Category: General Interest

Categories : Cardiovascular Disease General Interest PaediatricsTags :

Young Boy’s Triumph Over Rare Heart Condition

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Photo by Danijel Durkovic on Unsplash
Photo by Danijel Durkovic on Unsplash

Hannah Lewis was expecting to learn the sex of her first child at 20 weeks of her pregnancy. Anxious about becoming a mother at just 19, Lewis was thrilled when she learned she was having a boy.

However, with a worried look on her face, her doctor told her that the baby’s organs looked healthy – except for his heart.

The baby was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, or HLHS, a rare condition where the heart’s left side is underdeveloped, doubling the workload for the right side. Days later, doctors at a children’s hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, confirmed the diagnosis.

But Lewis said her faith gave her the strength to believe she was meant to raise this child as a single mother, as well as her own experiences being raised by a single mother herself.

The rest of the pregnancy was filled with checkups and tests but remained uneventful. Then, at 37 weeks, doctors realised he was developing foetal hydrops, a life-threatening condition in which an abnormal amount of fluid accumulates in the tissue around the lungs, heart or abdomen, or under the skin.

Even in shock from induced labour followed by a caesarean, she remembers hearing her son’s first cries:

“They let me see him for just a second,” she said. “I loved him at first sight obviously, but I was super scared because they took him directly to the heart cath lab and for like 12 hours, we didn’t know what was going on. I was very sick so they wouldn’t let me go see him.”

She named him Bennett after learning the moniker means “God’s gift of hope” or “little blessed one”.

“It was so fitting for what he was about to face,” Lewis said.

HLHS is usually treated with either three different surgeries at certain stages of development or a heart transplant.

Because of the complications introduced by foetal hydrops, Bennett Sayles was 6 days old when he underwent his first open-heart surgery. Although the procedure went well, Bennett remained in critical condition on a ventilator. Then, when he was 2 months old, he had a stroke.

After three open-heart surgeries, 9 month old Bennett had stabilised enough to go home. But shortly before he was discharged, he went into cardiac arrest, and was without a heartbeat for six minutes.

“Then, out of nowhere, his heartbeat came back and it was strong,” Lewis said.

Two weeks later, days before his first Christmas, Bennett went home for the first time. After he turned 2, Bennett underwent the second HLHS surgery, which didn’t work and days later, he needed a fifth open-heart surgery.

Some weeks later he went home, but in hours, Bennett was back in the emergency room with staph infection in his chest. However, Bennett made it home again in time for Christmas. And ever since that series of setbacks, things have improved for him.

“His mental capacity is anywhere from 3 to 5 years old, but he’s got this amazing personality,” Lewis said. “He’s just got such a caring heart. When he’s in the room, he really does light it up and he changes the way you see things. I’m inspired every day because of how amazing he is and he doesn’t let anything hold him back or stop him.”

Two years ago, Bennett’s doctors determined that he would never be a candidate for the other surgeries needed to treat HLHS. He could, however, become eligible for a heart transplant.

“It’s debatable whether he’ll get there, but having known Bennett for the last nine years is not surprising at all that he has progressed to this point,” said Dr. Gerald Johnson, the boy’s paediatric cardiologist. “One of the beauties of working with kids is that they fight and they work to get better, and they work through things in ways that we as adults don’t necessarily do. Bennett’s been a particular fighter on that score and his mother is very proactive and in tune with his needs.”

Raising Bennett has taught Lewis and her family to focus on the present. “We don’t know what’s in store for Bennett,” Lewis said. “He could live his whole life like this or we can have him just a few more years. We love every minute we get to have with him.”

Source: American Heart Association

Categories : COVID General InterestTags :

Kids Cunningly Spoof COVID Tests to Skip School

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Photo by Greenvalley Pictures on Unsplash

School children in the UK have found an ingenious way to get out of school — by deliberately compromising COVID tests using soft drinks or fruit juice to produce false positives.

Children returned to in-person learning in March in the UK, with regular COVID testing to monitor for infection and infected students being sent home. 

However, after three months of regular testing, a school in Merseyside had reports of students who had found that either drinking fruit-flavored juice or misusing them as an analyte had the potential to provide a false-positive result.  

