Antidepressants may be our best bet in treating Ebola The 2013 to 2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa made global headlines and inflamed discussion as the largest single outbreak of this deadly virus. The lack of a vaccine approved for use in humans and the rapid rate of mutation in the Ebolavirus genus create a…
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Can H. pylori colonization offer some protection against disease? Helicobacter pylori is an organism typically known as the culprit of painful stomach ulcers and severe abdominal pain, although there is now growing evidence which suggesting that there may be advantages to colonization by this acid-loving organism. In several studies conducted during the 1990s and 2000s, correlations emerged between H….
Some patients have become infected with TB from contaminated graft material. How are they screened for infectious disease? In June of this year, it was discovered over 100 patients may have been exposed to tuberculosis originating from cadaver-derived material used in their bone graft procedures. Second only to blood, human bone is the next most…
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Medieval doctors didn’t always prescribe what was best for an ailing patient (leeches were a popular therapy). However, a medical manuscript from the 10th Century called Bald’s Leechbook recently found in the British Library details a concoction of wine, oxbile, and two species of Allium (garlic, onion, or leek) used to treat styes, now known…
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Although of great concern, vaccination will help When will the pandemic end? How many more COVID-19 waves will the U.S. go through? Will we go back to “normal” in the fall? All these questions depend largely on one factor: the epidemiology of the variants. As the virus spreads around the world, variant strains have emerged….
How far do we have to go to reach herd immunity? First of all we must know that herd immunity is defined as a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that can occur with some diseases when a sufficient percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, either through vaccination or previous infections, thereby reducing the likelihood of infection…
Public health is facing a looming crisis. However, unlike many more obvious public health emergencies, the majority of us may not recognize or realize the culprit: antimicrobial resistance. As hundreds of thousands of patients come face-to-face with health issues related to antibiotic-resistant infections, the scientific community must address the significance of antimicrobial stewardship and its…
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Nanotechnology refers to the manipulation of molecules for large-scale manufacturing purposes. It is a broad field of science, which combines chemistry, physics, energy storage, microfabrication, and molecular engineering. Recently, it has been popularized by its role in nanomedicine for the COVID-19 vaccine. (1) Currently, with the introduction of mRNA vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, the importance of…
Could this explain why some are more susceptible to COVID-19? The SARS-CoV-2 virus gains entry to the epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract by way of the ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2) receptor. This is the protein to which the viral spike proteins attach in order to gain entry into the cell. If we knew more…
Information on messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines is frequently in the news due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, since mRNA technology is used in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. Long before the start of the pandemic, however, researchers have been trying to use this technology to treat cancer. Colorectal cancer is the third leading…
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