May 3rd, 2021 - Factors such as blood pressure, blood glucose levels, and cholesterol levels could predict the onset of dementia in individuals with type 2 diabetes up to 20 years beforehand, say UK researchers who hope the findings could help prevent or delay the condition. "While this study cannot confirm causal associations," said lead researcher Dr Eszter Vamos, Imperial College London, in a news release, ...

May 3rd, 2021 - CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela this month will begin clinical trials of the Cuban coronavirus vaccine candidate Abdala, and plans to produce enough doses locally to vaccinate 4 million people, Health Minister Carlos Alvarado said on Monday. Cuba in March approved late-stage trials of Abdala, named after a poem by the 19th-century Cuban independence hero Jose Marti. The trials of the protein subu...

May 3rd, 2021 - SANTIAGO (Reuters) - The director of Chile's health regulator said he sees no evidence of safety issues with Sputnik V, the COVID-19 vaccine developed in Russia, despite its rejection by the Brazilian health regulator this week over a lack of information about its safety. Heriberto Garcia, the director of Chile's Public Health Institute (ISP), said Chile was seeking clarity from the vaccine's d...

May 3rd, 2021 - Loneliness among middle-aged men ups their risk of cancer, and being single at the time of diagnosis confers a worse prognosis, suggest results from a longitudinal Finnish study with a mean follow-up of 20 years. The study also found that although loneliness was associated with an increased risk of cancer, social isolation was not. It's not clear why loneliness had a stronger association with c...

May 3rd, 2021 - Dr William Stewart A large study of adolescent soccer players in Michigan revealed key differences in concussion injury metrics among males and females, underscoring a need to develop sex-specific approaches to managing injury in the sport. Sport-related concussion (SRC) is a specific concern in young female athletes, study authors Abigail C. Bretzin, PhD, and colleagues noted in their paper, w...

May 3rd, 2021 - NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's daily COVID-19 shots have fallen sharply from an all-time high reached early last month as domestic companies struggle to boost supplies and imports are limited, even as the country fights the world's worst surge in infections. Daily inoculations have averaged 2.5 million since hitting a peak of 4.5 million on April 5. A quadrupling of coronavirus cases during the ...

May 3rd, 2021 - (Reuters) - Over 60 U.S. stadiums and other venues are deploying an app from Clear to verify people's COVID-19 status, placing the New York company known for its airport security fast lanes at the forefront of a national debate over "vaccine passports." Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants and New York Mets are among the first big businesses to demand guests prove they tested negative f...

May 3rd, 2021 - Lobaplatin-based induction plus chemoradiation was as effective as, and safer than, a cisplatin-based regimen in a phase 3 trial of more than 500 patients with advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma. The lobaplatin regimen proved to be a "promising alternative regimen to cisplatin-based treatment," Xing Lv, MD, of Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Centre in Guangzhou, China, and colleagues wrote in The ...

May 3rd, 2021 - NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A forum of scientific advisers set up by the government warned Indian officials in early March of a new and more contagious variant of the coronavirus taking hold in the country, five scientists who are part of the forum told Reuters. Despite the warning, four of the scientists said the federal government did not seek to impose major restrictions to stop the spread of the ...

May 3rd, 2021 - BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union's executive has recommended easing COVID-19 travel restrictions next month to let foreign travellers from more countries enter the EU, hoping to boost the stricken tourism industry this summer. Under current restrictions, people from only seven countries, including Australia and Singapore, can enter the EU on holiday, regardless of whether they have been ...

May 3rd, 2021 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. One of China's leading scientists in the fight against COVID-19 failed to disclose ties to a pharmaceutical company in a paper stemming from a clinical trial, Retraction Watch has learned. A co-author on the paper is married to the daughter of that pharmaceutical company's founder, who herself s...

May 3rd, 2021 - Around three-quarters of patients remained on treatment with baricitinib (Olumiant) for rheumatoid arthritis after their first 6-month assessment in an independent analysis of British Society for Rheumatology Biologics Register (BSRBR) data. The rate of continuation was even higher, at almost 85%, in patients who had not previously been treated with a biologic or targeted synthetic disease-modi...

May 3rd, 2021 - Second-line treatment with sintilimab improved survival, when compared with docetaxel, in patients with advanced/metastatic squamous non–small cell lung cancer (sqNSCLC) in a phase 3 trial. Sintilimab improved both overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS), according to Yuankai Shi, MD, of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College in Beijing. Shi pre...

May 3rd, 2021 - (Reuters Health) - Gastric cancer patients with diabetes who undergo conventional gastrectomy have an increased likelihood of diabetes remission with greater postoperative weight loss, independent of baseline weight, a recent study suggests. Researchers examined data on 5,150 patients with diabetes who had gastrectomy for cancer between 2004 and 2014. Overall, 25% of patients experienced diabet...

May 3rd, 2021 - (Reuters) - Some COVID-19 survivors infected early in the pandemic still have detectable antibodies against the virus a year later, according to a new study. U.S. doctors collected blood samples from 250 patients, including 58 who had been hospitalized for COVID-19 and 192 who had not required hospitalization. Six-to-10 months after diagnosis, all of the former inpatients and 95% of the outpati...

May 3rd, 2021 - After spending much of the past year tending to elderly patients, doctors are seeing a clear demographic shift: young and middle-aged adults make up a growing share of the patients in covid-19 hospital wards. It's both a sign of the country's success in protecting the elderly through vaccination and an urgent reminder that younger generations will pay a heavy price if the outbreak is allowed to...

May 3rd, 2021 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. The United States set another record for the number of air travelers since the pandemic set in, although passenger numbers remain far below 2019 levels. More than 1.6 million people were screened at US airport checkpoints on Sunday, according to the Transportation Security Administration. That w...

May 3rd, 2021 - A topical hemostatic patch placed under a standard air-bladder bracelet reduces the time to hemostasis after transradial cardiac catheterization without increasing complications, according to results from the STAT2 trial. The average time to successful hemostasis fell from 113 minutes with the air-bladder bracelet alone (TR Band, Terumo) to 66 minutes when coupled with the StatSeal (Biolife) he...

May 3rd, 2021 - For most vitamin and mineral supplements, there is not enough evidence to recommend for or against taking them to prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to new draft recommendations from the US Preventive Services Task Force. While the evidence is still unclear for most vitamin and mineral supplements, there is evidence that two products do not reduce the risk of these disea...

May 3rd, 2021 - These are the UK coronavirus stories you need to know about today. Meanwhile, Savanta ComRes polling of more than 2000 UK adults for health unions suggests 60% think the proposed 1% NHS pay rise in England is too low. Emergency Departments Latest Scottish Government data for March show emergency department attendances returning to pre-pandemic levels, with a 30% increase compared to February th...