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It’s official: Don’t rely on just your mask to protect you from coronavirus-contaminated droplets. You have to keep your distance if you want a fighting chance against contracting Covid-19. Using technology designed to mimic what happens in face-to-face interactions, researchers from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at New Mexico State University tested various

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the EndoRotor System (Interscope, Inc) for removal of necrotic tissue in patients with walled-off pancreatic necrosis (WOPN). “This device has shown its potential to provide a minimally invasive way to remove harmful necrotic pancreatic tissue in patients with walled-off pancreatic necrosis,” Charles Viviano, MD, PhD, acting

A year ago, while many Americans were finishing their holiday shopping and finalizing travel plans, doctors in Wuhan, China, were battling a mysterious outbreak of pneumonia with no known cause. Chinese doctors began to fear they were witnessing the return of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, a coronavirus that emerged in China in late

During the COVID-19 pandemic, new CDC data showed that drug overdose deaths spiked, particularly for deaths involving synthetic opioids. “As we continue the fight to end this pandemic, it’s important to not lose sight of different groups being affected in other ways. We need to take care of people suffering from unintended consequences,” CDC Director

A newly passed US law ensures, starting in 2023, that for Medicare patients who receive a kidney transplant, insurance coverage of immunosuppressant drugs that prevent rejection of the organ will not end after 3 years. Currently, nearly 400 patients a year lose their transplant and return to dialysis because of not being able to afford

Editor’s Note: With a coronavirus vaccination effort now underway, you might have questions about what this means for you and your family. If you do, send them to The Conversation, and we will find a physician or researcher to answer them. Here, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a public health pediatrician whose research exposed the Flint, Michigan,

Women with epilepsy do not have an increased seizure rate during pregnancy as long as they have their medication levels carefully monitored, a new study suggests. The study showed very similar fluctuations in seizure rates in women with epilepsy during pregnancy and the peripartum period to that of a group of matched nonpregnant controls. “Our

In a normal year, the holidays are a time for family and friends, festive good cheer — and the normal dangers for pets. They eat too much people food, snack on poisonous plants and try eating a ribbon or two. In this most abnormal of years, add Covid-19 and pet parent burnout. In short, the

Whether or not you’re a healthcare provider, chances are you’ve spent the year thinking, talking, and reading about healthcare. We’ve had national conversations about everything from the global pandemic to rising healthcare costs, to rationing resources and the politicization of medicine. Much less discussed — but very much affected by all of this — is

A recent analysis of the incidence of gout in men, published in JAMA Network Open, offers new insights on the role of lifestyle changes in preventing gout, particularly the importance of obesity and its modification. Prior gout research, although it addressed lifestyle issues, had not quantified the impact of obesity on incident gout cases, noted

A common-sense question: If the coronavirus travels via respiratory droplets; if it can hang around in the breathable air, and under the right conditions (bad ventilation, for example) travel more than 6 feet;  then is it reasonable to assume washing out the nostrils with the right product would temper the virus’ activity? Could someone flush the

Apathy is an early marker of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and predicts future cognitive decline, a new study has shown. Results showed that apathy occurs early in the disease course of genetic FTD before cognitive decline, reflecting early brain changes and predicting individual future clinical trajectories of cognitive and executive function deterioration. “Our study shows clearly

The electoral votes have confirmed Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election. The presidential electors gave Biden 306 electoral votes to President Donald Trump’s 232 votes. Biden also recorded a solid lead of over 7 million in the popular vote. Nonetheless, results from a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey found that approximately three-quarters of

The FDA now has authorized vaccines from both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. However, the news is not all good. We are a country of about 325 million people, yet, in the near term, there will only be enough vaccine for about 20 million people. Hopes that the majority of the population will be vaccinated by spring

Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. As the first American healthcare workers rolled up their sleeves for a COVID-19 vaccine, the images were instantly frozen in history, marking the triumph of scientific know-how and ingenuity. Cameras captured the first trucks pulling out of a warehouse in Portage,

Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. Stanford Medicine issued an apology on Twitter Friday after protesters blasted its vaccine distribution plan that left out nearly all of its residents and fellows, many of whom treat COVID-19 patients. But some say the error shows the residents’ need for

Adults, ages 75 and older, and “frontline essential workers” should receive the COVID-19 vaccine in phase 1b, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) said Sunday. In a 13-1 vote, the ACIP voted for an interim recommendation for phase 1b and phase 1c of COVID-19 vaccination. Phase 1c is comprised of adults 65-74, adults

Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. As expected, the US Food and Drug Administration granted Moderna an emergency use authorization (EUA) for its messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccine today. The vaccine becomes the second authorized for emergency use in the United States, and will likely increase the number of vaccine doses

Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. An influential federal advisory panel on Sunday voted to recommend that the elderly and certain essential workers be the next groups of Americans to get access to limited doses of COVID-19 vaccine. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the

The 24-hour news cycle is just as important to medicine as it is to politics, finance, or sports. At MedPage Today, new information is posted daily, but keeping up can be a challenge. As an aid for our readers and for a little amusement, here is a 10-question quiz based on the news of the

Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine — the second now cleared for emergency use in the United States — was endorsed by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Saturday. The panel voted 11-0, with three recusals, to recommend use of Moderna’s vaccine for people aged 18 years

Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. US Army General Gustave F. Perna, chief operations officer for Operation Warp Speed, told reporters in a briefing Saturday morning that the nation is on track to finish distributing 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine by the first week in January.

Only a week after the historic first approval of a Covid-19 vaccine in the US, Moderna has joined Pfizer as the second company with an FDA-approved vaccine for Covid-19. The FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee’s lengthy pre-authorization review of the Moderna vaccine, which is officially called mRNA-1273, is available on YouTube. The vaccine

WASHINGTON — As expected, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for Moderna’s mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 late Friday, following the pattern laid down last week for Pfizer and BioNTech’s similar product. On Thursday, an FDA advisory committee overwhelmingly backed the vaccine’s availability in a 20-0 vote, with one abstention, for adults 18 and

Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. Now that the first COVID-19 vaccine has been authorized for use in the United Kingdom and the United States, healthcare workers are in the first priority group to be eligible for vaccination. Medscape asked doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers what

Kids and Covid: Finding definitive answers for myriad questions — should schools stay open, are masks enough to keep them safe, how do children mostly contract the virus — have been contentious questions for months. One study found they are not the asymptomatic carriers as once thought; another went further, pointing out that one child

Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. The most ambitious vaccine deployment in history promises to stop a pandemic that has already claimed 1.67 million lives, but what if a vaccine for COVID-19 had been available sooner, say as early as March? It’s a question raised by Florian

The CDC issued a Health Alert Network advisory to medical and public health professionals and others Thursday, saying drug overdose deaths have soared to the highest number ever recorded in a 12-month period. Approximately 81,230 drug overdose deaths occurred in the U.S. in the 12 months ending May 2020, with the largest spike after the