WVU Medicine’s Maternal-Fetal Medicine program: The highest level of care for babies and mothers – WV News

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) At WVU Medicine, the experts with the Maternal-Fetal Medicine program are strongly committed to providing world-class care for the women of West Virginia and the surrounding region who have complicated or high-risk pregnancies.

Dr. Annelee Boyle, associate professor and director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine and Labor and Delivery Services for WVU Medicine, said her team specializes in any and everything that could make a pregnancy more complicated.

This includes services for maternal medical disorders such as diabetes, heart disease, or cancer or complications with the pregnancy itself, Boyle said.

If you break your water early, if youre going into pre-term birth, or if you actually have twins, triplets, quadruplets, etc., she said. Maternal-Fetal medicine is really providing the highest level of care to the patients that need it. At J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, we have the ability to provide the highest level of care for both babies and mothers.

Her team is comprised of six board-certified maternal-fetal medicine specialists.

We really coordinate care for moms and babies with potentially any other specialist in the hospital, she said. "So if a baby is going to need heart surgery after birth, we're coordinating with our pediatric cardiologist, our pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon, our neonatologist, and potentially even our geneticist. Or if a mother has heart disease, we may be coordinating with our adult cardiology specialist or ICU team and our anesthesia colleagues.

In addition to seeing patients at Ruby Memorial in Morgantown, the specialists with the Maternal-Fetal Medicine program are also able to see patients remotely via telemedicine services, Boyle said.

We have telemedicine outreach, so if you do whats called a MyWVUChart video visit, we can actually communicate with you through secure video and telephone links so that you dont have to drive all the way up to Morgantown if its a consult, like looking at sugars for diabetes management, she said. Certain things were going to have to see you in person for, but this allows us to expand our reach.

It is also possible to schedule a telemedicine appointment at a number of WVU Medicines satellite locations throughout the state, Boyle said.

We also have telemedicine uplinks, so if you dont have a smartphone or dont have cell service where you live, we can also do it through our different satellite offices, she said. You can come into the office for a regular OB appointment, then hop on the computer screen with us as well.

The program regularly serves mothers from Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, Boyle said.

I will see anybody who walks through my door or calls me up on the phone, she said. We are a safety net we provide care for anybody that others are unwilling or unable to care for.

The Birthing Center in the new WVU Medicine Childrens Hospital, which is scheduled to open in the summer of 2021, will positively impact the health and wellbeing of the region for generations to come, Boyle said.

The advantage to Morgantown compared to what you see up in Pittsburgh is that we will not have to separate mom and babies ever, she said. So if a mother has a complex cardiac condition, shell deliver at the same hospital. Her baby might be in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit), but they are in the same physical space as opposed to being across town from each other.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the experts with the Maternal-Fetal Medicine program have worked to ensure that partners arent separated during labor, Boyle said.

From the very beginning, we advocated for our patients, so that no woman would have to give birth alone, she said. I know that has been a big fear, but I would say that our hospital leadership is exceptionally open to providing the best care possible for everybody and really defers to the physicians and nursing staff as the folks who are on the ground advocating for the patients.

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WVU Medicine's Maternal-Fetal Medicine program: The highest level of care for babies and mothers - WV News

Popular scrubs company FIGS generates backlash from women in medicine and DOs after insensitive video – CNN

FIGS, a scrubs start-up, apologized for the video and pledged to donate $100,000 to the American Osteopathic Association, an organization for DOs, after the video generated backlash among Twitter's vibrant medical community.

In the now-deleted video, which was meant to show how one of its pairs of women's scrub pants looked in action, a bespectacled model played a DO and pretended to scan through the book "Medical Terminology for Dummies," which she held upside down.

On Twitter, a handful of women health care professionals and DOs quickly criticized the video's contents and FIGS for producing it.

Brenna Hohl, a first-year medical student from North Carolina, told CNN she found the ad disrespectful, particularly as health care workers face the brunt of coronavirus exposure.

"In the midst of a pandemic, we should be supporting and building up our health care workers, not bringing them down like this," she said.

After addressing the video briefly in two now-deleted tweets, FIGS co-founders Heather Hasson and Trina Spear apologized for publishing the video, which they said was "offensive" and "particularly disparaging" to women in medicine and DOs.

"Our mission at FIGS has always been to empower medical professionals," the co-founders said in a statement to CNN. "Beyond a lapse in judgment, the bottom line is -- our processes at FIGS failed. We are fixing that now. It will never happen again."

Some women in medicine say video was harmful

But some women in health care said they are turned off by the brand after the video.

"The 'silly and dumb, but sexy' look in ads and other media contributes to harmful gender stereotypes," she told CNN. "When girls see this, they start feeling like this is what is 'cool,' and start yearning to be like this."

YouTube influencer and family physician Dr. Mike Varshavski encouraged medical students to stop wearing scrubs from the brand.

Some also came to the brand's defense.

"If I was judged on a single mistake, then my career would have ended as a 3rd year medical student when labs weren't updated before rounds and I didn't have the newest creatinine," she wrote in an impassioned Instagram post. "Watch [FIGS] closely, I promise you from this point forward they will ALWAYS have the updated creatinine."

FIGS vows to improve

News of the brand's commitment to change softened critics slightly. In a statement to CNN, Dr. Kevin Klauer, a DO and CEO of the American Osteopathic Association, said that while he was "appalled" by the "ill-conceived" clip, he was working with FIGS to right its wrongs.

FIGS also will hire health care consultants to assist with future product shoots, according to Hasson and Spear.

Hohl called it a "step in the right direction" but said there's more that could be done -- namely, featuring "a wider range of health care practitioners," rather than mainly doctors and nurses, in their ads.

In response to the brand's apology, many doctors of osteopathic medicine and medical students who were openly critical of the brand later said they were glad to see the brand take responsibility.

However, many said they won't accept an apology without action -- noting that they plan to monitor to see whether the company continues to improve.

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Popular scrubs company FIGS generates backlash from women in medicine and DOs after insensitive video - CNN

Two new COVID-19 cases in Medicine Hat and two more recovered – CHAT News Today

There are currently 117 Albertans in hospital, 18 in ICU. There have been 292 deaths, an increase of four from Friday.

The province conducted 58,183 tests in the past 72 hours 16,021 on Oct. 16, 12,556 on Oct. 17 and 13,578 on Oct. 18.

Brooks has six new cases since Friday and now has 14 active cases.

With a rate of more than 50 active cases per 100,000 people, Brooks is now on the provincial Watch list; Brooks rate is 72.6 The city was a hotspot of COVID-19 cases early in the pandemic but had kept active cases below five for the past few months.

Lethbridge and Lethbridge County are also both on the Watch list at 135 and 99.1, respectively.

The city and county have seven outbreaks between them and with case counts rising in recent weeks.

On Tuesday there are 97 schools in the province where outbreaks have been declared. Alberta Healths threshold for declaring an outbreak in school is two cases being in a school while infectious within 14 days.

No local schools are classified as having outbreaks on the provincial website.

The website Support Our Students is tracking instances of cases in schools across the province. Elm Street School and Herald School were added to the list on Oct. 5, and Ecole St. John Paul II has been on it since late August.

There 2,102 cases in the South Zone There are 191 active cases and 1,884 recovered. There are currently four COVID-19 cases in hospital in the South Zone, two in the ICU. A death in Lethbridge County brings the zone death total to 27.

Cypress County has totaled 34 cases one new active case and the rest recovered.

The County of Forty Mile has 43 total cases. There are three active cases and the rest are recovered.

The MD of Taber has 45 total cases one new active and the rest recovered.

Special Areas No. 2 has 17 total cases, two active cases and the rest recovered.

Brooks has 1,145 total cases 14 active and 1,122 are recovered. Brooks has recorded nine deaths.

The County of Newell has a total of 37 cases four active cases, 31 recovered and there have been two deaths.

The County of Warner has 65 total cases. There are two active cases, 62 are recovered cases and there has been one death in the county.

The City of Lethbridge has a total of 350 cases. There are 134 active cases, 214 recovered and there have been two deaths. Lethbridge County has 112 cases, 25 active cases, 86 recovered and there has been one death.

The figures on alberta.ca are up-to-date as of end of day Oct. 18, 2020.

Saskatchewan reported 126 new cases of COVID-19 over the weekend, three in the South Zones.

Saskatchewan has a total of 2,396 cases, 398 considered active. There are 1,973 recovered cases and there have been 25 COVID-19 deaths in the province.