The trick involves “spoofing” a lateral flow device (LFD) which is designed to detect COVID antibodies.

LFDs come in the form of cartridges containing a nitrocellulose membrane strip and absorbent paper with dried test reagents affixed, which include antibodies labelled with gold particles for visibility. When these reagents are mixed with the analyte from a test sample, they migrate through the nitrocellulose strip and over the test (T) line where the SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibody is located.

A key part of the trick is not mixing the sample fluid with the buffer, BBC’s Mark Lorch found.

The liquid buffer solution maintains an ideal pH for the antibodies, and is key to the correct function of the test. The critical role of the buffer is highlighted by if cola is mixed with the buffer, then the LFDs behave correctly, returning a negative result for COVID.

Without the buffer, the antibodies in the test are fully exposed to the acidic pH of the beverages. And this has a dramatic effect on their structure and function. Proteins such as antibodies fold up into very specific structures, and even a small change to the chains can dramatically impact a protein’s function. Changing the pH could cause the antibodies used in the test to no longer function correctly and incorrectly binding. By diluting the drink

In a study made available on the medRxiv preprint server, researchers tested the ability of various types of soft drinks to produce false positive results. They found that the presence of sugar and acidity was necessary to produce the false positives. The researchers also recommended 

Source: BBC News

Categories : COVID General InterestTags :

Month-long COVID Coma Left Ambulance Worker ‘Scarred’

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Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash

A UK ambulance worker who contracted COVID and was in an induced coma for over a month says his family is psychologically scarred by what happened.

Paul Clements, 59, had major organ failure as well as several infections, leaving him in intensive care at Bristol Royal Infirmary. Doctors told him he was lucky to survive the 33-day induced coma. Speaking to the BBC, Mr Clements said that the time passed “in the blink of an eye”.

“The last thing I remember is being handed a cup of tea by my daughter,” said Mr Clements. He was agitated, complaining that the tea tasted awful, prompting concern from his family.

“I put it down, and then I blinked. I then found myself lying on a bed looking at a nurse,” he recalled. “I told her that I’d put my tea down somewhere.”

He said the nurse laughed in response, and then explained to him that he “had been unconscious for 33 days.”

On 19 March 2020, Mr Celements began to have COVID symptoms. Five days later, he was rushed into hospital.

“They tried three times to wake me up. The doctors told me I had pneumonia, a chest infection, an abdominal infection, kidney failure and liver failure – all wrapped up in COVID.” Up to a third of hospitalised COVID patients in the UK’s first wave had ‘do not resuscitate’ orders, recorded on or just before their admission.

He says that “Trying to get my head around that was almost impossible. Even now they have no idea why I survived.”

At the time, his family weren’t allowed to visit the Bristol Royal Infirmary where he was due to COVID restrictions.

“It was hell, absolute hell,” said Paul’s wife, Kerri. “Every time the phone rings you’re on edge thinking this is a call we don’t want. Listening out for his breathing every night, if he coughs I’m on edge, if he says he doesn’t feel well we’re back on edge.”

Mr Clements spent a total of three months in hospital before being leaving the ward to applause by the staff.

He returned to his work as an emergency care assistant six months later, with South Western Ambulance Service where has been for the past 38 years. He acknowledges the close call he had. “Unfortunately in my job I’ve put people in body bags and taken them to the mortuary,” he said.

“I spent some time in hospital trying to get my head around it and realised that could’ve been me, and the reality of it is so scary.”

Source: BBC News

Categories : Diseases, Syndromes and Conditions General InterestTags :

Study Reveals Mediaeval Plague Victims Buried With Care and Attention

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Photo by Peter Kvetny on Unsplash

Mediaeval plague victims in the UK were mostly buried with care and attention, according to a new study from Cambridge University. 

In the mid-14th century, Europe was devastated by the Black Death which killed between 40 and 60 per cent of the population. For centuries afterward, waves of plague would continue to strike the region.

Due to the rapid onset of death in the absence of antibiotic treatment (less than a week for bubonic plague and under 48h for pneumonic plague), the disease leaves no visible evidence on the skeleton, so until now archaeologists have been unable to identify individuals who died of plague unless they were buried in mass graves.

Although it has been long believed that most plague victims in fact received an individual burial, this has been impossible to confirm until now.

