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Category: health – Page 202

China’s zero-COVID-19 policy is showing strain as health authorities struggle to contain the growing spread of the Delta variant.
At least 1,000 locally-transmitted infections have been reported since mid-October in 20 provinces, prompting strict quarantine periods and area-specific lockdowns.
The onset of winter in China’s north is also helping disperse the disease.
Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu reports from Beijing, China.

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#China #COVID #Delta

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A decade ago, a London cancer prevention researcher predicted that the United Kingdom’s national HPV vaccination campaign would take more than 15 years to prevent a majority of cervical cancers. So when he analyzed the data this year, he was stunned to find that the vaccine may already have nearly eliminated cervical cancer in the U.K. among young women.

“If this is right,” Peter Sasieni of King’s College London said of his findings, cervical cancers “could be reduced to about 50 – just 50 cancers in the whole of the U.K. for women under 30. It’s really quite exciting to see that day come – excitement and just joy.”

That joy was tempered with envy in the United States, where some of Sasieni’s peers lamented that the HPV vaccination rate for teenage girls lags far behind — about 59% in the U.S. vs. more than 85% in the U.K. The analysis, published last week in the Lancet, suggests the U.K. has notched a major public health victory against cancer through vaccinating the vast majority of young women against HPV, said Allison Kempe, a pediatrics professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who did not work on the study.

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Health Canada is updating the labels for the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines to add immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), an autoimmune condition, as a potential side effect.

In a statement on Tuesday, the agency said very rare cases of ITP have been reported internationally after receiving the Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) and Janssen (J&J) COVID-19 vaccines.

ITP is a disorder that can cause easy or excessive bruising and bleeding, which results from unusually low blood platelet levels.

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After a series of delays for bad weather, the ill-health of an astronaut and then a wait for the splashdown of the previous mission this morning the world’s only re-usable orbital rocket take four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) as SpaceX and NASA launch the Crew-3 mission.

Originally due to launch on October 27 2021 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA has now confirmed that its SpaceX Crew-3 mission will take-off no earlier than 9:03 p.m. EST on Wednesday, November 10 2021.

After the night launch the Falcon 9 rocket will attempt to land on a drone-ship in the Atlantic.

It will be SpaceX’s fourth NASA flight with astronauts, though last month it also successfully launched and landed the first all-civilian private astronaut crewed mission to orbit Earth.

Continue reading “NASA And SpaceX’s Delayed ‘Halloween’ Mission Is Finally Going Skywards. Here’s When And Where To Watch Four Astronauts Blast-Off” | >

Wastewater samples are being used to track the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

It’s sometimes called ‘wastewater-based epidemiology’ (WBE) – a scientific and public health field that involves detecting and monitoring specific molecules in untreated wastewater, to determine how prevalent they are. First proposed more than 70 years ago as a way to track the spread of the deadly poliovirus, WBE has since been used to measure human population exposure to pollutants, and even to estimate the level of drug consumption in major cities. In 2,020 it hit global news headlines when it was first proposed as a way to track SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

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A team of scientists from the University of Florida (UF) will use a $1.1 million grant to further their work on the use of artificial intelligence-or AI-powered medical research for predicting and diagnosing Parkinson’s disease while maintaining patient privacy.

This grant, from the National Institutes for Health (NIH), will allow the scientists to train artificial neural network models — computer systems modeled on the human brain and nervous system — and further develop AI technologies that can predict and diagnose Parkinson’s, according to a press release.

“The proposed research will remove a major roadblock that restricts medical data accessibility and hinders cloud-based operations of deep-learning artificial neural networks for biomedical research,” the investigators said.

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EVP, patient advocacy & engagement, national patient advocate foundation.

Gwen Darien is Executive Vice President for Patient Advocacy and Engagement, at the National Patient Advocate Foundation (https://www.npaf.org/), an organization with a mission of bringing patient voices to health system delivery reform, developing and driving initiatives promoting equitable access to affordable quality health care, and prioritizing the patient voice in health system delivery reform to achieve person-centered care. She is also Executive Vice President at their sister organization, Patient Advocate Foundation (https://www.patientadvocate.org/), a national non-profit organization which provides case management services and financial aid to Americans with chronic, life threatening and debilitating illnesses.

Gwen is a longtime patient advocate who has played leadership roles in some of the country’s preeminent nonprofit organizations.

Continue reading “Gwen Darien — EVP, Patient Advocacy and Engagement, National Patient Advocate Foundation” | >

Displacing Delta. Expect this to dominate globally in the coming year, if truly 10% more transmissible.

An offshoot of the Delta coronavirus variant which is slowly spreading throughout the UK is expected to be dominant within a matter of months, experts believe.

Known as AY.4.2, the sub-variant is thought to be at least 10 cent more transmissible than its predecessor, with analysis underway to determine what accounts for its increased infectiousness.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has said that early tests do not suggest that AY.4.2, which has been labelled a ‘Variant Under Investigation’, has acquired the ability to evade immunity generated by infection or injection.

Continue reading “Delta sub-variant expected to be dominant in UK” | >

“De-Extinction” Biotechnology & Conservation Biology — Ben Novak, Lead Scientist Revive & Restore

Ben Novak is Lead Scientist, at Revive & Restore (https://reviverestore.org/), a California-based non-profit that works to bring biotechnology to conservation biology with the mission to enhance biodiversity through the genetic rescue of endangered and extinct animals (https://reviverestore.org/what-we-do/ted-talk/).

Ben collaboratively pioneers new tools for genetic rescue and de-extinction, helps shape the genetic rescue efforts of Revive & Restore, and leads its flagship project, The Great Passenger Pigeon Comeback, working with collaborators and partners to restore the ecology of the Passenger Pigeon to the eastern North American forests. Ben uses his training in ecology and ancient-DNA lab work to contribute, hands-on, to the sequencing of the extinct Passenger Pigeon genome and to study important aspects of its natural history (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK2UlLsHkus&t=1s).

Continue reading “Ben Novak, Lead Scientist, Revive & Restore — De-Extinction Biotechnology & Conservation Biology” | >