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Two new COVID-19 cases in Medicine Hat and two more recovered - CHAT News Today

Mary Schonfield: She Had a Love of Medicine and Worked at Redwoods Rural Health Center – Redheaded Blackbelt

This section includes announcements of important events in our livesbirths, graduations, engagements, marriages, and deaths. If you want to share an event with your community, please send a photo and a written piece to[emailprotected]

Mary Schonfield

Mary Schonfield unexpectedly passed away September 12th, 2020 at the age of 72.

Mary moved to Southern Humboldt in 1971 where she met and married Stuart. They built their dome home from scratch and then proceeded to bring into this world two lovely daughters, Laurel and Johanna.

Mary worked at Redwoods Rural Health Center, where she started out at the front desk and moved on to work as a medical assistant. In her late forties Mary took her love of medicine and caring for people to the next level, attending UC Davis Medical school and graduating with her Physician Assistant (PA) license. Mary brought her new expertise back to Southern Humboldt where she served the community for many years as a PA.

Mary and Stuart eventually moved to Santa Cruz to be near their two daughters. Mary continued her work in providing accessible health care to everyone, working at a Planned Parenthood Clinic on the Central Coast.

Mary was an avid gardener, turning every greenspace into a lush bounty for birds, bees and butterflies alike. She inspired her neighbors to rip out their lawns and gifted her children with an endless supply of plant clippings to make their yards beautiful. As a voracious reader, Mary was often reading multiple books at once and used books to show her children and grandchildren the endless possibilities in the world.

Mary and Stuart built a marriage based on love, respect and equality, and their match may have even been destiny, for when Stuart needed a kidney transplant, not only was Mary willing but she was a match. She gave Stuart a kidney and nearly 20 more years of health by her selfless act. She loved her family deeply and she will be greatly missed by family and friends.

If Mary had one parting thing to say, it would be

Vote him out.

Mary is survived by her husband Stuart Schonfield, daughters Laurel and Johanna, and three beautiful granddaughters.

Due to Covid-19 there will be no Memorial service. If you would like to communicate with Marys family and/or share a story or memory of Mary please email [emailprotected].

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Mary Schonfield: She Had a Love of Medicine and Worked at Redwoods Rural Health Center - Redheaded Blackbelt

COVID-19 | How laughter may be effective medicine for these trying times – Moneycontrol.com

Some enlightened doctors, nurses and therapists have a prescription for helping all of us to get through this seemingly never-ending pandemic: Try a little laughter.

Humor is not just a distraction from the grim reality of the crisis, said Dr. Michael Miller, a cardiologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Its a winning strategy to stay healthy in the face of it.

Heightened stress magnifies the risk of cardiovascular events, including heart attacks and strokes, Miller said. Having a good sense of humor is an excellent way to relieve stress and anxiety and bring back a sense of normalcy during these turbulent times.

Laughter releases nitric oxide, a chemical that relaxes blood vessels, reduces blood pressure and decreases clotting, Miller said. An epidemiological study of older men and women in Japan confirmed that those who tend to laugh more have a lower risk of major cardiovascular illness. Possessing a healthy sense of humor is also associated with living longer, an epidemiological study from Norway reported, although the correlation appears to be stronger for women than for men.

Armed with this growing body of research, Miller prescribes one good belly laugh a day for his patients. Its not just going ha, ha, he explained, but a deep physiological laugh that elicits tears of joys and relaxation.

While the long-term impacts of such a practice remain unknown, Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist at University College London, said that laughter has been shown to reduce the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline and increases the bodys uptake of the feel-good endorphins.

There also appear to be cognitive benefits. Watching a funny video was tied to improvements in short-term memory in older adults and increased their capacity to learn, research conducted by Dr. Gurinder Singh Bains of Loma Linda University found.

Perhaps most relevant today, possessing a sense of humor also helps people remain resilient in the face of adverse circumstances, said George Bonanno, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University.

In one study, Bonanno interviewed young women who had been sexually abused and noted their facial expressions. Those who managed to laugh or smile at moments during their interview were more likely to be doing better two years later than those who had not, he said. Humor keeps negative emotions in check and gives us a different perspective, allowing us to see some of the bad things that happen to us as a challenge rather than a threat.

Humor and tragedy may be more intimately connected than one would think.

Charlie Chaplin once said In order to truly laugh you need to be able to take your pain and play with it, said Paul Osincup, the president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor. Write down all of the most difficult and annoying things about quarantine, Osincup recommends. Play with those. See if you can find any humor in your situation.

Megan Werner, a psychotherapist in private practice, uses a similar strategy in her work with at-risk youth in Fayetteville, Arkansas. During group therapy sessions, she has the teenage gang members she works with interact with Irwin, a life-size Halloween skeleton, to encourage them to confront their dangerous lifestyle head-on.

Most of the time you try to deflate a painful situation, she said. In my therapy work, its more like lets blow it up, lets make it so absurd that we laugh about it. This releases anxiety, and were able to approach the topics that werent approachable initially. It takes the power away from the trauma and helps to defuse it.

Increasingly humor is being integrated into mainstream medical practice with a similar goal, said Dr. Kari Phillips, a resident physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Phillips observed over 100 clinical encounters and discovered that humor typically surfaces about twice during a half-hour doctor visit. It is initiated in equal measure by doctors and patients, often to break the ice between them or to help to soften the impact of a difficult medical conversation.

We found that introducing humor results in better patient satisfaction and empowerment, and it helps people feel more warmth in their connection with the doctor, she said.

Dr. Peter Viccellio, a professor of emergency medicine at Stony Brook University Hospital on Long Island, has seen many COVID-19 patients during his hours in the emergency room. A touch of playfulness and kindly humor, he said, has helped to ease an enormously painful situation for both his patients and members of the overburdened hospital staff.

Genuine levity can make patients believe that they are not going to meet their doom today, Viccellio said, but he added that it needs to flow naturally. If you are empathetic with the person, your humor tends to fit them, its not forced. If you are not emotionally connected to them and force a joke it can go very wrong.

A case in point: A colleague of mine once said casually to a patient whose medical history he did not know, Dont worry about it, at least its not cancer, Viccellio recalled. The patient replied, Actually, Doc, it is.

Other kinds of joking that are potentially destructive, he said, are the in-group humor that mocks patients or other members of the hospital staff, and the gallows humor that focuses on the darker sides of medicine. And one needs to be careful not to appear to be making light of somebody elses pain.

Despite these potential pitfalls, some hospitals have initiated formal humor programs, making funny books and videos available and inviting clowns in to interact with their younger patients. Some caregivers are also innovating ways to bring humor into their own practice.

Mary Laskin, a nurse case-manager at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, has been working with her chronic pain patients online, teaching them laughter exercises alongside practices designed to develop other positive mental states like gratitude and forgiveness.

This pandemic is like a tiger creeping toward us, a huge slow-motion stressor that makes the experience of pain worse. Humor helps my patients relax and release their grip on pain, she said.

Humor can also serve to powerfully reaffirm ones humanity in the face of illness or disability, said Dr. B.J. Miller, a palliative care physician in San Francisco who suffered a freak electrical accident in 1990 that cost him two legs and an arm.

After the accident, he said, most people including medical staff members viewed him as an object of pity. There is a solemnity in how people look at you, he said. You are essentially walled off from others, they stop treating you as a sexual being, they stop treating you as a source of humor.

The one exception, he recalled, were the men who scrubbed off his burned skin in the hospital. Its a terrible job, I mean you are inflicting reams of pain on someone to save their life, Miller said. But this ragtag crew, they were freaking hilarious. One of them had a flask and was drinking during the procedure, they were cracking jokes the whole time.

It made me stronger because they were looking at me and saying this guy can handle the pain and he can also handle a joke it made me feel like a human being again.

Inspired by their example, Miller said, he uses every opportunity to bring a dose of comic relief into his own medical work. Increasingly, he sees his colleagues doing so as well.

The culture is beginning to shift injecting humor and humanity back into medicine, he said. If you cant change what you are dealing with, you can at least change how you view it. Humor gives us the power to do that.

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COVID-19 | How laughter may be effective medicine for these trying times - Moneycontrol.com

COVID-19 Impact on Organic Herbal Medicine Market Competitive Developments such as Expansions, Agreements, New Product Launches, Acquisitions and…

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What is osteopathic medicine? A D.O. explains – The Conversation US

When President Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19, many Americans noticed that his physician had the title D.O. stitched onto his white coat. Much confusion ensued about doctors of osteopathic medicine. As of a 2018 census, they made up 9.1% of physicians in the United States. How do they fit into the broader medical field?

Andrea Amalfitano is a D.O. and dean of the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine. He explains some of the foundations of the profession and its guiding principle: to use holistic approaches to care for and guide patients. And dont worry, yes, D.O.s are real doctors and have full practice rights across the U.S.

