Author: Shannon Becker
Lingering Effects Seen With Non-COVID Respiratory Illness Too
(MedPageToday) People with acute respiratory illness during the pandemic suffered similar levels of poor well-being in the months afterward whether they tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 or not, a registry study showed. In a cohort of people who all had initial symptoms suggestive of COVID-19, those who had moderate to severe scores at 3 months on […]
Dec 2, 2022
How Qatar Provided Early Answers About COVID Immunity
(MedPage Today) While the world turns its attention to Qatar for the World Cup, the tiny Middle Eastern nation jutting into the Persian Gulf is more recognized in the medical research community for providing some of the earliest insights into vaccine efficacy, waning immunity, and reinfection during the COVID-19 pandemic. With a national healthcare system […]
Nov 29, 2022
RSV Cases May Have Peaked in the US But the Flu Is Surging
(Bloomberg) The flu is sending more children to the hospital in the US right now than it has in over a decade, just as an autumn spike in severe RSV cases is starting to recede. Severe cases of RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, have overloaded children’s hospitals the past few months. In early November, when cases […]
Nov 29, 2022
R.S.V. Strains California Hospitals
(NYT) The Covid-19 pandemic persists, we’re in the midst of flu season and now there’s a new threat to worry about: R.S.V. Perhaps you’ve heard of the possibility of a “tripledemic,” an alarming sequel to last winter’s “twindemic” with the addition of respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V. It is by no means a new virus, but the […]
Nov 29, 2022
Medical Masks Versus N95 Respirators for Preventing COVID-19 Among Health Care Workers
(Annals of Internal Medicine) Background: It is uncertain if medical masks offer similar protection against COVID-19 compared with N95 respirators. Objective: To determine whether medical masks are noninferior to N95 respirators to prevent COVID-19 in health care workers providing routine care. Design: Multicenter, randomized, noninferiority trial. (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04296643).
Nov 29, 2022
Blood Thinner Ineffective for COVID-19 Patients: Study
(The Scientist) A clinical trial finds that the anticoagulant apixaban, which has been prescribed to help COVID-19 patients recover, is ineffective and in rare instances dangerous. New data from a clinical trial suggest that apixaban, an anticoagulant that’s widely been prescribed to promote recovery in patients with severe cases of COVID-19, doesn’t offer any discernable […]
Nov 29, 2022
Flu continues to spread across the U.S., infecting millions, CDC reports
(NBC News) The floodgates have opened on the flu, with millions of people across the U.S. reporting the illness and nearly 3,000 deaths from influenza since the beginning of October, according to the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With the start of the holiday season and large family gatherings, cases are […]
Nov 29, 2022
Deep Learning Model Predicts 10-Year Cardiovascular Disease Risk from Chest X-Rays
(Diagnostic Imaging) Based on a single existing chest X-ray image, the deep learning model predicts future major adverse cardiovascular events with similar performance to an established risk scoring system and may help identify people for preventive use of statin medication. Researchers have developed a deep learning model that predicts the 10-year risk of major adverse […]
Nov 29, 2022
A multivalent nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccine against all known influenza virus subtypes
(Science) Because we cannot currently predict which subtype of the influenza virus will cause the next pandemic, researchers have made various attempts to produce a “universal” vaccine that could protect people from a wide swathe of subtypes. Although most of these efforts have focused on a limited set of antigens that are shared by many […]
Nov 29, 2022
One Step Closer to a Universal Flu Vaccine?
(NYT) Scientists have tested in animals a vaccine that may protect against 20 strains of influenza, helping to prevent another pandemic. A new study describes successful animal tests of just such a vaccine, offering hope that the country can be protected against future flu pandemics. Like the Covid vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the […]
Nov 29, 2022