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Many hospitals use the adsorber to purify the blood of seriously ill patients in order to trap inflammatory substances and prevent the life-threatening cytokine storm. Researchers have now found in a meta-study that the treatment does not reduce mortality and may even cause harm. Blood purification procedures are used for a variety of diseases such as kidney failure or severe infections. In these procedures, which usually takes several hours, the blood is passed through a machine to remove pathogens or harmful metabolic products with the help of so-called adsorber systems. The healthy parts are then returned to the patients as...

Janus tyrosine kinase (JAK) signaling may be involved in the pathogenesis of polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR), and tofacitinib may be an effective treatment, according to a pilot study. Xinlei Ma and colleagues examined pathogenetic features of PMR and assessed the efficacy and safety of the JAK inhibitor tofacitinib in patients with PMR. The analysis included 11 treatment-naive PMR patients and 20 healthy controls. In a second cohort, 76 patients with PMR were randomly assigned to tofacitinib or glucocorticoid treatment in an open-label trial, with 67 completing the 24-week intervention. The researchers found that gene expression patterns of peripheral blood mononuclear cells...

Over the last week, protesters have lit thousands of cars on fire, attacked schools, town halls, police stations, banks and businesses, and set nearly a thousand buildings ablaze. Some in the Paris suburb of L'Hay-les-Roses rammed a burning car into the mayor's home. Estimates of the damage have been projected to be about $1.1 billion. As a result, thousands of young people have been arrested since the rioting began in the days after 17-year-old Nahel M. was killed on June 27. According to France's Interior Ministry, the average age of those arrested is 17. The crisis has exposed deep rancor...

Chris Cuomo says the Biden Administration’s continued non-answers to questions about an apparent exchange between Hunter Biden and his Chinese Communist Party-connected business partner are stirring up “blood in the water” in the press, while severely weakening the president’s re-election chances. “If he loses, we’re going to talk about this reason: It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up,” Cuomo said Friday night on his News Nation show “Cuomo.” “And as we saw today again, the president and his administration [are] on a collision course with the truthiness of this adage.” Cuomo quoted from a WhatsApp message that surfaced last week...

Anew cancer therapy developed at Jerusalem’s Hadassah-University Medical Center had a 90% response rate in a new clinical trial, with over half of patients going into total remission. The CAR-T therapy — which arms the body’s own immune cells to fight cancer — was able to send multiple myeloma, an extremely deadly cancer that impacts the immune system, into remission. The therapy is the result of years worth of experiments conducted by the hospital’s bone-marrow transplant and immunotherapy department, the Jerusalem Post reported. “We have evidence of a very positive overall response rate with minimal side effects, and they are...

HIV infection rates within the Asian-American population increased by 36 percent between 2010 and 2014, with similar findings in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. … To combat the stigma and advocate for just and equitable HIV care, Filipino artist Niccolo Cosme curated a photo series entitled TAGGULAN, or defense, and features Filipino/a/x activists, social justice icons, and drag artists. The models are positioned in red, and the originals were made with emulsified samples of HIV-positive blood samples on canvas stretched over wood. “We wanted to humanize the pieces through the actual blood,” said Cosme, utilizing...

Old blood clots in lung arteries can obstruct blood flow and lead to pressure build-up in the affected arteries. When this happens, symptoms such as shortness of breath, fatigue, chest pain, and fainting spells may develop, which severely impair quality of life. While this condition, known as chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH), is often effectively treated with open heart surgery, many CTEPH patients cannot undergo surgery, because of other medical problems or because blockages in their arteries are beyond the reach of surgery. Said Riyaz Bashir, MD, FACC: "CTEPH patients treated with balloon pulmonary angioplasty come away having fewer symptoms,...

Credit: Fussenegger Lab / ETH Zurich / Annelisa Leinbach Swiss researchers have developed a sugar-powered implant that automatically produces insulin when blood glucose levels are high — potentially giving people with diabetes an easier, less-painful way to manage their condition. Diabetes management: For people with type 1 diabetes (T1D), the body doesn’t produce enough (or any) insulin, a hormone that converts blood sugar into energy. To prevent their blood glucose levels from being dangerously high, they need regular injections of synthetic insulin. People who manage their diabetes manually must give themselves these painful injections multiple times a day. Those who...

There’s a reason why “may you live in interesting times” is a curse. The eras we call a “Terror” — Stalin’s Russia, Robespierre‘s France, Pol Pot’s Cambodia — are pretty interesting. Ethiopia in the mid-1970’s was one of the most interesting places in the world. After the Derg, a shadowy committee of leftist officers, toppled the monarchy in 1974, factional violence between Ethiopia’s two main Marxist parties soon came to the fore. Long story short, All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement (MEISON) backed the Derg — while its rival the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) denounced it as fascistic. And when Mengistu assumed...

