Connectgalaxy

Medical news: Scientists from the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology and Boston Children’s Hospital have discovered that probiotic consumption may lead to blood infections. Administering probiotics is a common protocol during medical treatments, and its use in hospitals is constantly expanding as a means for preventing diarrhea and intestinal diseases, and sometimes against pneumonia, pancreatitis, and sepsis.

The University of Illinois at Chicago celebrates the opening of three health care simulation centers. The facilities, which are run individually by the university’s College of Medicine, College of Nursing and College of Pharmacy.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a way to fluorescently tag cells infected with chikungunya virus. The technique opens up new avenues to study how the virus persists in the body and potentially could lead to a treatment.

Newswise medicine news section displays top medical news, health news and new medical embargo press releases with experts, features, and sources for journalists.

Diane and Phil Hannah of New Milford, Connecticut faced a series of health problems — including Phil’s skin cancer diagnosis — that made it difficult for them to keep up with everyday tasks, like shopping for groceries and preparing meals. 
The Eating Well program aims to improve the overall well-being of patients and caregivers, and is fully supported by generous donors.

Approximately 50% of patients who undergo immunotherapy and receive targeted cancer medications experience a skin-related reaction to the medication. This can result in changes to their nails or to the skin on their hands and feet, making daily activities, such as wearing shoes or opening a jar, very painful.

Making sure you have the right diagnosis is critical for successful treatment,” says board-certified dermatologist Paradi Mirmirani, MD, FAAD. “However, to an untrained provider, this can be tricky, as hair loss can have many causes.

A protein called UV-DDB—which stands for ultraviolet-damaged DNA-binding—is useful beyond safeguarding against the sun. This new evidence points to UV-DDB being a scout for general DNA damage and an overseer of the molecular repair crew that fixes it. 

Using an ultra-sensitive and high-throughput isolation technology, UCLA researchers were able to characterize and identify the neoantigens driving the antitumor responses in a patient treated with anti-PD-1 blockade and isolate the T cell receptors responsible for such effect. Check out more medical news at Newswise.

Death rates from sepsis fell faster in New York than expected – and faster than in peer states – following the introduction of the nation’s first state-mandated sepsis regulation.

The tobacco industry’s court-ordered anti-smoking advertisements reached just 40.6% of U.S. adults and 50.5% of current smokers in 2018, according to new research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Exposure to the advertisements was even lower among certain ethnic and socioeconomic subgroups historically targeted by tobacco industry marketing.

Efforts by the FDA and some cities to limit the availability and appeal of e-cigarettes to young users could drive some existing users to smoke more tobacco cigarettes to get their fix, according to new research from Duke Health.

Adults who were born pre-term (under 37 weeks gestation) are less likely to have a romantic relationship, a sexual partner and experience parenthood than those born full term. The meta-analysis by researchers at the University of Warwick with data from up to 4.4 million adult participants showed that those born preterm are 28% less likely to ever be in a romantic relationship.

Adults with HIV are more likely to continue life-saving treatments if their primary health care providers show respect, unconditional empathy without judgement and demonstrate an ability to partner with patients in decision making to address their goals, a Rutgers study finds. 

Alcohol consumption in later life has increased over the past decade. Although moderate alcohol intake in older adults has been previously linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and death, recent studies have suggested little ─ if any ─ health benefit to alcohol. Assessing the relationship between alcohol intake and mortality is extremely challenging, partly because of the need to disentangle the effect of alcohol from that of other factors that influence health, and also because people’s drinking habits often change over time. However, research methodology and data quality continue to improve. A new report in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research presents a 16-year follow-up of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) ─ one of the largest and most rigorous US studies of the relationship between alcohol consumption and mortality to date.