In the years after the Civil War, without antibiotics and vaccines, many clinicians of the day relied on techniques like arsenic, castor oil, mercury and bloodletting to treat the ill. Unsanitary surgical practices were standard. These treatments promised cures but often led to more sickness and pain.

In response to that dreadful state of affairs, a group of American physicians founded the osteopathic medical profession. They asserted that maintaining wellness and preventing disease was paramount. They believed that preserving health was best achieved via a holistic medical understanding of the individual patients, their families and their communities in mind, body and spirit. They rejected reductionist interactions meant to rapidly address only acute symptoms or problems.

They also embraced the concept that the human body has an inherent capacity to heal itself decades before the immune systems complexities were understood and called for this ability to be respected and harnessed.

Doctors of osteopathic medicine D.O.s, for short can prescribe medication and practice all medical and surgical specialties just as their M.D. counterparts do. Because of the focus on preserving wellness rather than waiting to treat symptoms as they arise, more than half of D.O.s gravitate to primary care, including family practice and pediatrics, particularly in rural and underserved areas.

D.O. training embraces the logic that understanding anatomic structures can allow one to better understand how they function. For example, alongside contemporary medical and surgical preventive and treatment knowledge, all osteopathic physicians also learn strategies to treat musculoskeletal pain and disease. These techniques are known as manual medicine, or osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT). They can provide patients an alternative to medications, including opioids, or invasive surgical interventions.

D.O.s pride themselves on making sure their patients feel theyre treated as a whole person and not simply reduced to a symptom or blood test to be rapidly dealt with and then dismissed. We say we aspire to care for people, not patients, with an empathetic attitude and an emphasis on making sure those closest to those in their care, such as family and loved ones, as well as other social factors, are all taken into account.

The osteopathic philosophy around prevention and wellness might seem like common sense today, but it was revolutionary. Aspects of osteopathic medicine, including the use of alternative therapies such as OMT, were originally met with skepticism or outright hostility by some medical doctors who questioned their scientific bases. Indeed, in 1961, the American Medical Associations code of ethics declared it unethical for an M.D. physician to professionally associate with doctors of osteopathy.

So with the guidance of the American Osteopathic Association, D.O.s created their own D.O. hospitals, residency and fellowship programs, and four-year D.O. degree-granting medical schools. Instruction around the current science of health and illness is similar between D.O.s and M.D.s its the philosophical delivery of that knowledge thats different.

[Get our best science, health and technology stories. Sign up for The Conversations science newsletter.]

Certainly a holistic approach to health is no longer exclusive to D.O.s. In fact, many M.D., nursing, physician assistant and other health professional schools now embrace parts of it as they deliver care. And now, D.O.s and M.D.s often work side by side in medical settings across the country. More recently, the AMA has recently recognized the D.O. licensing exams as equivalent to the exams M.D.s take. D.O.s compete for the same training residencies as M.D.s and, eventually, the same jobs.

Osteopathic medicine is now one of the fastest-growing health professions, with over 150,000 D.O.s and D.O. medical students practicing in the U.S. and internationally. One in four newly minted U.S. physicians in the class of 2019 graduated from an osteopathic medical school.

Osteopathic medicine is now a mainstay of contemporary medical practice, with D.O.s active in all aspects of the nations health care systems.

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What is osteopathic medicine? A D.O. explains - The Conversation US

2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes to Scientists Who Discovered Hepatitis C – The New York Times

[View the latest updates to the 2020 Nobel Prize winners list.]

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice on Monday for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough the Nobel committee said had made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives.

For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus from the world population, the committee said in a statement. They announced the prize at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

About 71 million people worldwide live with a chronic infection of the hepatitis C virus, a blood-borne pathogen that can cause severe liver inflammation, or hepatitis, and is typically transmitted through shared or reused needles and syringes, infected blood transfusions and sexual practices that lead to blood exposure.

Tests and treatments all start with being able to recognize the virus exists, said Craig Cameron, chair of the department of microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a hepatitis C virus researcher.

The discovery of the hepatitis C virus solved a thorny scientific mystery that had plagued physicians and researchers for years.

A number of hepatitis viruses can infiltrate the liver and cause a range of health problems, some of which are fatal. One of the main ways that hepatitis is transmitted is through blood transfusions, a life saving procedure central to modern medicine that could have deadly consequences when blood was contaminated.

The hepatitis A virus usually has few long-term impacts on the people it infects. Another virus, hepatitis B virus, tends to linger in the body and is responsible for hundreds of millions of chronic infections around the world, many of which remain undiagnosed. The discovery of the hepatitis B virus earned Baruch Blumberg the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976.

In the 1970s, Dr. Alter led a team of scientists in discovering that most cases of post-transfusion hepatitis couldnt be linked to Type A or B viruses a hint to the existence of a pathogen that had not yet been described.

In the 1980s, Dr. Houghton, along with two colleagues Qui-Lim Choo and George Kuo, became the first to identify and formally name the hepatitis C virus as the infectious culprit. The work led to the development of a diagnostic test to identify the virus in blood, enabling doctors and researchers for the first time to screen patients and donors.

Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia who spent her postdoctoral fellowship working on the hepatitis C virus, described the pathogen as a tricky virus to work with. She added that Dr. Houghtons work, which isolated the viruss genetic sequence, bolstered the case that it was a new pathogen and distinct from the viruses behind hepatitis A and B.

Updated Oct. 9, 2020

Dr. Alter and Dr. Houghton later shared the Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 2000 for their work.

Dr. Rices genetic experiments added important details to scientists understanding of the virus, showing that it could be isolated in the lab and cause disease in an animal host, the chimpanzee. These studies nailed the hepatitis C virus as the sole infectious agent responsible for the mysterious non-A, non-B cases of hepatitis and set up a crucial animal model for future studies.

Without Charlie, we still probably would not have completed the story, Dr. Cameron said.

The hepatitis C virus is responsible for tens of millions of long-term infections around the world. Because the infections can spread and persist without symptoms, many dont know they carry the virus. But once it establishes itself in the body, the pathogen can silently erode the livers function over the course of years and decades, later flaring up as severe inflammation or cancer.

If not caught early, a long-term hepatitis infection can be extremely difficult to treat. Many people infected with the hepatitis C virus require liver transplants.

Work by the three awardees paved the path for highly accurate and effective blood tests for the hepatitis C virus. In many parts of the world, screening blood for hepatitis has driven post-transfusion hepatitis rates down to near zero.

Still, most people living with the hepatitis C virus have not received a diagnosis, especially in low-income countries, where testing rates remain below 10 percent.

Numerous life saving treatments have also been developed for the hepatitis C virus, many of which are in regular use today. When available, hepatitis C antivirals can block the virus from multiplying in the body, and can cure people of the infection in weeks. Researchers around the world, including Dr. Houghton, are now at work on a vaccine that could prevent future hepatitis C virus infections and disease.

For the longest time, we had nothing to treat this virus with, said Dr. Guadalupe Garcia Tsao, a cirrhosis expert at Yale University. Preventing the disease, she added, was also nearly impossible without accurate tests. For most of my career, it was the bane of my existence. But from the moment they made these discoveries, the numbers of sick people went down dramatically.

Even hepatitis C drugs that originally failed to clear the approval pipeline have found new use in modern times: Remdesivir, one of only a handful of treatments with emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to treat severely sick Covid-19 patients, was originally developed as an antiviral against the hepatitis C virus.

Thats really the story of investing in basic science, and having it pay off later down the road, said Stephanie Langel, a virologist and immunologist at Duke University.

Dr. Alter, an American, is a medical researcher for the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. Born in 1935 in New York, he earned a medical degree at the University of Rochester before joining the N.I.H. in 1961.

After treating some of the first non-A, non-B hepatitis patients decades ago, Dr. Alter expressed wonder at watching treatment for the illness evolve. Modern drugs can cure more than 95 percent of patients.

I could never have imagined this, really, not in my lifetime, he said Monday during a N.I.H. news conference.

With more testing and affordable access to drugs, it would be possible to eradicate this disease over the next decades, even in the absence of a vaccine, he said.

Dr. Rice, born in Sacramento in 1952, is a professor at Rockefeller University in New York. From 2001 to 2018, he was the scientific and executive director at the Center for the Study of Hepatitis C. He earned his Ph.D. from Caltech in 1981.

In an interview Monday morning, Dr. Rice described the utter shock he felt at receiving the early morning phone call notifying him of the award.

I thought it was because a freezer in the lab was warming up, or it was a wrong number, he said. Even after getting over being mad at the phone for ringing, added Dr. Rice, a self-described night owl, my initial impression was this had to be a crank phone call.

