Shirley Curry has clocked thousands of hours of gameplay since the 1990s. She’s been a gamer longer than many of today’s top competitors have been alive. Still, when people rave about her charming walk-throughs of the blockbuster role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, she feels their praise is out of place. “When people say…
In April, more than three months before any coronavirus vaccine would enter large clinical trials, the mayor of a picturesque island town in the Pacific Northwest invited a microbiologist friend to vaccinate him. The exchange occurred on the mayor’s Facebook page, to the horror of several Friday Harbor residents following it. “Should I pop up…
Solving the Opioid Crisis Isn’t Just a Public Health Challenge–It’s a Bioethics Challenge Travis N. Rieder It is popular, Rieder observes, to claim that we know what we, as a society, ought to do to solve America’s opioid crisis–we simply don’t want it badly enough. Those who focus on prescription opioids think we ought to…
Bethesda, MD (September 1, 2020) — The American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) published new clinical guidelines outlining an evidence-based approach for the initial gastrointestinal evaluation of chronic iron deficiency anemia in asymptomatic patients. Iron deficiency anemia is extremely common worldwide, and a gastrointestinal cause should be considered in all patients without an obvious cause for their…
Yale researchers are completing a first-of-its-kind clinical trial to test the efficacy of an automated bilingual alcohol screening and intervention tool for use in emergency departments (EDs). The computerized tool, administered to English- and Spanish-speaking Latino patient volunteers, is designed to address health disparities in the treatment of alcohol use disorders. Previous studies show…
Biological sex influences the effect of amyloid beta on alterations to tau protein characteristic to Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting a role for estradiol in preventing the disease in women, report scientists in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease Amsterdam, September 1, 2020-Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease and the leading cause of dementia. It…
The estimated time to clear surgeries postponed in Ontario because of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is 84 weeks, with a target of 717 surgeries per week, according to a new modelling study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). “The magnitude of the surgical backlog from COVID-19 raises important implications for planning for the…
Scientists have taken a significant step forward in the search to find effective new drug candidates for the treatment of motor neurone disease. Researchers from the Universities of Liverpool (UK) and Nagoya (Japan) have shown that a Selenium-based drug-molecule called ebselen and a number of other novel compounds developed at Liverpool can change many of…
Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have added to evidence that a gene responsible for turning off a cell’s natural “suicide” signals may also be the culprit in making breast cancer and melanoma cells resistant to therapies that use the immune system to fight cancer. A summary of the research, conducted with mice and human cells, appeared…
ITHACA, N.Y. – A new study in mice helps explain why gut microbiomes of breastfed infants can differ greatly from those of formula-fed infants. The study, “Dietary Sphinganine Is Selectively Assimilated by Members of the Mammalian Gut Microbiome,” was published in July in the Journal of Lipid Research. Sphinganine from milk Johnson Lab/Provided A new…