Growing ‘mortality gap’ detected between Democratic and Republican counties
A new study highlights how closely connected politics and health outcomes have grown over time. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital examined mortality rates and federal and state election data for all counties in the U.S. from 2001 to 2019. The team found what they call a “mortality gap” — a widening difference between age-adjusted […]
Draft Genome Sequence of Latest Monkeypox Virus Unveiled
The latest monkeypox virus now popping up in multiple countries appears most closely related to a strain that circulated in 2018-2019, according to a draft genome sequence of a recent case. Sequencing of a skin lesion sample from an infected male patient in Portugal — where at least 20 confirmed cases have been reported — […]
Third Person ‘Cured’ of HIV via Transplant
A U.S. woman appears to be free of her HIV infection after receiving closely matched blood from a relative and HIV-resistant umbilical cord blood, researchers reported. Following the general game plan of two European men who required bone marrow transplantation for cancer and received their transplant from donors with rare HIV-resistant blood, the middle-age woman […]
Regular Blood Work After Gene Therapy Warranted by Rare Condition
Recipients of certain adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector-based gene therapies should be monitored closely for signs of thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA), FDA advisors agreed. “Frequent laboratory assessments are necessary,” said Barry Byrne, MD, PhD, of the University of Florida in Gainesville, based on his observations that patients on onasemnogene abeparvovec (Zolgensma) tend to first show IgM presence […]
Dogs may not return their owners’ good deeds: In experiments, dogs did not reciprocate food-giving nor act more favorably towards helpful humans
Domestic dogs show many adaptations to living closely with humans, but they do not seem to reciprocate food-giving according to a study, publishing July 14 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, led by Jim McGetrick and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria. The researchers trained 37 domestic dogs to operate a […]