Latest healthcare news
Is A Single Dose Of Vaccine Effective? And is it Sufficient For Those Who Have had Covid-19?
An interesting article published by Jabbal and others in Eurosurveillance, Europe's journal on infectious disease surveillance, epidemiology, prevention and control looked at whether a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine was effective. They found that a...
COVID-19: Vaccine Questions and Answers
An article in the Scientific American asked some questions and gave some answers. Yes, if you are currently eligible to get a vaccine, you should have it. In order to build herd immunity and slow the spread of disease, it is important to get as many people vaccinated...
Does Taking Vitamin C or Zinc or Both Reduce COVID-19 Symptoms?
This was looked at in a randomised study published 12th February 2021 in the Journal of the American Medical Association's Network Open. The randomised clinical trial by Thomas and others examined whether high dose zinc and/or high dose vitamin C reduced the severity...
How do you Re-Programme the Vaccines?
Wudan Yan, a freelance journalist, elegantly explains this in his New York Magazine Intelligentsia on 17th February 2021. In December 2020, as quickly as excitement grew over the new COVID-19 vaccines that have been approved for use, worry took over....
When should the UK lift its lockdown?
An interesting comment in The Lancet respiratory medicine by Tony Kirby dated February 19th 2021 discusses this issue. The United Kingdom has been one of the world's countries hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. As of February 15th 2021, there have been...
SARS-CoV-2 Variants and the Ending of the COVID-19 Pandemic
A fascinating comment by Fontanet and others published in The Lancet February 11th 2021 discusses this issue. COVID-19 pandemic has devastated healthcare systems, shutdown schools and communities, and plunged the world into an economic recession. While...
Does one need a second booster vaccination following the first if one has already had COVID-19?
An interesting preprint by Bradley and others in MedRxiv looked at this issue. Current guidelines recommend that individuals who have had COVID-19 should receive the identical vaccine regime as those who have not had infection. This includes two doses of...
How Does the Brain Respond to Beauty?
An interesting article published in the Scientific American this month looked at this fascinating concept. Beauty is elusive – it is sought in nature, art and philosophy, but also in design such as our phones and furniture. It is valued beyond...
Alzheimer’s Disease
This can now be detected by a simple blood test. The Scientific American this month guides us to the fact that there now exists a laboratory test for Alzheimer's disease. Memory loss is a common feature to all of us and can be of no particular...
The COVID-19 Exit Strategy
The editorial published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases dated February 11th 2021 looks at this issue and asks when the global pandemic end will? The question on everyone's mind is; when will this end? Much of the narrative around the pandemic last...
