Beginning September 25, every U.S. household can again place an order to receive four more free COVID-19 rapid tests delivered directly to their home. Before You Throw Out "Expired" Tests: Check to see if your COVID-19 tests' expiration dates have been extended.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/959362
News Release 20-Jul-2022
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Tel-Aviv University
Researchers from Tel Aviv University exposed patients with long-term COVID-19 symptoms to intensive Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) treatment, and found significant improvement in cognitive, neurological, and psychiatric functions.
The treatments were accompanied by advanced MRI imaging of the patients' brains, identifying damage from the COVID-19 virus, and correlating the images with clinical findings, before and after HBOT treatment.
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Long COVID, which affects up to 30% of patients infected by the COVID-19 virus, is characterized by a range of debilitating cognitive symptoms such as inability to concentrate, brain fog, forgetfulness and difficulty recalling words or thoughts - persisting for more than three months, and sometimes up to two years.
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/949973
News Release 18-Apr-2022
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Wolters Kluwer Health
A "bundled care" Medicare program to improve care for patients undergoing hip or knee replacement surgery has led to reductions in some outcome disparities for Black compared with White patients, suggests a study in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio in partnership with Wolters Kluwer.
The introduction of Medicare's Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) Model coincided with a reduction of racial differences in hospital readmission rates after hip or knee replacement surgery, according to new research by Calin Moucha, MD, Jashvant Poeran, MD, PhD, and other colleagues at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.
Despite gains, racial differences persist in patient characteristics and outcomes.
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https://twitter.com/TheDemocrats/status/1516110568612061184
Why did 193 House Republicans vote against a standalone bill to cap the cost of insulin at $35/month?
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/949822
News Release 14-Apr-2022
Peer-Reviewed Publication
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
At first blush, the numbers aren’t great: Cancer patients who are covered by Medicaid tend to have later-stage disease and higher rates of mortality.
But when Cathy Bradley, PhD, deputy director of the University of Colorado (CU) Cancer Center, started digging into the data a little deeper, she found some of the reasons for the dire statistics. Many people with cancer enroll in Medicaid only after they are diagnosed, suggesting they may have been uninsured prior to diagnosis and had limited access to cancer screening and treatment.
“What some researchers have done in the past is looked at Medicaid and observed that people who are insured by Medicaid and diagnosed with cancer have late-stage disease and greater mortality rates,” she says. “What I was able to show is that Medicaid is actually picking up people who were otherwise uninsured or underinsured. They get diagnosed with cancer, and enroll in Medicaid afterward. By then, they have late-stage cancer because they most likely did not have health insurance that would have given them access to screening and treatment prior to cancer diagnosis.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/949291
gen
News Release 8-Apr-2022
Findings from study led by Susan G. Komen scholars published in JAMA Oncology
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Susan G. Komen
A new study led by Susan G. Komen® Scholars indicates that patients diagnosed with de novo stage 4 breast cancer – also called metastatic breast cancer– had improved survival rates and decreased mortality rates when those patients had access to care. De novo means the breast cancer was stage 4 at the time of diagnosis and had already spread to distant parts of the body.
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/948814
News Release 7-Apr-2022
Peer-Reviewed Publication
University of British Columbia
The risk of developing one of three serious eye conditions increases by 85 per cent for regular users of common erectile dysfunction (ED) medications such as Viagra, Cialis, Levitra and Stendra, new UBC research has found.
Two of the three conditions had previously been linked to ED medications only by anecdotal case studies. Those links are now confirmed for the first time by a large, epidemiological study, published today in JAMA Ophthalmology.
"These are rare conditions, and the risk of developing one remains very low for any individual user. However, the sheer number of prescriptions dispensed each month in the U.S.—about 20 million—means that a significant number of people could be impacted," said Dr. Mahyar Etminan (he/him), an associate professor in the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the UBC faculty of medicine. "Regular users of these drugs who find any changes in their vision should take it seriously and seek medical attention."
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/948633
News Release 4-Apr-2022
Encouraging the vaccine-resistant will take more than advertising
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Duke University
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The researchers turned to their database, the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, which has been tracking all of the nearly 1,000 people born in 1972 and 1973 in a single town in New Zealand. Since childhood, the researchers have measured multiple social, psychological and health factors in each of the participants’ lives, resulting in a steady stream of research publications offering deep insights into how childhood and its environment forms the adult.