By studying DNA extracted from the teeth of individuals who died at this time, researchers from the Wellcome Trust-funded After the Plague project, based at the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, have identified the presence of Yersinia Pestis, the bacterial pathogen that causes plague. The study is available to read online in the European Journal of Archaeology.

These include people who received normal individual burials at a parish cemetery and friary in Cambridge and in the nearby village of Clopton.

Lead author Craig Cessford of the University of Cambridge explained: “These individual burials show that even during plague outbreaks individual people were being buried with considerable care and attention. This is shown particularly at the friary where at least three such individuals were buried within the chapter house. The Cambridge Archaeological Unit conducted excavations on this site on behalf of the University in 2016-2017.”

The individual at the parish of All Saints by the Castle in Cambridge was also buried with care; this stand in contrast to the apocalyptic language used to describe the abandonment of this church in 1365 when it was reported that the church was partly in ruins and ‘the bones of dead bodies are exposed to beasts’.”

The study also shows that some plague victims in Cambridge did, as expected, receive mass burials.

Yersinia Pestis was also identified in several parishioners from St Bene’t’s, who were found buried together in a large trench in the churchyard excavated by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit on behalf of Corpus Christi College.

Soon afterwards, this part of the churchyard was transferred to Corpus Christi College, which was founded by the St Bene’t’s parish guild to commemorate the dead including the victims of the Black Death. For centuries, the members of the College would walk over the mass burial every day on the way to the parish church.

Cessford concluded, “Our work demonstrates that it is now possible to identify individuals who died from plague and received individual burials. This greatly improves our understanding of the plague and shows that even in incredibly traumatic times during past pandemics people tried very hard to bury the deceased with as much care as possible.”

Source: University of Cambridge

Journal information: “Beyond Plague Pits: Using Genetics to Identify Responses to Plague in Medieval Cambridgeshire” – Craig Cessford, Christiana L. Scheib, Meriam Guellil, Marcel Keller, Craig Alexander, Sarah A. Inskip and John E. Robb. European Journal of Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2021.19

Categories : Cancer General InterestTags :

CNN Anchor Christiane Amanpour Reveals Her Ovarian Cancer Diagnosis

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Photo by Obi Onyeador on Unsplash

CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour told viewers on Monday that she has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

The 63 year-old international news veteran told viewers she had had “major successful surgery to remove it” and will now undergo several months of chemotherapy, adding that she was “very confident”.

Amanpour, who works in CNN’s London studio, said she feels “fortunate to have health insurance through work and incredible doctors who are treating me in a country underpinned by, of course, the brilliant NHS,” referencing the UK’s National Health Service.

After four weeks off, she said in Monday’s announcement, “I’m telling you this in the interest of transparency but in truth really mostly as a shoutout to early diagnosis.” Pointing out “millions of women around the world”, she added that she wanted to “urge women to educate themselves on this disease; to get all the regular screenings and scans that you can; to always listen to your bodies; and of course to ensure that your legitimate medical concerns are not dismissed or diminished.”

Amanpour has decades of experience reporting around the world, covering a wide range of conflicts and crises.

Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death in women diagnosed with gynaecological cancers. It is also the fifth most frequent cause of death in women, in general. The symptoms, such as bloated, swollen or painful stomach, are easily mistaken for less serious health problems, making diagnosis difficult. Most cases are only diagnosed at an advanced stage, leading to poor outcomes. Existing screening tests unfortunately have a low predictive value.

Standard care treatment includes surgery and platinum-based chemotherapy; however, anti-angiogenic bevacizumab and Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors are gaining ground in the treatment of this disease.

Source: BBC News

Categories : General Interest Healthcare Politics and RegulationsTags :

Meet the Two Women in the Running for SA’s Top Medical Job

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Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize is in hot water over alleged procurement fraud for a R150 million COVID contract, and is widely expected to step down shortly.

President Cyril Ramaphosa is reportedly weighing up two candidates to replace Dr Mkhize as health minister.

The candidates are the former Gauteng health MEC Dr Gwen Ramokgopa, (who took over following the Life Esidimeni tragedy) and Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who, as Health Minister saw the overhaul of the country’s apartheid-era healthcare systems.