Dr. Cameron, a frequent collaborator of Dr. Rices, described him as welcoming, generous and a dedicated and prolific mentor. His lab has really populated the flavivirus field, Dr. Cameron said, referring to the virus family that includes hepatitis C virus. I was not formally a trainee, but I feel like I was adopted by him early on.

Dr. Houghton, born in Britain, is a Canada Excellence Research Chair in Virology and the Li Ka Shing professor of virology at the University of Alberta. He is also director of the Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute at the university. He earned his Ph.D. from Kings College London in 1977.

Shortly after the awards announcement, scientists on social media noted that Dr. Houghton in 2013 declined to accept the Canada Gairdner International Award, which he criticized for failing to include his colleagues Dr. Choo and Dr. Kuo. But in a news conference on Monday, Dr. Houghton said he felt it would be really too presumptuous to turn down a Nobel, and highlighted the contributions of his colleagues, with whom he is now developing a hepatitis C vaccine.

Great science is often a group of people, he said. Going forward, we somehow need to incorporate that.

The Nobel science prizes have long been criticized for failing to amplify the achievements of women and people of color in the scientific community.

While I am always happy to see virologists recognized for their excellent work, the Nobel committee continues its streak of recognizing the achievements of white men, Dr. Rasmussen said. I really wish the Nobel committee would consider recognizing equally substantive achievements by women or people of color, and by scientists outside of North America or Europe.

Dr. Rice also stressed the importance of community and collaboration in his discoveries.

Were all a few in a cast of thousands, he said. I feel a little bit odd a combination of humbled and embarrassed. I think there are many people who should feel very good about what they contributed today.

The prize was awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for discoveries about how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability. These cellular mechanisms control, for example, adaptation to high altitudes and how cancer cells manage to hijack oxygen.

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2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes to Scientists Who Discovered Hepatitis C - The New York Times

President Trumps doctor is a D.O, not an M.D. Whats the difference? – Tampa Bay Times

Dr. Katherine Pannel was initially thrilled to see President Donald Trumps physician is a doctor of osteopathic medicine. A practicing D.O. herself, she loved seeing another glass ceiling broken for the type of doctor representing11% of practicing physiciansin the U.S. and now1 in 4 medical studentsin the country.

But then, as Dr. Sean Conley issued public updates on his treatment of Trumps COVID-19, the questions and the insults about his qualifications rolled in.

How many times will Trumps doctor, who is actually not an MD, have to change his statements? MSNBCs Lawrence ODonnelltweeted.

It all came falling down when we had people questioning why the president was being seen by someone that wasnt even a doctor, Pannel said.

The osteopathic medical field has had high-profile doctors before, good and bad. Dr. Murray Goldstein was the first D.O. to serve as a director of an institute at the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Ronald R. Blanck was the surgeon general ofthe U.S. Army. Former Vice President Joe Biden, challenging Trump for the presidency, alsosees a doctor who is a D.O.But another now former D.O., Larry Nassar, who was the doctor for USA Gymnastics, was convicted of serial sexual assault.

Still, with this latest example, Dr. Kevin Klauer, CEO of the American Osteopathic Association, said hes heard from many fellow osteopathic physicians outraged that Conley and by extension, they, too are not considered real doctors.

You may or may not like that physician, but you dont have the right to completely disqualify an entire profession, Klauer said.

For years, doctors of osteopathic medicine have been growing in number alongside the better-known doctors of medicine, who are sometimes called allopathic doctors and use the M.D. after their names.

According to theAmerican Osteopathic Association, the number of osteopathic doctors grew 63 percent in the past decade and nearly 300 percent over the past three decades. Still, many Americans dont know much about osteopathic doctors, if they know the term at all.

There are probably a lot of people who have D.O.s as their primary (care doctor) and never realized it, said Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, a philanthropic group focused on community health.

Both types of physicians can prescribe medicine and treat patients in similar ways.

Although osteopathic doctors take adifferent licensing exam, the curriculum for their medical training four years of osteopathic medical school is converging with M.D. training as holistic and preventive medicine becomes more mainstream. And starting this year, both M.D.s and D.O.s were placed into one accreditation pool to compete for the same residency training slots.

But two major principles guiding osteopathic medical curriculum distinguish it from the more well-known medical school route: the 200-plus hours of training on the musculoskeletal system and the holistic look at medicine as a discipline that serves the mind, body and spirit.

The roots of the profession date to the 19th century and musculoskeletal manipulation. Pannel was quick to point out the common misconception that their manipulation of the musculoskeletal system makes them chiropractors. Its much more involved than that, she said.

Dr. Ryan Seals, who has a D.O. degree and serves as a senior associate dean at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, said that osteopathic physicians have a deeper understanding than allopathic doctors of the range of motion and what a muscle and bone feel like through touch.

That said, many osteopathic doctors dont use that part of their training at all: A 2003 Ohio study said approximately75%of them did not or rarely practiced osteopathic manipulative treatments.

The osteopathic focus on preventive medicine also means such physicians were considering a patients whole life and how social factors affect health outcomes long before the pandemic began, Klauer said. This may explain why 57 percent of osteopathic doctorspursue primary carefields, as opposed to nearly a third of those with doctorates of medicine, according to theAmerican Medical Association.

Pannel pointed out that shes proud that42 percentof actively practicing osteopathic doctors are women, as opposed to36 percentof doctors overall. She chose the profession as she felt it better embraced the whole person, and emphasized the importance of care for the underserved, includingrural areas. She and her husband, also a doctor of osteopathic medicine, treat rural Mississippi patients in general and child psychiatry.

Given osteopathic doctors' likelihood of practicing in rural communities and of pursuing careers in primary care,Health Affairsreported in 2017, they are on track to play an increasingly important role in ensuring access to care nationwide, including for the most vulnerable populations.

To be sure, even though the physicians end up with similar training and compete for the same residencies, some residency programs have often preferred M.D.s, Seals said.

Traditional medical schools have held more esteem than schools of osteopathic medicine because of their longevity and name recognition. Most D.O. schools have been around for only decades and often are in Midwestern and rural areas.

While admission to the nations37 osteopathic medical schoolsis competitive amid a surge of applicants, thegrade-point average and Medical College Admission Test scoresareslightly higherfor the155 U.S. allopathic medical schools: Theaverage MCATwas 506.1 out of 528 for allopathic medical school applicants over a three-year period, compared with 503.8 for osteopathic applicants for 2018.

Seals said prospective medical students ask the most questions about which path is better, worrying they may be at a disadvantage if they choose the D.O. route.

Ive never felt that my career has been hindered in any way by the degree, Seals said, noting that he had the opportunity to attend either type of medical school, and osteopathic medicine aligned better with the philosophy, beliefs and type of doctor he wanted to be.

Many medical doctors came to the defense of Conley and their osteopathic colleagues, including Dr. John Morrison, an M.D. practicing primary care outside of Seattle. He was disturbed by the elitism on display on social media, citing the skills of the many doctors of osteopathic medicine hed worked with over the years.

There are plenty of things you can criticize him for, but being a D.O. isnt one of them, Morrison said.

Lauren Weber is Midwest correspondent for Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation), which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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President Trumps doctor is a D.O, not an M.D. Whats the difference? - Tampa Bay Times

UW Medicine, Fred Hutch test experimental antibody treatment used on Trump for COVID-19 – KING5.com

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies was used to treat President Donald Trump for COVID-19.

SEATTLE Researchers at UW Medicine are partnering with the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center to lead a study of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' antibody cocktail as a way to prevent COVID-19 infections.

The researchers are currently recruiting patients for the study.

The same experimental Regeneron Pharmaceuticals cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies was used to lower the level of the COViD-19 virus in President Donald Trump after he became infected.

Its the same antibody cocktail, that can be used for both prevention and treatment, said Dr. Ruanne Barnabas, co-principal investigator and associate professor of Global Health and Allergy and Infectious Diseases at University of Washington School of Medicine. But trials for both prevention and treatment are ongoing.

The trial, which also includes 100 additional sites and plans to recruit 2,000 patients, is focused on helping people stay healthy after a close member in their own household becomes sick with COVID-19. The antibody cocktail is called REGN-COV2.

If thats the case, why not use this antibody in lieu of vaccines, a number of which are in the final trial phases?

Dr. Barnabas said, These antibodies last for a short time, for a number of weeks. But a vaccine will teach our bodies to make these antibodies that will last for years. Thats the plan.

The presumption is someone given the cocktail would have enough antibodies immediately to last long enough to get through their housemates infection.