They ran a special survey of their participants in the middle of 2021 to gauge vaccination intentions shortly before the vaccines became available in New Zealand. Then they matched each individual’s responses to what they know about that person’s upbringing and personality style.
The Gallup organization estimated last year that about one in five Americans was vaccine resistant. The Dunedin data showed that 40 years ago in childhood, many of the participants who said they were now vaccine-resistant or hesitant had adverse childhood experiences, including abuse, neglect, threats, and deprivations.
“That suggests to us that they learned from a tender age ‘don't trust the grownups,’” Moffitt said. “If anyone comes on to you with authority, they're just trying to get something, and they don’t care about you, they’ll take advantage. That's what they learned in childhood, from their experiences growing up at home. And that kind of learning at that age leaves you with a sort of a legacy of mistrust. It's so deep-seated that it automatically brings up extreme emotions.”
The survey also showed that “the mistrust was widespread, extending not only to institutions and influencers, but also to family, friends and co-workers,” according to the paper.
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At ages 13 and 15, the vaccine-resistant group had tended to believe that their health was a matter of external factors beyond their control.
At age 18, the teens who became the vaccine-resistant and hesitant groups also were more likely to shut down under stress, more alienated, more aggressive. They also tended to value personal freedom over social norms, and being nonconformist.
The resistant and hesitant groups had scored lower on mental processing speed, reading level, and verbal ability as children. At age 45, before the pandemic, these people were also found to have less practical everyday health knowledge, which suggests they may have been less well-equipped to make health decisions in the stress of the pandemic. None of these observations changed when the survey findings were controlled for the participants’ socioeconomic status.
Wood, a marketing professor who specializes in health messages, said many healthcare workers who have been pouring their hearts into fighting the pandemic have taken resistance to vaccines personally and literally cannot comprehend why patients refuse so adamantly. “Doctors and hospitals have been asking us ‘Why would people be so resistant? Why can’t we convince them with data?’”
Unfortunately, Wood said, the fear and uncertainty of the pandemic triggers a fight to survive in some of these people, an ancient response that reaches back decades in their past and is grounded firmly in their own sense of self. “The root of this is, you can’t change this as a healthcare provider,” Wood said. “And it’s not about you. It’s not a diminution of your service and your warm intent.”
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“The best investments we could make now would be in building children’s trust and building stable environments, and ensuring that if the individual caregiver fails them, society will take care of them,” Wood said.
“Preparing for the next pandemic has to begin with today's children,” said co-author Avshalom Caspi, the Edward M. Arnett Distinguished Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke. “This isn’t a contemporaneous problem. You can't combat the hesitancy and the reluctance with adults who have been growing up to resist it their entire lives.”
“It’s also the case that pro-vaccination messaging is not operating in a vacuum,” Moffitt added. “It’s competing against the anti-vax messaging on social media. The anti-vaxxers are winding people up with mistrust and fear and anger. It creates a situation where their audience is very distressed and upset and then can't think clearly. They're manipulating emotions, which reduces cognitive processing.”
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tags: child abuse,
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/948687
News Release 4-Apr-2022
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Medicare Part D beneficiaries who did not receive federal subsidies to lower their out-of-pocket costs were nearly twice as likely as others to not fill prescriptions for serious health conditions like cancer or hepatitis C treatment, according to a new study from Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers.
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The authors found that among patients without subsidies, 30% did not fill their prescribed cancer treatments. Twenty-two percent of patients without subsidies did not fill curative treatments for hepatitis C, and more than 50% did not fill disease-modifying therapies for immune disorders.
“Overall, we found that a very large percentage of Medicare beneficiaries who are prescribed a new and expensive drug for treating conditions like cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and hepatitis C are not filling these drugs,” Dusetzina said. “The rate of not filling is nearly twice as high for beneficiaries who lack subsidies, which is the case for most Medicare beneficiaries. These beneficiaries face very high costs when starting a drug and unlimited out-of-pocket spending over the year.”
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/948093
News Release 31-Mar-2022
High prices, low value -- Two new composite scores from West Health and Gallup illustrate America’s healthcare cost crisis
Reports and Proceedings
West Health Institute
An estimated 112 million (44%) American adults are struggling to pay for healthcare, and more than double that number (93%) feel that what they do pay is not worth the cost. The findings come from two new composite scores developed by the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization West Health and Gallup, the global analytics and advice firm, to assess the healthcare cost crisis.
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National health spending is over $4 trillion in this country, and current projections indicate it will continue to grow at an annual rate of 5.4%, topping $6.2 trillion by 2028.
