The first study to evaluate the clinical characteristics and outcomes of fully vaccinated patients with cancer who had breakthrough COVID-19 infections indicates they remained at high risk for hospitalization and death. The study, published Dec. 24 in Annals of Oncology, showed that fully vaccinated patients who experienced breakthrough infections had a hospitalization rate of 65%, an ICU or mechanical ventilation rate of 19%, and a 13% death rate. The study was conducted by the COVID-19 and...
Preliminary data suggests that people with the omicron variant of the coronavirus are 50% to 70% less likely to be hospitalized than those with the delta strain, Britain's public health agency announced today. The findings from the U.K. Health Security Agency add to emerging evidence that omicron produces milder illness than other variants. But scientists caution that any reductions in severity must be weighed against the fact that omicron spreads much faster than delta...
U.S. health regulators today authorized the first pill against COVID-19, a Pfizer drug that Americans will be able to take at home to head off the worst effects of the virus, Medical Xpress reports. The milestone comes as U.S. cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are rising and health officials warn of a tsunami of new infections from the omicron variant. The drug Paxlovid is a faster way to treat early COVID-19 infections, though initial supplies will be...
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Australia and the U.K. has taught a small mass of human brain cells to play the video game Pong, reports Medical Xpress. Their paper is available on the bioRxiv preprint server. Pong is a first-generation video game. The single-player version consists of a paddle and a ball. The player moves the paddle into the path of the ball to keep it in play as it bounces off...
The relationship between alcohol and atrial fibrillation has long been referred to as the Holiday Heart Syndrome. An extensive study of the relationship between total alcohol consumption and cardiovascular disease determined that this phenomenon is not associated with ventricular arrhythmias (VAs), reports Medical Xpress. It appears in Heart Rhythm, the official journal of the Heart Rhythm Society, the Cardiac Electrophysiology Society, and the Pediatric & Congenital Electrophysiology Society. Researchers analysed data from the U.K. Biobank,...
A team of researchers from China, the U.K., and the U.S. has found that a species of darkling beetles engage in oral sex prior to copulating, reports Phys.org. In their paper published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, the group describes their study of the beetles and what they learned about their mating habits. As the researchers note, males giving females oral genital stimulation is rare in invertebrates. So they were surprised when they found male darkling...
Thyme and oregano possess an anti-cancer compound that suppresses tumour development, but adding more to your tomato sauce isn't enough to gain significant benefit. The key to unlocking the power of these plants is in amplifying the amount of the compound created or synthesizing the compound for drug development. Researchers at Purdue University achieved the first step toward using the compound in pharmaceuticals by mapping its biosynthetic pathway, a sort of molecular recipe of...
Alberta's world renown in carbon capture and sequestration is set to receive another lift thanks to the promise of a material invented and tested in the province that offers an efficient way to pull carbon dioxide out of industrial emissions. A team from the University of Alberta's Faculty of Engineering characterized a CO2-capturing microporous material developed by a group led by George Shimizu at the University of Calgary that attracts gas molecules and sees...
Facebook is notifying nearly 50,000 users in more than 100 countries that they may have been targets of hacking attempts by surveillance companies working for government agencies or private clients, the company said. The notification is the result of a months-long investigation by Meta, Facebook’s parent company, into what Meta officials called “cyber-mercenaries” who engage in “surveillance for hire”, the Washington Post reports. As a result, Facebook said it was taking enforcement actions against seven surveillance...
Why do 80-90% of people infected with COVID-19 experience only mild cases while 10-20% face more severe or life-threatening symptoms? Researchers in the lab of Yale's Richard Flavell decided to pose this question to mice they have engineered to possess human-like immune systems. These "humanized mice" revealed that the causes of severe COVID may lie in our own antiviral inflammatory response to the virus, the researchers report Dec. 17 in the journal Nature Biotechnology. The study also...
