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Category: health – Page 132

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A fungal superbug called Candida auris is spreading rapidly through hospitals and nursing homes in the US. The first case was identified in 2016. Since then, it has spread to half the country’s 50 states. And, according to a new report, infections tripled between 2019 and 2021.

This is hugely concerning because Candida auris is resistant to many drugs, making this fungal infection one of the hardest to treat.

Candida auris is a yeast-type fungus that is the first to have multiple international health alerts associated with it. It has been found in over 30 countries, including the UK, since it was first identified in Japan in 2009.

Continue reading “New Deadly Superfungus Can Now Be Found in Half of US States” | >

In a recent study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, researchers assessed the impact of consuming unprocessed, minimally processed (UMP), and ultra-processed foods (UPFs) on diet quality.

Study: Intakes of unprocessed and minimally processed and ultra-processed food are associated with diet-quality in female and male health professionals in the United States: a prospective analysis.Image Credit: Parilov/Shutterstock.com

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Improving the seasonal influenza vaccine and public health specialists’ ability to predict pandemic potential in new flu strains may be possible, due to new findings from scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The key is the stability of a viral protein that gains entry into human cells. The findings were published today in Science Advances.

“We found that the protein flu viruses use to enter cells, hemagglutinin, needs to be relatively stable and resistant to acid in an effective H3N2 flu vaccine,” said senior and co-corresponding author Charles Russell, Ph.D., St. Jude Department of Infectious Diseases. “We found a mutation in hemagglutinin that makes the grow better in eggs also causes a mismatch in the vaccine. The mutation makes the virus unstable and makes it look less human-like.”

The H3N2 virus is a subtype of Influenza A and is one of the culprits behind the seasonal flu. Many flu vaccines are made by growing the virus in chicken eggs, but the virus can gain mutations during that process. Some of those changes, like the one uncovered by the St. Jude group, make the vaccine less effective in generating the ideal immune response. At the same time, other mutations have more beneficial impacts.

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Ambassador Dr. John-Arne Røttingen, MD, Ph.D. (https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/people/john-arne-rottingen) is Ambassador for Global Health, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway, and a Visiting Fellow of Practice, at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University.

Ambassador Dr. Røttingen has previously served as the Chief Executive of the Research Council of Norway; the founding Chief Executive Officer of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI); Executive Director of Infection Control and Environmental Health at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health; founding Chief Executive of the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services; Professor of Health Policy at the Department of Health Management and Health Economics, Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo; and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

From 2020, Ambassador Dr. Røttingen also chaired the Executive Group and the International Steering Committee of the WHO Solidarity trial to compare four untested treatments for hospitalized people with severe COVID-19 illness. In early 2021, he was appointed by the G20 to the High Level Independent Panel (HLIP) on financing the global commons for pandemic preparedness and response. That same year, he was also appointed to the Pandemic Preparedness Partnership (PPP), an expert group chaired to advise the G7 presidency. From mid-2021, he was part of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator’s Vaccine Manufacturing Working Group.

Ambassador Dr. Røttingen received his MD and Ph.D. from the University of Oslo, an MSc from Oxford University and an MPA from Harvard University.

Continue reading “Dr. John-Arne Røttingen, MD, PhD — Ambassador for Global Health, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway” | >

In the intensive care unit (ICU), critically ill patients are cared for by a multidisciplinary care team. Compassionate and caring behaviors on the part of the care team result in better outcomes for patients and their families, and care providers entering the demanding field of medicine because they wish to help people and relieve suffering. However, studies have demonstrated deficiencies in delivering compassionate health care. Evidence suggests that physicians may miss up to 90% of opportunities to respond to patients with compassion.

To determine what factors drive and enhance compassionate care behaviors in the ICU setting and which factors drain and negate caring attitudes and behaviors, Shahla Siddiqui, MD, MSc, FCCM, and a colleague conducted an observational, qualitative study of an international panel of intensive and critical . The researcher-clinicians report in PLOS ONE that while ICU physicians and nurses feel a deep moral imperative to deliver the highest level of compassionate care, pressures of capacity strain, lack of staff, lack of compassionate skills training and a heavy emphasis on electronic health record maintenance present significant hurdles to achieving that goal.

“Studies done on physician compassion from a patient perspective emphasize listening and awareness of the patient’s , which not only builds trust within the patient-physician relationship but also enhances resilience amongst the care team and prevents burnout,” said Siddiqui, an anesthesiologist at BIDMC. “Our aim was to describe compassionate behaviors in the ICU, study the factors that enhance and those that drain such behaviors with an aim to enable recommendations for practice and training.”

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“Introducing the first soft material that can maintain a high enough electrical conductivity to support power hungry devices.” and self-healing.

The newest development in softbotics will have a transformative impact on robotics, electronics, and medicine. Carmel Majidi has engineered a soft material with metal-like conductivity and self-healing properties that, for the first time, can support power-hungry devices.

“Softbotics is about seamlessly integrating robotics into everyday life, putting humans at the center,” explained Majidi, a professor of mechanical engineering.

Continue reading “Engineering breakthrough in softbotics” | >

Your circadian rhythm doesn’t just govern your sleeping schedule; it can also impact cancer development, diagnosis, and treatment. In a review paper published in the journal Trends in Cell Biology, researchers discuss the role of circadian rhythms in tumor progression and spread and describe how we could better time when patients are tested for cancer and when they receive therapies to improve diagnostic accuracy and improve treatment success.

“The circadian rhythm governs most of the cellular functions implicated in cancer progression, and therefore its exploitation opens new promising directions in the fight against metastasis,” write the authors, molecular oncologists Zoi Diamantopoulou, Ana Gvozdenovic, and Nicola Aceto from the ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

Our circadian rhythms help our bodies synchronize different tasks throughout the day, including gene expression, immune function, and cell repair. We’ve long known that chronically disrupted circadian rhythms—as a result of erratic sleep patterns, jet lag, or , for example—can predispose us to a number of health issues, including cancer. More recent work has shown that circadian rhythms are not only involved in tumor onset, but also govern and metastasis, the colonization of secondary sites within the body.

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Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG), and the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a novel method for evaluating the interpretability of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, opening the door to greater transparency and trust in AI-driven diagnostic and predictive tools. The innovative approach sheds light on the opaque workings of so-called “black box” AI algorithms, helping users understand what influences the results produced by AI and whether the results can be trusted.

This is especially important in situations that have significant impacts on the health and lives of people, such as using AI in . The research carries particular relevance in the context of the forthcoming European Union Artificial Intelligence Act which aims to regulate the development and use of AI within the EU. The findings have recently been published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.

Time series data—representing the evolution of information over time—is everywhere: for example in medicine, when recording heart activity with an electrocardiogram (ECG); in the study of earthquakes; tracking weather patterns; or in economics to monitor financial markets. This data can be modeled by AI technologies to build diagnostic or predictive tools.

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