Free Republic

Despite health authorities' continued push for people to stay up to date on boosters, public interest appears to be waning. A recent study reveals why... Most Americans eligible for a COVID-19 bivalent booster chose not to get it, and researchers say they now know why. Previous research found that over 80 percent of Americans eligible for the booster decided against it. A new survey administered between February 13 and March 29 of nearly 2,200 Arizona respondents, averaging 53 years old, revealed why those who chose to forgo the booster did so in the fall of 2022. Those who shied away...

he U.S. is experiencing a blood supply emergency. The emergency exists in Illinois and elsewhere across the country. Lifesaving blood products that cancer patients, sickle cell patients, hemophiliacs and others need for survival are at dangerously low levels, Dr. Dan Waxman, vice president and senior medical director of the Versiti Blood Center, said. “We are at such a shortage of daily donations that this is the first time we have gone on appeal in Illinois since the pandemic,” he said. ... The American Red Cross declared a national blood shortage on Sept. 11. Blood product distributions to hospitals are outpacing...

At a recent blood drive in downtown L.A., Los Angeles area resident Terry Brown was both excited — and nervous — to donate blood for the first time in decades. It was Brown’s first time to give blood since the U.S. Food and Drug Association and American Red Cross relaxed its decades-old policy on how individual donors are assessed, making the questions more inclusive regardless of sexual orientation, sex or gender. The new rules took effect in early August. “For myself, this is really an opportunity to reengage with the broader community of Los Angeles. I view giving blood as...

Other screening questions will remain the same -- for everyone. Potential donors will be asked about risk factors including sexual activity -- whether they have had sexual contact with a new partner in the past three months or had anal sex, which would require them to wait three months before donating. The Red Cross said the decision is supported by decades of data collection and assessments, including the ADVANCE study, which was funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA approved new rules for blood donation in May that eliminated waiting periods on the basis of sexual orientation...

The American Red Cross is changing its donor screening policy to allow gay and bisexual men to donate blood. The humanitarian organization announced the change on Monday, removing a historic barrier in the donation process by not considering sexual orientation as a risk factor. Other screening questions will remain the same. Potential donors will be asked about risk factors including sexual activity. Specifically they will be asked if they have had sexual contact with a new partner in the past three months and had anal sex. The Red Cross said the decision is supported by decades of data collection and...

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat, being highly resistant to chemotherapy. However, there are no effective alternative therapies to chemotherapy, so chemo remains the best available treatment. Researchers report that a hyperglycemic state—that is, one where the blood glucose level is raised—made pancreatic cancer more sensitive to chemotherapy in a mouse model. (Pancreatic cancer is more formally known as Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma and shortened as PDAC). Results were replicated in cell culture and a cohort of patients with metastatic PDAC. These findings present a potentially new method of making chemotherapy more effective against pancreatic cancer,...

On March 3, an illegal bio lab was discovered in a believed-to-be vacant building in Reedley, California in Fresno County. City code enforcement stumbled upon the building in December 2022 when they discovered a garden hose running up into the building through a hole in the wall. In March, they obtained a warrant to inspect the property, and in April, the Fresno County Department of Public Health ordered an inspection of the facility. Investigators inspected the building that contained the lab in July and found a room used to make COVID-19 tests and pregnancy tests. They also found over 35...

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...