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Covid-inspired Montana health insurance proposal wouldn’t kick in for 2 years

For employees of small businesses in Montana suddenly laid off during the covid-19 pandemic, maintaining health insurance coverage could be a struggle.

19 Mar 2021

Doctors found jet fuel in veteran’s lungs. He can’t get full benefits.

The lungs Bill Thompson was born with told a gruesome, harrowing and unmistakable tale to Dr. Anthony Szema when he analyzed them and found the black spots, scarring, partially combusted jet fuel and metal inside.

19 Mar 2021

The case for donating US Covid vaccines overseas

A Senate committee grilled federal officials about the shortage of vaccines to protect Americans against a pandemic virus. Two months later, the U.S. public had lost interest in the virus, and millions of vaccines were sitting in warehouses — although poor countries still needed them.

19 Mar 2021

Study: Mobile stroke units reduce disability, improve outcomes in stroke patients

Stroke patients treated via a mobile stroke unit (MSU) received clot-busting medications faster and more often - and recovered significantly better than patients who receive regular emergency care by standard ambulance.

19 Mar 2021

Researchers find stark disparities in COVID-19 outcomes

Researchers at Seattle's Institute for Systems Biology and their collaborators looked at the electronic health records of nearly 630,000 patients who were tested for SARS-CoV-2, and found stark disparities in COVID-19 outcomes -- odds of infection, hospitalization, and in-hospital mortality -- between White and non-White minority racial and ethnic groups.

19 Mar 2021

Online learning platform about COVID-19 pandemic aids frontline workers, educates the public

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced medical students out of classrooms and clinical rotations this time last year, the state of Georgia's only public medical school had to quickly rethink its traditional curriculum.

19 Mar 2021

Malfunctioning blood-brain barrier is linked to benign forgetfulness of aging

Have you forgotten where you laid your keys? Ever wondered where you had parked your car? Or having trouble remembering the name of the new neighbor? Unfortunately, these things seem to get worse as one gets older.

19 Mar 2021

Mass vaccination needed to protect against future resurgences of COVID-19

The first long-term seroprevalence study of residents in Wuhan, China, has found that 6.9% of people in the city had antibodies against COVID-19 in April 2020, and 82% of these people had an asymptomatic infection.

19 Mar 2021

Virtual reality experiences can be used to train professionals in organ donation and transplants

The Donation and Transplantation Institute and Immersium Studio, a UOC spin-off, have developed virtual reality experiences that can be used to train health professionals in the area of organ and tissue donation and transplantation.

18 Mar 2021

New high-throughput system for testing drug candidates to treat brain diseases

On the basis of a license agreement with the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden (IPF), the Dresden-based start-up "Neuron-D GmbH" is developing a high-throughput system for testing drug candidates to treat neurodegenerative diseases.

18 Mar 2021

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: ACA packs more benefits — and more confusion

The Covid relief bill signed by President Joe Biden a week ago includes billions of dollars in new health benefits for consumers. But those benefits may be hard for people to take advantage of because of the interaction with the income tax system and the lack of experts to help them navigate the system.

18 Mar 2021

Undocumented pregnant women in Finland receive inadequate prenatal care, study shows

Undocumented women in Finland access pregnancy care later than others. Yet, screening of infectious diseases at the early stages of pregnancy would be particularly important to these women, a new study carried out in Helsinki, Finland, shows.

18 Mar 2021

Need amid plenty: Richest US counties are overwhelmed by surge in child hunger

Alexandra Sierra carried boxes of food to her kitchen counter, where her 7-year-old daughter, Rachell, stirred a pitcher of lemonade.

18 Mar 2021

Landmark Covid relief law pumps more than $100 billion into public health

Acknowledging that chronic underfunding of public health contributed significantly to the nation's fragmented response to the coronavirus pandemic, Democrats included more than $100 billion in the recently enacted relief package to address urgent needs and enhance future efforts.

18 Mar 2021

Non-Hispanic blacks with Type 1 diabetes and COVID-19 are more likely to have diabetic ketoacidosis

Non-Hispanic black patients with Type 1 diabetes and COVID-19 were almost four times as likely to present to the hospital with diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) compared to non-Hispanic whites, according to an article published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism by Le Bonheur Pediatric Endocrinologist Kathryn Sumpter, MD.

18 Mar 2021

Study shows how coronavirus variants spread more quickly

The fast-spreading UK, South Africa, and Brazil coronavirus variants are raising both concerns and questions about whether COVID-19 vaccines will protect against them.

18 Mar 2021

Digital communication can bridge the racial disparity gap in cervical cancer care

An estimated 14,480 new cases of invasive cervical cancer will be diagnosed in the United States this year, according to the American Cancer Society. Cases that could be prevented or cured with better education from screening to treatment based on improved provider-patient communication, says a Michigan State University researcher.

17 Mar 2021

Older and non-White people less likely to be captured by mobility data used in response to COVID-19

Information on individuals' mobility--where they go as measured by their smartphones--has been used widely in devising and evaluating ways to respond to COVID-19, including how to target public health resources.

17 Mar 2021

New method for growing embryos outside the womb

To observe how a tiny ball of identical cells on its way to becoming a mammalian embryo first attaches to an awaiting uterine wall and then develops into nervous system, heart, stomach and limbs: This has been a highly-sought grail in the field of embryonic development for nearly 100 years.

17 Mar 2021

Study finds elevated heart disease risk in cancer survivors

A new study has found that about 35% of Americans with a cancer history had an elevated risk of cardiovascular disease in the next decade, compared with about 23% of those who didn't have cancer.

17 Mar 2021