NIH-funded trial of Moderna mRNA vaccine is first of any for COVID-19 On March 16, 2020, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) gave the first-ever injection of an investigational vaccine for the 2019 novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, to 4 volunteers participating in a phase I federally sponsored clinical trial. To date, no other trial has been launched...
The virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is stable for several hours to days in aerosols and on surfaces, according to a new study from National Institutes of Health, CDC, UCLA and Princeton University scientists The New England Journal of Medicine. The scientists found that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was detectable in...
Life expectancy in the USA is no longer rising. This stagnation has long been largely attributed to increasing numbers of drug deaths due to the opioid crisis. But Mikko Myrskylä and colleagues have now shown that deaths due to cardiovascular diseases are in fact having a much larger impact on life expectancy. Over each decade...
The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that emerged in the city of Wuhan, China, last year and has since caused a large scale COVID-19 epidemic and spread to more than 70 other countries is the product of natural evolution, according to findings published in the journal Nature Medicine. The analysis of public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2...
The large red-and-white bins at Walmart pharmacies across the country read, in bold all-caps type: “Approximately every 40 seconds an American will have a heart attack.” Inside the 3-foot-tall cartons, adorned with the American Heart Association and Bayer logos, were dozens of boxes of low-dose Bayer aspirin. The implication was that everyone could reduce their...
As the novel coronavirus continues to march across the country, for many workers getting sick is only part of what worries them. What about getting paid if they are ill or have to be quarantined? Congressional Democrats are pushing for legislation that would provide paid leave for those who are not being compensated while out...
Andrea Amelse knows hand-washing. For the past eight years, she’s been washing her hands pretty much every time she passes a sink. When she’s near a bottle of antibacterial gel, she uses it. She makes a point of avoiding people with contagious illnesses, even though it can be uncomfortable to ask to work from home...
As the Affordable Care Act turns 10 years old, a new study shows it has narrowed racial and ethnic gaps in access to health insurance and health care – but definitely not eliminated them. Just before the ACA’s insurance programs took effect, nearly 25% of African-American adults under 65 and 40% of Hispanic adults in...
When scientists try to predict the spread of something across populations–anything from a coronavirus to misinformation–they use complex mathematical models to do so. Typically, they’ll study the first few steps in which the subject spreads, and use that rate to project how far and wide the spread will go. But what happens if a pathogen...
The average age at which teens and young adults start using drugs has been rising, according to a study published today in JAMA Pediatrics. The study examined changes in the average age of first drug use for 18 different drugs–including alcohol and tobacco products–between 2004 and 2017 and found that average ages had increased for the majority of...
