In the News
In the News
Advanced spatial transcriptomics techniques are advancing our understanding of cancer and other diseases at the cellular level: “You can zoom in, you can look at the tissue-specific features, how many cells there are, what is the cell density, and what are the morphological features of individual cells,” says Mingyao Li, PhD.
Some social media posts have misinterpreted and publicized a criticized study that claims to have identified a correlation between emergency calls for cardiac events and the vaccination rate in Israel. “Much of what I am seeing is people presenting more examples of time series for select places and times, or more scatterplots, considering this validation of a narrative of vaccine harm," commented Jeffrey S. Morris, PhD. "Many times I don’t see an acknowledgement of the limitations of these approaches … or acknowledgement that these are hypotheses that need validation.”
In a review of current facts about the antiviral drug Paxlovid, Susan Ellenberg, PhD, comments on Pfizer's unusual release of interim results during an ongoing clinical trial.
Social media posts this month claiming new revelations that the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine is only 12 percent effective against infection most likely stem from a misreading of documents made public more than a year ago, says Jeffrey Morris, PhD.
Jeffrey Morris, PhD, debunked the latest in a series of misleading claims that linked athletes' heart issues with Covid-19 vaccines.
If Philadelphia's masking policy aims to prevent spread of Covid-19, emphasizing hospitalization numbers, a lagging indicator, over case numbers isn't wise, comments Michael Levy, PhD. “It’s like instead of using a weather forecast, just putting a bucket out and seeing how much rain is in it.”
For medical researchers who aim to understand the patient experince, "collecting abundant social-media data is cost-effective, does not involve burdening participants, and is available in real time,” Graciela Gonzalez Hernandez, PhD, commented—and it may help highight the voices of groups typically underrepresented in clinical trials.
Negative descriptors appear more often in clinical notes for Black patients — new findings that build on what we already know, says Nwamaka Eneanya, MD, MPH: “Such biases won't go anywhere without systemic interventions,” she comments.
How do we define “asymptomatic” COVID-19 cases? That can vary, says Michael David, MS, MD, PhD. Some patients have chronic respiratory symptoms as baseline, from congestive heart failure to allergies.
Amid the omicron surge, more patients are coming into the hospital for other reasons but testing positive for Covid-19 once they arrive. M. Kit Delgado, MD, MS, says that many now come with chronic conditions that normally are treated elsewhere — but now, because of the strain that the latest surge is placing on the system, hospitals are the only option available to them.
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