Health & Medicine

Nov

2021

Pain Management Services

UPMC Ireland, November 8, 2021.

UPMC’s pain management specialists can help you manage pain, whether it’s acute or chronic. Acute pain comes on suddenly and is often from a specific injury or condition. Chronic pain is daily pain lasting at least three months, according to the International Association for the Study of Pain. Most acute pain resolves quickly with standard therapies and the passage of time. But untreated acute pain can sometimes evolve into or cause chronic pain conditions. Chronic pain, typically, is pain that hasn’t responded to healing or standard therapies. Pain comes from many conditions — an injury, a surgery, or a health problem such as low back pain or cancer. Uncontrolled long-term pain can have a chronic impact on quality of life. Pain management and treatment is an important component of the services UPMC provides to its patients.

Specialists at UPMC Aut Even Hospital, UPMC Kildare Hospital, and UPMC Whitfield Hospital may be able to help reduce your pain with proven treatments. Our experts can diagnose your pain and assign you a tailored treatment plan. Read More >

Oct

2021

Why does water squirt out of your eye if you blow your nose really hard?

LiveScience, October 9 2021.

The human body is full of quirks. For example, some people can squirt water (or even smoke or milk) from their eyes.

But how can some people spurt unusual fluids from their eyes, and is it dangerous to their health?

It turns out that when someone squirts water out of their eye, they’re putting pressure on a sac in the bridge of the nose (where glasses usually sit) that holds fluid draining from the eyes. This sac is called the lacrimal sac and is a part of the tear duct system. Read More >

Aug

2021

Colds and Other Common Respiratory Diseases Might Surge as Kids Return to School

Science News, August 12 2021.

As U.S. schools resume in-person learning this fall, parents and administrators may have to deal with more outbreaks of colds and other seasonal respiratory illnesses than usual. If so, these outbreaks aren’t likely to be especially dangerous for school-age children, but could be problematic for traditionally more vulnerable younger siblings or elderly relatives, experts say. And because the symptoms of these illnesses often mirror those of COVID-19, it could make having kids back in the classroom — and keeping them there — that much more challenging. Read More >

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Jun

2021

Cancer symptoms women shouldn’t ignore

Cancer Treatment Centers of America, June 10 2021.

If you have a uterus, cervix, ovaries, vagina and/or vulva, you may experience occasional pain, discomfort and discharge. But some of these symptoms—especially when they’re new, persistent (lasting longer than a couple of weeks) or keep getting worse—may be signs you should get checked out by your doctor. They may be warning signs of a cancer of the reproductive system, which may be even more concerning if you have a family history of gynecologic cancers or other risk factors. Read More >

Jun

2021

Mohs surgery

Cancer Treatment Centers of America, June 7, 2021.

Mohs surgery (also known as Mohs micrographic surgery, MMS or Mohs) is a type of outpatient surgical procedure used to treat multiple types of skin cancer. During the procedure, the surgeon removes a layer of tissue from the cancerous region and examines it under a microscope to look for remaining cancer cells that were not removed during the procedure. If cells are detected, the surgeon will remove another layer of tissue, and so on, until no more cancer cells have been detected.

Dr. Frederic Mohs developed the surgery as a medical student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1930s, and it’s been considered an effective treatment option for keratoses (precancerous lesions), early-stage melanomas and carcinomas. Read More >

Apr

2021

Coronavirus Variants—Will New mRNA Vaccines Meet the Challenge?

Engineering, April 18 2021.

On 24 February 2021, a month after announcing the project, the biotechnology company Moderna (Cambridge, MA, USA) sent samples to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the updated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine booster it had created and manufactured to address the B.1.351 variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), first reported in South Africa [1]. The hope is that such quick updates to authorized vaccines will provide—if and as needed—protection against the rapidly spreading new strains of SARS-CoV-2 that have shown troubling signs suggesting immune evasion [2].

These vaccines and boosters highlight the unique advantages of the new, messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based vaccine development platform. Both Moderna and the partnership of Pfizer (New York City, NY, USA) and BioNTech (Mainz, Germany) tapped this novel technology to create and deliver COVID-19 vaccines in an unprecedented matter of months—in contrast to the typical timetable of years [3]. Now, the technology’s speed and flexibility may prove doubly valuable by helping to meet the challenge of a swiftly evolving virus. Read More >

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Mar

2021

What Is Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer?

Verywell Health, March 15, 2021.

Nonmelanoma skin cancers are a group of cancers that develop in the upper layers of the skin. They include several different types of skin cancer, but the two most common are squamous cell skin cancer (or squamous cell carcinoma) and basal cell carcinoma.

Most nonmelanoma skin cancers are easily treatable, especially when caught early, but some are more dangerous. For most people, skin cancers are relatively preventable. Read More >

Feb

2021

COVID-19 Precautions may be Reducing Cases of Flu and Other Respiratory Infections

Science News, February 2 2021.

Heading into the dead of winter, doctors and scientists have noticed something odd: Missing cases of non-COVID-19 respiratory illnesses, specifically flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

“We’re seeing very low numbers of both of these infections, even now, while we’re in the peak season,” says Rachel Baker, an epidemiologist at Princeton University. “We really should be seeing cases go up.”

Instead, positive flu tests reported in December are a little less than one one-hundredth of all of those tallied in December 2019, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. RSV’s drop in reported cases — to one two-hundredth of those a year earlier — is even bigger. Read More >

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Dec

2020

Metabolic Health & Menopause: What is the Link Between Sugar and Hot Flashes?

Levels Blog, December 2 2020.

A rolling heat spreads uncontrollably over your skin. Your heart beats faster. Your skin flushes hot and red, you start sweating through your clothes, and you feel confused, irritable. A hot flash has taken over your body, and all you want to do is find somewhere cool to wait it out.

Almost 80% of people undergoing natural menopause have hot flashes, and about 30% report frequent or severe symptoms. These are called vasomotor episodes (because they’re related to constriction and dilation of the blood vessels) and researchers attribute them to ovarian changes in early menopause that cause spikes and dips in how much estrogen the body produces. So what is the relationship between blood sugar and hot flashes, and does elevated blood sugar cause hot flashes? Read More >

Nov

2020

Bringing Embryonic Stem Cells to the Blind: Clinical Test Gets FDA Approval

Discover, January 4 2011.

Embryonic stem cell treatments are edging closer to mainstream medicine. An experimental treatment just approved for clinical trials may provide hope to the 10 to 15 million elderly patients in the United States who suffer from a common form of macular degeneration, which causes gradual blindness.

The biotech company behind the treatment, Advanced Cell Technology, Inc., previously won FDA approval to try an embryonic stem cell treatment on patients with a rare, juvenile form of macular degeneration. The new FDA-approved trial will use similar techniques, but targets a much broader patient base. Read More >