According to the Healthcare Affordability Index, respondents are considered “cost desperate” if they report experiencing three key financial challenges:
Unable to pay for needed medical treatment over the prior three months.
Skipped prescribed medication due to cost over the prior three months.
Unable to afford quality care if it was needed today.
Those classified as “cost insecure” have one or two of these affordability challenges, while cost secure individuals report none of these challenges and are able to consistently access and pay for prescription medications and quality care.
Based on these classifications, 36% of Americans are "cost insecure," 8% are “cost desperate" and 56% are “cost secure.” The likelihood of being cost desperate is more than four times greater for those in households earning under $48,000 per year (13%) compared to those earning $90,000+ per year (3%). Men were more likely to be cost secure than women (60% to 53%) and Hispanic adults were less likely to be cost secure than their Non-Hispanic White counterparts (51% to 58%).
Over one-third (35%) of cost desperate adults report that they have cut back on utilities, and half have cut back on food in the past 12 months to pay for necessary healthcare, rates that are 10 times greater than their cost secure counterparts. Another 14% of this group know a friend or family member who has died in the last 12 months after not receiving treatment due to an inability to pay for it—double the rate of “cost insecure” individuals and seven times greater than “cost secure” individuals.
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/948081
News Release 30-Mar-2022
Peer-Reviewed Publication
University of Waterloo
Low blood sugar in infancy is serious, but treatment can ward off long-term brain damage in infants, a new study has found.
The study from the University of Waterloo and the University of Auckland is the first research of its kind to declare stabilizing blood sugar levels in newborns with hypoglycemia prevents brain damage.
Low blood sugar, also known as hypoglycemia, occurs when the level of glucose in the blood is too low. Low blood sugar is very common, affecting more than one in six babies. As glucose is the main source of fuel for the brain and the body, untreated low blood sugar can cause adverse effects on a child’s neurodevelopment up to the age of 4.5 years old.
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/948067
News Release 30-Mar-2022
Vaccination also prevented critical illness with both omicron and delta in children age 12-18
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Boston Children's Hospital
Although the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine became available in October for children age 5-11, many parents have been hesitant to have them vaccinated. As of March 16, only 27 percent had received two vaccine doses, according to CDC data. A national study published March 30 by The New England Journal of Medicine now reports that vaccination of 5- to 11-year-olds reduced hospitalizations with COVID-19 by more than two thirds during the omicron surge and protected against severe illness.
The study, co-led by Adrienne Randolph, MD, MSc, at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also confirms that vaccination reduced COVID-19 hospitalization in adolescents age 12-18 and protected strongly against severe illness, in line with a study earlier this year.
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/944906
News Release 1-Mar-2022
Some common drugs can help and others hinder immune responses
Peer-Reviewed Publication
University of Sydney
The largest clinical review of immune responses to paracetamol, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and opioid analgesics, with a focus on infectious diseases, has provided insights into unintended impacts of these commonly used medicines. The findings highlight the potential for some of these medicines to join the fight against old and new infectious diseases.
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Key findings of the clinical review
For pain: Morphine suppresses key cells of the immune system and increases the risk of infection, particularly after cancer surgery.
For fever: Antipyretics – e.g. Paracetamol [acetaminophen], Ibuprofen, Aspirin – can reduce the desirable immune response when taken for vaccination.
Aspirin could be an affordable and accessible therapeutic option for tuberculosis – which mainly afflicts poor countries, with beneficial results shown in animals and humans.
Anti-inflammatory medicine indomethacin may reduce viral replication in Covid-19 but large-scale human trials are needed.
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/945004
News Release 1-Mar-2022
In studies, a third booster shot enhances immune response
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Ohio State University
A new study using serum from human blood samples suggests neutralizing antibody levels produced by two-dose mRNA vaccines against the original and early variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus wane substantially over time, and offer essentially no protection against the omicron variant.
The same Ohio State University lab found in a previous study, posted on the preprint server bioRxiv, that a third COVID-19 mRNA vaccine booster shot did produce effective levels of neutralizing antibodies against omicron. This study has not yet been peer-reviewed.
“Our new work shows that two doses of mRNA vaccine do not offer protection against omicron, and even having a breakthrough infection on top of vaccine does not help much. But our earlier study showed that the booster can really rescue the shortcomings of the two doses,” said Shan-Lu Liu, the senior author of both studies and a virology professor in the Department of Veterinary Biosciences at Ohio State.
