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NEWS:
NIH Holds COVID-19 Vaccine Kick-off Event
The National Institutes of Health held a livestreamed COVID-19 vaccination event to kick-off NIH’s vaccination efforts for its employees on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Six healthcare workers from the NIH Clinical Center received the Moderna OVID-19 vaccine, known as mRNA-1273, kicking off a live event during which U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar II, NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., and NIH Office of Research Services Director Colleen A. McGowan will give brief remarks and also be vaccinated.
Following the event, additional healthcare workers from the NIH Clinical Center will receive the vaccine from the agency’s first shipment of 100 doses. NIH expects a sizeable shipment from the State of Maryland next week for its tier 1 front li
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FDA Grants 3B Medical Emergency Use for Lumin UV System Use in Nursing Homes, Ambulatory Care and Primary Care for SARS-CoV-2 N95 Re-Use
3B Medical announced receiving Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA to permit use of Lumin, a UVC system, on N95 respirators during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lumin was designed to clean CPAP accessories but is also used as a multi-purpose sanitizer. Today's announcement by the FDA allows Lumin to be used by healthcare workers employed in nursing homes, long term acute care, ambulatory, primary care, and clinics to allow N95 re-use to stop the spread of COVID-19 and help keep frontline healthcare workers safe.
UVC was first reportedly used for N95 decontamination during the COVID-19 crisis by the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Since then the CDC recognized UVC as a potential means of decontaminating N95 respirators, if the proper wavelength and UVC irradiance dose were used. While FDA has approved other systems for hospital use, the approved systems are complicated, limited to l
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Study Finds Over 80 Percent of COVID-19 Patients Have Vitamin D Deficiency
Over 80 percent of 200 COVID-19 patients in a hospital in Spain have vitamin D deficiency, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
Vitamin D is a hormone the kidneys produce that controls blood calcium concentration and impacts the immune system. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to a variety of health concerns, although research is still underway into why the hormone impacts other systems of the body. Many studies point to the beneficial effect of vitamin D on the immune system, especially regarding protection against infections.
“One approach is to identify and treat vitamin D deficiency, especially in high-risk individuals such as the elderly, patients with comorbidities, and nursing home residents, who are the main target population for the COVID-19,” said study co-author José L. Hernández, Ph.D., of the Unive
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$5.5 Million NIH Grant Supports New Tests To Diagnose Dementias Earlier And Easier
With a $5.5 million, five-year award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers at Case Western Reserve University will seek to further develop new diagnostic tests for dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson’s disease dementia—together the second-most-common dementias after Alzheimer’s disease.
Establishing quick and reliable testing methods for these neurological conditions—using tissue samples from non-traditional sources, such as skin, nasal mucosa, or the colon—could eventually allow doctors to diagnose patients earlier and more easily.
Researchers will use real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC)—a relatively-new technology originally developed at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories—to hone the identification of the telltale protein deposits of these brain diseases, in areas of the body outside of the brain.
The results could eventually help doctors track the
