Health | WPN World People News

Vaping marijuana and vaping nicotine rose sharply in the past three years among college-age (19-22 years old) adults, according to 2019 survey results from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study. The percentage of college students who said they vaped marijuana in the past 30 days rose from 5.2% in 2017 to 14% in 2019. The corresponding percentages for their non-college-attending peers increased from 7.8% in 2017 to 17% in 2019.

To meet the pressing need to better understand the prevalence, progression, and clinical impact of Alzheimer’s disease among Mexican Americans, the National Institutes of Health has added funding for more biomarker measures, including positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, to the ongoing Health and Aging Brain Among Latino Elders (HABLE) Study. NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA) awarded new support that is expected to total $45.5 million over five years to the University of North Texas Health Science Center (HSC) at Fort Worth for the Health and Aging Brain Among Latino Elders-Amyloid, Tau, and Neurodegeneration (HABLE-AT(N)) Study. This combined investment and effort will help researchers better understand the health disparities of brain aging and Alzheimer’s between Mexican Americans and non-Latino whites.

Colorized scanning electron micrograph of an apoptotic cell (blue) heavily infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (yellow), isolated from a patient sample. Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland.NIAID

“The recent vaccine-derived polio outbreaks confirmed in Yemen and Sudan are consequences of increasingly low levels of immunity among children. Each outbreak has paralysed children in areas that have been extremely difficult if not impossible to reach with routine or supplementary polio vaccination for extended periods of time.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has awarded $7 million over two years to the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) to fund a pilot project that will identify up to 50 high-burden communities working to advance health equity by addressing social determinants of health.

A laboratory technician works at a health and science centre in Bangkok, Thailand. It is a WHO Collaborating Centre for research and training on viral zoonoses.

The National Institutes of Health has launched two of three adaptive Phase 3 clinical trials evaluating the safety and effectiveness of varying types of blood thinners to treat adults diagnosed with COVID-19. Part of the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) initiative, these trials will be conducted at more than 100 sites around the world and will involve patients in various clinical settings — those who have not been hospitalized, those currently hospitalized and those discharged after hospitalization for moderate to severe disease.

The World Health Organization’s first global report on sepsis finds that the effort to tackle millions of deaths and disabilities due to sepsis is hampered by serious gaps in knowledge, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. According to recent studies, sepsis kills 11 million people each year, many of them children. It disables millions more.