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Category: health – Page 105

Conclusions.

The vectorial role of bat flies should be checked by testing the same pathogen and bacterial organisms by collecting blood from host bats. This study is of great interest in the fields of disease ecology and public health owing to the bats’ potential to transmit pathogens to humans and/or livestock.

Covid is a bat bourne disease from such zoonotic transmission.

Background Bats are hosts for many ectoparasites and act as reservoirs for several infectious agents, some of which exhibit zoonotic potential. Here, species of bats and bat flies were identified and screened for microorganisms that could be mediated by bat flies. Methods Bat species were identified on the basis of their morphological characteristics. Bat flies associated with bat species were initially morphologically identified and further identified at the genus level by analyzing the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene. Different vector-borne pathogens and endosymbionts were screened using PCR to assess all possible relationships among bats, parasitic bat flies, and their associated organisms. Results Seventy-four bat flies were collected from 198 bats; 66 of these belonged to Nycteribiidae and eight to Streblidae families.

Continue reading “Relationship among bats, parasitic bat flies, and associated pathogens in Korea” | >

Ear infections in babies and toddlers are extremely common. In fact, according to the National Institutes of Health, five out of six children will experience an ear infection before their third birthday.

“Many parents are concerned that an ear infection will affect their child’s hearing irreversibly—or that an ear infection will go undetected and untreated,” says David Tunkel, M.D., Johns Hopkins Medicine pediatric otolaryngologist (ENT). “The good news is that most ear infections go away on their own, and those that don’t are typically easy to treat.”

Ear infections happen when there is inflammation— usually from trapped bacteria—in the middle ear, the part of the ear connects to the back of the nose and throat. The most common type of ear infection is otitis media, which results when fluid builds up behind the eardrum and parts of the middle ear become infected and swollen.

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Since I was going to become a Dr before my TBI, or a scientist but there’s this and some devices and apps are pretty accurate. Like Samsung and Apple. Now there’s the Google Pixel, the Pixel watch and of course Fitbit and more.

The same devices used to take selfies and type out tweets are being repurposed and commercialized for quick access to information needed for monitoring a patient’s health. A fingertip pressed against a phone’s camera lens can measure a heart rate. The microphone, kept by the bedside, can screen for sleep apnea. Even the speaker is being tapped, to monitor breathing using sonar technology. Smartphones as medical devices could be the next big thing.

In the best of this new world, the data is conveyed remotely to a medical professional for the convenience and comfort of the patient. Or, in some cases, to support a clinician without the need for costly hardware.

But using smartphones as diagnostic tools is a work in progress, experts say. Some doctors and their patients have found some real-world success in deploying the phone as a medical device. However, the overall potential remains unfulfilled and uncertain.

Continue reading “Smartphones as Medical Devices — The Future of Healthcare?” | >

Is Program Manager, Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H — https://arpa-h.gov/people/ross-uhrich/), which is focused on advancing high-potential, high-impact biomedical and health research that cannot be readily accomplished through traditional research or commercial activity, accelerating better health outcomes targeting society’s most challenging health problems.

Under the ARPA-H portfolio, Dr. Uhrich is responsible for the recently launched Novel Innovations for Tissue Regeneration in Osteoarthritis (NITRO — https://arpa-h.gov/engage/programs/nitro/) program which seeks to develop new ways of helping the human body repair its own joints, with the goal of revolutionizing treatment for osteoarthritis — a common and often very painful condition where bones and cartilage break down.

Dr. Uhrich joined ARPA-H in March 2023 from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC) and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, where he worked as a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon and assistant professor of surgery. In addition to these roles, he spent 12 years with the U.S. Navy, finishing his tenure as a Lieutenant Commander.

Throughout his career, Dr. Uhrich has cared for thousands of members of the U.S. Armed Forces at various healthcare facilities, including the USS Gerald R. Ford, Naval Health Clinic Quantico, and WRNMMC, and served as an oral and maxillofacial surgery consultant to Congress. He also treated patients at Charleston Area Medical Center, R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, and Suburban Hospital.

