https://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. As the federal shutdown continues, states have been forced to fall back on their own resources to spot disease outbreaks—just as respiratory illness season begins. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-shutdown-gaps-states-health-possibly.html Wed, 22 Oct 2025 08:41:13 EDT news680341269 A new study from researchers at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City finds that a comprehensive program with a strong focus on education in the health system's urgent care clinics and emergency departments significantly increased HIV testing for patients being evaluated for other sexually transmitted diseases, helping to increase the number of previously undiagnosed patients who learned they were living with HIV and promptly connected to care. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-hiv-screening-boosts-urgent-clinics.html Thu, 02 Oct 2025 15:19:00 EDT news678637135 A new study led by researchers at UC Berkeley School of Public Health found a link between exposure to fine mineral dust and an increased risk of Valley fever, an emerging infectious disease that is becoming increasingly common in California and other southwestern states. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-02-valley-fever-linked-fine-mineral.html Thu, 20 Feb 2025 10:10:16 EST news659268602 California public health officials are dipping into state and federal stockpiles to equip up to 10,000 farmworkers with masks, gloves, goggles, and other safety gear as the state confirms at least 21 human cases of bird flu as of early November. It's the latest reminder of the state's struggle to remain prepared amid multibillion-dollar deficits. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-11-california-pandemic-stockpile-bird-flu.html Mon, 18 Nov 2024 13:40:01 EST news651152261 In Canada, prescribing potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs)—drugs whose harms may outweigh their benefits, which may be ineffective, or for which a safer alternative exists—remains very common among the elderly. Moreover, although overall spending on PIMs decreased between 2013 and 2021, seniors' exposure to three categories of PIMs increased during this period: gabapentinoids, proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and antipsychotics. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-elderly-potentially-inappropriate-drugs.html Tue, 10 Sep 2024 13:50:01 EDT news645192363 Countries in Asia Pacific are unlikely to meet their commitment to eliminate hepatitis by 2030 unless they declare a public health emergency, as they did with COVID-19, a disease specialist suggested. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-07-scientists-countries-declare-health-emergency.html Mon, 01 Jul 2024 15:00:04 EDT news639064801 While mpox cases have sharply declined since the 2022 global outbreak, they continue to occur in the U.S. among gay and bisexual men who have sex with men (GBMSM), according to a UCLA-led study from EMERGEncy ID NET, a multi-site surveillance network. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-06-mpox-circulate-gay-bisexual-men.html Thu, 06 Jun 2024 13:00:01 EDT news636878522 Congo is struggling to contain its biggest mpox outbreak, and scientists say a new form of the disease detected in a mining town might more easily spread among people. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-05-mpox-easily-congo-biggest-outbreak.html Thu, 02 May 2024 03:55:07 EDT news633840899 Dengue is a disease characterized by fever, rash, headache, myalgia, and arthralgia, with a risk for complications due to endothelial dysfunction and hemorrhage. Most common in countries in Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa, travel-related cases of dengue are frequently spread to the United States and occasionally spark local transmission. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-genomic-sequencing-dengue-effective.html Tue, 19 Mar 2024 16:23:03 EDT news630084181 The World Health Organization today declared an end to the mpox public health emergency. But just two days earlier, the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) announced a potential resurgence of mpox (formerly monkeypox) in Chicago. Nine of the 13 cases (69%) reported to the CDPH between April 17 and May 5 were in men who were fully vaccinated for mpox. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-high-monkeypox-resurgence-summer-vaccine.html Fri, 12 May 2023 12:17:18 EDT news603112635 Dwindling COVID deaths may have allowed "normal" life to largely resume but uncertainties persist, the WHO chief said Thursday, as experts debated if the global health emergency should be declared over. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-mulls-covid-emergency-status.html Thu, 04 May 2023 13:29:31 EDT news602425766 For the first time since the mpox outbreak began last spring, no new cases have been reported in more than a week, fresh government data shows. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-04-cdc-mpox-cases-week-outbreak.html Fri, 28 Apr 2023 12:33:03 EDT news601903981 While the World Health Organization hopes COVID-19 will soon no longer be considered a public health emergency, it has warned the virus itself is here to stay. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12-years-covid-stay.html Fri, 16 Dec 2022 05:30:01 EST news590389539 Noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular conditions account for 41 million deaths each year. That's more than 70% of all deaths globally. Most of these deaths (77%) are in low-income and middle-income countries—including those in Africa. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12-hypertension-diabetes-people-infectious-diseases.html Wed, 14 Dec 2022 12:16:04 EST news590242561 A common clinical practice may be inadvertently harming patients, according to new research published October 13 in the European Respiratory Journal. The team of Michigan Medicine researchers behind the study suggest that administration of antibiotics with activity against anaerobic bacteria has a profound effect on the gut microbiome and, ultimately, an adverse impact on critically ill patients. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10-anti-anaerobic-antibiotics-mortality-critically-ill.html Thu, 13 Oct 2022 13:48:03 EDT news584887681 Outpatient antibiotic management of selected patients with appendicitis is safe, allowing many patients to avoid surgery and hospitalization, and should be considered as part of shared decision-making between doctor and patient. Of 726 participants who were randomized to receive antibiotics, 46% were discharged from the emergency department within 24 hours. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-patients-appendicitis-antibiotics.html Wed, 06 Jul 2022 11:11:30 EDT news576324688 New research being presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Lisbon, Portugal, (23-26 April), has identified the third day of hospitalization as a tipping point in the progression of disease among symptomatic patients admitted for COVID-19 pneumonia. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04-day-hospital-severity-covid-pneumonia.html Sat, 23 Apr 2022 05:08:23 EDT news569909295 While the world is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, public health and emergency management experts are already preparing for the next one. After all, biologists are certain another dangerous new pathogen will emerge sooner or later. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-03-strategies-pandemic.html Tue, 09 Mar 2021 09:40:01 EST news534502193 A new artificial intelligence-based score considers multiple factors to predict the prognosis of individual patients with COVID-19 seen at urgent care clinics or emergency departments. The tool, which was created by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), can be used to rapidly and automatically determine which patients are most likely to develop complications and need to be hospitalized. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-score-prognosis-outpatients-covid-.html Mon, 26 Oct 2020 17:17:01 EDT news522951414 Non-routine testing of patients with suspected COVID-19 to help predict their prognosis on admission to emergency departments offers limited benefit and could have significant cost implications, according to a collaborative evaluation by Cardiff University and the University Hospital of Wales. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-non-routine-patients-covid-benefit.html Mon, 19 Oct 2020 08:44:15 EDT news522315848 As the United States exceeds 5 million reported coronavirus cases—the world's first country to do so—epidemiologists have pinpointed what helped to set the country on this path. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-gaps-early-surveillance-coronavirus-record-breaking.html Fri, 21 Aug 2020 16:11:11 EDT news517245064 Norovirus is a major cause of acute gastroenteritis, with at least 49 different norovirus genotypes. GII.4 genotype is responsible for the majority of norovirus epidemic outbreaks. The genotypes associated with medically-attended sporadic acute gastroenteritis are less clear. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-identification-stomach-flu-culprit.html Mon, 10 Aug 2020 09:20:01 EDT news516267949 One in four inpatients with influenza in a given season showed signs of having become infected during care. This is clear from a University of Gothenburg thesis about the spread of influenza in hospitals and how this problem can be remedied. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-flu-virus-hospital-environment-common.html Wed, 15 Jul 2020 10:32:04 EDT news514027922 Malaria causes almost a half-million deaths every year worldwide. While the majority of people affected by this mosquito-borne parasitic infection are in Africa, a smaller percentage of cases are also found in Southeast Asia. This is the only region where the most common malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, has shown confirmed resistance to a widely used combination drug therapy. However, we may now have another solution to counter these hard-to-eliminate parasites. A study led by Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS) scientists has found that treating fabric with an insecticide, transfluthrin, can incapacitate and kill mosquitoes found in Vietnam that transmit malaria to humans. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-anti-mosquito-fabrics-malaria.html Thu, 25 Jun 2020 09:38:38 EDT news512296709 Researchers from UCLA, Harvard Medical School and the University of Tokyo found that during a recent six-year period, homeless people in New York state were more likely to hospitalized and treated with mechanical ventilators for respiratory infections than people who are not homeless. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-homeless-likelier-ventilators-respiratory-infections.html Thu, 18 Jun 2020 11:07:10 EDT news511697227 JDR Clinical & Translational Research has published an invited commentary by researchers at the University of Rochester, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, N.Y., USA on dental care and the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), including the provision of dental care and protecting patients and staff during the pandemic. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-dental-oral-health-clouds-covid-.html Wed, 29 Apr 2020 12:24:09 EDT news507381844 In many areas of the U.S. and around the world, people are being told to stay home and avoid travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, travel restrictions may not apply to employees of critical industries, such as trucking, public health professionals, financial services, and food supply. So what should someone do if they develop symptoms consistent with COVID-19 while traveling? https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-covid-symptoms-home.html Wed, 15 Apr 2020 11:44:47 EDT news506169883 The first virus detections for the 2019/2020 season indicate co-circulation of influenza types A (71%) and B (29%) viruses in the WHO European Region. This is a mix which potentially could result in high mortality in elderly patients and a heavy burden on healthcare services, warns the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe in a joint assessment issued today. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-12-seasonal-influenza.html Thu, 19 Dec 2019 10:46:45 EST news495974802 (HealthDay)—The United States' ability to deal with major health emergencies quickly has improved significantly in recent years, researchers say. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-05-emergency-readiness-gaps-persist.html Wed, 08 May 2019 11:30:01 EDT news476530633 New research presented at this week's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Amsterdam, Netherlands (13-16 April) shows that only one third of patients that enter the emergency department with suspected urinary tract infection (UTI) actually have evidence of this infection, yet almost all are treated with antibiotics, unnecessarily driving the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. The study is by Dr. Laura Shallcross, University College London, UK and colleagues. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-04-uk-patients-uti-antibiotics-lack.html Fri, 12 Apr 2019 02:35:24 EDT news474255317