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Access to targeted therapies for lung cancer depends on accurate identification of patients' biomarkers through molecular testing, but survey results published today in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology suggest that many international clinicians are unaware of evidence-based guidelines that support the use of molecular testing.
PrECOG, LLC is reporting clinical efficacy and biomarker analyses from its single-arm phase two study PrE0505 for the initial treatment of patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma. The trial evaluated adding durvalumab, an immune checkpoint antibody targeting PD-L1, to chemotherapy consisting of pemetrexed and cisplatin (Pem-Cis), the only FDA approved regimen, in 55 patients of any histologic subtype.
DALLAS, May 20, 2020 -- Women receiving treatment in primary care received some cardiovascular medication prescriptions at a lower rate than men, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access journal of the American Heart Association.
(Boston)--Higher blood pressure during exercise and delayed blood pressure recovery after exercise are associated with a higher risk of hypertension, preclinical and clinical cardiovascular disease and death among middle-aged to older adults.
ARLINGTON, Va., May 20, 2020 - Despite facing challenges such as limited access to personal protective equipment (PPE) following the COVID-19 outbreak, radiation oncology clinics quickly implemented safety and process enhancements that allowed them to continue caring for cancer patients, according to a new national survey from the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).
Cambridge, Mass., May 18, 2020 - In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have published a pair of studies in a COVID-19 special issue of the Harvard Data Science Review, freely available via open access, describing new methods for accelerating drug approvals during pandemics and for providing more accurate measures of the probabilities of success for clinical trials of vaccines and other anti-infective therapies.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- As more Covid-19 patients experience acute respiratory distress, there has been much debate over the idea of sharing ventilators, which involves splitting air tubes into multiple branches so that two or more patients can be connected to the same machine.
Several physicians' associations have issued a joint statement discouraging this practice. It poses risk to patients, they say, because of the difficulty in ensuring that each patient is receiving the right amount of air.
NEW YORK (May 19, 2020) - While most children infected with the novel coronavirus have mild symptoms, a subset requires hospitalization and a small number require intensive care. A new report from pediatric anesthesiologists, infectious disease specialists and pediatricians at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore (CHAM) and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, describes the clinical characteristics and outcomes of children hospitalized with COVID-19, during the early days of the pandemic.
A study by academics at the University of Bristol has found reductions in overall and individual antibiotic dispensing between 2013 and 2016 after evaluating, for the first time, national primary care prescribing policy on community antibiotic resistant infection.
The researchers investigated the relationship between primary care antibiotic dispensing and resistance in community-acquired urinary Escherichia coli infections from Bristol and the surrounding areas between 2013 and 2016.
Disability rights advocates are concerned that crisis triage protocols aimed at allocating scarce health care resources to save the most lives could be biased against people with disabilities. These concerns have prompted an investigation by the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services and appeals to Congress to prohibit crisis triage based on "anticipated or demonstrated resource-intensity needs, the relative survival probabilities of patients deemed likely to benefit from medical treatment, and assessments of pre- or post-treatment quality of life."
PORTLAND, OR - Researchers from SWOG, a cancer clinical trials group funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, will make 31 presentations as part of the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, the online annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which runs May 29-31.
OAK BROOK, Ill. - Women with mammographically detected breast lesions that are probably benign should have follow-up surveillance imaging at six months due to the small but not insignificant risk that the lesions are malignant, according to a new study published in the journal Radiology.
While it's too soon to use COVID-19 antibody testing to issue "immunity passports", antibody tests that are available today are good enough to inform decisions about public health and relaxing social distancing interventions, says an international group of infectious disease and public health experts in Science Immunology today.
Singapore, 19 May 2020 -- Very young children exposed to antibiotics at an early age (from birth to 12 months) are associated with higher risks of childhood obesity and increased adiposity in early to mid-childhood. The findings by a team of researchers from Singapore's NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (NUS Medicine), Agency for Science, Technology and Research's (A*STAR) Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (SICS), and KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH) were published in the scientific journal International Journal of Obesity in April 2020.
Eager to ramp up your fitness while stuck at home? A new generation of virtual reality (VR) exergames nudges home-based cyclists to perform a lot better by immersing them in a crowd of cyclists. And as all cyclists participating in the race are versions of the flesh-and-blood player, the Covid-19 norms of social distancing are maintained even in the parallel universe of VR.