.Tacci, MD, JD, MPH (FACOEM) today called the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act "a major step forward for health and safety in the workplace.”
Johns Hopkins University engineering students working to develop a better suit to protect health care workers in Ebola outbreaks have developed prototypes for a more comfortable hood and face mask that make breathing easier, and for a battery-powered system that curbs humidity in the suit.
Residents on the South Side say cancer, violence prevention and sexually transmitted infections are among their top health concerns, according to the latest comprehensive assessment conducted by the University of Chicago Medicine.
The 2016 Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA), published online in mid-June, also identifies diabetes among adults, pediatric asthma and pediatric obesity as other critical health issues faced by South Siders. In addition to uncovering the community’s health needs, the report also includes a plan to advance outreach, prevention and education in those six health areas.
In the following Q&A, Richard Duhrkopf, Ph.D., associate professor of biology in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences and nationally recognized expert on mosquitoes, provides an update on national and statewide (Texas) efforts and gives tips to avoid mosquitoes known to carry Zika (Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus), which, he said, are different from those that carry other viruses such as West Nile.
An ongoing incident of Listeria contamination linked to frozen vegetables is causing illnesses across state and national lines. At least 350 products use the vegetables, which are distributed to retailers in all 50 states and four Canadian provinces.
Mosquito bite sites are not just itchy, irritating nuisances - they also make viral infections spread by the insects far worse, new research has found.
Eric Wallace is piloting a telehealth program, which he says could open the door for Alabamians in rural communities to receive more subspecialized care without traveling long distances.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved initiation of the first phase I human trial for a Zika vaccine, based on new research with key findings generated in the lab of David B. Weiner, Ph.D., executive vice president, director of the Vaccine Center, and the W.W. Smith Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at The Wistar Institute.
In a study appearing in the June 21 issue of JAMA, Matthew M. Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues examined changes in insurance coverage among hospitalized nonelderly adults after Michigan expanded Medicaid coverage in 2014 under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
In nationally representative surveys conducted between 1999 and 2012, several improvements in self-reported dietary habits were identified, such as increased consumption of whole grains, with additional findings suggesting persistent or worsening disparities based on race/ethnicity and education and income level, according to a study appearing in the June 21 issue of JAMA.
Using unmanned drones to deliver vaccines in low- and middle-income countries may save money and improve vaccination rates, new research led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center suggests.
Medical researchers, policymakers and providers are paying greater attention to race, national origin, immigration status and a wide range of cultural and socioeconomic factors in addressing the health of the country's large, growing and diverse Hispanic population.
Mayo Clinic highlights the potential merits of using precision medicine in prescribing antidepressants. Details appear in the current issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Eleven percent of Americans 12 years and older have been prescribed antidepressant medication, according to CDC data from 2005–2008.
Low dose aspirin is recommended by clinicians as a preventive measure for patients who have already had a heart attack or stroke, but the risk of taking low-dose aspirin to prevent or delay a first heart attack or stroke is less clear, as the benefit for reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) must be balanced with the increased risk of gastrointestinal or other bleeding. To help clinicians and patients make informed decisions about aspirin use, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital have developed a new, free, mobile app, "Aspirin-Guide" that calculates both the CVD risk score and the bleeding risk score for the individual patient, and helps clinicians decide which patients are appropriate candidates for the use of low-dose aspirin (75 to 81 mg daily).
The 39th annual Research Society on Alcoholism Scientific Meeting will take place June 25-29 in New Orleans, Louisiana. RSA 2016 provides a meeting place for scientists and clinicians from across the country, and around the world, to interact. The meeting also gives members and non-members the chance to present their latest findings in alcohol research through abstract and symposia submissions.
Experts from the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other leading national healthcare groups spoke about the emerging biosimilars market, including key policy and regulatory questions for patients, providers and the healthcare system, during a national policy briefing held today by the nonpartisan Alliance for Health Reform.
In a small study looking at pain assessments in adults with sickle cell disease, researchers at Johns Hopkins says overall, those treated long-term with opioids often fared worse in measures of pain, fatigue and curtailed daily activities than those not on long-term opioids.