Research investigated the use of metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) in diagnosing bloodstream infections (BSIs) for immunocompromised hematology patients. Hematology patients are highly susceptible to BSIs, which can have severe consequences such as septic shock, multiple-organ failure, disseminated intravascular coagulation, and even death. An accurate and quick microbiological diagnosis of BSI is therefore essential for the control of the infection. In the study, peripheral blood samples were collected from 256 immunocompromised hematology patients suspected of BSI, and both mNGS and conventional microbiological tests (CMTs) were performed. BSI diagnosis was confirmed in 189 out of 256 patients (73.8%). The detection rate of...

A team of scientists from Scripps Research and the University of North Carolina (UNC) has found antibodies in the blood of certain COVID-19 donors that can block infection from a broad set of coronaviruses—specifically, in people who have recovered from the virus and were then vaccinated. They found this includes not only the COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2, but also SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV. The scientists' detailed study of the antibodies and their virus binding sites, reported on February 15, 2023, in the journal Immunity, could lead to the development of a broad coronavirus vaccine and related antibody therapeutics. Both could be used against...

Jan. 27 (UPI) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Friday proposed loosening restrictions based on gender and sexual orientation for blood donors in the United States. Under the proposal, current time-based deferrals for men who have sex with men and women who have sex with them would be eliminated and replaced with a "gender-inclusive, individual risk-based" screening to cut the risk of transfusion-transmitted HIV, the FDA said. All prospective donors would answer a revised questionnaire about new or multiple sex partners in the past three months and a prospective donor who does not report new or multiple sex partners...

Gay and bisexual men will soon no longer have to abstain from sex in order to donate blood in the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Thursday. The move comes after widespread calls from members of Congress, the American Red Cross and LGBT organizations to drop the ban put in place during the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Men who had sex with another man (MSM) in the past three months, or women who had sex with one of those men, are not allowed to donate blood under current rules. This is because those men were struck hardest by America's...

Artificial Pancreas Successfully Trialed for Use by Type 2 Diabetes Patients Scientists at the University of Cambridge have successfully trialed an artificial pancreas for use by patients living with type 2 diabetes. The device – powered by an algorithm developed at the University of Cambridge – doubled the amount of time patients were in the target range for glucose compared to standard treatment and halved the time spent experiencing high glucose levels. Around 415 million people worldwide are estimated to be living with type 2 diabetes, which costs around $760 billion in annual global health expenditure. According to Diabetes UK,...

A mother in Draper, Utah broke her silence and revealed that her healthy son developed blood clots in his brain nine days after receiving the experimental mRNA Covid vaccine. Nearly a year later, another blood clot formed in his right leg and moved to his lungs. Cherie Romney revealed that her son, Everest, was taken to the ICU with blood clots in his brain back in April 2021, 9 days after receiving the COVID vaccine. Medical records state that the blood clots were an “adverse reaction to the vaccine.” Everest stands 6’9″ and was a basketball player prior to the...

Facebook requested talking points from the Biden administration to “get ahead” of the possibility that people might be less likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine after evidence emerged that the Johnson and Johnson (J&J) single-dose vaccine might cause life-threatening blood clots in some rare cases, according to emails obtained by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA). A Facebook staffer — whose name is redacted in compliance with a court order — discussed ways to potentially modify Facebook’s algorithms or provide “context” to posts from White House-approved sources with White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty, according to the emails....

For the past 40 years, the LGBTQ+ blood ban has prevented members of the community from donating blood in what can only be deemed a simultaneously discriminatory and damaging policy, particularly in the face of a serious national blood shortage. ... And so in protest of this hateful and harmful ban, artist Zain Curtis has released a new tee shirt featuring the real blood of gay men in order to create an actual "statement piece." As Curtis explained in an announcement post on Instagram, the limited edition shirt is screen printed using a special red ink created by Mother Goods...

Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has been linked to blood clotting in older individuals, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA researchers, crunching data from a database of elderly persons in the United States, found that pulmonary embolism—blood clotting in the lungs—met the initial threshold for a statistical signal and continued meeting the criteria after a more in-depth evaluation. Three other outcomes of interest—a lack of oxygen to the heart, a blood platelet disorder called immune thrombocytopenia, and another type of clotting called intravascular coagulation—initially raised red flags, researchers said. More in-depth evaluations, such as comparisons with populations who...

Tamari Key, who sat out Tennessee’s 69-39 win over Chattanooga on Tuesday, will miss the remainder of the season after blood clots were found in her lungs, the team announced. The Vols senior has been an integral part of the roster since her freshman year. Tuesday’s game was the first she had missed since beginning her career at Tennessee. “My sole concern right now is that Tamari continues to get the medical care and guidance she needs and begins the gradual process of healing and returning to full strength,” coach Kellie Harper told reporters Thursday. “This is much bigger than...

Patients taking efgartigimod, a drug being studied for use to treat chronic primary immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), exhibited a significantly greater improvement in platelet counts which are essential to clotting and stopping bleeding, compared to those taking a placebo, according to results reported from the ADVANCE IV clinical trial. People with ITP have a type of autoantibody (antibodies directed against a person's own proteins) called immunoglobulin G (IgG) that increases the clearance of platelets from the circulation and can also reduce platelet production. ITP can be very difficult to treat, especially in patients who have not responded well to previous ITP...