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/945033
News Release 1-Mar-2022
CDC study provides real-world information on vaccine effectiveness in 5- to 11-year-olds
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Regenstrief Institute
Using data from 10 states, a study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is one of the first real-world studies to show that two doses of an mRNA vaccine provide protection against COVID-19 associated emergency department and urgent care visits among children ages 5 to 11.
The study also found that two doses of an mRNA vaccine provide protection against COVID-19 associated emergency department and urgent care visits as well as very high protection against hospitalization among adolescents aged 12 to 17.
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An example of why it is important for people to get vaccinated, even when they feel they themselves are at low risk, to reduce spreading it to others.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/944754
News Release 25-Feb-2022
90 percent who qualified but did not receive ECMO died in hospital
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Nearly 90 percent of COVID-19 patients who qualified for, but did not receive, ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) due to a shortage of resources during the height of the pandemic died in the hospital, despite being young with few other health issues, according to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
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Approximately 90% of patients for whom health system capacity to provide ECMO was unavailable died in the hospital, compared to 43% mortality for patients who received ECMO, despite both groups having young age and limited comorbidities.
“Even when saving ECMO for the youngest, healthiest and sickest patients, we could only provide it to a fraction of patients who qualified for it,” Gannon said. “I hope these data encourage hospitals and federal authorities to invest in the capacity to provide ECMO to more patients.”
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“Throughout the pandemic, it has been challenging for many outside of medicine to see the real-world impact of hospitals being ‘strained’ or ‘overwhelmed,’” said co-author Matthew Semler, MD, assistant professor of Medicine at VUMC. “This article helps make those effects tangible. When the number of patients with COVID-19 exceeds hospital resources, young, healthy Americans die who otherwise would have lived.”
In total, the risk of death for patients who received ECMO at a specialized center was approximately half of those who did not.
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/944765
News Release 25-Feb-2022
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Indiana University
A new analysis from Indiana University, the nonprofit Rand Corp. and the University of Michigan highlights the changes in the U.S. health care workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic and found that the average wages for U.S. health care workers rose less than wages in other industries during 2020 and the first six months of 2021. This is in spite of the health care workforce shouldering the heavy burden of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/944741
News Release 25-Feb-2022
New data helps inform nation’s plan and prioritize booster programs
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Providence Health & Services
A study released in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine by Providence, one of the largest health systems in the United States, confirms the overall effectiveness of vaccines in preventing severe infection resulting in hospitalization from Covid-19, but also shows a substantial decline in protection after six months. Completed by a team of clinicians and scientists in the Providence Research Network, the study examined data from nearly 50,000 hospital admissions between April and November of 2021, finding that vaccines were 94% effective at preventing hospitalization 50-100 days after receiving the shot but fell to 80.4% 200-250 days later, with even more rapid declines after 250 days.
In addition to examining the effectiveness of vaccines over time, the Providence study was also able to identify factors associated with reduced vaccine effectiveness. Key risk factors for a severe “breakthrough” infection included advanced age (80+), comorbidities such as cancer, transplants, chronic kidney disease, hypertension, or heart failure, the amount of time that had elapsed since being vaccinated, and the type of vaccine one received. For the latter factor, the study found that the Moderna vaccine offered the best overall protection over time, while the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offered initial protection equivalent to Moderna’s but declined more rapidly over time. Persons receiving the Janssen vaccine also had higher odds of experiencing a severe breakthrough infection compared to Moderna.
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/944123
News Release 24-Feb-2022
Does severe COVID-19 affect pregnancy outcomes?
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Wiley
New research published in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica indicates that severe COVID-19 in pregnancy increases the risk of pre-labor caesarean birth, a very or extreme preterm birth, stillborn birth, and the need for admission to a neonatal unit.
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“This new analysis shows that certain pregnant women admitted to a hospital with COVID-19 face an elevated risk of severe disease. However, it shows once again the strongly protective effect of vaccination against severe disease and adverse outcomes for both mother and baby,” said senior author Marian Knight, FMedSci, of the University of Oxford.
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https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/942764
News Release 9-Feb-2022
Frequent use of over-the-counter analgesics associated with risk of tinnitus
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Frequent use of NSAIDs or acetaminophen or regular use of COX-2 inhibitors was associated with an almost 20 percent higher risk of tinnitus
Frequent use of moderate-dose aspirin was associated with a 16 percent higher risk among women under 60, but frequent low-dose aspirin use did not elevate risk
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