"Monoclonal antibodies could help us achieve and end to the pandemic," said Dr. Shelly Karuna with Fred Hutch in a statement.

People wanting to participate in the study must have a confirmed household member test positive for COVID-19 to qualify. To learn more about getting involved call (206) 773-7129 or visit the UW Medicine website.

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UW Medicine, Fred Hutch test experimental antibody treatment used on Trump for COVID-19 - KING5.com

Laughter is the best medicine, and may also be quite effective during Covid – Economic Times

By Richard Schiffman

Some enlightened doctors, nurses and therapists have a prescription for helping all of us to get through this seemingly never-ending pandemic: Try a little laughter.

Humor is not just a distraction from the grim reality of the crisis, said Dr. Michael Miller, a cardiologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Its a winning strategy to stay healthy in the face of it.

Heightened stress magnifies the risk of cardiovascular events, including heart attacks and strokes, Miller said. Having a good sense of humor is an excellent way to relieve stress and anxiety and bring back a sense of normalcy during these turbulent times.

Laughter releases nitric oxide, a chemical that relaxes blood vessels, reduces blood pressure and decreases clotting, Miller said. An epidemiological study of older men and women in Japan confirmed that those who tend to laugh more have a lower risk of major cardiovascular illness. Possessing a healthy sense of humor is also associated with living longer, an epidemiological study from Norway reported, although the correlation appears to be stronger for women than for men.

Armed with this growing body of research, Miller prescribes one good belly laugh a day for his patients. Its not just going ha, ha, he explained, but a deep physiological laugh that elicits tears of joys and relaxation.

There also appear to be cognitive benefits. Watching a funny video was tied to

Armed with this growing body of research, Miller prescribes one good belly laugh a day for his patients. Its not just going ha, ha, he explained, but a deep physiological laugh that elicits tears of joys and relaxation.

While the long-term impacts of such a practice remain unknown, Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist at University College London, said that laughter has also been shown to reduce the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline and increases the bodys uptake of the feel-good endorphins.

There also appear to be cognitive benefits. Watching a funny video was tied to improvements in short-term memory in older adults and increased their capacity to learn, research conducted by Dr. Gurinder Singh Bains of Loma Linda University found.

Perhaps most relevant today, possessing a sense of humor also helps people remain resilient in the face of adverse circumstances, said George Bonanno, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University.

In one study, Bonanno interviewed young women who had been sexually abused and noted their facial expressions. Those who managed to laugh or smile at moments during their interview were more likely to be doing better two years later than those who had not, he said. Humor keeps negative emotions in check and gives us a different perspective, allowing us to see some of the bad things that happen to us as a challenge rather than a threat.

Humour and tragedy may be more intimately connected than one would think.

Charlie Chaplin once said In order to truly laugh you need to be able to take your pain and play with it, said Paul Osincup, the president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor. Write down all of the most difficult and annoying things about quarantine, Osincup recommends. Play with those. See if you can find any humor in your situation.

Humour can also serve to powerfully reaffirm ones humanity in the face of illness or disability.

Most of the time you try to deflate a painful situation, she said. In my therapy work, its more like lets blow it up, lets make it so absurd that we laugh about it. This releases anxiety, and were able to approach the topics that werent approachable initially. It takes the power away from the trauma and helps to defuse it.

Increasingly humor is being integrated into mainstream medical practice with a similar goal, said Dr. Kari Phillips, a resident physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Phillips observed over a hundred clinical encounters and discovered that humor typically surfaces about twice during a half-hour doctor visit. It is initiated in equal measure by doctors and patients, often to break the ice between them or to help to soften the impact of a difficult medical conversation.

We found that introducing humor results in better patient satisfaction and empowerment, and it helps people feel more warmth in their connection with the doctor, she said.

Dr. Peter Viccellio, a professor of emergency medicine at Stony Brook University Hospital on Long Island, has seen many COVID-19 patients during his hours in the emergency room. A touch of playfulness and kindly humor, he said, has helped to ease an enormously painful situation for both his patients and members of the overburdened hospital staff.

Genuine levity can make patients believe that they are not going to meet their doom today Viccellio said, but he added that it needs to flow naturally. If you are empathetic with the person, your humor tends to fit them, its not forced. If you are not emotionally connected to them and force a joke it can go very wrong.

A case in point: A colleague of mine once said casually to a patient whose medical history he did not know, Dont worry about it, at least its not cancer, Viccellio recalled. The patient replied, Actually, Doc, it is.

Other kinds of joking that are potentially destructive, he said, are the in-group humor that mocks patients or other members of the hospital staff, and the gallows humor that focuses on the darker sides of medicine. And one needs to be careful not to appear to be making light of somebody elses pain.

Despite these potential pitfalls, some hospitals have initiated formal humor programs, making funny books and videos available and inviting clowns in to interact with their younger patients. Some caregivers are also innovating ways to bring humor into their own practice.

Mary Laskin, a nurse case-manager at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, has been working with her chronic pain patients online, teaching them laughter exercises alongside practices designed to develop other positive mental states like gratitude and forgiveness.

This pandemic is like a tiger creeping toward us, a huge slow-motion stressor that makes the experience of pain worse. Humor helps my patients relax and release their grip on pain, she said.

Laskin suggests that her patients treat humor as a discipline like physical exercise that they set aside time for on a daily basis. She recommends laughter first-aid boxes, where they can stash joke books, funny toys and other props for this purpose.

Our health care system focuses on passive ways to manage pain like taking a pill or getting an operation, Laskin said. I encourage people to actively cultivate the healing power of laughter, which puts them back in the drivers seat.

Humor can also serve to powerfully reaffirm ones humanity in the face of illness or disability, said Dr. B.J. Miller, a palliative care physician in San Francisco who suffered a freak electrical accident in 1990 that cost him two legs and an arm.

After the accident, he said, most people including medical staff members viewed him as an object of pity. There is a solemnity in how people look at you, he said. You are essentially walled off from others, they stop treating you as a sexual being, they stop treating you as a source of humor.

The one exception, he recalled, were the men who scrubbed off his burned skin in the hospital. Its a terrible job, I mean you are inflicting reams of pain on someone to save their life, Miller said. But this ragtag crew, they were freaking hilarious. One of them had a flask and was drinking during the procedure, they were cracking jokes the whole time.

It made me stronger because they were looking at me and saying this guy can handle the pain and he can also handle a joke it made me feel like a human being again.

Inspired by their example, Miller said, he uses every opportunity to bring a dose of comic relief into his own medical work. Increasingly, he sees his colleagues doing so as well.

The culture is beginning to shift injecting humor and humanity back into medicine, he said. If you cant change what you are dealing with, you can at least change how you view it. Humor gives us the power to do that.

Here are five smart ways listed by Anjali Malhotra, Chief Customer Marketing and Digital Officer Aviva Life insurance to prevent heart problems in today's busy life.

A daily exercise schedule in any form of physical activity for a period of 30-45 minutes is crucial to ensure that the arteries remain flexible.

Small changes in your physical activity can help in bringing positive change in your routine.

Studies have shown that brisk walking may add about two hours to the life expectancy of some adults.

Few changes in lifestyle such as taking the stairs instead the elevator, parking at the furthest end of a parking lot and taking a break from the office for a short walk during your lunch hour help in keeping the body in shape and inculcating a habit of healthy living.

In addition, few yoga asanas such as Virbhadrasana, Tadasana, Utkatasana, Bhujangasana and Vrikshasana also helps in preventing heart problems. If you practice these five yoga postures daily, you can reduce substantial risk of heart problems.

What you eat directly affects your heart. Therefore, ensure the intake of green and leafy vegetables, exclude sugar and aerated drinks from your diet, replace sweetened beverages with water as much as possible and bring down the intake of processed foods and refined flour.

Too much sodium can also cause excess fluid in the body that puts an extra strain on your heart. Therefore, it is best to adapt to variety of spices, herbs and flavours that are an alternative to salt.

Also, exclude red meats from the diet in order to avoid bad cholesterol. Keep the intake of oil and sugar minimal which will further help in reducing the risk of heart problems.

Keep a check on BMI (Body Mass Index) and maintain it to optimal levels.

Not only that, it leads to overall disruption in the normal functioning of the heart. Therefore, it is advisable to avoid consumption of both or consume it in moderation and gradually phase it out. It may be difficult to follow but worth the effort.

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Laughter is the best medicine, and may also be quite effective during Covid - Economic Times

The Future of Precision Medicine – Rutgers Today

The new Ahmed Lab at Rutgers Institute for Health is charting the course with advanced data and technology

Precision medicine is a rapidly growing approach to health care that focuses on finding treatments and interventions that work for people based on their genetic makeup, rather than their symptoms.

