Summary Severe asthma in children is rare, accounting for only a small proportion of childhood asthma. After addressing modifiable factors such as adherence to treatment, comorbidities, and adverse exposures, children whose disease is not well controlled on high doses of medication form a heterogeneous group of severe asthma phenotypes. Over the past decade, considerable advances [...]
Cytotoxic drugs or cytostatics are drugs used to destroy cancer cells. Cytotoxic drugs inhibit cell division and in this way cause cancer cells to die. But current treatments inevitably have negative consequences on healthy cells. Now scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of Oxford say they have found a new way to kill [...]
The Covid-19 pandemic has tightened our social circles and narrowed the scope of our lives in ways no one imagined just a year ago. But the lockdown also brought an unexpected solace: Everyone, it seems, turned to baking sourdough bread. Social media has been overflowing with photos of frothy sourdough starters — many of them [...]
Fruit is packed with vitamins, minerals, fiber, and plant compounds called phytonutrients. As such, it’s one of the healthiest foods you can eat. Some fruits are even considered “superfoods” due to their numerous benefits. Even though there’s no exact definition of what constitutes a superfood, they’re often rich in health-boosting compounds with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties [...]
As many as 1 in 100 hospitalized COVID-19 patients may experience a pneumothorax, or punctured lung, according to a multicenter observational case series published yesterday in the European Respiratory Journal. Pneumothorax usually occurs in very tall young men or older patients with serious underlying lung disease. But University of Cambridge researchers identified COVID-19 patients with neither of those traits [...]
As the pandemic total approached 29 million cases, World Health Organization (WHO) officials today warned that a global effort to speed the development of new drugs, vaccines, and tests to battle COVID-19 only has a fraction of the financial support it needs. With cases surging in India, where a record 95,735 cases were reported today, the global total [...]
Despite public wariness of a potential COVID-19 vaccine and AstraZeneca’s pause of a phase 3 trial of its vaccine candidate yesterday, the US government continues to roll out preparations for a vaccine. Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act to expand access to safe and [...]
The World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday released its first report on the global epidemiology and burden of sepsis, estimating that the life-threatening reaction to infection causes 1 in 5 deaths worldwide. Data from 2017 show that sepsis affected 49 million people and was linked to approximately 11 million deaths worldwide—roughly 20% of annual global deaths. The report [...]
What is already known about this topic? Delayed or avoided medical care might increase morbidity and mortality associated with both chronic and acute health conditions. What is added by this report? By June 30, 2020, because of concerns about COVID-19, an estimated 41% of U.S. adults had delayed or avoided medical care including urgent or emergency care (12%) [...]
The role of sex in the human transcriptome In humans, the inheritance of the XX or XY set of sex chromosomes is responsible for most individuals developing into adults expressing male or female sex-specific traits. However, the degree to which sex-biased gene expression occurs in tissues, especially those that do not contribute to characteristic sexually dimorphic [...]
