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The story of David Ho, MD, who contracted the COVID-19 virus after attending a conference on the virus(!), but who lived COVID-free for two years beforehand. The Paxlovid he took eliminated the symptoms and he was free from the virus after testing. However, a few days later, he felt sick again and tested himself. Lo and behold, COVID returned. Is it the drug or is it the virus causing this phenomenon?

People who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 have a shorter duration of viable viral shedding and a lower secondary attack rate than partially vaccinated or unvaccinated people. Data from this study provides important evidence that despite the possibility of breakthrough infections, COVID-19 vaccinations remain critically useful for controlling the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

Monkeypox has never before appeared more or less simultaneously across different countries and now continents. So this current outbreak is both puzzling and concerning public health workers. Unlike the previous cases discovered outside Africa, the current outbreaks have occurred in people with no travel history, suggesting that human-to-human transmission is driving the spread. And in the current outbreak, the illness appears to be presenting atypically, without its normal prodrome. Read more about the hypothesized connection with smallpox eradication, available vaccinations, and public health response from the outbreak.

The CDC continue to recommend Paxlovid for early-stage treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19 among individuals at high risk of progression to severe disease. Recent case reports suggest that some patients treated with Paxlovid may have a recurrence of COVID-19 symptoms two to eight days after completing the five-day course of treatment. Both the illness and the positive test results resolved, on average, three days later without the need for additional treatment.

The US is in the midst of another surge in COVID-19 infections heading into the summer. A GWU physician feels CDC are misserving the country by downplaying the surge and hiding the real data behind an “all green” map.

Scientists have made a breakthrough when it comes to triggering lucid dreams. Building on their previous work, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Lucidity Institute in Hawaii wanted to investigate how acetylcholinesterase inhibitors might promote lucid dreaming. A common drug used to treat memory decline in Alzheimer’s disease – galantamine – is a fast-acting AChEI with only mild side effects, so researchers recruited 121 participants to see what effect the drug had on their ability to have and recall lucid dreams. The findings were surprising.