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NEWS:
As COVID Continues, Can Hospitals Create Better Bed Management Through Math?
The COVID-19 pandemic shined a spotlight on a significant healthcare problem: a sudden inundation of critically ill patients can take a hospital’s bed capacity to the limit – and beyond.
“COVID threw healthcare into an enormous temporary imbalance, especially early on as hospitals struggled to manage the influx of patients,” says Sanjeev Agrawal, co-author with Mohan Giridharadas of Better Healthcare Through Math (www.leantaas.com).
“Now there are concerns that another wave of the virus will once again put hospitals and their bed capacities to the test.”
Agrawal and Giridharadas, senior executives at LeanTaaS, a software company that focuses on improving healthcare operations, say that while the pandemic may have exacerbated the problem with hospital bed capacity, it didn’t create it.
Hospitals have confronted a lack of bed space for years, struggling to figure out how to match t
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Lack of Key Considerations in FDA Food Chemical Safety Process Leaves Consumers at Risk of Chronic Diseases
A group of health, environmental, and consumer organizations challenged the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) practice of not accounting for the cumulative health effect of chemicals in the diet when allowing new chemicals in food. Over 60 years ago, Congress passed a law requiring that FDA and industry do just that. Unfortunately, an Environmental Defense Fund investigation of nearly 900 safety determinations found that only one considered the requirement in a meaningful way.
In reviewing the correspondence between FDA and manufacturers, EDF found no evidence the agency raises concerns with this major shortcoming. The analysis also demonstrates that, when evaluating the safety of new additives, FDA and food manufacturers all too often consider one chemical at a time rather than as a class of related substances.
“The collective failure by FDA and the food industry to follow the law
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Center for Lyme Action Launches "Moonshot" Plan to Eliminate Lyme Disease by 2030
The Center for Lyme Action, a leading nonprofit dedicated to increasing federal funding for Lyme disease research, held a "Call to Action" on-line event and issued a report outlining a "Moonshot" strategy for eliminating Lyme Disease by 2030.
"Lyme disease now affects more than 300,000 Americans each year, with the number of cases growing steadily. A broad mix of modern trends and practices are to blame, including climate change, international travel, changes in land use and deforestation of rural areas. This means the disease in reality threatens all Americans. It demands a comprehensive national strategy with strong bipartisan support," said Bonnie Crater, co-founder of the Center for Lyme Action.
Lyme disease is the most prevalent vector-borne and tick-borne illness in the Country. Between 1-2 million have Persistent Lyme disease with debilitating symptoms. Estimated economic costs
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Prostate Cancer: Immunotherapy Offers Hope
An antibody for treating advanced prostate cancer improves progression-free survival in patients with metastasised, castration-resistant prostate cancer. This is the finding of the long-term analyses of an international phase 3 clinical trial, recently published in the leading journal "European Urology". The study showed that overall survival was 2 – 3 times higher than in the placebo arm.
Ipilimumab is a humanised monoclonal IgG1 antibody that is active against CTLA-4. CTLA-4 is a molecule that controls part of the immune system by down-regulating it. "Cancer cells can evade the endogenous defence of the immune system by deactivating it. An antibody that targets CTLA-4, a so-called checkpoint inhibitor (CPI), can block this deactivation, thereby reactivating the immune system once again. This reactivated immune response can then help the body to destroy cancer cells," explains oncolo