As an anti-Apartheid activist, Dr Ramokgopa held various leadership positions. She qualified as a medical doctor (MBChB) in 1989 and obtained her Master’s in Public Health (MPH) in 2007. She worked as a Medical Officer at the Dr George Mukhari (then Ga-Rankuwa) Hospital until 1992.

Having served once as the Gauteng health MEC in 1999,  Dr Ramokgopa took on the role deputy health minister from 2010 to 2014. She succeeded Qedani Mahlangu as Gauteng health MEC following the shameful Life Esidimeni tragedy involving the deaths of at least 94 mental health patients released from private mental healthcare facilities to 27 unlicensed facilities. In a  statement, she vowed to tackle waste and corruption.

Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma completed her MBChB at the University of Bristol in 1978, and took part in underground ANC activities. During Mandela’s presidency, she was appointed Minister of Health, and courted controversy by voicing support for Virodene, an ‘HIV cure’ which attracted heavy criticism and which was never approved.

She then served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1999 to 2009, and then Minister of Home Affairs to 2012, where she turned around a department mired by mismanagement. Despite stubborn resistance from French-speaking nations, she was elected the African Union’s (AU) Chairperson from 2012 to 2017 and was praised for focusing on gender issues. After this, she began vying for the ANC presidency as an MP. In 2019, she was appointed Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.

During South Africa’s lockdown, she memorably rose to internet fame for using “zol” to refer to cannabis when giving reasons for the tobacco ban.

Categories : General Interest Obstetrics & GynaecologyTags :

South African Woman Gives Birth to 10 Babies in World First

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Photo by William Fortunato from Pexels

In a world first, a Gauteng woman has given birth to 10 babies. It was only last month when Malian woman Halima Cissé had set the record when she gave birth to nine children in Morocco.

Gosiame Thamara Sithole, 37, delivered her seven boys and three girls by Caesarean section at 29 weeks along last night at a Pretoria hospital, according to her husband Teboho Tsotetsi. 

While such large numbers are usually a result of fertility treatment, Sithole had told the Pretoria News that her pregnancy was natural. She already has a pair of six-year-old twins.

Sithole said in an interview that she was shocked and fascinated by the pregnancy.

The retail store manager was told she had sextuplets, before that was revised to octuplets and finally decuplets because two foetuses were hidden in the fallopian tubes.

“I am shocked by my pregnancy. It was tough at the beginning. I was sick. It was hard for me. It’s still tough but I am used to it now. I don’t feel the pain anymore, but it’s still a bit tough. I just pray for God to help me deliver all my children in a healthy condition, and for me and my children to come out alive. I would be pleased about it,” Sithole said.

At first, she was dubious when the doctors informed her she was pregnant with octuplets.

“I didn’t believe it. I doubted it. I was convinced that if it was more, it would be twins or triplets, not more than that. When the doctor told me, I took time to believe it. Even when I saw the scans I didn’t believe it. But, as time went by, I realised it was indeed true. I battled to sleep at night though.”

Sithole had worried a great deal about her unborn children.

“How would they fit in the womb? Would they survive? What if they came out conjoined at the head, in the stomachs or hands? Like, what would happen? I asked myself all these questions until the doctor assured me that my womb was starting to expand inside. God made a miracle and my children stayed in the womb without any complications.”

Tsotetsi, who is unemployed, also said he was shocked when he heard the news.

“I could not believe it. I felt like one of God’s chosen children. I felt blessed to be given these kinds of blessings when many people out there need children. It’s a miracle which I appreciate. I had to go do my own research on whether a person could really conceive eight children. It was a new thing. I knew about twins, triplets and even quadruplets,” Tsotetsi said.

“But after I found out that these things do happen, and saw my wife’s medical records, I got even more excited. I can’t wait to have them in my arms.”

Professor Dini Mawela, deputy head of the school of medicine at the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, said Sithole’s case was rare and usually the result of fertility treatments. Because it was a “high risk” situation, the children will spend the next few months in an incubator, she said. Termed ‘grand multiparity‘, such pregnancies can be risky, and a pregnancy with 10 babies is of course unprecedented.  

