Katie McCurdy has myasthenia gravis, a rare autoimmune condition that she acquired when she was 13. This conditions affects the muscles of the body, but especially those that control eyes and eyelids, facial expression, swallowing and sometimes breathing. It’s been an ordeal for her, from diagnosis to now when she goes to the doctor and tries to...
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The homey aroma of fresh baked bread, the mouth-watering fragrance of chocolate chip cookies just out of the oven, the loamy scent of autumnal leaves raked into high piles: cells in our noses snatch chemicals in the air which fire neurons in a part of the brain called the olfactory bulb. From the bulb information zips to other areas of the brain. The...
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In June the CDC asked almost 10,000 respondents in the US the question, “Have you delayed or avoided medical care due to concerns related to COVID-19?” The survey question found that 41 percent answered yes to this statement. Twelve percent avoided urgent or emergency care and another 32 percent stated they had avoided routine care. Some of...
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CLL or Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia results from a mutation in B lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell that develops in the bone marrow. B-cells produce antibodies, an important part of the immune system. CLL can be slow growing, with small slow changes in the blood counts over years or fast growing, where cancerous B-lymphocytes crowd out the bone...
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When it comes to ovarian cancer, finding the right kind of doctor for your surgery impacts survival. Gynecologic oncologists are the surgeons of choice. In some studies when comparing general surgeons to gynecologic oncologist surgeons, having gynecologic oncologists improved survival rate significantly. The Foundation for Women’s Health can...
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Something unusual happened when Professor Andrew Sewell and the T-Cell Modulation Group at the University of Cardiff put the blood of a healthy donor in a petri dish with some cancer cells. What grew in the blood was a T-cell that no one had seen before. This T-cell attacked the cancer cells and destroyed them. Sewell and his team did what all bench...
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You may not believe this – after a summer with mosquitoes buzzing around you – but there are of these pesky insects that don’t bite humans specifically. They just aren’t that interested in us. Researchers at Princeton University wanted to know why. So they went to Africa to find Aedes aegypti aegypti, the mosquito that spreads yellow...
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Theories abound as we learn more about COVID-19 but one that makes a lot of sense has to do with viral dosage. There is a term “LD50” which is the virus dose at which fifty percent of those who are exposed, die. Research determining this dosage is done in experiments on animals, varying the dose of virus to calculate a dose-mortality curve. ...
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My name is Rick Davis. This summer, I interned remotely for Medivizor from my home in Cincinnati, Ohio. I am a sophomore studying finance and economic consulting at Indiana University. As much as the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted my life, its impact was not fully realized until a member of my household tested positive for the virus. My father...
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Most people are taking statins to lower their cholesterol, right? It’s about reducing your risk of heart disease and stroke. Well, now there is some recent research that finds an association between taking statins and survival of a colorectal cancer diagnosis. This research is a review of almost 30,000 medical records from the National Veterans...
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Recent research presented at a virtual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research 1 indicates the need for greater care and continued social distancing for those who are in treatment for cancer and – in one study that was presented – those who have a recent history of cancer (the research looked at people from 2015 to the...
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We are surrounded by glass but most people don’t know the first thing about it. Glass is a strange substance: It is partly a solid and partly a liquid. What does this mean? The atoms of solids are packed close together. If they are crystalline, they are in regular, repeating patterns. The atoms in liquids are not in a regular pattern and move...
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