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NEWS:
Johns Hopkins Medicine Researchers Identify Health Conditions Likely To Be Misdiagnosed
For a patient, a diagnostic error can mean the difference between life and death. While estimates vary, likely more than 100,000 Americans die or are permanently disabled each year due to medical diagnoses that initially miss conditions or are wrong or delayed.
Now a research team, led by a Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality expert, reports it has identified three major disease categories — vascular events, infections and cancers — that account for nearly three-fourths of all serious harms from diagnostic errors. The team’s findings, based on analysis of a large repository of malpractice insurance claims, are described in a paper published online today in the journal Diagnosis.
The researchers found that diagnostic errors were the most common, most catastrophic and most costly of medical mistakes. Diagnostic errors leading to death or serious, permanent di
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For Malnourished Children, New Therapeutic Food Boosts Gut Microbes, Healthy Development
A new type of therapeutic food, specifically designed to repair the gut microbiomes of malnourished children, is superior to standard therapy in an initial clinical trial conducted in Bangladesh.
An interdisciplinary team of investigators from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Dhaka, Bangladesh, have undertaken a new approach for addressing the pressing global health problem of childhood malnutrition. Their approach focuses on selectively boosting key growth-promoting gut microbes using ingredients present in affordable, culturally acceptable foods.
Their work supports the notion that healthy growth of infants and children is inexorably linked to healthy development of their gut communities following birth. The results of their research are described in two reports published July 12 in the journal Scien
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A Third Of Children Up To Age 3 Exposed To Zika In-Utero Have Neurological Problems
New UCLA-led research suggests that 32% of children up to the age of 3 years who were exposed to the Zika virus during the mother’s pregnancy had below-average neurological development.
The study also found that fewer than 4% of 216 children evaluated had microcephaly —a smaller-than-normal head that is one of the hallmarks of the mosquito-borne disease. The heads of two of those children grew to normal size over time, the researchers reported.
The study was published in the journal Nature Medicine.
The findings, conducted by UCLA researchers with colleagues in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the disease was first detected, as well as in Austria and Germany, are a follow-up to previous research. That study showed substantial neurologic damage identified through developmental testing and neuroimaging in children younger than age 2 whose mothers were infected with Zika during their pregna
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New Antibiotics Effective Without Triggering Resistance, Mouse Study Shows
Not only are they effective against Gram-positive and negative multi-resistant bacteria, they also appear not to trigger resistance when used to treat infection in mice. Such are the promises of the two new antibiotics created by Prof. Brice Felden and his team at the Inserm and Université de Rennes 1 'Bacterial Regulatory RNAs and Medicine' joint laboratory (U1230), in conjunction with a team from the Rennes Institute of Chemical Sciences (ISCR). This French advance could bring both fresh impetus and new possibilities for fighting antibiotic resistance worldwide. Details on this research will be published July 9 in PLOS Biology.
Antibiotics have saved so many lives over the previous century of their use in humans that they are considered to be one of the major breakthroughs of contemporary medicine. Unfortunately, growing resistance is gradually rendering them ineffective, with the thr