Zeeshan Ahmed, director of the new Ahmed Lab at Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, discusses the future of precision medicine, what needs to be done to successfully analyze the data necessary to develop individualized treatments and the role genetics play during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What new trends do you see emerging in precision medicine?

One emerging trend in precision medicine is the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the traditional symptom-driven practice of medicine, allowing earlier interventions using advanced diagnostics and tailoring better and economically personalized treatments.

Development of cutting-edge, new artificial intelligence and machine learningbased big data platforms has the potential to revolutionize the field of medicine and allow a high volume of data to be analyzed quickly. While this poses unprecedented challenges in data storage, processing, exchange, and curation, it will ultimately provide us with a better understanding of biology.

But we need to improve procedures for genetic testing in health care settings and integrate the study of genetic and metabolic makeup and function into the traditional health care process. We also need to develop prevention and therapeutic strategies and build a library of information about how to use genetics in health care.

Our lab will continue researching and developing useful analytic tools, modern technologies, and big databases in order to provide better personalized health care.

Ahmed Lab recently launched a new mobile app. How will this help drive precision medicine?

There has been a dramatic increase in the availability of genetic and health data over the past decade resulting in a crucial need for databases and technology to effectively store and analyze this wealth of information.

Our lab has initiated a new project to study evolving information about the links between different genes, genetic variants and diseases. We focused on helping researchers, medical practitioners and pharmacists better understand the genetic basis of common diseases.

We developed a mobile app known as PAS that allows users, including scientists and health care providers, to quickly and easily search a comprehensive worldwide database of genes, variants and related diseases and drugs.

Our project is focused on humans, but we will be extending research and development to include other species in the future and plan to develop a new web page and online tools.

What should patients know about the PAS app?

Although approaches that combine clinical and genomic information are becoming increasingly common, scientists and health care providers still face the daunting challenge of identifying what genes may be relevant to the part of the body or biological system they are studying, and how variants may impact health in unique ways for each patient. They need standard information to help them make health care decisions.

PAS brings together clinical, genetic and other health data and information to help map health conditions to their corresponding diseases, to benefit all users, including researchers, medical practitioners, pharmacists, life science students and even patients.

Patients can also access detailed information about their disease and prescribed medications. And individuals who have sequenced their DNA/RNA can use the app to easily search and access information on their genes and potential associated health conditions.

The COVID-19 pandemic also has highlighted the useful contribution of the app and our research. Despite many significant scientific and medical discoveries, the genetics of COVID19 remains far from clear. PAS allows users to look for and connect relevant information to COVID19, including genes, variants, and disease codes in health records.

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The Future of Precision Medicine - Rutgers Today

How Medicine Bow National Forest Got Its Name – Kgab

Medicine Bow National Forest is located in south-central Wyoming extending into Colorado. It is one of the Cowboy State's natural crown jewels. It started life as Medicine Bow Forest Reserve when it was designated by President Theodore Roosevelt in May of 1902. The legendary origin of the name goes way back.

Along with forest, Medicine Bow includes several mountain ranges of the Rocky Mountains: Gore Range, Flat Tops, Parks Range, Medicine Bow Mountains, Sierra Madre, and Laramie Range.

At these assemblies, there were ceremonial powwows for the cure of disease which, in the hybrid speech that developed between the Indians and the early settlers, was known as making medicine. Eventually, the settlers associated the terms making-medicine and making bow, and Medicine Bow resulted as the name for the locality. - US Forest Service

The name gained a foothold in popular culture thanks to Owen Wister's Wyoming-Territory set novel, The Virginian

Along with forest, Medicine Bow includes several mountain ranges of the Rocky Mountains: Gore Range, Flat Tops, Parks Range, Medicine Bow Mountains, Sierra Madre, parts of the Snowy Range, and Laramie Range.

The National Forest includes Medicine Bow Peak in the Medicine Bow Mountains. The mountain is the highest point in southern Wyoming at 12,018feet tall.

Thunder Basin National Grassland and the Routt National Forest (named forJohn N. Routt, the last territorial governor and first state governor of Colorado) are also part of Medician Bow.

In 1993, the consolidation of the Medicine Bow National Forest and Thunder Basin National Grassland with the Routt National Forest was proposed. The Chief of the Forest Service approved the consolidation in February 1995, and the forests were administratively combined. - US Forest Service

The story of the townof Medicine Bowstarted asanother bustling transcontinental stopwest of Cheyenne. The population, though,decreased in the post-Lincoln Highway era,when I-80 went around it.

WILDFIRE: The Latest on the Mullen Fire, burning in Medician Bow National Forest (October 2020)

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How Medicine Bow National Forest Got Its Name - Kgab

East Alabama Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine Player of the Week Nominees – Opelika Auburn News

Central-Phenix City running back Joseph McKay (23) stiff arms Auburn's James Hume (16) during the Auburn High vs. Central-Phenix City high school football game on Friday, Oct. 2, at Garrett-Harrison Stadium in Phenix City.

Nick Farrow, running back

Loachapoka

Farrow made the most of every carry he got in the Indians' shutout victory over Verbena. When the game was over, he had four carries for 149 yards and two touchdowns.

Joseph McKay, running back

Central-Phenix City

McKay made history for Central with back-to-back 200-yard performances to end September, and he came back strong on Thursday. McKay had 16 carries for 200 yards with two touchdowns to help the Red Devils take care of Prattville.

Juicy Hughley, running back

Reeltown

Hughley didn't get the ball much in the Rebels' blowout victory over Beulah, but when he did he made it count. Hughley had three carries for 123 yards and two touchdowns to help Reeltown take a 47-13 region victory.

Back

Vote for the Opelika-Auburn News Player of the Week at OANow.com/high-school. Voting ends at 11:59 p.m. (Central) Tuesday night.

*During the season, if a player wins Player of the Week, he is ineligible to be nominated the following week. He is eligible two weeks later.

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East Alabama Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine Player of the Week Nominees - Opelika Auburn News

WTEN: St. Peter’s Health Partners may Merge with Ellis Medicine – St. Peter’s Health Partners

WTEN reported on the virtual press conference where SPHP and Ellis Medicine announced signing a letter of intent to examine the formation of a joint affiliation between the two health systems.

From the story:

St. Peters Health Partners and Ellis Medicine may merge. Both health care systems have signed a letter of intent to examine a joint affiliation.

While a potential merger is in its early stages, St. Peters Health Partners and Ellis Medicine will be partaking in a review process over the next several months to help determine whether or not both health care systems will join together.

Representatives made it clear, that the pandemic is not the main reasoning behind this potential merger, adding that St. Peters Health Partners and Ellis Medicine have joined together in the pastworking on initiatives such as the Innovated Health Alliance of New York.

A final agreement will require the approval of both boards of trustees, as well as state and federal regulatory agencies.

Click here to watch the full report.

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WTEN: St. Peter's Health Partners may Merge with Ellis Medicine - St. Peter's Health Partners

CBHJ, School of Medicine and Wayne County develop toolkit of COVID-19 mitigation strategies for Michigan county jails – The South End

The Wayne State University School of Social Work Center for Behavioral Health and Justice collaborated with the Wayne County Jail to identify key mitigation strategies county jails can use to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in their facilities. The toolkit provides guidance for implementation of testing, contact tracing, information sharing and discharge planning, along with examples of practices put in place in the Wayne County Jail.

As the disease spread across Michigan and mitigation efforts began to emerge, county administrators worked with the Wayne State University School of Social Work Center for Behavioral Health and Justice and the School of Medicine to formulate strategies to slow the spread of the virus. Funding was provided from the Michigan Justice Fund to facilitate the collaborative efforts of community, public health, social work, criminal-legal judicial stakeholders and the development of four COVID-19 Mitigation Strategies that are expanded within the toolkit: 1) COVID-19 testing, 2) community contact tracing, 3) information sharing, 4) discharge planning.

Incarceration settings account for a large portion of the COVID-19 outbreaks nationally, surpassing other vulnerable settings such as nursing homes and food processing plants, so mitigating the spread in these facilities should be key to any community mitigation efforts said Brad Ray, director of the CBHJ.

Combining jail testing data with data regarding the surrounding community and region is important in informing decisions related to jail operations. Since March 2020, jails across the country have taken measures to prevent COVID-19 transmission, including verbal screening, freeing inmates, restricting movement within facilities, prohibiting visitation and suspending internal programming. However, few have implemented testing or implemented effective data measures.

This toolkit will provide better access to information and protocols on limiting contact with COVID-19 in our jails, said Jennifer Caruso, director of the Wayne County Clinical Services Division.