Continue reading “Dr. Ross Uhrich, DMD, MBA — Program Manager, Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)” | >

Children with food protein-induced allergic proctocolitis experienced impaired growth during their first year of life, but this resolves as the disease resolves, according to a study published in Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

Meanwhile, children with IgE-mediated food allergy (IgE-FA) experienced impaired growth after age 1 year, Rachael Rosow, BA, clinical research coordinator for pediatric food allergy at Massachusetts General Hospital at the time of the study and now a medical student at Frank H. Netter M.D. School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University, and colleagues wrote.

The 804 children followed from birth through age 2 years in the study included 134 (17%) who developed food protein-induced allergic proctocolitis (FPIAP), 50 (6%) who developed an IgE-FA and 15 (2%) who developed both.

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This is true. I’ve been missing photography and books. Too much YouTube even can give you a bit of depression and anxiety. I’m a YouTube addict I’ll admit.

Reducing social media usage by as little as 15 minutes per day can increase health and well-being, claims a new study published in the Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science. The findings indicate that a 15-minute reduction in social media usage has positive consequences for one’s social life, vitality, and health.

Research has shown that excessive social media use can lead to a range of negative outcomes, including increased feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and depression. Social media use has also been linked to poor sleep quality, decreased physical activity, and decreased face-to-face social interaction. These negative outcomes are particularly concerning given that young adults are among the heaviest social media users, with many spending several hours daily on social media platforms.

Despite the growing concern about the negative effects of social media use, there is limited research on the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing social media use. Previous studies have suggested reducing social media use can improve mental health outcomes. However, small sample sizes and reliance on self-reported measures of social media use and mental health outcomes have limited these studies.

Continue reading “New study finds small reductions in social media use are linked to improvements in health and well-being” | >

Using artificial intelligence (AI) to combine data from full-body x-ray images and associated genomic data from more than 30,000 UK Biobank participants, a study by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and New York Genome Center has helped to illuminate the genetic basis of human skeletal proportions, from shoulder width to leg length.

The findings also provide new insights into the evolution of the human skeletal form and its role in musculoskeletal disease, providing a window into our evolutionary past, and potentially allowing doctors to one day better predict patients’ risks of developing conditions such as back pain or arthritis in later life. The study also demonstrates the utility of using population-scale imaging data from biobanks to understand both disease-related and normal physical variation among humans.

“Our research is a powerful demonstration of the impact of AI in medicine, particularly when it comes to analyzing and quantifying imaging data, as well as integrating this information with health records and genetics rapidly and at large scale,” said Vagheesh Narasimhan, PhD, an assistant professor of integrative biology as well as statistics and data science, who led the multidisciplinary team of researchers, to provide the genetic map of skeletal proportions.

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Using cannabis may cause changes in the human body’s epigenome, a study of over 1,000 adults suggests. The epigenome functions like a set of switches, activating or deactivating genes to change how our bodies function.

“We observed associations between cumulative marijuana use and multiple epigenetic markers across time,” says Lifang Hou, a preventative medical doctor and epidemiologist from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Cannabis is a commonly used substance in the United States, with 49 percent of people trying it at least once, Hou and a team of US researchers report in their published paper. Some US states and other countries have made it legal, but we still don’t fully understand its effects on our health.

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In March 2020, an experiment in science philanthropy was hatched in the span of a five-minute call.

Patrick Collison, the now 34-year-old billionaire CEO of the online payments company Stripe, and economist Tyler Cowen were chewing over a shared concern: Scientific progress seemed to be slowing down. As the first pandemic lockdowns went into effect, researchers were in a holding pattern, waiting to hear if they could redirect their federal grants to COVID-related work. Collison and Cowen worried that the National Institutes of Health wasn’t moving quickly enough, so they launched Fast Grants to get emergency research dollars to virologists, coronavirus experts, and other scientists rapidly.

“We thought: Let’s just do this,” Cowen recalls. “It was a bit like put up or shut up.”

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If you’re fighting cancer, a healthy lifestyle can help you stay well during and after treatment. Research suggests that good nutrition, exercise and other healthy behaviors may improve your quality of life during treatment.

“Taking charge of your health by developing healthy habits empowers you to cope better with your treatment and any side effects you may have,” says Lonny Yarmus, D.O., a board certified interventional pulmonologist at the Lung Cancer Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

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