Latest healthcare news

SARS-CoV-2 Moderna Vaccine, the mRNA-1273 Vaccine in Older Adults Moderna published their safety and immunogenicity data from elderly patients in the New England Journal of Medicine, 29 September 2020, Anderson and others.  They conducted a phase 1, dose...

President Trump has COVID-19, so what are the treatments that he has currently received? Regeneron This is a one shot intravenous drug with a half life of 22 days which he received prior to hospitalisation. The company only announced its trial on 29 September and this...

If You Have Had the Common Cold, are you Protected From COVID-19  An interesting article in Science dated 2 October 2020 by Mateus and others suggested that robust T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 occur in most individuals with COVID-19 disease.  Several...

Susceptibility to SARS-Cov-2 Infection Among Children and Adolescents Compared with Adults An interesting review and metanalysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association published by Weiner and others in September 2020 looked at the evidence on the...

Covid-19 and the Easing of Restrictions.  How can we Learn from Countries in Asia, Pacific and Europe? An interesting article published on health policy in The Lancet September 24, 2020 by Han and others looks at this in great detail. Many countries have...

COVID and Eye Glasses; Should one Wear Glasses in order to PreventCOVID-19 Infection? An interesting article in the Journal of American Medical Associations Ophthalmology report by Xang and others published September 16 looked at the association between daily wearing...

The Association Between Mental Illness and Covid-19 Susceptibility An interesting article published in September 2020 in The Lancet Psychiatry by Professor Juan Lee and others looked at the evidence of the associations between mental illness and the likelihood of a...

Facemasks, Should they be Washed after every use and How Often? Facemasks have become a necessity in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic.  It is now illegal to be on public transport, be in a taxi, be in an Uber or be in a public place without wearing a...

COVID-19 A Global Perspective The Gates Foundation gives us a perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic.  This is in both human terms, country terms, worldwide terms and economic terms.  COVID-19 has killed more than 850,000 people.  It has plunged the world...

Testing for SARS-CoV-2, What is New COVID Nudge  Our friends at Imperial describe their novel, lab free, point of care test for SARS-CoV-2 known as COVID nudge in The Lancet September 17.  This was based on work done by Gibani and Toumazou.  Between...

COVID-19, Can it be Cured? An interesting editorial in The Lancet Infectious Diseases published September 10, 2020 reflects on this question and helps to provide answers. As the COVID-19 pandemic moves into its tenth month, there is a greater patient survival which...

COVID-19 and Influenza, Will there be a Double Epidemic? A news article in The Lancet reviewed this double whammy.  Vijay Balakrishnan reviewed and considered the evidence for this. As I discussed last week, the WHO reported that the worldwide circulation of...

When did SARS-CoV-2 become established in Europe and North America? An interesting study by Worobey and others published in Science 10 September 2020 looks at the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 virus in both Europe and North America.  They conclude that rapid early...

Sex Differences in the Immune Response to COVID-19 Why do men appear to suffer differently to women when exposed to SARS-CoV-2? Why are men more likely to be hospitalised and die? An interesting article by Dr Takehiro Takahashi and others published in Nature 26...

Did Closing Down Schools Decrease COVID-19 Incidence and Mortality? An interesting article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, published online July 29, 2020, reviewed the association between school closure and the reduction of spread of...

Neurological and Mental Health Screening There are currently no validated screening pathways to assess brain and mental health. The increasing stress of modern day living compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in more patients presenting with neurological...

Gynaecological Screening Guidelines Cancer of the Cervix Cervical cancer starts in the cells lining the cervix - the lower part of the uterus. The cervix connects the body of the uterus (the upper part where a foetus grows) to the vagina. Cancer starts when cells in...

COVID-19-Related Stroke in Young Individuals Evidence is mounting on the diverse neurological presentations associated with COVID-19.  This is highlighted in a comment by Dr Johanna Fifi from Mount Sinai in The Lancet.  It is known that SARS-CoV-2 causes...

Diabetes, Metformin and COVID-19 Dr Andrew Crouse and others conducted a retrospective electronic health record analysis of 25,326 patients who were tested positive for COVID-19 between 25 February and 22 June 2020 in the Birmingham Hospital at the University of...

Air Travel in the Time of COVID-19 An interesting editorial in The Lancet Infectious Diseases discusses the implications of this. The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the way we think about travelling. Most countries in the world have adopted some measures of lockdown or...

Breast Cancer Screening It is important to understand that most breast lumps are benign and are not cancer.  Breast cancer cells usually form a tumour that can often be seen on an x-ray or felt as a lump.  Breast cancer occurs almost entirely in women but...

COVID and Reinfection The question is, can a patient who has had COVID be re-infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus? The press recently have documented that there appears to have been a case of reinfection in Hong Kong during August.  Is this the case?  What are...

Ovarian cancers were previously thought to begin only in the ovaries, but recent evidence suggests that many ovarian cancers can actually start in the cells at the far end of the uterine (fallopian) tubes. The ovaries are mainly made up of three kinds of cells. Each...

Skin Cancer Screening Currently no screening programme exists for skin cancer.  There are various different types of skin cancer including: Melanoma Melanoma is a cancer that begins in the melanocytes. Other names for this cancer include malignant melanoma and...

Pancreatic Cancer Pancreatic cancer is more common in men than women.  The average lifetime risk of pancreatic cancer is about 1:64, but each person's chance of getting this cancer can be affected by risk factors: 1.    Tobacco Use Smoking is one...