The goal of the toolkit is to provide the experience and knowledge gained thus far in Wayne County (Detroit) to other public county jails, as well as outline key considerations for jail facilities, and the successes, or barriers, of recommended practices from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other criminal justice, public health and community stakeholders. Mitigation strategies will differ for each jail depending on a number of factors. The recommendations contained in the toolkit should not supersede guidance from governing entities, such as state health and correctional departments or local public health agencies.

View the toolkitto learn more or contact the CBHJ for more information.

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CBHJ, School of Medicine and Wayne County develop toolkit of COVID-19 mitigation strategies for Michigan county jails - The South End

Regenerative Medicine Market | Increasing Prevalence of Chronic Diseases to Boost the Market Growth | Technavio – Business Wire

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The global regenerative medicine market size is poised to grow by USD 9.55 billion during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of over 20% throughout the forecast period, according to the latest report by Technavio. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. The report also provides the market impact and new opportunities created due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Download a Free Sample of REPORT with COVID-19 Crisis and Recovery Analysis.

The increasing prevalence of various chronic diseases is one of the primary factors which will drive regenerative medicine market growth during the forecast period. The incidence of many musculoskeletal disorders and bone injuries such as arthritis, osteoporosis, and severe limb trauma injuries requiring hospitalization is also increasing. Regenerative medicine opens the possibility of overcoming previously untreatable diseases using new treatment methods like processed cells for reconstructing tissues. It has the unique capability of altering the fundamental mechanisms of disease and also helps in reducing healthcare costs by eliminating the need for long-term hospitalization or drug regimes. This is leading to the increased adoption of regenerative medicine for the treatment of chronic diseases.

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Increasing Number of Clinical Trials will be a Key Market Trend

One of the most significant regenerative medicine market trends is the growing number of clinical trials. The rise in the number of clinical trials is primarily attributed to the increasing initiatives and support from various international and national public and private organizations. There are many regenerative medicine products at different stages of clinical trials ranging from discovery, pre-clinical phase to mid-stage and late-stage period. The increasing number of products completing clinical trials and receiving product approval will drive the regenerative medicine market to grow during the forecast period.

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Regenerative Medicine Market 2020-2024: Key Highlights

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Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market Sizing

Five Forces Analysis

Market Segmentation by Technology

Customer landscape

Geographic Landscape

Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendor Analysis

Appendix

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Regenerative Medicine Market | Increasing Prevalence of Chronic Diseases to Boost the Market Growth | Technavio - Business Wire

All the president’s medicine: How doctors are treating Donald Trump – ABC News

The leader of the free world is now fighting his own battle with a virus that's laid global siege. A concoction of some experimental treatments is helping him do it.

On Monday evening, after spending three nights undergoing treatment for COVID-19 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, President Donald Trump returned home to the White House.

Standing on the balcony, Trump removed his mask and gave a double thumbs up to the crowd.

Minutes later, in a produced video released via tweet, Trump claimed his victory over the virus.

"I didn't feel so good," Trump said to camera. "Two days ago I felt great, like better than I have in a long time... better than 20 years ago."

"Now I'm better -- and maybe I'm immune! I don't know. But don't let it dominate your lives. Get out there. Be careful. We have the best medicines in the world, and they're all happened, very shortly, and they're all getting approved."

Trump has been recovering under close watch from a team of physicians administering world-class care and special access to therapeutics. Monday, his personal physician, Dr. Sean Conley, told reporters Trump "has continued to improve" over the past 24 hours, having "met or exceeded all standard hospital discharge criteria."

There is not enough evidence to confirm when, or if, some level of immunity to COVID-19 occurs, and how long it might last. Experts say right now, the president is likely still contagious. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says COVID-19 patients should stay isolated for at least 10 days after the start of their symptoms or after receiving a positive test. Trump's doctors said Monday he "may not entirely be out of the woods yet," but they are using what they have called a "multi-pronged approach" in his treatment, which will continue as he recuperates at home.

Trump's diagnosis early Friday morning plunged a nation already in chaos into further crisis, uncertainty and fear for his well-being of urgent concern amid a pandemic that has now claimed the lives of more than 210,000 Americans.

Over the weekend, Trump assured the public he was feeling "much better" since being given a sundry mix of medication, some of it experimental, which he called "miracles coming down from God."

A car with US President Trump drives past supporters in a motorcade outside of Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland on October 4, 2020.

The full picture of what treatments Trump has received thus far is still evolving, as still-outstanding questions in the public interest are met with more fulsome, forthright detail. Monday, his medical team told reporters they continue to treat him with the intravenous antiviral Remdisivir, and have continued with the steroid Dexamethasone.

Of the combination of medicines and supplements now being deployed to help him recoup, many are not yet definitively known to beat the novel coronavirus, but are thought to help mediate the virus' symptoms and severity in the body. There is, as of now, no drug "approved" by the FDA for COVID-19 treatment, though some have been given emergency authorization.

Some experts have raised questions about the uniquely robust drug regimen now being administered to the president. Dr. Lew Kaplan, president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and a surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania, said these types of "non-standard processes" can " invite error." This exact combination of medications has not been tested together yet in large-scale studies.

NIH treatment panel guidelines member Dr. Mitchell Levy assured that there is no "miracle" drug yet available.

"If you look at our guidelines, we just don't think there's enough evidence to recommend one way or the other," Levy, chief of pulmonary critical care at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, told ABC News. "So little is proven. It's like the Wild West, and he's the president of the United States, and so you feel like: 'I want to do anything I can to prevent the disease from progressing.' That often drives us to do things outside of the normal standard. And that is never a good idea. There's a standard of care for a reason. With COVID-19, part of the problem is, we're never really sure what the standard of care is."

Other experts are more optimistic

"All of these treatments shift the odds in your favor," Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told ABC News. "None of them is a magic wand that suddenly makes you feel better," he added, explaining that Trump's treatment plan was made respecting the parameters of available science.

The president's doctors have said he is taking at least eight medicines and supplements. The timeline of Trump's illness remains murky; however, here's what we know about what the president is taking -- and when he started taking it.

Remdesivir

Before Trump was to check out of Walter Reed and head back to the White House Monday evening, his physicians told reporters they planned to administer the fourth dose of the antiviral drug Remdesivir. He has been receiving Remdesivir intravenous infusions since Friday, within 24 hours of revealing his diagnosis. Initially developed for Ebola treatment, it has solid evidence supporting its use in COVID-19 patients, according to the National Institutes of Health, and based on that promising potential, the FDA has issued emergency authorization for its use. Typically given to patients with severe infection, it works by hindering the virus' replication in the body.

Once Trump settles back at the residence, his doctors say, they've made arrangements for the fifth and final dose of his treatment course, Tuesday evening.

In this undated image from video provided by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020, vials are inspected at the company's facilities in New York state, for efforts on an experimental coronavirus antibody drug. Antibodies are proteins the body makes when an infection occurs; they attach to a virus and help the immune system eliminate it.

Regeneron monoclonal antibody "cocktail"

Trump is taking a cocktail of two synthetic, pharmaceutical versions of what occurs naturally in the body to fight off infection. A mix of monoclonal antibodies, this one made by biotech company Regeneron, is thought to be promising, though still in its experimental phase. Late last month, Regeneron published positive, yet preliminary data for its cocktail treatment showing it improved symptoms in patients without severe disease.

While it is not yet FDA-authorized, Trump has been granted access to it under "compassionate use," enabling him to get it outside of a clinical trial. A Regeneron spokesperson confirmed to ABC News that Trump's medical staff reached out to them for permission to use their monoclonal cocktail, and it was cleared with the FDA.

Dexamethasone

Trump's personal physician told reporters Monday afternoon that they continue to treat the president with the steroid Dexamethasone, in response to temporary drops in his oxygen levels.

A corticosteroid used for its anti-inflammatory effects, Dexamethasone has solid evidence supporting its use in COVID-19 patients, according to the National Institutes of Health. In severe cases it's thought steroids can fight the haywire inflammation caused by the virus; however in milder cases, one trial found "no benefit (and the possibility of harm) among patients who did not require oxygen."

When pressed by reporters Monday afternoon, Conley, Trump's personal physician admitted that the president had, in fact, been given supplemental oxygen twice since falling ill. Previously, Conley had said he was not sure if Trump had received it a second time, and would have to check with the nursing staff.

Regarding those two times Trump received supplemental oxygen, Conley said, "it wasn't required."

Schaffner told ABC News that though the press and public have not seen the president's chest X-rays or CAT scans, prescribing the steroid is "a borderline indication within the physicians' prerogative."

