Articles related to Internal Medicine

This new study found that patients who underwent radiotherapy to treat head and neck cancer experienced accelerated biological aging of as much as 4.9 years in the period immediately post therapy, with further accelerated aging following over time. The study was conducted at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. Chronological age is a strong risk factor for chronic health problems, including greater inflammation and fatigue.

Amy Watson became famous for coining the term “COVID long hauler” to describe people, such as herself, who suffer from the effects of the respiratory disease over an extended period. These long-haul symptoms can include fever, body aches, and fatigue. Watson herself says she rarely goes more than a few hours without suffering a fever, nearly two years after first contracting COVID-19. GoodRx Health chronicles Amy Watson’s story and what it’s like for people suffering from long COVID.

Since the onset of COVID-19, medical professionals have struggled to rapidly diagnose and determine whether someone has the respiratory illness. This issue is particularly acute in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) where doctors and nurses must triage patients based on the severity of their illnesses. Now, a “breathalyzer” test given to critically ill patients has been found to detect the virus quickly and efficiently, providing new hope for the rapid screening of people who are overwhelming hospital emergency rooms. Specifically, the breathalyzer test was found to detect COVID-19 with 88% sensitivity among a group of 46 patients admitted to an ICU.

At the outset of the pandemic, biotechnology company Novavax was one of the frontrunners to bring a vaccine against COVID-19 to market. But nearly two years later, Novavax’s vaccine has yet to appear. In a compelling article, the BMJ details the repeated delays and setbacks that have torpedoed Novavax’s once-promising vaccine candidate and rendered it unnecessary now that other vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca flood the global marketplace.

Adults with confirmed R/R aNHL within 12 months after first-line (1L) chemo-immunotherapy were eligible for the randomized Phase III study, which demonstrated that tisagenlecleucel (tisa-cel) as second-line (2L) treatment in R/R aNHL patients did not have a higher event-free survival (EFS) vs. the standard-of-care (SOC). Read this late-breaking abstract from the ASH Annual Meeting & Exhibition to discover the contributing factors leading to the results, as well as how insights from this study will inform use of cellular treatment in the 2L R/R aNHL setting and the design of future CAR-T trials.

To define the spectrum of alterations common at relapse, the researchers in this study performed integrated profiling of 136 relapsed pediatric AML cases with RNA sequencing (RNA-seq), whole-genome sequencing, and target-capture sequencing. In addition, well-characterized fusion oncoproteins were identified, as were somatic mutations in UBTF (upstream binding transcription factor). See the results from the late-breaking abstract being presented at the ASH Annual Meeting & Exhibition.