“It’s quite a unique situation. I don’t know how often it happens. It’s extremely high risk (pregnancy). It’s a highly complex and high-risk situation. The danger is that, because there is not enough space in the womb for the children, the tendency is that they will be small. What would happen is that they would take them out pre-term because there is a risk if they keep them longer in there. The babies will come out small, chances of survival compromised. But all this depends on how long she carried them for.”

Source: IOL

Categories : General Interest Neurodegenerative DiseasesTags :

A Neurologist Confronts His Alzheimer’s Disease

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Image by valelopardo from Pixabay

Neurologist Daniel Gibbs, MD, PhD, related his experiences of having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and taking part in clinical trials of possible treatments for it.

“I’m fascinated by this disease that, for my entire career as a scientist and a neurologist, I could only observe from the outside,” Dr Gibbs wrote in his new book, A Tattoo on my Brain: A Neurologist’s Personal Battle against Alzheimer’s Disease. “Now I’ve got a front-row seat — or rather, I’m in the ring with the tiger.”

Dr Gibbs stumbled upon his diagnosis accidentally, when he and his wife tested their DNA to learn about their ancestry that he discovered he had two copies of the APOE4 allele, the most common genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease.

Because he had an early diagnosis, Dr Gibbs has volunteered to participate in several Alzheimer’s clinical trials in recent years, including one for aducanumab, the controversial Alzheimer’s treatment the FDA is expected to decide upon in June.

During a trial of aducanumab, he developed a serious amyloid-related imaging abnormality (ARIA) involving both brain oedema and intracerebral haemorrhage, which he recovered from. Dr Gibbs went on to co-author a case report about the clinical course and treatment of his complication. In the wake of much controversy, aducanumab has today received FDA approval.

MedPage Today interviewed Dr Gibbs on his experiences and perspectives since his Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

Dr Gibbs said that “as a patient and as a neurologist” it is a coping mechanism which gives hime “a huge advantage” to be able to look at the disease through his two “masks”. “Looking at it from the neurologist scientist’s point of view is a lot less threatening and is intellectually very satisfying. I enjoy reading and writing about it,” he said.

Regarding his future, he said: “One of the messages I try to get across in the book is that you need to plan for the future while you are still cognitively intact, and make very clearly known what you want done when you’re unable to give instructions about your care. I’ve done that. My family knows, my doctor knows: I don’t want anything done if I can’t participate in making decisions.” 

Dr Gibbs said he was excited to volunteer for the aducanumab study partly because of the way aducanumab was discovered; a reverse-engineered antibody found in cognitively normal aged people. Another reason was the more aggressive nature of the trial. He explained the meaning of “tattoo on my brain” alluded to in the title of his book, an adverse effect of the experimental drug.

“For me, a ‘tattoo on my brain’ has two forms. In the ARIA — the amyloid-related imaging abnormality complication I had from aducanumab — there was both leakage of fluid causing swelling in my brain and leakage of blood, microhaemorrhages. Those went away, as did the swelling in my brain, but they left behind this haemosiderin, this iron-containing pigment which is not dissimilar to tattoo ink, if you will.

“I haven’t had a recent MRI scan, but at least the last one I looked at a year or two ago still showed those little dots of hemosiderin. In a literal sense, that is the tattoo on my brain. In the figurative sense, the tattoo is a symbol of a kind of coming out of the closet and showing something that you’re not ashamed of.” 

The book, he said, is about people with early disease and the children of people with Alzheimer’s disease because they’re at risk. The aim is to “loosen up the conversation” so that interventions such as lifestyle changes can take place.

He suspects that the first disease-modifying drugs will be effective in early stages, which are going to be really hard studies to do. Recruiting participants without cognitive impairment but the pathology of  of Alzheimer’s disease is extremely difficult.
Finally, he offered some advice on dealing with Alzheimer’s.

“What I would recommend is for everybody to start doing things that are good for them. A heart-healthy diet is good for you in so many ways. It’s hard to say that’s not a good idea, although we’re a country of hamburger-loving people. And exercise — I don’t know how you overcome that bar of convincing people if you want to be a healthy 70- or 80-year-old, you have to exercise and get a good diet. And good sleep.”

