news 2022

A pan-Canadian team announces initial results of the national OPTIMA study comparing the efficacy of two models of care for treating opioid use disorder. Did you know that more than 26,500 Canadians died from opioid intoxication between January 2016 and September 2021? Or that more than 350,000 people who used drugs containing opioids to relieve their pain did so problematically? In Quebec alone, 339 people died from opioid intoxication between January and September 2021, according to the latest data from the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Relative to white patients, racial and ethnic groups saw a sharper decline in access to medicines to treat opioid use disorder during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic-intensifying pre-pandemic disparities, says a University of Michigan researcher. "We found that COVID-19 was associated with widened racial and ethnic disparities in buprenorphine, the most common medication to treat opioid use disorder,” said Thuy Nguyen , research assistant professor at the U-M's School of Public Health and first author of the study published in JAMA Network Open.

HBV vaccination, screening, and treatment strategies are often logistically challenging and expensive By A new University of Waterloo study shows that current Hepatitis B vaccination, screening, and treatment strategies in Ontario will leave the province well short of its goal to reduce preventable infections that afflict 1,000 Ontarians annually.

University of Queensland researchers have found enjoying a daily latte or long black causes no increased risk to pregnancy. Dr Gunn-Helen Moen , Dr Daniel Hwang and Caroline Brito Nunes from UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience used genetics to analyse coffee drinking behaviour, and their findings show limited coffee consumption during pregnancy didn't increase the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth or premature birth.

University of Queensland researchers are calling for an urgent review of low influenza vaccination rates for pregnant women and whooping cough vaccinations for young and Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander mothers-to-be. The figures were revealed by researchers from the multi-jurisdictional Links2HealthierBubs study , who analysed the largest observational cohort of mothers with babies born in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory from 2012-2017.

Seven out of 10 pregnant women were cured of their multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and delivered healthy babies after taking a medication that had previously been considered unsafe in pregnancy, a new Curtin and Telethon Kids Institute study has found. Published in JAMA Network Open , the study examined the experiences of 275 pregnant women with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis living in South Africa, Peru, Brazil, Iran and Uganda.

Scientists have discovered how an anti-cancer drug could be repurposed to improve memory. It does so by supporting the cell's ability to read the very genes that are important for learning. The epigenetic mechanism of the drug is shown in mice. If you are scared of spiders, you may soon benefit from a drug to enhance your ability to unlearn your arachnophobia, without any undesirable side-effects.

Digital interventions that help people take their asthma medication better, such as 'smart' inhalers or text messages, may cut the risk of asthma attacks by half, finds a new review of evidence led by UCL, Queen Mary University of London, and University of Auckland researchers. The new Cochrane Review paper found that digital interventions improve medication adherence by 15% and can yield a clinically-significant improvement in asthma control.

Researchers used bacteria-eating viruses to treat 20 complex, antibiotic-resistant lung infections, resulting in no adverse reactions and more than half of treated patients experiencing favorable clinical outcomes An international team of researchers, led by scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh, report promising results from the largest case series yet of patients treated with bacteriophage therapy for antibiotic-resistant infections.

Here. A clinical study examining new ways of treating children with sepsis - using vitamin C and steroids alongside antibiotics - could save children's lives around the world. The University of Queensland-led study has received $1.3 million over five years from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) to commence one of the largest clinical trials conducted in paediatric sepsis.

Certain antibodies isolated from people who had recovered from COVID-19 and were vaccinated have the ability to neutralize variety of coronaviruses Scientists at Johns Hopkins University and Scripps Research have characterized 30 antibodies that recognize a wide range of coronaviruses-successfully blocking not only all the SARS-CoV-2 variants that were tested but also other, related viruses, including SARS-CoV-1, which caused the deadly 2003 SARS outbreak in Asia.

Many ethnic minority patients in England with the most common form of atrial fibrillation (AF) are not being prescribed the blood thinners they need to lower their risk stroke, according to data scientists at The University of Manchester. The study compared recommended treatment (oral anticoagulation such as warfarin), less effective treatment (aspirin), and no treatment.

Finding suggests that all people with HIV might benefit from additional dose in primary vaccination People with HIV have a higher rate of breakthrough COVID-19 infections after vaccination compared to people without HIV, according to findings from a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Millions of patients with incurable breast cancer could benefit from new Welsh-led research. A clinical trial by Cardiff University, Velindre University NHS Trust and AstraZeneca, found a combination of drugs could help prolong the lives of patients with incurable disease. The findings were presented at the world's biggest cancer conference in Chicago last weekend and published simultaneously in the Lancet Oncology journal.

Every patient in a Yale clinical trial of a new treatment for the disfiguring disease sarcoidosis saw improvement to their skin - and more than half showed improvement in affected internal organs. Sarcoidosis is a disease affecting four out of every 10,000 people in the United States. In sarcoidosis, abnormal collections of immune cells called granulomas may occur in the lungs, skin, heart, lymph nodes, eyes, and other organs, causing damage.

Team led by bioinformatician Rolf Backofen develops algorithm to identify anti-CRISPR protein The nuclease Cas13b associated with the CRISPR gene scissors, which is an enzyme that degrades nucleic acids, has the potential to be used in the future in hereditary diseases to switch off unwanted genes. In the fight against infections, this nuclease is also being researched as an antiviral agent, as Cas13b can specifically intervene in the genetic material of viruses and render them harmless.

In view of the constant emergence of new viral variants and the limited duration of immune protection through recovery or vaccination, it is becoming increasingly likely that an annual COVID-19 booster vaccination might be needed. Working with colleagues from the Transatlantic Research Lab on Complex Societal Challenges, Jakob Weitzer and Eva Schernhammer from the Department of Epidemiology at the Medical University of Vienna and Gerald Steiner from the University of Continuing Education Krems investigated the willingness of the population to be vaccinated annually against COVID-19.

A University of Queensland-led study has found millions of COVID-19 patients may have undiagnosed acute kidney injury (AKI). AKI is a condition where the kidneys suddenly fail to filter waste from the blood, which can lead to serious illness or even death. Existing data indicates approximately 20 per cent of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 develop AKI, rising to roughly 40 per cent for those in intensive care.

Researchers from McGill University and the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) have made some surprising discoveries about our immune system. By using mathematical modelling to look at specific aspects of immune responses in mice and humans, their data-driven approach, described in a recent article in Science, reveals that immune responses may exist on a finer spectrum than had previously been believed.

Informing people about the strong positive consensus among doctors persistently leads to increases in Covid-19 vaccinations How to increase vaccination rates by autumn, without any compulsion is shown by an international research team including the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.