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Young doctor succumbs to COVID, one of the south’s many health workers lost

It took Carrie Wanamaker several days to connect the face she saw on GoFundMe with the young woman she had met a few years before.

8 Oct 2020

In debate, Pence and Harris offer conflicting views of nation’s reality

The Trump administration's pandemic response: decisive action that saved lives, or the greatest failure of any presidential administration? During Wednesday's vice presidential debate, Vice President Mike Pence and the Democratic challenger, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, offered drastically different takes — from behind plexiglass screens — on how the president has handled the COVID-19 crisis.

8 Oct 2020

Job-based health insurance costs are up 4% this year, 55% in past decade

Health insurance costs for Americans who get their coverage through work continued a relentless march upward with average family premiums rising 4% to $21,342 this year, according to a study published Thursday.

8 Oct 2020

Moved by plight of young heart patient, stranger pays his hospital bill

Even with insurance, Matthew Fentress faced a medical bill of more than $10,000 after a heart operation. A cook at a senior living community in Kentucky, he figured he could never pay what he owed — until a stranger who lives 2,000 miles away stepped in to help.

8 Oct 2020

Hard lives made harder by COVID: Homeless endure a ‘slow-moving train wreck’

The message wasn't lost on Daniel Gonzalez. Early in the pandemic, one of the first things Imperial County did to ward off the virus was close the public bathrooms and, later, public cooling centers. In this sprawling Southern California desert, where summer brings blistering triple-digit heat, that lack of access could amount to a death sentence for people without shelter.

8 Oct 2020

Multi-faceted approach required to improve cardiovascular health of LGBTQ population

More than half (56%) of LGBTQ adults and 70% of those who are transgender or gender non-conforming report experiencing some form of discrimination, including the use of harsh or abusive language, from a health care professional.

8 Oct 2020

Majority of UK residents who tested positive for COVID-19 did not have specific symptoms

86% of UK residents who tested positive for COVID-19 during lockdown did not have the specific virus symptoms (cough, and/or fever, and/or loss of taste/smell), finds a new study by UCL researchers. The authors say a more widespread testing programme is needed to catch 'silent' transmission and reduce future outbreaks.

8 Oct 2020

Researcher receives NIH award to explore effect of women's hormones on postpartum opioid relapse

When most people think of opioid addiction, they typically do not think of pregnant women. Unfortunately, however, the prevalence of opioid addiction during pregnancy has increased nearly 500% during the past 15 years.

8 Oct 2020

Paying oncology practices to prescribe evidence-based drugs can improve quality of cancer care

A pay-for performance program that offers enhanced reimbursement to oncology practices for prescribing high-quality, evidence-based cancer drugs increased use of these drugs without significantly changing total spending on care, Penn Medicine researchers report in a new study published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

8 Oct 2020

Pre-existing conditions can increase patient's risk of dying from COVID-19

A large, international study of COVID-19 patients confirmed that cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, chronic kidney disease, stroke and cancer can increase a patient's risk of dying from the virus.

8 Oct 2020

Vitamin D deficiency may predict COVID-19 seroconversion

A recent study published on the preprint server medRxiv* in October 2020 reports the potential contribution of vitamin D deficiency to an increased risk of COVID-19 in a subset of health care workers in the UK.

8 Oct 2020

Study reveals major deficits in addressing asylum seekers’ mental health needs

A new study of asylum seekers in Germany suggests that, among those with symptoms of depression, anxiety, or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), few receive a diagnosis from the health care system, and of those diagnosed, many do not receive treatment.

7 Oct 2020

New report estimates the global burden of stillbirths

Almost 2 million babies are stillborn every year – or 1 every 16 seconds – according to the first ever joint stillbirth estimates released by UNICEF, WHO, the World Bank Group and the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

7 Oct 2020

COVID-19 mortality linked to differences in trust and income inequality

rust in public institutions is linked to fewer COVID-19 deaths, but trust and belonging to groups is associated with more deaths, according to a wide-ranging, McGill-led study of 30-day COVID-19 mortality rates in 84 countries.

7 Oct 2020

New biomarker may help identify patients at risk for graft-versus-host disease after stem cell transplants

A recent report published in Science Translational Medicine by MUSC Hollings Cancer Center investigator Sophie Paczesny, M.D., Ph.D., sheds light on immune cell biomarkers that may reveal which patients are most at risk for graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), a life-threatening condition that can arise after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) for treatment of liquid cancers such as leukemia.

7 Oct 2020