Source:MedPage Today

Categories : General Interest NeurologyTags :

Researchers Discover that Humans can Readily Develop Echolocation Ability

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The ability for humans to sense their surrounding space with reflected sounds might sound like a superhero’s ability, but it is a skill that is developed by some blind people, who use clicks as a form of echolocation.

Echolocation is an ability known in dolphins, whales and bat species, which occurs when such animals emit a sound that reflects off objects in the environment, returning echoes that provide information about the surrounding space.

Existing research has shown that some blind people may use click-based echolocation to judge spaces and improve their navigation skills. Armed with this information, a team of researchers led by Dr Lore Thaler explored how people acquire this skill.

Over the course of a 10-week training programme, the team investigated how blindness and age affect learning of click-based echolocation. They also studied how learning this skill affects the daily lives of people who are blind.

Both blind and sighted people between 21 and 79 years of age participated in this study, which provided a training course of 10 weeks. Blind participants also took part in a 3-month follow up survey assessing how the training affected their daily life.

Both sighted and blind people improved considerably on all measures, and in some cases performed as well as expert echolocators did at the end of training. A surprising result was that a few sighted people even performed better than those who were blind.

However, neither age nor blindness limited participants’ rate of learning or in their ability to apply their echolocation skills to novel, untrained tasks.

Furthermore, in the follow up survey, all participants who were blind reported improved mobility, and 83% reported better independence and wellbeing.

Age or vision not a limitation

Overall, the results suggest that the ability to learn click-based echolocation is not strongly limited by age or level of vision. This has positive implications for the rehabilitation of people with vision loss or in the early stages of progressive vision loss.

Click-based echolocation is not presently taught as part of mobility training and rehabilitation for blind people. There is also the possibility that some people are reluctant to use click-based echolocation due to a perceived stigma around  the click sounds in social environments.

Despite this, the results indicate that both blind people who use echolocation and people new to echolocation are confident to use it in social situations, indicating that the perceived stigma is likely less than believed.

Source: Durham University

Journal information: Human click-based echolocation: Effects of blindness and age, and real-life implications in a 10-week training program, PLOS ONE (2021)

Categories : Gender General InterestTags :

Reviewing 50 Years of Progress in Women’s Health

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Woman receiving a mammogram. Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

As abortion comes under threat in the United States, a perspective article looks back at the progress made in women’s health, seeing significant improvements in areas like equitable access to health care and survivorship.

However, the article’s authors argue there is still a long road ahead, despite all of the progress.

The United States, for example, still has the highest rate of maternal death among high-income countries, particularly among African American women.

As the United States Supreme Court prepares to hear a Mississippi abortion case challenging the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, some experts are questioning whether the progress made in women’s health may be winding back.

Cynthia A Stuenkel, MD, clinical professor of medicine at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, and JoAnn E Manson, MD, DrPH, professor of epidemiology at Harvard TH Chan School Of Public Health, review 50 years of progress in women’s health in a perspective article published online in New England Journal of Medicine.

“Reproductive justice is broader than the pro-choice movement and encompasses equity and accessibility of reproductive health care, as well as enhanced pathways to parenthood,” wrote the authors.

In addition to Roe v. Wade, they authors reviewed advances in reproductive health including:

  • The 1972 US Supreme Court ruling on Eisenstadt vs Baird ensuring unmarried persons equal access to contraception
  • The 2010 Affordable Care Act in the US made contraceptives an insured preventive health benefit
  • The Reproductive technology advances, including in vitro fertilisation, genetic testing and fertility preservation by cancer specialists

Advances in women’s health encompass more than reproduction, the authors wrote. As interest and focus has expanded to all stages of a woman’s life, science has begun to catch up to the specialised needs of women and sex-specific risk factors for chronic diseases that disproportionately affect women’s health, such as autoimmune diseases, mental health, osteoporosis and coronary heart disease.

  • Progress in breast cancer care and prevention resulted in a five-year overall survival rate of 90%
  • The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine reduced cervical cancer mortality fell by 50%

“Moving forward, it will be essential to recognise and study intersectional health disparities, including disparities based on sex, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, income and disability status. Overcoming these challenges and addressing these inequities will contribute to improved health for everyone,” wrote the authors.

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Stuenkel, C. A., et al. (2021) Women’s Health — Traversing Medicine and Public Policy. New England Journal of Medicine. doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2105292.