Whatever was on those CAT scans, Schaffner said, along with his oxygen levels, seems "undoubtedly what targeted physicians' decision to add dexamethasone," in hopes that it would moderate his immune system response's "collateral damage."

Famotidine

Famotidine, more commonly known by its brand-name Pepcid, is an FDA-approved for heartburn, not COVID-19. Some early, observational studies showed improved survival amongst hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Still, experts caution that observational studies are no substitute for high-quality, randomized trials designed to demonstrate a treatment's true effectiveness. A trial for an intravenous infusion of famotidine is still ongoing.

Zinc

This is not the first time Trump has said he is taking Zinc. In mid-May, Trump told reporters he had been taking both Zinc and Hydroxychloroquine as a "preventative" measure. On Friday, as his doctors listed off the treatments he would now receive for his infection, Zinc again appeared on the list. As an over-the-counter supplement, Zinc is subject to less regulatory oversight. Its virus-fighting properties have shown mixed results in prior studies. Schaffner described Zinc, along with Vitamin D, as "adjunctive therapies, the benefits of which are not known."

"There is some data that Zinc is helpful if you have the common cold," he said. "But not COVID."

Vitamin D

Trump's doctor announced the president is also taking a vitamin D supplement. Studies show an association between vitamin D deficiency and a greater risk of and dying from COVID-19. However, most people get enough vitamin D from their diet. At this point, studies have not demonstrated that taking a vitamin D supplement can help fend off COVID-19 related illness, although there is an ongoing, randomized trial that may offer clarity.

Melatonin

Melatonin is a naturally-occurring hormone with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties also helping regulate circadian rhythms. Some researchers have suggested that the supplement might help compliment other COVID-19 treatments. At this point, research showing that this supplement helps COVID-19 patients is limited, but there is at least one small, randomized study ongoing in the U.S.

Aspirin

Available over the counter, aspirin have been taken internationally as concomitant treatment for COVID-19 -- in response to the strange prevalence of clotting and pulmonary embolism doctors have seen crop up in some patients. Aspirin may also help reduce low grade fevers. Saturday, the president's medical team said he no longer had a fever, after less than a day's time. On Monday afternoon, his medical team told reporters Trump "has not been on any fever reducing medications for over 72 hours," but declined to elaborate.

For people for people who don't have increased cardiovascular risks or COVID-19, daily aspirin use is no longer recommended as a way to reduce the risk of heart attacks, because the risks are now believed to outweigh the benefits.

Before taking any medication, people should always check with their doctor, as every patient's situation is different.

This report was featured in the Monday, Oct. 5, 2020, episode of "Start Here," ABC News' daily news podcast.

"Start Here" offers a straightforward look at the day's top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, the ABC News app or wherever you get your podcasts.

ABC News' Eric Strauss and Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.

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All the president's medicine: How doctors are treating Donald Trump - ABC News

Navigating the 2020 flu season – SCNow

Nine-month-old Laura Hope Derrick plays with her new book after receiving her first dose of the flu shot at HopeHealth Pediatrics in Florence. She will return after 30 days for her second dose. Children age 6 months to 8 years getting vaccinated for the first time and those who have only previously gotten one dose of vaccine should get two doses of vaccine this season spaced at least four weeks apart. Your childs health care provider can tell you if your child needs two doses.

After more than seven months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are approaching winter and flu season. The influenza virus (flu) and its potential confounding effects are forefront in the minds of health care professionals.

How can you prepare for both the flu season and COVID-19? Experts are in debate, but a few points can be gained by looking at each virus and their past effects.

COVID-19

As of Oct. 1, there have been approximately 147,000 cases, 9,000 hospitalizations and 3,500 deaths in South Carolina alone. Transmission primarily occurs person-to-person via respiratory spread with shedding of infectious material 48 hours prior to any symptoms and 10 or more days after symptom onset.

The highest shedding of infectious material occurs during that period prior to any symptoms. Once exposed, it can take up to 14 days for any symptoms to occur. Symptoms, initially stated as cough, fever and shortness of breath, have been expanded to include fatigue, headache, nasal congestion, muscle aches, sore throat, new loss of smell or taste, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Influenza

The 2019-2020 flu season, as of April 25, had 6,639 cases, 2,954 hospitalizations and 126 deaths in South Carolina. Transmission primary occurs person-to-person via respiratory spread. Shedding of infectious material can occur 48 hours prior to any symptoms and seven or more days after symptom onset. The highest shedding of infectious material occurs during symptoms and, once exposed, it can take up to four days for symptoms to occur. Symptoms include fever, cough, fatigue, headache, nasal congestion, muscle aches, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

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Navigating the 2020 flu season - SCNow

Medicines neglected half: The relevance of palliative care is growing. In Covid times, it can provide total – The Times of India Blog

The relevance of palliative care is growing thanks to the rise in non-communicable diseases and chronic lifelong conditions. The list of those who need palliative care is keeping pace with the increase in the average human life span. Earlier, it was primarily restricted to people with cancer. Now those with HIV/AIDS, neurodegenerative disorders (including forms of dementia), progressive neuromuscular diseases, metabolic disorders, terminal organ failures, cardiac or respiratory conditions, liver conditions, and others, are all included.

Palliative care today is therefore no longer just for terminal patients. There are people living with incurable health conditions, and palliative care can give them a good quality of life provided they use it early. Yet palliative care is not recognised as it should be, and access to it is restricted. This not only impacts a large population negatively but hurts the socially and economically disadvantaged the most.

According to the WHO, approximately 40 million people annually are in need of palliative care, of whom 78% live in low and middle income countries. Of the estimated 21 million children who have palliative care needs, almost 98% live in low and middle income countries. Add to this list a new fast emerging group of long haulers, those who will have to live with the long term side effects of SARS-CoV-2, and you have a veritable deluge of people who need effective symptom control and psychosocial and spiritual support, with little hope of getting it from existing health systems.

Making palliative care accessible to all those who need it is not an impossible dream. The obstacles that stand in its path can be easily overcome. They are a lack of awareness among policy makers, health professionals and the public about what palliative care is and the benefits it can offer if integrated into existing health systems, especially at the primary level.

We are also living in a cultural environment that would rather deny death, and view it as a medical failure, than accept it as a corollary of life. Another misconception is that improving access to opioids like oral morphine, so essential for meaningful pain control, will lead to increased substance abuse.

Looking forward, besides changing attitudes and altering misconceptions, national health policies and systems will have to reboot themselves to include palliative care as a vital component at all levels of health care. They will have to earmark funds to create new services as well as invest in services currently being operated, primarily by NGOs, who are doing a commendable job, but are limited in their reach and ability to raise funds.

Training in palliative care for all health care professionals, especially for health workers at the grass roots level, will have to receive priority along with access to essential medicines, like opioids for pain relief. Local communities must be mobilised for this effort.

The simple fact is that palliative care not only improves lives but also extends life. There are evidence based studies that verify this. Even if it is only a few extra days or weeks, these are precious additions for both patients and their family members. On the other hand, suffering has its limits and if not attended to early can take lives.

And I am not only referring to physical pain but to mental and spiritual pain as well. If we do not attend to this aspect, the mandate of WHO to promote total health wellbeing will go unmet. Psychiatrists tell us that they already see a rise in mental illness brought on by increased anxiety, fear of premature death and physical isolation. Moreover, dying today has become a health hazard for families as they are separated from their loved ones at this vital time, unable to say their final goodbyes in person or even to perform the final rites and post-bereavement rituals that provide solace.

The Covid-19 lockdown has brought on fresh challenges for those who are active in palliative care. Mahesh (name changed), a farmer from UP, was under treatment in a cancer hospital in Delhi. He, like almost 80% of those diagnosed with cancer in our country, had advanced disease. He had returned for his second cycle of chemotherapy. His plan was to have his treatment and leave as he could not afford to live in the city. When he arrived, he was surprised to find the hospital doors shut as it had been turned into a Covid-19 facility.

Another poignant real life tragedy. A distraught young man was pleading for help as his uncle lay dying on the hospital pavement. He wanted to see his loved ones back home before dying but the lockdown had begun and they had no money. Who could help him?

It was a palliative care NGO counsellor who responded to his plight and connected him with his family members through a video call. As the elder in the family, he talked to them, blessed them and said his final goodbyes. After his death, in accordance with his wishes, the last rites were performed, via a video call again, by a priest in his village.

My care, my comfort is the message of this years World Hospice & Palliative Care Day. I appeal to policy makers to make it a day of comfort for everyone in India by ensuring palliative care becomes an integral part of our health system so that it is accessible to all.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Medicines neglected half: The relevance of palliative care is growing. In Covid times, it can provide total - The Times of India Blog