The mental effects of pandemics on people can arise not only from the burden of preventive measures, the fear of contracting and cure but also coping with the exponential deaths. It was predicted in 2018 that the next major outbreak and its containment challenges might not be due to a lack of preventive technologies, but […]
Outcomes Worse for Women With MI at 50 Years or Younger
FRIDAY, Oct. 16, 2020 — Women who experience their first myocardial infarction (MI) at ≤50 years of age are less likely than men to undergo coronary revascularization or be treated with guideline-directed medical therapies, according to a study published online Oct. 13 in the European Heart Journal. Ersilia M. DeFilippis, M.D., from Harvard Medical School […]
Nudges combined with machine learning triples advanced care conversations among patients with cancer
An electronic nudge to clinicians—triggered by an algorithm that used machine learning methods to flag patients with cancer who would most benefit from a conversation around end-of-life goals—tripled the rate of those discussions, according to a new prospective, randomized study of nearly 15,000 patients from Penn Medicine and published today in JAMA Oncology. Early and […]
Around a third of infants with COVID-19 may have caught it from mother
Environmental exposure to SARS-CoV-2 was responsible for the majority of infections detected in newborn infants in an analysis of 176 reported cases. However, the findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that 30% of the reported cases may have been acquired from the mother. Daniele De Luca and colleagues performed a meta-analysis of published cases of […]
Fusing cytokines with antibodies found to be effective at treating brain tumors in mice
A team of researchers from University Hospital Zurich and the University of Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and biotechnology company Philochem, has found fusing cytokines with antibodies to be an effective treatment for glioblastoma in mice. In their paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the group describes their technique and how […]
Doctors Thought The Cyst in a Woman's Brain Might Be a Tumor—But It Turned Out to Be Filled With Tapeworm Larvae
Stress, dehydration, and excess alcohol are all well-known causes of a headache. But there are other, less obvious reasons for pounding head pain—as one Australian woman discovered. After she experienced a headache for more than a week, doctors found tapeworm larvae in her brain. The unidentified woman is the subject of a new case study, […]
A small T cell switch with a big impact
T cells play a key role in the human immune system. They are capable of distinguishing diseased or foreign tissue from the body’s own, healthy tissue with great accuracy; they are capable of triggering the actions necessary to fight off the troublemakers. The details of this immune response are manifold and the individual steps are […]
What is contact tracing, and how does it work with COVID-19?
What is contact tracing, and how does it work with COVID-19? The goal of contact tracing is to alert people who may have been exposed to someone with the coronavirus, and prevent them from spreading it to others. Health experts say contact tracing is key to containing the virus and allowing places to reopen more […]
Anticipating heart failure with machine learning
Every year, roughly one out of eight U.S. deaths is caused at least in part by heart failure. One of acute heart failure’s most common warning signs is excess fluid in the lungs, a condition known as pulmonary edema. A patient’s exact level of excess fluid often dictates the doctor’s course of action, but making […]