Disease

What's Magical About the Surgical Management of Obesity?

Obesity remains a significant health problem, especially when it increases one's susceptibility to COVID-19. While better eating habits and exercise have long been the mainstays of weight reduction, in the last 10-to-15 years surgical rearrangements of the gastrointestinal tract have come to the fore. Not only do they reduce weight, but they've improved hypertension and diabetes mellitus. A new study compares surgical and medical management for diabetes.

The media regularly reports about deaths from COVID-19 as if that is the whole story. But it's not. COVID-19 doesn't behave like a cold or the flu. In many cases, it hangs on, leaving the patient with a host of chronic (and maybe permanent) conditions. Simply counting deaths will understate the damage done by the virus.

Data suggest that about 3% of Americans, or nearly 10 million people, have been infected with coronavirus. Unfortunately, this data comes from late April and early May, and the virus has spread even further since then. The official COVID-19 case tally, therefore, is a dramatic undercount.

COVID-19 makes us reconsider so many of our normal activities. Sure, from the perspective of exposure, driving is the safest form of travel. Planes? Perhaps not as much, as corporations and your wallet determine the seating relative to other passengers. But what about trains? Hop on board and find out.

There is a distinction between healthy concern for the coronavirus and deeply unhealthy obsession and paranoia. Guess which side Esquire magazine picked?

"Twelve Diseases That Changed Our World" was originally published in 2007 but has taken on renewed relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Will the coronavirus similarly change our world? We review the book authored by Prof. Irwin Sherman.

Hip fractures remain a significant health problem, especially for the elderly, where a fracture can lead to immobility and a downward spiral. Making use of data from the Framingham Osteoporosis Study, a new study looks at the risk factors and incidence of hip fractures over the last several decades. The study focused on recognized risk factors for fracture, in the end singling out two: smoking and drinking.

Can you personalize public health guidance? One-size-fits-all policy, in the era of COVID, is causing a great deal of controversy. Are the feds, the states, or local officials best equipped in deciding what measures to put in place? A new study provides a more local, county-wide view.

Long ago, roughly 100 years past, in a place far away, there were few (if any) effective treatments for pneumonia. One treatment that seemed to help was targeting the lungs with low-dose radiation. Could COVID-19’s attack on the lungs be stopped in a similar way? Several small studies are now underway to find out.

“You can think of the human immune system as an orchestra playing together and needing a co-ordinated performance from all the musicians and their instruments. It doesn’t make scientific sense to talk about antibodies or T-cells on their own.”

The foundation of medical research, which is considered the gold standard, is the Randomized Controlled Trial when individuals are matched with others, and then randomized to one treatment or another. While the beauty of an RCT lies in its process of deliberate randomness, very little attention has been paid to the integrity of its building blocks: categories. It's time to take a more in-depth look.