The United Kingdom today became the first country in the world to approve a COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, which paves the way for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to be available in the country starting next week. In other developments, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that cases remain at a very high level, with deaths rising [...]
Detection of replication-competent severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the most reliable indicator of contagiousness.1 Although the duration of live-virus shedding is well-characterized in immunocompetent patients with coronavirus disease 19 (Covid-19), little is known about how long immunocompromised patients are contagious. Consequently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines on transmission-based precautions [...]
Abstract This is a brief report of an unusual observation of COVID-19 infection in Hawaii. The State of Hawaii is one of the most remote of the Pacific islands with approximately 1.4 million persons. The racial and ethnic diversity is enormous. For example, the white Caucasians make up ∼25%, Asians including Japanese, Chinese and other [...]
All Hong Kong residents will be offered free doses when a Covid-19 vaccine is available next year, the health minister has promised, while a top pandemic adviser to the government cautioned that it could take until the end of 2021 to get everyone inoculated. The city confirmed 103 new infections on Wednesday in a reflection [...]
Introduction The diagnosis of asthma in children under five years is difficult due to changing concepts of what true asthma is in this age group.1 Wheezing can occur in this age without asthma and confirmatory lung function tests are difficult to perform.2 Many preschool wheezers become asymptomatic by school age irrespective of treatment.3 Asthma management in very young patients [...]
Bluestar Genomics and University of Chicago have published a genome-wide 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) map across multiple human tissue types. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications, demonstrated the robust performance of 5hmC as a global biomarker for the detection of multiple serious illnesses, such as cancer and various chronic diseases. Unlike 5mC which is a [...]
BACKGROUND World Health Organization expert groups recommended mortality trials of four repurposed antiviral drugs — remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir, and interferon beta-1a — in patients hospitalized with coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). METHODS We randomly assigned inpatients with Covid-19 equally between one of the trial drug regimens that was locally available and open control (up to five options, four active [...]
Background Cognitive impairment (CI) is highly prevalent in elderly asthmatics and is associated with worse asthma self-management (SM) and outcomes. CI may also explain why older adults may under-perceive asthma symptoms. We hypothesized that CI would be associated with low medication adherence and asthma symptom under-perception (ASP). We also hypothesized that ASP would mediate the relationship [...]
Objective: Asthma is a frequent comorbidity of bronchiectasis, with possible implications for exacerbation and severity. We investigated the clinical impact of asthma on bronchiectasis in terms of disease severity and exacerbation risk. Methods: We collected demographic, clinical, and functional characteristics of patients with a confirmed diagnosis of bronchiectasis. All patients were investigated for concomitant diagnosis of [...]
Facing a post-Thanksgiving surge of COVID-19 cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released new options for shorter quarantine periods and urged Americans not to travel for the upcoming holidays, though it also unveiled new tools for doing so safely—both with and without testing. rudi_suardi Read more CIDRAP… The post CDC [...]
