Latest healthcare news
Does a Good Night’s Sleep Improve the Efficacy of COVID-19 Vaccine?
An interesting commentary published in The Lancet March 12th by Benedict and Cedernaes discusses this issue. Within an extraordinarily swift timeframe vaccines to control the COVID-19 pandemic have been developed using either an mRNA protein subunit or...
Are Patients who Suffer with Gout an Under Recognised Group at High Risk of COVID-19?
An interesting article published by Dalbeth and Robinson in The Lancet rheumatology March 9th 2021 discusses this issue. There has been a rapid acceleration in the understanding of predictors for poor outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection since first reports of...
Smoking and COVID-19 Risk
An article published by Hopkinson and others in the British Medical Journal Thorax looked at this important issue. They tried to associate current tobacco smoking with the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 and the severity of illness. They looked at the...
Is There An Association Between Influenza Vaccination and Hospitalisation Or All-Cause Mortality In Patients With COVID-19?
An interesting retrospective cohort study by Wilcox and others published in the BMJ Open Respiratory Research Journals suggested that influenza vaccination may offer some protection against COVID-19 severity. The study used routinely collected health records...
America appears to be Ahead of us in What You Are Allowed to do Following Full Vaccination
The CDC in America has published guidelines for what you can and cannot do when you have been fully vaccinated. Here in the United Kingdom we must abide by the guidelines as set out by the Government and Public Health England. It is, however, interesting to...
Body Mass Index and the Risk of Severe COVID-19 Requiring Hospitalisation, ITU Admission and Invassive Mechanical Ventilation
The CDC in their weekly morbidity and mortality report March 12th 2021 looked at this issue. They found that individuals with a BMI near the threshold between healthy weight and overweight generally had the lowest risk for hospitalisations, ICU admission and...
Does having been vaccinated by other non COVID-19 vaccines protect against SARS-CoV-2 infection?
An interesting article published by Pawlowski and others in Scientific Reports published 26th February 2021 investigated this issue. Conventionally, vaccinations are intended to train the adaptive immune system by generating an antigen specific immune...
Can COVID-19 Affect Fertility?
The BMJ clears this controversial topic up for us in its news published 19th February. New expert guidance dictates that there is absolutely no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines can affect the fertility of women or men. The guidance published by the...
What is the New Norm going to be following the COVID Pandemic and what is the Roadmap to the Ending of Lockdown in England?
The government has set out their roadmap for ending lockdown in a 60 plus page document. The document, however, warns that vaccines on their own may not be enough to prevent a significant proportion of people being infected whilst the restrictions are...
Long-haul COVID, How Can We Learn from other Infection Triggered Illnesses?
Aucott and Redman discuss this in their letter in The Lancet published March 5th 2021. 115 million people worldwide have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic, with extensive implications for morbidity and mortality. Description...
